POS Comparison Calculator

Transaction Fee % is only the percentage component of the per-transaction charge -- the flat Transaction Fee (flat) amount is added on top of every transaction regardless of its size. Because that flat fee is a bigger share of a small transaction than a large one, Effective Processing Rate (total fees divided by total volume) runs higher than the entered percentage alone, especially when Avg Transaction Value is low.

Not necessarily the total dollar amount -- but it does raise the Effective Processing Rate. Monthly Transaction Fees depend on both Monthly Transactions and Avg Transaction Value together, so fewer, larger transactions and many small ones can produce similar total fees; the small-transaction business simply pays a higher rate as a percentage of its sales because the flat per-transaction fee is spread across less revenue per sale.

Hardware Cost only affects First Year Total Cost, added once on top of twelve months of subscription and transaction fees -- it never recurs in Annual Cost or 3-Year TCO beyond that first year. For a business processing meaningful volume, ongoing transaction fees typically dwarf even a several-hundred-dollar hardware cost within the first few months, which is why comparing POS systems on hardware price alone can be misleading.

3-Year TCO (total cost of ownership) adds First Year Total Cost -- which already includes the one-time Hardware Cost -- to two additional years of Annual Cost at the same subscription and transaction-fee levels, giving a single figure to compare against a competing system's own 3-year projection. Annual Cost, by contrast, is only the ongoing yearly run rate and excludes the hardware purchase entirely.