A POS System for Sri Lankan Shops: Decimal Quantities, Optional VAT and the Z-Report

Many point-of-sale tools are designed with one picture in mind: a cashier scanning barcoded goods. That is a fine picture, but it does not describe a hardware shop, a grocery, a stationery counter or a pharmacy-style shop with boxes and loose items together.

Your counter has its own habits. Prices vary by variant: the same shirt in three sizes, the same paint in different tins. Some goods expire, so you need to know which batch to sell first. Some customers want a small discount, and some want to pay half now and half next week.

A till that cannot cope with these habits forces you back to the notebook for the awkward sales, and then you are keeping two records again. The goal of a good POS is to cover the awkward sales too.

PlanzEvo Biz supports decimal quantities. You can sell 2.5 kg, 1.25 litres or 3.5 metres, and the line total is worked out for you from the unit price. No mental arithmetic at the counter, no rounding mistakes at the end of the day.

This matters for stock too. If you buy a 50 kg sack and sell it in small amounts, your stock count goes down by exactly what you sold. When you check the shelf at the end of the week, the numbers have a chance of matching reality.

Variants help with the other kind of variety. A single product, such as a t-shirt, can have sizes and colours underneath it, each with its own stock. You see "medium, blue" is running low without opening a separate page for each.

If you sell food, medicines that do not need a prescription, cosmetics or anything with a printed date, batches matter. The same product may arrive in two deliveries with different expiry dates.

With batch tracking, you record each delivery with its expiry. You can then see which stock is closest to its date and sell it first. For a small shop where margins are thin, writing off a box of expired goods can erase the profit from a whole day's sales, so a little visibility goes a long way.

A modern Sri Lankan counter takes several kinds of payment at once. PlanzEvo Biz lets you record a sale as cash, LankaQR, bank transfer, card or credit, and even split between them.

It is worth being clear about what the system does here. It records how the customer paid, so that your end-of-day totals are split correctly. It does not process the money for you; your QR, bank and card payments reach your own accounts as they do today. The benefit is that you can answer "how much of today was cash?" without sorting slips and screenshots.

Credit is recorded too, and flows into a credit book so you can see who owes you. Our post on the credit book for shops covers that in more detail, and you can see the whole platform on the PlanzEvo Biz page.

VAT is a topic where owners are rightly careful. If your business is registered for VAT, you need your sales to reflect it. If it is not, you should not be adding it to bills at all.

PlanzEvo Biz treats VAT as a setting for your business. If you are registered, you switch it on and choose the rate and whether your prices include it. If you are not, you leave it off and your prices stay as they are. We do not suggest you need to be registered, and we are not a substitute for your accountant. If you are unsure about your status, please ask your accountant or the relevant authority, and then set the system to match.

A shop is more than sales. Customers return things. You buy stock from suppliers. You pay for electricity, a helper's wages or a delivery. If these live in separate notebooks, your daily profit is a guess.

The POS handles returns, so a refunded item goes back into stock and out of the day's takings. It also lets you record expenses and purchases. When you receive stock from a supplier, you record it, and your stock counts rise. When you pay a small expense from the drawer, you note it, and the day's cash makes sense.

Together, these mean the question "did we really make money today?" has an answer, not just a feeling.

A Z-report is the end-of-day summary of everything that happened at the till. It shows total sales, how much came by each payment type, returns, and what the drawer should contain. For a small shop, it replaces an evening of adding up slips.

The routine is simple. At closing time, you run the Z-report. You count the cash in the drawer. You compare the two numbers. If they match, you lock up with a clear mind. If they do not, you know the same night, when your memory of the day is still fresh, not three days later.

Over weeks, the reports also build a picture: which days are busiest, which payment types are growing and how expenses compare to sales.

Begin with your fifty fastest-moving products. Enter them with their prices and opening stock, and use the till for one shift beside your usual method. Add the rest as you go. Starter is LKR 3,000 a month, Pro is LKR 5,000 and Premium LKR 7,500; annual billing is charged as 10 months. The pricing page has the details, and the waitlist keeps you updated.

When you are comfortable, create your PlanzEvo Biz account and ring up your first sale.