POS demo script: the transactions to test before you buy

The way to choose a POS for a supply store is to make every vendor run your own hardest transactions, live, on your own items, while the person who works your counter watches. A feature list cannot tell you whether a system handles your store, because every vendor will say yes to every line on it, but a contractor charge that pushes an account over its limit, a box of screws sold by the each, a ton of feed going out on account, or a perennial in three pot sizes will tell you in about two minutes. This guide covers how to set up a demo so it tests your store instead of the vendor's, seven transactions every supply store should run, a short script for each trade (hardware, paint, farm and feed, lumber, and garden), and a scorecard you can print and fill in for each system you see.

Why a feature list won't tell you

A feature grid answers "does it have charge accounts" with a checkmark, and the checkmark covers everything from a hard credit limit with job accounts and statement runs to an emailed PDF with a balance due on it. The difference between those two only shows up when a real transaction hits the screen, which is why the demo, not the brochure, is where you buy a system. Our guide to POS systems with built-in charge accounts walks through thirteen ways that one checkmark can mean very different things, and the same is true of units of measure, receiving, and tax exemptions.

The other thing a demo exposes is how much of the work lands on your staff. Listen for the phrases "you'd just" and "our support team can set that up later," because each one is a step your counter will be doing by hand on a busy Saturday. A transaction that takes three screens and a workaround in a quiet demo room will take five screens and a sigh with a line at the register.

Set up the demo so it tests your store

A good demo takes an hour of preparation on your side, and that hour pays for itself the first time you watch a rep try to ring something that isn't in their canned dataset.

Send your items ahead. Pick twenty products that cause trouble: something you buy by the case and sell by the each, something sold by weight or length, a special-order item, a slow mover, and your three best sellers. Send the list with their costs, units, and prices a week before the call and ask for them to be loaded, so the demo runs on your products instead of somebody else's sample store.

Bring real tickets. Pull three or four actual transactions from last month, with the customer names removed if you like, and ask the rep to ring each one exactly as it happened. The ugly ones are the most useful, so bring the contractor who charged across two jobs, the return without a receipt, and the delivery that came in short.

Let the counter person drive. Ask for control of the screen at least once, and have the person who runs your register on a Saturday ring a sale themselves. A system that looks smooth when the rep clicks through it can feel very different to someone who has never seen it, and that's the experience your newest hire will have.

Bring the bookkeeper for the last fifteen minutes. Statements, aging, and what lands in QuickBooks the next morning are where weak systems hide, and your bookkeeper will spot a double-entry problem faster than anyone else in the room.

Ask the "send me a link" question directly. Plenty of owners want a demo login to click around in on their own time, and it's a fair request. The answer at most supply-store vendors is a live demo before you sign and a sandbox once you've started implementation, and there's a reason for it: an empty practice store can't show you your own items, accounts, or units of measure, which are the things you're trying to test. What you want to know from each vendor is when your team gets hands-on time, and whether the sandbox will hold your own migrated data or a generic sample.

Seven transactions every supply store should run

These seven apply whether you sell paint, feed, lumber, plants, or plumbing parts. For each one there's what to ask the rep to do and what a passing answer looks like.

1. A charge account sale that goes over the limit. Ask the rep to charge a sale to a contractor or producer account that pushes it past its credit limit. Passing: the register blocks the charge tender or demands a manager, rather than showing a warning the cashier can tap past. Our charge account demo script has five more account tests worth adding if accounts are a big part of your store.
2. A return. Return one item from last week's charge sale and another to store credit with no receipt. Passing: the charge return credits the right invoice on the account, the store credit lands on a customer record or gift card, the item goes back into on-hand stock at once, and a refund over your set amount asks for a manager's PIN. Our return policy guide covers the policy side.
3. A special order from quote to pickup. Quote an item you don't stock, turn the quote into a special order with a deposit, receive it when it arrives, and check the customer out. Passing: it all happens in the same sale flow, the deposit follows the order, and the item doesn't wander into general stock and get sold to someone else. See our guide to backorders versus special orders.
4. The internet drops. Ask the rep what happens at the counter when the connection goes down, and then ask them to show you. Passing: a clear, specific answer, whether that's an offline mode with a sync plan or a cloud system with a backup connection such as a phone hotspot, and no hand-waving. Our guide to cloud POS internet requirements covers what to ask.
5. Receive a truck against the purchase order. Build a purchase order, then receive it with one line short and one line at a new cost. Passing: the shortage stays open as a backorder, the new cost updates the item and its margin, freight can be added so your landed cost is right, and nobody retypes the vendor's invoice. Our guide to receiving and vendor invoice matching walks a full delivery.
6. A month-end statement. Run a statement for one account right now and look at it. Passing: the statement generates on demand, shows open invoices clearly, and the aging report answers "who owes me money and how late are they" in one screen.
7. Last year's data. Ask to see a migrated customer's open balance and aging, and a product's sales history from last spring, as they would look after the switch. Passing: the vendor names exactly what comes over from your current system and shows you where it will live. Our guide to what transfers in a POS data migration lists what to hold a vendor to.

Scripts by trade

The seven above test the store, and the scripts below test your trade. Each one is short on purpose, because several of our trade guides already carry a longer test list, and those are linked where they exist.

Hardware

A hardware store lives and dies on a huge catalog, products bought one way and sold another, and reordering thousands of slow movers without walking every aisle.

• Sell a broken pack. Ring three deck screws out of a box you buy by the case, then show the on-hand count for the box. Passing: one item, with the case and the each as units of measure on it, and an on-hand count that dropped by three. Our units of measure guide explains why two separate items for one product goes wrong.
• Look up something you don't stock. Search your distributor's catalog for an item a customer asked about and add it to a purchase order. Passing: the catalog lives in the system and loads from the distributor's files, so the answer is a search away rather than a phone call. Our guide to ordering from Orgill shows what that connection involves.
• Generate a reorder. Ask for a suggested order for one vendor based on sales history. Passing: a draft you can review and edit, built from min and max levels or recent sales, not a blank screen.

More on the inventory side in our guide to hardware store inventory software.

Paint

A paint store stocks bases, not colors, and it sells to repainting crews who buy several times a week across several jobs.

• Tint a gallon and see what left inventory. Passing: one gallon of the right base in the right sheen came out of on hand, and no mystery color item appeared.
• Repeat a formula. Pull up a returning customer's color from their record and send it back to the dispenser. Passing: nobody retypes the formula or digs through a drawer of index cards.
• Charge a contractor's job account. Passing: the job carries its own limit under the contractor's account, and the clerk sees the limit before the tint goes in the can, not after.

Our paint store inventory guide has eight more paint tests, and our guide to tinting and color matching in a paint POS covers the dispenser handoff.

Farm and feed

A feed store sells by the bag, the pound, and the ton, carries producers through the season, and rings exempt and taxable items for the same customer.

• Ring a mixed basket. A producer with an ag exemption buys feed, a bag of dog food, and a garden hose on one ticket. Passing: the feed drops tax, the dog food and hose don't, the exemption number is on the account, and the cashier doesn't have to split the sale. Our guide to farm tax exemptions at the counter covers the paperwork side.
• Sell bulk on account. Charge half a ton of a bulk ration to a producer's account and write the delivery ticket. Passing: the sale rings in tons or pounds from one item, and the delivery ties back to the ticket.
• Bag from bulk. Turn bulk feed into 50 lb bags in the back room. Passing: the bulk count goes down, the bag count goes up, and the cost moves with it. Our guide to bulk feed inventory from the bin to the bag walks the full example.

Our guide to farm charge accounts for feed stores adds a five-step account test built around harvest-season terms.

Lumber

A yard buys by the thousand board feet, receives random-length tallies, sells by the piece or the lineal foot, and runs contractor jobs from quote to delivery.

• Ring a mixed contractor ticket. Studs by the piece, sheet goods by the sheet, and fasteners by the box, on one ticket, charged to a contractor's job. Passing: each item sells in its own unit without anyone doing math on a calculator.
• Receive a random-length unit. Receive a unit of 2x10s in mixed lengths against the purchase order, priced per thousand board feet. Passing: a tally that takes pieces times length per row and lands the total in the product's unit. Our board foot calculator shows the counter math.
• Ask what stopped moving. Ask the system which items haven't sold in ninety days and what they're tying up. Passing: an answer in plain English or a report you can read in a minute, not an export to a spreadsheet.

Our guide to lumberyard POS and inventory software lists eleven things a yard needs, with a test for each.

Garden

A garden center sells the same plant in several container sizes, marks down plants as they age on the bench, and sells flats and yards of mulch to landscapers on account.

• Find a perennial three ways. Search one variety by its common name and its botanical name, and show it in quart, gallon, and 3-gallon pots. Passing: each size has its own count and price, and both names find it.
• Mark down and write off. Mark down a bench of tired annuals for the weekend, then take a dead flat off the books. Passing: the markdown can be scheduled and ends on its own, and the write-off leaves the count and lands somewhere your bookkeeper can see it.
• Sell in the yard with the Wi-Fi off. Ring a landscaper's flats and a yard of mulch on account from a tablet out by the bulk bins, then turn the store Wi-Fi off and do it again. Passing: a plan that keeps the sale going, and partial yards that sell from the same item as full ones.

Our guides to greenhouse retail checkout in the spring rush, landscaper accounts, and garden center units of measure cover each of these in depth.

The scorecard

Print this once per vendor, or once with a column for each, and fill it in during the demo. Mark each transaction pass, partial, or fail, and write one line about what you saw, because three demos in one week blur together faster than a paint shaker on high.

Any system that passes the seven store transactions and your three trade tests, live and on your items, belongs on the short list. Any system that needs a sidebar, a follow-up email, or "we'll set that up for you later" on more than one of them has told you what month three will look like.

How Rundoo runs a demo

Rundoo is the AI-first POS for independent supply stores, and our demos work the way this guide describes. We ask stores to bring the real thing, whether that's a kit you sell, a report you run every Monday, the way you receive a truck, an estimate with three phases, or a contractor with four jobs, and we run it live, because if Rundoo doesn't handle something your business depends on, we'd rather find that out before you switch than after.

Some answers you'll hear from us, so they aren't a surprise. Rundoo runs in a web browser and has no offline mode, so when store Wi-Fi drops, stores connect to a phone's hotspot or a hotspot box, and some run 5G Wi-Fi as a backup to their wired line. The credit limit on a charge account is a hard block with no per-sale override, and job accounts sit under a parent with their own limits. Rundoo is not manufacturing software, it doesn't connect to a scale, and it has no shrink reason codes, so if your store depends on one of those, ask us about it directly.

Hands-on time comes during the switch. Your team gets a test environment loaded with your real data weeks before go-live, and you're encouraged to click every button and break things on purpose before that test data is cleared and a final pull brings over the day's numbers. Training runs four sessions (system unveil, daily fundamentals, admin side, and hardware setup), each with videos to watch ahead of time, a sandbox to practice in, and a document to share with your team, and a typical switch takes about a month. The full process is in our guide to switching to Rundoo, and the questions owners ask most on demo calls are on our FAQ page.