talech Review

talech is an affordable and feature-rich POS system for retailers and restaurateurs, but does it have what it takes to support your business? The Ascent provides an in-depth review of talech so you can decide if it's the right POS for you.

One of the lesser-known POS systems on the market -- but by no means less powerful -- talech's iPad POS system has been coolly serving the restaurant and retail industries since 2012.

Packed with strong POS features and then some, we were impressed with talech's overall functionality. In this review, I'll go through talech's features, pricing, support options, ease of use, and more to help you decide whether talech is a front-runner for your choice of restaurant or retail POS system.

Who is talech for?

talech is designed for both the retail and restaurant industry, but the software really excels when it comes to its restaurant-focused features. Just like its competitors, the level of functionality to which users have access is determined by each pricing plan.

Its most basic package is geared toward basic retail operations and cafes; its medium plan is kitted out for quick-service restaurants, fast/casual food service, and medium-sized retailers; while its premium plan supports full service restaurants, multilocation businesses, and salons and spas.

talech's features

talech offers a solid feature set, but offers a great all-round pack of specific and well-thought-out features for the restaurant industry.

Let's check out some of talech's most notable features.

Inventory management

The importance of good inventory management for any business cannot be overstated, and talech agrees.

Each of talech's pricing plans include inventory management tools that allow you to create item variations, set discounts, and track inventory. However, for more advanced features, you'll need to subscribe to talech's Standard or Premium plan.

Its Standard plan includes product bundling, selling items by weight, and generating bar codes on a PDF and printing them from any device. It also has functionality for applying automatic discounts, offering exchanges, and giving store credit.

talech's Premium plan takes inventory management to the next level, with inventory alerts for low stock, stock taking functionality, support for BOGO discounts, and inventory logs.

The Premium package includes all Standard plan features plus appointment booking, gift cards, online ordering, inventory alerts, purchase orders, inventory log, stock take, table management, pay by position, split and merge orders, coursing, automatic gratuity, and BOGO discounts.

talech's inventory management feature allows you to create product variations. Image source: Author

Table mapping

talech's table mapping feature allows users to create an accurate floor plan of their restaurant or food service business, view open and occupied tables by color, track the length of time taken to turn a table, and assign tables to servers.

Table mapping is only available on its Premium plan.

talech has a strong table mapping feature, with color-coded visuals. Image source: Author

Online ordering

Important in the time of COVID-19, talech also offers online ordering functionality. Users can create their own branded website where customers are able to order items for in-store pickup.

Online orders are completely synced with inventory and are available to both retail and restaurant businesses.

Offline mode

Although talech does offer an offline mode, it's not the best I've come across in the POS space. If you suffer a power outage for any reason, or want to sell at a craft fair or another open-air event, you'll be able to accept only cash transactions, and won't be able to access a large chunk of the POS system.

Customer management

All of talech's plans include some form of customer management, which isn't as common as you might think across POS systems.

Users can view data such as customer visit frequency, average spend, and days since last visit to help create customer profiles and understand behavior. The Standard and Premium plans also offer a customer loyalty program at no further cost.

With the Premium package, you can also generate email campaigns to send to your entire customer database or subsets. Through this feature, you can send discounts, coupons, and announcements, and also view how many customers took advantage of your offers.

Dashboard

talech's dashboard is very visually pleasing while also displaying a large amount of useful and insightful information. It provides a real-time snapshot of business performance, and users can also choose to view a specific date, a date range, or specific business shifts to view.

Unfortunately, the dashboard is only available with the Standard and Premium plans.

talech's dashboard provides an at-a-glance look at sales figures. Image source: Author

Reporting

talech's reporting functionality is adequate. While the system offers a good amount of reports to select from, such as top-performing products, net revenue per employee, it's not as extensive a feature as I've seen other vendors offer.

You can also select to view your Summary report, which gives you an overview of revenue for the day, including payment totals split by cash, credit, and check, and employee receipt totals showing number of receipts, revenue totals, and tips.

Users can generate multiple reports from Gross Revenue to Guests Per Receipt. Image source: Author

talech's ease of use

Like most modern POS systems, talech is easy to use -- especially if you're an iOS user. It's built for use on iPads, but does offer some limited third-party hardware options. iPads can also be used as customer-facing displays that show customers their orders.

It boasts an intuitive and uncluttered design, and all features are readily accessible, so users don't need to search far and wide to be able to carry out business.

talech's POS register is clean and uncluttered. Image source: Author

talech's pricing

While talech doesn't offer a free version like many of its competitors, it does offer three reasonable and affordable pricing bands:

• Starter: Priced at $29/month, this option is best for cafes and basic retail operations. Features include unlimited devices, up to 5 employees and 100 products, inventory tracking, employee permissions, basic order management, full and partial refunds, cash drawer management, customer history tracking, and basic reporting.
• Standard: Priced at $69/month, this option is best for quick-service restaurants, fast/casual food service, and medium-sized retailers. This package includes all Starter plan features plus unlimited employees and products, product bundles, time-based services, sales of items by weight, bar code label printing, clock-in and timesheets, kitchen printing, automatic discounts, exchanges, store credit, house accounts, and insights.
• Premium: Priced at $99/month, this package is best for full-service restaurants, multilocation businesses, and salons and spas. The Premium package includes all Standard plan features plus appointment booking, gift cards, online ordering, inventory alerts, purchase orders, inventory log, stock take, table management, pay by position, split and merge orders, coursing, automatic gratuity, and BOGO discounts.

Each plan charges $29 per additional device you want to use. The good news is that talech's pricing is month-to-month, which means you're not locked into a contract if your business changes.

talech offers three pricing levels, ranging from $29 to $99 per month. Image source: Getty Images

talech's support

talech support is almost second to none.

In addition to 24/7 phone support, users are also offered 24/7 email support, live chat available Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and a large knowledge base that houses help articles, training videos, and a search bar.

Benefits of talech

talech has done a great job of aligning specific feature sets with its pricing bands, so users don't feel like they're paying for features they don't need, but are able to scale easily as business grows.

Aside from its extensive feature set, it's an intuitive and easy system to use, backed up with two 24/7 customer support options.

talech is a well-rounded and affordable system that caters to a wide array of industries

The talech POS system might not be as well-known as some of the best retail software on the market, such as Square or Lightspeed POS, but that's not to say it doesn't pack a good punch.

While its offline mode, apparent lack of mobile payments functionality and virtual terminal, and lack of hardware options is disappointing, the rest of the software is very solid.

talech manages to offer a broad feature set at competitive prices and boasts a stellar customer support function, all wrapped up in an easy-to-use and intuitive back end.