Apex Rental Pro ships with a dedicated POS business profile designed for counter-sales operators — indoor play centers, party venues, attraction businesses, walk-in retail, and any business where customers come up to a register, pay for an admission, product, or package, and (sometimes) sign a waiver before participating. When you set your business profile to POS during onboarding, the app rearranges itself: the home screen becomes a register workspace called Apex-POS, the Calendar becomes a one-click button instead of the main view, and a new set of screens appears (Register, Products, Waivers, Check-ins, Parties, Prize Counter, Incidents).
This guide covers the POS-specific pieces. Core features like Quotes, Customers, Employees, and Analytics work the same way as in the rental profile — see their dedicated guides.
Switching to the POS Profile
You choose your profile during onboarding. If you already have an account and want to switch:
- Go to Settings → Business.
- Change Industry Profile to POS.
- Save.
The home screen rebuilds as Apex-POS. Your existing customers, quotes, and events are preserved. You can also switch back from the variant selector in the top bar — POS, CalOps, and Classic are all available to admins, but POS is the default for this profile.
The Apex-POS Register
The register is your home screen. It is dense and built for speed at the counter rather than as a marketing dashboard.
The product search is the main input — start typing the name of an admission, package, drink, or add-on and matches appear instantly. A row of quick-sale buttons for your most common categories sits below the search so staff can ring up a sibling admission or a juice box without typing.
The cart on the right shows each line with quantity, unit price, line discount, tax, and a notes field. You can lock down who can apply an open discount per user — see Permissions below. Below the cart, the totals strip shows subtotal, discount, tax, tip, and grand total.
The payment-method selector offers card (via Stripe Terminal), cash, Venmo, manual (anything else with a reference note), comp, and pass redemption. Picking cash reveals a tendered/change-due field. Picking card kicks off the Stripe Terminal flow on a paired smart reader. Picking pass lets you redeem against a customer's punch card or membership.
The side panels show today's sales, the current open sale, active check-ins, and the weather widget so staff have one screen of awareness without leaving the register.
When the sale completes, the receipt is sent to whatever email or phone the customer provided, the receipt number is recorded, and the register clears for the next transaction.
Products and Categories
Products are the things you sell at the counter. Each product has a name, optional SKU, price, tax behavior (taxable, exempt, or inclusive), an optional stock count if you want to track inventory on socks or drinks, and a product type (one-shot product, admission, package, or pass).
Edit products from Products in the menu. The starter import seeds a typical play-center catalog: open-play admission, toddler admission, sibling admission, free adult admission, basic and deluxe birthday party packages, arcade cards, grip socks, juice boxes, extra-guest add-ons, and a monthly play pass. Replace those with your own pricing during onboarding or anytime later.
Waivers
For businesses that need a guardian-signed waiver before a child can play, the Waivers screen replaces a free QR-code waiver page like the one many small venues use today.
The Waivers screen lists waivers signed today, waivers expiring soon, and guardians who tried to sign without completing the form. From a guardian record you can resend a signing link, download the signed PDF, or check which terms version they signed.
A waiver covers one guardian and one or more children. Parents scan a QR code printed at the front desk or shared on your website, fill in their name and contact info, list their children, sign on the screen with a finger or stylus, and submit. The signed waiver is stored with a timestamp, IP address, and the version of your terms that was in effect when they signed. Staff can verify a waiver from the check-in screen before admitting a child.
You configure the validity period — common choices are one year or one season — and the default waiver text from Settings → POS → Waivers.
The default waiver text shipped with the app is a placeholder. Review it with your own attorney before customers sign it.
Check-ins and Occupancy
Once a guardian and their children have a signed waiver, staff can check them in from the front desk. The check-in screen searches by guardian name or phone, lets staff pick which children of that guardian are visiting today, optionally links the check-in to the sale that paid for admission, and records the time of arrival.
The Active Check-ins view shows everyone currently inside. When a family leaves, staff tap Check out to record the exit time. The header shows the live occupancy count compared to your configured maximum, with a visible warning when capacity is approached.
For birthday parties booked through the calendar, check-ins can be linked to the party event so the analytics roll up cleanly.
Parties and Bookings
Birthday parties and private bookings live in the calendar like any other event, but the Parties tab in Apex-POS surfaces today's parties at the top of the register so the desk staff always know what is on the schedule.
A party booking captures the package, guest count, deposit status, and waiver status for invited guardians. From the party row you can send waivers to all invited guardians at once, mark deposits paid, and confirm setup notes.
Behind the scenes, parties use the same calendar, customer, quote, contract, and payment infrastructure as the rental side of the app, so deposits and balances work identically.
Prize Counter
For venues that have an arcade with ticket redemption, the Prize Counter tracks prize inventory, the ticket cost of each prize, and a redemption log. Staff search a prize, enter the quantity redeemed, and the stock count decreases automatically.
The prize counter is intentionally simple — it does not connect to arcade machines or to a card-swipe system. Most small venues already have a separate arcade card platform that handles the physical card balance. The Prize Counter is for the redemption shop where children spend their tickets.
Incidents
The Incidents screen captures any incident that happens on site — a bumped head, a torn waiver, a behavioral issue, a guest concern. An incident record links to the guardian, optionally to a specific child and check-in, and accepts a summary, the action taken, witnesses, and any documents or photos you want to attach.
Incident records are append-only and audit-friendly. If you ever need to produce a record for an insurance claim or a request from counsel, you can export the full incident with timestamps, the staff member who logged it, and any attached documents.
Stripe Terminal and Hardware
Card-present payments are handled through Stripe Terminal, which supports smart readers like the BBPOS WisePOS E and the Stripe Reader S700. From Settings → POS → Hardware, you register a reader to your Stripe Terminal location and pair it with the register. After pairing, every card sale routes the charge to the reader; the customer taps, dips, or swipes; and the sale completes in Apex-POS the moment Stripe confirms the payment.
Cash drawers are handled through whatever your receipt printer supports. Apex-POS attempts to open the drawer when the printer driver allows it. If your hardware does not support automatic drawer kicks, you can configure the register to skip the open and just confirm completion manually so checkout is never blocked by hardware.
Receipt printers connect through the operating system's standard print path. A small companion bridge service can be added later for more reliable drawer and printer control on Windows and macOS terminals — ask support if you need this.
Permissions
POS adds five permissions to user accounts that you can grant or revoke per employee:
- Void POS sale — cancel an open or completed sale.
- Refund POS sale — issue a partial or full refund against a completed sale.
- Apply open discount — enter an arbitrary discount amount on a cart line.
- Open cash drawer — pop the drawer outside of a sale.
- Close POS shift — close the shift and confirm the cash count.
These permissions are off by default for non-admin users; admins are auto-granted at the access-helper layer. Configure them per user under Settings → Users.
Shifts and Cash Management
For tenants with cash transactions, the Shifts feature tracks an opening float, every sale during the shift, and a closing count. When a shift closes, Apex-POS shows the expected cash on hand based on the sales recorded against that shift, the actual cash counted, and the over/short amount. Notes on the shift record explain any discrepancy.
Each sale is linked to whichever shift was open when it completed, so a daily cash report rolls up cleanly per cashier.
Memberships and Multi-visit Passes
Passes are a separate concept from one-shot products. A pass definition lives in the Passes screen and describes what the customer is buying — for example, a ten-visit punch card, a monthly unlimited play pass, or an annual family membership. When a customer buys a pass at the register, an issued pass instance is created and tied to the guardian (and optionally a specific child). The instance tracks uses remaining and an expiration date.
When the customer comes back, staff redeem the pass at the register instead of charging again. The redemption decrements uses-remaining and is logged so you have an audit trail of how the pass was used.
Receipts
Every completed sale is assigned a sequential per-tenant receipt number and recorded in the Receipts table. Receipts can be emailed, sent by SMS, or printed depending on your hardware setup. The receipt shows your business name, address, phone, the line items, applied discounts, tax breakdown, payment method, and your configured footer text.
The Public Website
When you publish your public site through the Website Builder, POS tenants get an admissions mode that highlights the three customer paths that matter most for a counter-sales business:
- Sign a waiver before you arrive.
- Book a birthday party.
- Buy admissions or passes online (when Stripe is configured).
The site also includes hours and location, an FAQ, a gallery, and a contact form. See the Website Builder guide for full details.
Data Export
The standard data export under Settings → Data Export includes all of your POS data — sales, sale lines, payments, receipts, shifts, products, waivers, check-ins, incidents, prizes, redemptions, passes, pass instances, tax rates, and the full POS audit log. Your data is yours.