Do you actually need a trade counter POS, or will Linnworks alone do?
Linnworks can create orders directly. So the reasonable question a Linnworks seller asks before buying anything is: what exactly does a separate counter tool add, and does my business have that problem?
Where Linnworks alone is entirely sufficient
If your direct orders are occasional — a handful a week, taken by one person in the back office who is already in Linnworks all day — then adding a layer is overhead for no return. The same is true if your direct orders arrive as emails that get processed in a batch rather than live while a customer waits, and if your pricing is a single trade price with no per-customer variation.
In those cases, the honest advice is to improve the process you have: a saved view, a consistent naming convention, a keyboard-driven routine.
What changes when someone is standing in front of you
A live counter or a phone call introduces a constraint that back-office entry does not have: the customer is waiting. That constraint is what a trade POS is actually built around.
- Scan-to-add. A USB scanner that adds a line and returns focus so the next scan flows without a click. On a five-line order this is the difference between thirty seconds and three minutes.
- Address auto-fill from history. Typing a delivery address while someone watches is where errors come from.
- Price memory. Knowing what you last charged this customer for this SKU, without asking them or looking it up — see why price memory beats any rate card.
- Line-level overrides with a margin warning. So the person at the counter can do the deal without being able to do a bad one.
- Something a new starter can learn in an hour. Counter staff turnover is real.
The three-question test
Answer these honestly. 1. Does anyone take orders while a customer waits — at a counter, on the phone, or on site? 2. Do different customers pay different prices? 3. Does anyone other than an experienced Linnworks user need to create orders?
Three noes: stay as you are. One yes: probably still not worth it, but worth watching. Two or three yeses: the time you are losing is already larger than the cost of fixing it.
The cost of getting it wrong in either direction
Buying too early means a subscription and a system nobody opens. Buying too late is less visible and usually more expensive: slow counter service, order-entry errors that surface as returns and credits, and prices given away because the person at the counter had no better information. See where order-entry errors come from.
If you land on the “yes” side, Trade Order POS is built for exactly that case — scanning, live SKU search, customer auto-fill, per-line pricing, and orders submitted straight into Linnworks open orders. If you land on “no”, do not buy it. Find out more →
Questions, or want a tool we don't have yet? Email hello@grafto.co.uk — a real person replies.