Winery POS System
for Every Trading Area.

Those trading areas carry real money on a South African estate. In the SAWIS study of the economic value of wine tourism, tourism made up 17.3% of the turnover of wine cellars that crush grapes in 2022, and 36.3% for micro cellars with a turnover under R10 million. Wine tasting was the largest slice of that tourism turnover at 36%, followed by food and beverage at 26%, overnight accommodation at 18% and conferences and events at 5%. The same study puts wine tourism's direct, indirect and induced contribution to South Africa's GDP at R9.3 billion in 2022. Tastings, food and functions are separate counters, often with separate staff, on the same farm.

Here is how that works on a TimeWorks winery POS system. Zorgvliet Wine Estate in Stellenbosch runs one TimeWorks system across a fine dining restaurant, a tasting room and a retail wine shop. Each point of sale has its own setup (table management in the restaurant, tasting room pours, barcode scanning in the shop) and all three feed one central stock and sales database. According to our Zorgvliet case study, a manual stock reconciliation across the three venues that used to take 3 to 4 hours at the end of each day was eliminated, the estate now closes its books in under 30 minutes, and over-selling on limited-run vintages dropped to zero.

Each trading area keeps its own price list on one stock item, so a pour at the tasting bar and a bottle sold at a restaurant table draw down the same case count. The restaurant side gets table management, split bills and kitchen routing, so the wine list and the food close on one bill; see our restaurant and dining POS for the floor and kitchen tools. Each outlet produces its own sales report and all of them roll into one consolidated summary, the same way our hotel POS separates a restaurant, a pool bar and conference catering. Staff can switch between service areas on the same terminal without a second login.

Some producers trade in two places at once: the tasting room on the farm and a shop in town, sometimes with a weekend market stall as well. Each site runs its own terminal and local database, and all of them report into one head office view. You change a price once and push it out, and you move cases from the farm to the town shop as a stock transfer both sides can see. Our Cape Winelands POS support page covers how we look after estates in Stellenbosch, Paarl and Franschhoek from our Plattekloof office, including the harvest run from February to April, when tasting rooms and farm stalls carry their heaviest volumes.

Your liquor licence shapes how the areas are set up. Under section 49 of the Western Cape Liquor Act 4 of 2008, liquor sold under an on-consumption licence must be drunk on the licensed premises, while under an off-consumption licence no container may be opened and no liquor drunk on the premises except for tastings approved by the Liquor Licensing Tribunal; premises licensed for both on and off consumption fall outside those two conditions. Section 60 requires a licensee to keep a record, in the prescribed manner, of all liquor sold for consumption off the licensed premises, and section 59 lets the Tribunal set trading hours that may not exceed the hours in the municipal bylaw. Every cellar door sale on TimeWorks is recorded with its product, time and cashier, which gives you the sales record to work from; check the exact format your licence asks for with your licence consultant. If you also run a liquor shop off the farm, our bottle store POS adds age checks at the till.

Wine club members buy across the trading areas too. A typical estate club gives members a discount on its wines, a complimentary tasting and money off estate activities or the restaurant. That one membership touches the cellar door, the tasting room, the activities desk and the restaurant. On TimeWorks, member-tier pricing is applied at the point of sale and each member's order history sits in the same database as every other sale. If you send club offers by email or SMS, POPIA section 69 allows electronic direct marketing only to people who have given their consent or who are already your customers.

Weddings, corporate functions and harvest events are a trading area of their own. Under section 17 of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008, a business that accepts a booking for a later date may ask for a reasonable deposit in advance and may charge a reasonable fee if the booking is cancelled. TimeWorks records the deposit and the balance against the event booking, attaches a beverage and catering package to it, and opens a dedicated tab on the day. When a festival or a marquee needs more tills than you own, rent extra terminals for the event; daily rental is contact for pricing.

Then the hardware, the power and the tax. The Toshiba TCx touch screen terminals we install are fanless; Toshiba rates the TCx 820 IP53, and the TCx 810E IP53, or IP52 with peripherals installed, which suits a tasting bar where wine gets spilt. Eskom ended winter 2025 with 26 hours of load shedding across four evenings, supplying electricity 97% of the time, and fibre on farm roads can still drop. TimeWorks writes every sale to the SQL database on site, so the tills keep trading and sync when the connection returns; a UPS battery backup keeps them powered through an outage. Card payments are the exception, because the card machine talks to your bank over its own line. SARS levies VAT at the standard rate of 15%, and from 1 April 2026 the compulsory VAT registration threshold rose from R1 million to R2.3 million.

Finally, cost. POS software on its own is R350 per month excluding VAT for the Cloud-Based Entry POS, for up to two users, or R500 per month excluding VAT for the Full Business Solution with advanced stock control and unlimited users, and both are priced per branch; an estate with several trading areas and cashiers will want the Full Business Solution. Compare them on our POS software plans page. Or rent the complete setup monthly from R995 per month excluding VAT, with hardware, software and support included. TimeWorks has supplied 700+ South African businesses since 1999.