How to choose a system for your shop in Guatemala

I sell one of these systems, so let me start with what a salesperson normally leaves out: some shops do not need to buy anything yet, and pushing them into it is the fastest way for the system to sit unused three months later. This article is written so you decide well, including if you decide not to.

What follows are the questions that actually matter when you are looking for a system for your shop in Guatemala, how to test one before you sign, and the point at which a business genuinely outgrows the notebook.

First: do you need one yet?

A system solves coordination problems. If you do not have coordination problems, a system adds work instead of removing it.

You do not need one yet if you are the only one selling, you have one location, you handle a handful of products you already know by heart, you invoice little and without pressure, and at month end you know what you cleared from a subtraction you do in your head. In that situation, a tidy notebook and the SAT’s free application for invoicing leave you better off than any monthly fee.

You do need one if any of these is true:

• Someone else takes the money. The moment cash passes through hands that are not yours is the moment you need a record that does not depend on anyone’s memory.
• You have more than one till, or are about to open one, and you want to compare them.
• You do not know your margin per product. You know what you sold; you do not know which products leave you money and which merely move cash.
• Invoicing is costing you real time. Count your invoices on a busy day and multiply by how long each one takes to type by hand.
• You run out of your best sellers. Losing sales for want of stock is the most expensive cost there is, and the most invisible.
• You close the till and it does not balance, and you have no way to know which shift it went out on.

If none of those rang true, close the tab and get on with your day. Come back when the first one shows up.

The part that is not optional in Guatemala: FEL

Everything else in this decision is preference. Electronic invoicing is not.

There are two routes within the Factura Electrónica en Línea regime, and the SAT defines them itself: free issuing through the Agencia Virtual and the App FEL, where the SAT is your certifier; or through authorised certifiers, at a cost.

This matters when choosing a system because it changes the question. It is not what will they charge me to invoice, it is where do I want the invoice to come out of.

• If you are fine typing every invoice by hand in the SAT app, invoicing is already solved and costs you nothing, and what you are evaluating is a sales and inventory system, not an invoicing system.
• If you want the invoice to come out on its own when the sale closes, with the products, prices and the customer’s NIT already filled in, that route runs through an authorised certifier and a system connected to one.

There is a separate article on how far the SAT’s free tool takes you and the exact moments it stops being enough. If you are starting out, read it before paying for anything.

Is the SAT’s free App FEL enough for you?

A warning about the marketing: “electronic invoicing” in a system’s advertising can mean two very different things. That the system issues and certifies the DTE for you, or that it prepares the data for you to upload to the SAT yourself. Ask which one it is, and ask to see it working.

What it means for the system to certify the DTE for you

The seven questions that decide the purchase

Everything else is decoration. These seven are the ones that will hurt if you answer them wrong.

1. Does it work when the internet drops? Not a theoretical question in Guatemala. The answer you want is that the sale is stored on the device and syncs by itself when the signal returns. The answer you do not want is that it needs internet. Make them prove it by switching the WiFi off in front of you.

2. Does it really work on a phone? Not "there is an app". Works: that you can take payment, check a price and see today’s takings from the phone already in your pocket, without buying a computer. Plenty of systems have a phone screen that only looks things up and cannot sell.

3. Who certifies your invoices, and what does a DTE cost? Ask for the certifier’s name. Ask how many DTEs your plan includes and what each one costs beyond that. A cheap system with expensive DTEs can end up dearer than an expensive one with DTEs included, depending on how much you invoice.

4. Does a sale deduct stock? This is the one that separates an invoicing system from a sales system. If you sell physical goods and the system does not take stock down with every sale, you will end up keeping inventory on the side — and in two months you will stop keeping it at all.

5. Can you have users with different permissions? That everyone signs in as themselves, that discounts and voids require authorisation, and that you can see who did what. A system where everybody shares one password does not solve the problem you actually have once you hire someone.

6. Can you get your data out whenever you want? Your products, your customers and your sales are yours. Ask specifically: if I want to leave tomorrow, what format do I take my information in, and does it cost me anything? The answer tells you more about a vendor than their feature list.

7. Who do you talk to when something breaks on a Saturday at 3pm? Not the support email. The person. And if the answer arrives on Monday, does that work for you? For a shop, a system down on Saturday is Saturday lost.

Per-branch stock that drops with every sale

What the real price looks like

The price you are quoted is almost never the price you pay. Add these four things up before comparing.

• The monthly fee. Clear and easy to compare.
• The per-sale commission. Some systems take a percentage of every transaction on top of the monthly fee. That is the line to look at closely, because it grows exactly when you are doing well. Run the numbers on your real takings in a good month, not an average one.
• The DTEs. Count how many invoices you issue a month and compare that with what the plan includes. If you issue 400 and the plan carries 250, your real monthly cost is the fee plus 150 DTEs.
• Hardware and setup. Ask whether you need to buy specific equipment or whether it runs on what you already have, and whether installation or training is billed separately.

So you have at least one concrete reference point, here are our numbers, as of 9 September 2026: Cuadra Pro is Q249.00 a month and includes 250 DTEs a month; beyond that, Q0.75 per DTE. Premium is Q500.00 a month with 500 DTEs included and Q0.50 per additional DTE. We take no per-sale commission. There is a 14-day trial, a card is asked for at sign-up, and nothing is charged until day 15. Compare that against what you are offered, and ask them to itemise the same four lines.

The hardware you need and the hardware you are sold

The minimum for running a shop on a cloud system is a phone or a tablet with internet. That is all. Everything else gets added when not having it starts to hurt:

• Barcode scanner — worth it from day one if you handle more than 50 products with barcodes. It completely changes the speed of the counter.
• Thermal printer — if your customers expect a paper receipt. Plenty of shops now send the invoice over WhatsApp instead and save themselves the roll.
• Cash drawer — if you handle a lot of cash and several people work the till.
• Scale — only if you sell loose goods.

What you do not need at the start: a dedicated computer, a server, a branded point-of-sale terminal, or a maintenance contract. If a vendor makes the software conditional on buying their hardware, you are buying two things and being quoted for one.

How to test a system in one week

A demo is run by the salesperson and always goes well. A trial is run by you and always teaches you something. Nearly everyone offers a free trial; use it like this:

Day 1 — Load 20 of your real products. Not the sample ones. Yours, with their prices, their costs and their variants if they have them. Time yourself. If loading 20 takes an afternoon, loading 300 is never going to happen.

Day 2 — Sell a full day in parallel. Ring sales up in the system at the same time as you ring them up the way you always do. Compare at close. What you are measuring is not whether it works: it is whether your people used it without asking you every five minutes.

Day 3 — Break something on purpose. Switch the WiFi off mid-sale. Take cash and card on the same transaction. Apply a discount. Void a sale. Process a return. That is where systems fall over, not on the tidy sale.

Day 4 — Issue a real invoice and void it. See how many steps it takes and who is allowed to do it.

Day 5 — Close the till and deliberately count Q50.00 short. Does the system flag it? Is it recorded with a name and a shift, or does it vanish?

Day 6 — Ask for a report you actually care about. Not "sales this month". Something like what you earned per product, or how much each person sold. If it is not there, it is not going to appear later.

Day 7 — Export everything and open it on your computer. If you cannot, you already know what happens the day you want to leave.

Users, shifts and commission per person

The awkward questions for the salesperson

Ask them before signing, not after:

• Is there a minimum term? What happens if I cancel in month three?
• Does the price go up after the first year?
• How many shops like mine use this in Guatemala today? Will you give me the number of one so I can call them?
• Was this built for Guatemala, or is it a system from another country with FEL bolted on?
• If invoicing fails on me on a payday, what do I do?
• Who owns my data, and in what format do I take it with me?

The last one is the most revealing. A vendor who gets uncomfortable with the exit question is telling you how they plan to keep you.

The real options, no brand names

Notebook plus the SAT’s free application. Zero cost. Enough for a single-owner shop with low volume. It runs out when someone else takes money, or when you need to know your margin.

Spreadsheet. Better than the notebook for calculating, worse for working the counter. Nobody keys a sale into Excel with three customers waiting. It works as a report, not as a till.

Desktop system with a one-off licence. You pay once, it runs on a computer in your shop. Upside: no monthly fee. Downsides: the information lives on that machine, you cannot see it from your phone, FEL updates are usually billed separately, and if the computer fails, your shop stops.

Cloud system on a monthly fee. You see it from wherever you are, it updates itself, it works on the phone. In exchange you pay every month and depend on the vendor continuing to exist — which is why the question about exporting your data is not a detail.

Custom-built system. Only makes sense if your operation is genuinely unusual. It costs more than the quote, takes longer than they tell you, and the day the developer moves on you are left with a system nobody else understands. For a shop, it is almost never the answer.

Where Cuadra fits

Cuadra is a cloud system built in Guatemala. We built it for the business that no longer fits in the notebook but does not want a computer on the counter either: the point of sale runs on the phone, keeps taking payment if the internet drops and syncs when the signal returns, accepts cash, card and transfer on the same sale, and asks for a manager PIN on discounts and voids. Stock comes down with every sale, with reorder points and low-stock alerts. The till opens with a declared float and closes by counting the real cash, with the difference recorded by shift and by cashier. And the FEL invoice comes out when the sale closes.

Pro is Q249.00 a month, Premium Q500.00 a month, and there is a 14-day trial.

It is not for everyone. If you sell little, if you are the only one selling and if your inventory fits in your head, the SAT’s free tool and a tidy notebook will serve you better than we will — and I would rather tell you now than bill you for three months so you can reach the same conclusion.

Cuadra’s point of sale, feature by feature

Inventory control for your shop: a practical guide

Frequently asked questions

• Do I need a system for my shop if I already invoice with the SAT app? Not necessarily. The SAT’s free application solves invoicing. A system solves different things: sales that deduct stock, margin per product, a separate login per person, and a till that balances by shift. If none of those is missing for you yet, the SAT tool is enough.
• What does a point-of-sale system cost in Guatemala? It depends on the vendor and on four lines you have to add up separately: the monthly fee, the per-sale commission if there is one, the cost of DTEs beyond your plan, and hardware. For reference, Cuadra Pro is Q249.00 a month with 250 DTEs included and no per-sale commission. Always ask for those four lines itemised before comparing.
• What happens if the internet goes down in my shop? It depends on the system, and it is the first question you should ask. A system with an offline mode stores the sale on the device and syncs it when the signal returns. One without it leaves you unable to take money. Ask them to prove it by switching the WiFi off during the demo.
• Is a system worth it if I have two shops? Yes, and it is one of the clearest reasons to move from the notebook to software. What you want to verify is that each branch has its own stock, that you can transfer goods between them, and that reports let you see each one separately and both together.
• How do I know the system really issues FEL invoices? Ask for the name of the authorised certifier it works with, and ask to issue a real invoice during your trial. Some systems only prepare the data for you to upload to the SAT yourself, and that is not the same as issuing and certifying on your behalf.
• Can I take my data with me if I change systems? You should be able to, and you have to ask before you sign. Ask what format you export your products, customers and sales in, and whether it costs anything. A vendor who dodges that question is showing you how they plan to keep you.