Cash register cost over 3 years: calculator for Germany and Austria

How the calculator works

The price of a cash register is not just the device. Over three years the software subscription, the fiscal security (the TSE in Germany, the signature in Austria) and above all the fees on card payments, which grow with your takings, also weigh in. The calculator adds up these items for every offer in your country, with the prices the vendors publish and the date we read them.

How to use it

1. Choose the country where the business is based: offers and rules differ between Germany and Austria.
2. Enter the card takings of a typical month, VAT included. If you do not take cards, enter 0.
3. If you know it, enter the share of business, premium or foreign cards: it changes the cost only with subscriptions that discount consumer cards, such as SumUp’s Zahlungen Plus [1].

You can try the example of a café in Germany with 3,000 € a month and change the values: the result updates as you type.

How to read the result

• Complete total: every item has a published price. It can be a range when the price list gives one (for example a fee «from 1.09 to 1.49%») or when the cost depends on the share of business cards you did not enter.
• Minimum total («at least»): an item is missing because the vendor does not publish the price, or there is only a «from» price. We do not estimate the missing item: the real total is higher, by how much we do not know.
• The cheapest cash register is named only when no other one can cost less within its range. Otherwise the result lists the offers that may cost less.

Prices are those of the price lists, as the vendors state them: almost always excluding VAT. The calculation neither adds nor removes VAT.

What counts and what does not

We count the device and the card reader once, yearly subscriptions for every year started and monthly ones for 36 months. Fees are a percentage of card takings: none of the price lists we read has a fixed fee per payment, so for these offers the average ticket does not change the cost (we explain it in average ticket and card fees).

We do not count the printer, receipt paper, cash drawer, installation, training, paid support, temporary discounts or interest on instalments. The configurations are the smallest each vendor states and they differ from one another: the table says what each one includes. The rules on the obligations are reported from the official sources in TSE and receipts in Germany and the cash register obligation in Austria: the calculator does not say whether the obligation applies to you.

How we read the price lists and when we check them again is in where our data comes from.