Supermarket POS System
for South African Grocers.

Start with the barcode. GTIN stands for Global Trade Item Number, the number under the barcode, and GS1 South Africa is licensed to create GTINs for Africa and is the only registered provider in the SADC countries. Your suppliers' GTINs arrive printed on the pack. The Verified by GS1 registry answers three questions about any of them: is the GTIN valid, which company it is licensed to, and whether a set of basic attributes is present for it. A TimeWorks product record keeps the GTIN as the scan key, so one scan finds one product. Goods you weigh or pack in the store are sold from the scale's programmable PLU keys instead.

Then VAT, where grocery data goes wrong most often. SARS levies VAT at the standard rate of 15%, and a limited range of goods is zero-rated. In a supermarket the line between the two runs through the same aisle. Under SARS Binding General Ruling 38, a punnet of strawberries or mixed diced carrots and potatoes stays zero-rated, but a green salad with salad dressing or cheese added is taxed at the standard rate. Under Binding General Ruling 46, brown bread is zero-rated only when it is sold as "brown bread", its dough is at least 50% brown bread meal and the loaf weighs more than 100 grams. So the VAT rate belongs in each product record, set once by someone who knows the rule, never left to the cashier. Ruling 38 also says the vendor must keep documentary proof of its right to apply the zero rate. And from 1 April 2026, SARS raised the compulsory VAT registration threshold from R1 million to R2.3 million.

Fresh departments sell by weight. The dtic and NRCS briefing on the Legal Metrology Act lists the type approval of measuring instruments used in trade, such as retail scales, their ongoing verification, and the inspection of prepackages. TimeWorks reads CAS and Mettler-Toledo weighing scales for the produce and deli counters over RS-232 serial or USB, and applies the price per kilogram to the actual weight, or the scale prints a barcode label for the pack. Shelf and pack labels print from Zebra and TSC barcode label printers, with EAN-13 and Code 128 among their formats, from the same product records.

The same records can feed the web. If you also sell online, Google's merchant listing documentation says to include all applicable global identifiers in your Product structured data, such as gtin13, and recommends the most specific GTIN that applies. Our guide to grocery product data and supermarket tills goes through the item master field by field.

Then power. Eskom closed winter 2025 with 26 hours of load shedding across four evenings, supplying electricity 97% of the time, but a month-end Saturday queue still stops if the till needs the internet for every sale. TimeWorks keeps sales, stock and the product file on a Microsoft SQL Server database in your store, so every lane keeps trading when the line drops and the data syncs once you are back online.

Finally, cost. The Cloud-Based Entry POS is R350 per month excluding VAT, for up to two users. A supermarket that needs advanced stock control moves to the Full Business Solution at R500 per month excluding VAT. Both are on our POS software plans page. Or rent the full setup, hardware, software and support included, month to month from R995 per month excluding VAT, and daily rental is contact for pricing. Scanners, scales, printers and cash drawers are in the POS hardware range.