Restaurant POS software NF525: comparison and compliance 2026

The cash register is a restaurant's operational core: it takes payment, splits VAT, tracks sales and, soon, will transmit data to the tax authority. Badly chosen or non-compliant, it exposes you to a €7,500 fine and distorts all the accounts. Here is the 2026 restaurant POS comparison, from the angle of compliance and steering.

Since 1 January 2018, article 286-I-3° bis of the Tax Code requires every VAT-registered business that records customer payments via cash-register software to use a system meeting four conditions: integrity, security, retention and archiving of data. Compliance is proven in two ways of equivalent legal value: an NF525 certification issued by an accredited body (AFNOR or LNE), or an individual publisher attestation. The absence of either exposes you to a €7,500 fine per software (article 1770 duodecies), recoverable even without proven fraud, plus the risk of revenue reconstitution. Crucially, the attestation must cover the exact version in use — a major update requires a new attestation.

Systematic check at onboarding. When taking on a new restaurant client, we request and archive the NF525 attestation. It is easy to obtain from the publisher, but many venues have never requested it — and it is precisely what is missing on audit day.

NF525 compliance is a prerequisite, not a differentiator: every serious system offers it. The real sorting is on the venue format (traditional, quick-service, café-bar, food truck, chain); native multi-rate VAT split (10/5.5/20%) and handling of decomposed menus; delivery-platform connection (Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Just Eat) to avoid double entry; accounting and payroll connection; management reporting (food cost, sales by family, by service, by channel); and 2026-2027 e-invoicing readiness (transmission to the PPF/PDP).

Indicative comparison. NF525 compliance (certification or publisher attestation) must be checked for the version in use. The choice depends on format, volume and ecosystem.

This is not a ranking: a café does not have a chain's needs. The right software fits your format, connects to your accounting and platforms, and gives you useful management data — not the most feature-complete in the abstract.

The e-invoicing reform changes POS selection. From 1 September 2026, all businesses must be able to receive electronic invoices; the issuance and B2C e-reporting timeline runs to 1 September 2027 for SMEs and micro-businesses (see our restaurant VAT and invoicing article). A modern POS must transmit transaction data to the Public Invoicing Portal (PPF) or a partner dematerialisation platform (PDP). Choosing a till today that does not prepare for this transition programmes a costly change in the short term. It is now a selection criterion in its own right.

A good till does not only record payments: it produces the restaurant's management data. Well configured, it splits revenue by family (food, drinks, desserts), by service, by channel and by VAT rate — exactly the data needed to compute food cost, margin by channel and profitability. A poorly configured till — catch-all families, approximate VAT rates — produces unusable data. Initial configuration, often neglected, matters as much as the software choice.

Software choice is a one-off decision; configuration is the structural work that governs the quality of all subsequent data. In our practice, poorly configured tills are the primary source of accounting anomalies in catering — and they go unnoticed precisely because the till works.

Critical points to verify or build at opening: VAT-rate allocation by family — in French catering, 10% applies to food and non-alcoholic drinks (in-house or takeaway), 20% to alcoholic drinks; a product placed in the wrong family generates incorrect VAT across all periods, immediately visible in an audit reconstructing revenue by rate from till journals. Menu decomposition — a set menu must be split by component or handled under the single-service rule (see our restaurant VAT article); a till treating the whole menu at one blended rate is almost always an error source. Sales channels — room, takeaway, delivery platform, and click and collect must each be traceable separately; this is the condition for reading margin by channel and spotting that a delivery platform's 25–30% commission destroys the margin on certain dishes (see our Uber Eats and Deliveroo accounting article). Complimentary items and discounts — every waived item and discount (staff, press, loyalty, goodwill) must have a dedicated key to appear in the journal and allow tracking of deliberate losses.

The till produces, each day, the sales journal: a summary of revenue by VAT rate, channel and payment method. This journal is the primary document for revenue accounting — it must reconcile exactly with bank receipts. Two architectures exist. Manual export (common in small venues): the manager exports a daily or weekly summary and sends it to the firm; the risk is omissions and reconciliation errors. Direct connection or automatic integration: some POS systems interface with accounting software (Pennylane, Sage, Cegid) via native connectors or third-party tools; the till journal is transmitted automatically, reconciled against receipts, and anomalies surface without waiting for year-end. We recommend this whenever a restaurant exceeds a few hundred thousand euros in revenue — the reliability gain clearly outweighs the integration cost. Watch-point: when a restaurant uses delivery platforms, the till often records the net amount remitted by the platform, not the gross customer amount; gross revenue must be reconstructed from platform statements to avoid understating revenue and to correctly reconcile VAT collected. This is a recurring discrepancy we identify systematically during till reviews.

NF525 compliance (certification or publisher attestation, covering the version in use) is a legal prerequisite, sanctioned by a €7,500 fine. Beyond that, choose your till on format, VAT split, connections (platforms, accounting, payroll), 2026-2027 e-invoicing readiness and steering data. And get the configuration right: it is what turns a till into a margin tool. To validate your till's compliance and prepare for 2026, see our restaurant accounting support, our 2026 e-invoicing support service and our complete 2026 restaurant accounting guide.

Updated 3 June 2026. This comparison is indicative and not a commercial recommendation; NF525 compliance must be checked for the exact software version in use. Sources: impots.gouv.fr, French Tax Code.