Frequently Asked Questions
Have a question about our POS? We have answered commonly asked questions about various subjects below.
General
Acadia POS develops solutions for retail, quick-service and full-service restaurants. On the retail side, we do everything from liquor stores, mini marts, country stores to specialty retail. We can accommodate restaurants and bars who previously had very traditional software (like Aloha and its many clones).
Acadia POS is also a great fit for restaurants that want to incorporate mobile devices and order/pay-at-the table. Our solution is also great for hybrid businesses, like wineries, that have a restaurant and a retail component and don’t want two separate systems.
For retailers and quick-service restaurants, each station has its own dedicated database and can operate independently indefinitely without the internet.
Credit card authorizations will always require the internet and accepting cards without internet can be a painful mistake. We don’t recommend holding the cards until the internet comes back. Many times when the internet comes back, the funds are no longer available or there’s something preventing the card from being charged.
As a solution, we provide failover routers to our customers who experience any form of connectivity failure. New customers get a year’s worth of failover data from T-Mobile included and after that year it’s only $20 per month for failover service. For full-service restaurants who prefer local synchronization, Acadia will provide a small local server device to handle station synchronization offline without cloud.
Freedom POS is ideal for merchants who don’t value all the benefits the cloud services have to offer. Freedom POS isn’t cloud, however, it does have many of the same features of our full cloud POS.
Freedom POS merchants tend to be ones who don’t want to manage inventory remotely, like the local aspect of a cash register but want all the things a cash register can’t do, or are just getting started and want to keep their costs low.
We are integrated with Xero and QuickBooks online. We support passing sales, COGS and asset information.
Fees
No! There are no extra charges for features and Acadia consistently releases new features without increasing costs for our existing customers.
We do charge extra monthly fees for additional products such as our Acadia eCommerce Platform and Acadia Voice platforms.
Acadia POS and our partners have never raised monthly software fees on existing customers. Many of our customers in retail and restaurants understand inflation and how real it is. Many of our first customers transitioned to our platform because their previous platforms increased rates on them.
We reserve the right to increase pricing in cases of hyperinflation, but we are also very much aware of the negative consequences raising prices has. We will never increase prices without providing additional value.
Payment Processing
It’s not impossible, but you should be aware of the bad incentivization that creates. The interests of the credit card processing company are not aligned with the software company or support organization. It means when it comes to reconciling, you may have a more complicated process and no one party takes full responsibility for the customer experience.
Merchants who have previously used “Agnostic systems,” tell us about what they call “the blame game”. Credit card processing companies blame issues on the software provider and the software provider is constantly blaming issues on the processor. No one truly owns the customer experience. These agnostic systems are always selling their customer data to processors which leads to the constant bombardment of sales calls.
Often times the customers end up paying a higher monthly fee for the privilege to bring their own processor. If you’re bringing your own processor it should be in your economic interest. With that said, you should understand that the provider might charge higher monthly fees or refuse non-sustainable arrangements. This is due to the fact that technical organizations provide real value and offer real services in exchange for the profits earned to process your payments.
Hardware and Launch
The moment you sign up with Acadia POS, you’ll get a welcome email and you’ll be able to start logging into your system right away. Many customers are do-it-yourselfers and many setups are very straightforward.
Setups that are complicated (multiple stations, users with very little time for self-implementation, data import needs, or other steps related to a migration) might benefit from working with a partner or our own internal team. If you found out about us through a partner please revert to them. If you need help finding a partner, please fill out this form.