EPOS Systems · North West and UK-wide
EPOS Systems, installed and supported
Smart Wave IT installs and supports EPOS systems for restaurants, bars, cafes, shops and multi-site hospitality and retail groups. City teams cover Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Preston, Blackpool, Chester and Crewe with same-day response, and rollouts are delivered anywhere in the UK from a single build standard. The difference from buying a till online is that we install the whole thing: the hardware on the counter, the cabling and network it depends on, the card terminals paired to it, the kitchen screens or printers, the training, and the support afterwards. One quote, one visit, one number to ring when something stops. 700+ UK installs and 80+ multi-site rollouts across nine European countries.
Why businesses pick us
Track record behind every EPOS systems job.
- 700+
- UK installs
- 80+
- Europe rollouts
- 4 hrs
- SLA guarantee
- 1
- invoice per install
tills, cabling, Wi-Fi and CCTV
multi-site, nine countries
on site in our core cities
till, network and training together
Who we install EPOS systems for
Most EPOS enquiries come from one of three places: a venue opening or refitting, a venue whose current till has become the thing everyone blames, or a group that has grown to three or four sites and can no longer reconcile them. The kit is similar across all three. What changes is how much of the job is the till and how much is everything around it.
The businesses we fit tills for most often:
- Restaurants and gastro pubs: table plans, course holds, kitchen display screens and pay-at-table handhelds
- Bars, clubs and late-licensed venues: fast drinks screens, tabs, and card terminals that keep up with a queue
- Cafes, bakeries and takeaways: counter tills with delivery platform orders printing straight to the kitchen
- Independent and boutique retail: barcode scanning, stock by size and colour, loyalty and click-and-collect
- Hotels and visitor attractions: bar, restaurant and gift shop on one system with one back office
- Multi-site groups: one menu structure, one report, one receipt design across every venue, with site-level prices where needed
What a Smart Wave IT EPOS install includes
An EPOS supplier sells you software and posts you a box. We turn up. The quote covers the full job and there is no second invoice afterwards for the cabling or the Wi-Fi that makes the till work.
- Site survey: where the tills, printers, screens and router actually go, and what cable is needed to get there
- Till hardware (EPOS Now and other platforms): touchscreen terminals, cash drawers, Epson and Star receipt printers
- Kitchen printers or kitchen display screens, including Kitchen Brains KDS for high-volume kitchens
- Card terminals paired to the till, so amounts are never keyed twice and reconciliation matches
- Cat6 cabling to every till and screen position and a Wi-Fi network for handhelds, kept separate from guest Wi-Fi
- 4G or 5G failover on the router, so a broadband fault slows payments rather than stopping them
- Menu and product build with you, staff training on the day, and remote support after go-live
How to choose an EPOS system: cloud, traditional or tablet
Every supplier will tell you theirs is the right one. The honest answer depends on how you trade, how many sites you have and what happens when the internet drops. This is the comparison we walk through with customers before recommending anything, and it is why we install and support more than one platform.
| Cloud EPOS (e.g. EPOS Now, Lightspeed, Square) | Traditional on-site till (e.g. ICRTouch, Tevalis) | Tablet-based POS (iPad apps) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Independents and multi-site groups wanting central reporting | High-volume venues with complex service flows and local control | Pop-ups, small cafes, market stalls, very low budgets |
| Works when broadband drops? | Offline mode for a while, then needs the line back; failover matters | Yes, fully local; cloud features sync later | Usually poorly; depends entirely on Wi-Fi |
| Multi-site reporting | Built in, one login for every site | Possible with a head-office module, more setup | Limited |
| Hardware durability | Commercial terminals available; consumer kit is optional | Commercial, built for grease and spills | Consumer tablets; cases help, replacements are common |
| Upfront cost | Lower, monthly software fee | Higher, licence often one-off | Lowest |
| Our usual recommendation | Most restaurants, bars, cafes and retail groups | Busy kitchens with complex timing, venues that cannot tolerate any cloud dependency | Only where budget rules everything else out |
What an EPOS system costs
Two numbers drive the price: how many stations you need, and how much cabling it takes to reach them. Software is usually a monthly fee set by the platform; the install is a fixed price from us after a site visit.
- Single till with receipt printer, cash drawer and paired card terminal: typically around £1,200 installed and trained
- Restaurant with two tills, a kitchen screen and handheld ordering: usually £3,000 to £6,000 depending on cabling
- Multi-site rollouts: priced per site against a standard build, so the tenth site costs what the second did
- The main variable is the building: a converted mill or a listed unit costs more to cable neatly than a modern shell
- Migration from an existing system is included where the outgoing provider lets us export; we tell you up front if it does not
- No separate invoice for network, Wi-Fi or training; if it is needed to make the till work, it is in the quote
Multi-site and national EPOS rollouts
A rollout is not ten installs in a row. It is one install done carefully, written down as a build sheet, and then repeated without improvisation. We have done this across 80+ sites in nine European countries for one hospitality group, standardising the till, the kitchen display, the network and the CCTV per venue so head office sees every site the same way. The method is in our multi-site European rollout case study and the lessons are in what we learned from 50 sites.
When it goes wrong mid-service, speed matters more than anything. A Liverpool restaurant's tills dropped during a lunch rush; we were on site inside half an hour and traced it to a failing switch rather than rebooting and leaving. That one is written up in our Liverpool restaurant case study.
When our tills crashed during our busiest lunch service, the Smart Wave team was on site within 30 minutes and had us back up before the next sitting. They didn't just patch it. They explained what failed and stopped it happening again.
EPOS problems we get called in to fix
A lot of our EPOS work starts with a system somebody else installed. These are the failures we see most, and almost all of them are network problems wearing a till costume.
- Handhelds and card terminals dropping off Wi-Fi at the busiest moment: usually guest and staff traffic on one network, or access points placed by guesswork
- Kitchen printer or screen missing tickets: a flat network with no priority for the till traffic, or a printer on a flaky wireless link
- Card payments stopping when the broadband drops: no failover on the router, which is a two-figure monthly fix
- Three sites with three different menus and a Monday morning spent reconciling: no shared product structure
- Till supplier blames the network, IT company blames the till: two suppliers and no one accountable, which is the problem we are built to remove
- Staff unable to change a price or add a special without a support ticket: the back office was never set up or taught
Where we install
EPOS Systems across the North West and beyond
Each city page covers the local detail: the buildings, the trade, the licensing and the response times for that area. Multi-site and national projects are quoted from Liverpool and delivered wherever the sites are.
- EPOS in Liverpool
- Manchester EPOS
- EPOS for Leeds businesses
- EPOS in Preston
- Blackpool EPOS
- EPOS for Chester businesses
- EPOS in Crewe
Other services
Common questions
Frequently asked.
A single till with a printer, cash drawer and paired card terminal is typically around £1,200 installed. A restaurant with two tills, a kitchen screen and handhelds usually lands between £3,000 and £6,000, with cabling the main variable. Software is a monthly fee set by the platform. We quote a fixed install price after a site visit, with network and training included.
Ready when you are
Need EPOS systems for one site or fifty?
Call us today. Straight answer, same-day visit where possible.