ShopKeep Review: Pricing, Features, and Everything You Need to Know
Retailers, restaurants, bars, and all other quick-service businesses will likely be familiar with the ShopKeep brand. Touted as the “powerful yet simple point of sale system made with you in mind,” ShopKeep was designed by a successful business owner to provide other successful or new businesses with all the tools they need to take the struggles out of running a small business.
For those not yet familiar with the basics, ShopKeep is a cloud-based point-of-sale (POS) system that runs on iPad. It pairs with various POS hardware products and payment terminals, and offers an integrated credit card processing solution, ShopKeep Payments.
As a favored POS system to more than 25,000 merchants, ShopKeep has some stand out features worth looking deeper into. Their solutions can be broken into five primary functions which support the entire operation: Register, BackOffice, Payments, Inventory, and Reporting. We will dive into the features within each and then onto the pricing, pros, cons, reviews and customer service solutions.
ShopKeep acquired Ambur POS for Restaurants in 2015 and service for Ambur POS stations ended in 2021.
ShopKeep Register Features
On the floor, customer-facing features for smooth ordering and payments.
Split payments
ShopKeep POS allows for the acceptance of multiple payment types for a single transaction, or to divide a single check numerous ways, with just a few quick taps.
Refunds and returns
Refunds and returns can be quickly completed with or without a receipt, from current or previous shifts.
Deposits or down payments
ShopKeep opens up the option for customers to leave a security deposit or partial payment on an item, rather than a total amount all in one.
Tip customization
Proven to increase the size of tips, ShopKeep offers customizable recommended tip amounts that give customers the prompt to tip right on the register.
Discounts
Customizable discounts can be programmed into ShopKeep, including an approval step, if required, and tracking of the offer over time.
Open tabs
ShopKeep has the inbuilt capability to open tabs against customer orders, which can be updated each time a new item is added and closed out when they are ready to pay.
Time tracking
Linking with BackOffice, ShopKeeps back-office solution, employees can clock-in directly from the register to track and register their hours, which go straight into the BackOffice system for streamlined payroll reporting.
User permissions
Alter permissions accordingly to assign cashier and manager privileges to allow for, or introduce control over, register functions, including pay-ins/payouts, discounts, and returns.
Works with other processors
ShopKeep offers ShopKeep Payments as a payment processor option, but also work seamlessly with other processors merchants may prefer.
ShopKeep BackOffice Features
Behind the scenes, cloud-based solutions for running day to day operations.
Staff management
Able to track time and performance, ShopKeep allows business owners to keep an eye on employees, without needing to be everywhere at once.
Customer management
With ShopKeep’s smart CRM tools, businesses can identify top customers and design campaigns to bring them back, and stay at the front of their mind.
Manage register licenses
As businesses grow, more registered may be required, and ShopKeep makes it easy to add additional licenses.
Label printing
With ShopKeep BackOffice, business owners can print barcode labels for all inventory items from any Mac or Windows computer.
Customizable receipts
ShopKeep allows businesses to customize paper or email receipts to include whatever business information, social networks, or promotional message they want at any given time. This can also include enabling or disabling tip and signature options.
Billing management
Via the ShopKeep BackOffice businesses can update their billing plan, contact information, and payment details with ease.
ShopKeep Payment Processing Features
One of the best things about ShopKeep is its ability to allow business owners to work with a wide variety of credit card processing companies. This way, merchants are able to shop around for the best processing prices for their unique businesses. ShopKeep does have its own processing department, ShopKeep Payments, but merchants are not required to use them.
Over at Payment Depot, we love to refer our merchants looking for a new POS to ShopKeep because of their wonderfully intuitive software and the fact that we can integrate with them to offer merchants credit card processing. This way, merchants are getting the lowest wholesale credit card processing costs from us and an affordable and helpful POS.
Accepts all payment types
Whether cash, credit or debit cards, gift cards or contactless, ShopKeep’s POS system is set up to take them all.
Offline payments
To counter rare cases of internet connection interruptions, merchants can set up offline credit payments to run credit card transactions.
ShopKeep Inventory Features
Solutions to manage, update, and track inventory.
Inventory tracking and reordering
ShopKeep allows businesses to keep an eye on quantities, and set up triggers to be alerted when running low on inventory that needs to be reordered.
Open priced items
Want to keep the price open on custom, market-priced or miscellaneous items? ShopKeep allows merchants to register, but keep open, pricing on items until the time of purchase.
Receive and adjust inventory
Easily adjust inventory records to update when items are received in order to keep inventory levels and costs accurate.
Weighted average cost
Using weighted average costs, ShopKeep allows businesses to stay on top of the inventory’s value and other metrics, such as margins.
Bulk management
Using an inventory spreadsheet, ShopKeep allows businesses to add and manage multiple items simultaneously, which can then be uploaded all at once.
Modifiers
In every restaurant, cafe, and food service establishment, customers like to modify their meals. ShopKeep allows customers to personalize the inventory items within their order— such as subtracting mushrooms and adding an egg.
Variants
Items that come in multiple variations, such as different sizes and colors, can be easily created, sold, and tracked.
Unit priced items
In cases where items are sold by weight, unit pricing allows businesses to register and sell these items easily.
Inventory sales reporting
ShopKeep’s inventory management software simplifies tracking for top-selling items, categories, and departments, so you know which ones are most valuable to your business.
Raw goods
Tracking raw goods inventory allows businesses to track the components that makeup inventory items, such as how many coffee beans are used to make a coffee.
ShopKeep Reporting Features
For business insights, including register information, shift summaries, and staff performance.
Analytics dashboard
A quick view overview of all sales activities within a specified period.
Inventory value report
Showing the total value of inventory, the quantity on hand, and the cost of specific items for selected dates.
Shifts summary
Quick overviews of each shift’s cash flow, from opening/closing drawer, amounts to overages and shortages.
Transactions table
Specific transaction details of any transaction can be viewed and created as a downloadable receipt, which can be exported to a spreadsheet.
Sales reports
Filterable by category, item, discount, location, department, employee, and more to give businesses the best insight into what they’re selling.
Liabilities and redemptions
Tracking liabilities in the case of gift card sales, and redemptions when these are used to make a purchase.
Marketing dashboard
Identify high-value customers and learn how customers interact with email receipts.
ShopKeep Pocket App
It is worth mentioning that ShopKeep also offers the ShopKeep Pocket App, which bundles in many of the above features allowing businesses to monitor performance around the clock.
The app can show business insights, including detailed register breakdowns, lists of sold items, and much more. All locations can be linked for a comprehensive picture of business-wide performance. Notifications can even be set up to ping when shifts open and close, which employee was there and how much cash is in the drawer. Moreover, businesses can compare sales data over a date range to analyze performance on the move.
ShopKeep Pricing
Unfortunately, ShopKeep rates are not freely listed on their site or elsewhere online. From what is listed on 3rd party sites, pricing looks to start at $69 per month per register for the software.
Hardware comes at an additional cost, with a rough total of the iPad, enclosure, and card reader coming in at around $500.
Additional hardware and services come at additional costs.
ShopKeep Pros and Cons
Based on ShopKeep customer reviews on Trustpilot, we have put together the main pros and cons of ShopKeep.
ShopKeep Pros
Scrolling through all of the positive reviews, pretty much everyone says the same thing:
- Easy to use interface
- Great customer service
- Loads of useful features from inventory tracking to reporting and mobile phone analytics
ShopKeep Cons
While most feedback is quite positive, there are a few cons that come up, including:
- Some technical glitches
- Card reader issues
- Customer service quality falling over when issues become complex
ShopKeep Real Customer Reviews
Of the ShopKeep reviews on TrustPilot, of which there are 664, ShopKeep has 82 percent of its reviews at five stars, and 9 percent at 1 star. Making their average rating of 4.5 (out of 5) stars.
To give a neutral look at what real users have to say, we’ve listed the latest 5 star and 1-star reviews.
5 Stars
Aug 23, 2019
We began with Shopkeep after losing our…
We began with Shopkeep after losing our POS system to a virus. It was a relatively simple system to navigate and with their outstanding support team, any bumps we encountered were handled immediately.
The ability to track inventory, sales by item, profit margins, etc. makes this a win-win for our company. We were supplied the Clover Mini which is a great card acceptance device that allows us the ability to take debit, charge and even Apple Pay! Great system, well satisfied, would recommend to anyone.
1 Star
Aug 27, 2019 – Please Beware
Please Beware! We have had the system for about a year now. They have yet to get us live because of technical issues with their card swipers integrating with the new ipads that they had us purchase. They have been charging us $1500.00 a year, even though we have not put through one transaction. They have repeatedly told me that they HAVE to charge us that.. and they have no choice. They certainly have a choice here, and they chose the bad choice.
ShopKeep Customer Service
ShopKeep offers customers an online support portal where, in most cases, they can look up the information or answers they need, without needing to talk to anyone at ShopKeep.
The support portal includes video support, FAQs, best practices, a glossary, and a search section where customers can input the topic they are seeking information on.
If the portal does not hold the answers, customers can access ShopKeep customer service representative via a chat feature in the BackOffice platform, and for anything that requires a case, this can be submitted to be reviewed and followed up by someone higher up.