What is the difference between accounting software and a POS system?
Accounting software is built for the books. It records what the business earned and spent, tracks what it owes and is owed, runs payroll, and produces the statements an accountant or a tax office expects to see. It is designed to be correct at the end of the month.
A POS system is built for the counter. It rings up a sale in front of a waiting customer, takes the payment, subtracts the item from stock, prints a receipt and records who bought on credit. It is designed to be fast at the moment of sale, and to be right about stock.
The confusion is understandable, because both of them produce numbers about your business. The difference is when they run and what they are responsible for.
| Accounting software | A POS system like Stem | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is for | Keeping the books correct | Running the counter |
| When you use it | Weekly or monthly, at a desk | Every sale, all day, at the till |
| Who usually uses it | An owner, a bookkeeper or an accountant | Whoever is serving the customer |
| Typical questions it answers | What did we earn last quarter? What do we owe? | What sold today? What is left on the shelf? Who owes me? |
| Payroll and statements | Yes, that is its job | No. Stem does not do either |
| Works with no internet | Cloud tools need a connection | Yes. Stem sells offline and syncs later |
Which problem does your shop actually have?
Pick by the thing that is costing you money right now, not by which category sounds more serious.
You probably need the counter solved first if:
- You do not really know what sold today until you sit down and count.
- Stock disappears and nobody can say when or how.
- The credit book is a notebook, and some of those names are never going to pay.
- The cash in the drawer and the sales in your head do not agree at closing.
- You cannot leave the shop without losing track of what happened while you were away.
You probably need accounting software, or an accountant, if:
- You have staff on a payroll and need payslips and deductions handled properly.
- Someone is asking you for a profit and loss statement or a balance sheet.
- You are filing returns with URA and need your books to stand up to it.
- You are borrowing, and a lender wants formal accounts.
What Stem does not do
This is the honest part, and it is worth reading before you spend anything. Stem is a point of sale system. There is no accounting engine inside it.
- No payroll. Stem does not calculate salaries, payslips or statutory deductions.
- No ledgers or financial statements. There is no chart of accounts, no journals, no trial balance, no balance sheet and no profit and loss statement in the accounting sense.
- No tax filing. Stem holds settings for your URA TIN and fiscal device, but completed sales are not transmitted to URA. EFRIS submission is still in development. Keep filing exactly the way you do now.
Can a till work without internet?
Stem can, and that is the design decision the whole product is built around. The till on the counter keeps its own full copy of your catalogue, prices and customers, so it sells at normal speed with no connection at all and syncs to the cloud when the connection comes back.
This matters more than it sounds. A cloud tool that needs a connection to load is fine at a desk and a real problem at a counter with a queue. Registration and the first sign-in do need internet; from then on, day to day selling does not.
It is worth asking any vendor the same question directly, and asking them to show you: turn the internet off, then ring up a sale.
Do you need both?
Often, eventually, yes. The common pattern for a growing Ugandan shop looks like this:
- Get the counter right first, because that is where the daily leakage is.
- Let the till record sales, stock and credit as they happen.
- Give your accountant an export once a month instead of a shoebox of receipts.
- Add proper accounting software when you have payroll, lenders or a tax position that needs it.
The order matters. Accounting software built on numbers you reconstructed from memory is a tidy record of a guess.
What does Stem cost?
Stem is priced in Ugandan shillings and paid by MTN or Airtel mobile money, so there is no card or foreign payment method involved. The Free plan covers one till with no expiring trial: products, inventory, credit book, receipt history and analytics.
Paid plans are USh 20,000 a month for Basic, USh 55,000 for Standard and USh 100,000 for Premium, and you can change plan at any time from inside the app.