Sharp Menu-Based Cash Register

So far so good. I was very impressed with how easy it was to setup. I have setup lots of registers before and it’s like programming a computer.

This one was easy from the get go, and I didn’t even have to read the manual.

The auto subtotal is great as well. The delivery was quicker than advertised. My only issue was with the duty. This was the first product I bought through amazon where I had to deal with duty, and the need for a broker. This is now something I know to watch more closely.

My review will be skewed because this is the first ECR that I’ve ever bought and set up, and I’ve only used a register at Walgreen’s in high school without knowing how to program it. I will explain my rating and then give more details later.

I am giving this 5 stars because it fulfills my needs (please note what I will write about what features I needed and did not need), but subtracting 1 star (maybe 2) because the instructions can be unclear and I need to email Sharp to answer some of my questions. The new price on Amazon was the best I could find. Most retailers were selling for at least $200.

My needs are a couple hundred PLUs for preset pricing, only a few clerks, only several departments. My bonus wants were a nice multi-line LCD, RS232 port for credit card terminal hookup, and programming on PC and paperless reports through an SD card. The XE-A207 does all of this, and the price is only $140 on amazon, which seems good to me, although I’ve never bought a cash register before. What I didn’t need and what this product didn’t have is a bar code scanner for UPCs, other ports for peripherals such as a scale, and a larger cash box. For more functions, you’d either need a higher model such as the XE-A507, or a customizable POS system. If you didn’t need the SD card or the single RS232 port, or fewer PLUs, then you could get the XE-A106, which i think is about $80-$90. I don’t know much about other brands. It seems that the other large manufacturer of small-business ECRs is Casio, but their product descriptions on their website were too vague to figure out which one I needed, so I focused on Sharp products.

For me, the programming is not that hard, but this is almost certainly subjective. The menus are navigated just like any menu in an electronic device. You go in and out of the menu tree with arrow keys and enter/escape keys, and edit the settings with the keypad. The departments and PLUs probably take the most time to set up, and you can also do it on your computer with an SD card. However, you need the full-sized SD card, not a smaller SD form with an adapter. You need to download a small standalone program from Sharp, called a Customer Support Tool. The software is fairly simple, but may take extra time to learn for some people.

What I don’t like was that the instruction manual is often vague. It was probably written in Japanese, then translated to English. It’s not that the grammar is incorrect, but that the names of the settings and some of the choices sometimes are not self-explanatory. The manual also does not give a lot of description for the choices and functions. You often have to perform trial-and-error to figure out how to do things. For example, I had no idea what it meant to change a credit card payment’s “tender” to “inhibit” or “compulsory.” After trial-and-error, my best guess is that inhibit means you can only charge whatever the subtotal is, and compulsory means you can and must enter how much was charged to the card. Discounts do not reduce tax by default, and I was confused because you have to set the discount’s “tax,” or “taxable” according to the manual, to “yes.” That is confusing because you’d think discounts are NOT taxable, so that tax is applied after the discount is taken off. Another example is that the manual mentions testing the connection to a credit card terminal, but does not explain how connecting a credit card terminal changes how you manage the payment on the ECR. Another example is that there is type of report called the “Electronic Journal,” which is like a compilation of every action (even programming) done on the machine. When you “save & clear” it to an SD card, it does not reset the EJ as the manual says. It only resets if you do it on the machine through the “Z” menu. The EJ file (.SDA ?) can be read by Excel (the manual did not say this), although an occasional character shows up as a weird symbol. It is also strange that you cannot reset the daily/monthly transaction reports after you save to the SD card. You can only do that with the Z function, and that will use up paper.

Light weight, easy to use and go programmed. Bought 2 for my restaurant and im very happy

Ojalá que el manual de usuario fuera más fácil de entender hay algunas funciones en donde la explicación te deja con muchas dudas.

I was weary of this register thanks to reviews and with good reason. The manual is worthless. If you’re not familiar with registers in general it’s pretty tough to figure out. I only went through with this purchase because of the price and features on this model with hopes of managing to figure it out once it was in my hands. It’s simple to use pretty much thanks to YouTube. There are videos for this model all over the internet that pretty much explain everything. Most importantly, I needed help with how to change the way sales tax was applied with discounts and called Sharp’s customer service. It was maybe a 2 minute wait to speak with someone and I was off the phone with my problem solved within 10. It was amazing and I was thrilled! I highly recommend this register at this point. I truly believe all registers are difficult but there’s hope with this one!!