If you are new to Heartland Retail, you probably have some questions about whether or not your existing hardware will work with us. We have put together a list of recommended hardware designed to work with Heartland Retail. If you are purchasing new hardware, we strongly recommend that you purchase it from this list:
However, you may wish to use your existing hardware and that is just fine with us! Lots of your existing hardware will work with no existing setup required. Some of your hardware might need some small tweaking to get going. We offer ways to test your hardware ahead of time to make sure you are ready to go live!
Testing hardware on PC or a Mac as my primary POS device
Testing hardware on an iPad as my primary POS device
If you are going to be using a PC or a Mac, many printers, scanners, cash drawers, and swipers will work without any additional configuration in Heartland Retail. Before performing any hardware testing in Heartland Retail, we recommend that you install Heartland Retail Connect.
Scanners
The majority of USB barcode scanners will work with Heartland Retail. If you are experiencing issues with how the data is scanned, most scanners can be reconfigured using a series of barcodes available from the manufacturer. Our scanners need to be in Keyboard/iOS mode and configured to send a carriage return after scanning.
To test your barcode scanner, start a new transaction in the POS and scan any barcode you have available. You should receive an error notification or prompt to create a new item depending on your users permissions, this means your scan was registered and your scanner will work with Heartland Retail. If nothing displays on screen, consult the manual for your scanner to try different configurations.
Receipt Printers
For receipt printers, most USB printers will work on PC/Mac as long as they can accept 3 1/8" paper. Depending on your printer model, you may need to alter the settings on your printer to get receipts to cut at the appropriate place or to adjust the margins.
Most receipt printers require additional software to be able to communicate with your computer. Please consult the printers manufacturer for instructions on setting up the printer and preparing it for use. Once your computer is able to see and communicate with the printer, it will be displayed in Heartland Retail for you to test. To test it go to the POS and click the menu button in the top left corner, then select Settings. On this popup, select your printer from the dropdown and click the Print Test Receipt button. If it prints correctly then you are all set, if the margins are incorrect, most printers have the ability to adjust this and you can check with your printers manufacturer for more details.
Label Printers
The only two label printers that you can print to directly from Heartland Retail are the Zebra LP 2824 Plus and the Zebra ZD410 printer.
However, on a Mac or PC, you can generate PDFs for several different label sizes (for both thermal and laser printer-based labels) that can then be printed from a PDF viewer to your label printer. For more information about the different label sizes we support, please read this article: Recommended paper for receipt and label printing
If you have a Zebra label printer installed and setup for use with your computer, you can test it by navigating to Inventory -> Items and check the box next to an item and click the Print Labels button. On this popup select your printer as the destination and the label size that is loaded in your printer.
Cash Drawers
We recommend APG cash drawers with TSP receipt printers because our software knows to only kick the drawer when the payment is cash or check. With our recommended drawer and printer, the cash drawer will also kick when you start the opening and closing drawer cash count procedures at the beginning and ending of day. The cash drawer plugs directly into the receipt printer. Other cash drawers can be configured to kick when a receipt is printed, however, that will cause it to open for every transaction type, including credit card transactions. You can also use a manual cash drawer that is not configured to kick at all.
Credit Card Readers (EMV)
All EMV credit card readers must be supplied from one of our supported processors or gateways to ensure they are provisioned to work with Heartland Retail. Our current officially supported processors/gateways are Clover, eConduit, and Vantiv.
Credit Card Readers
Whether or not your existing credit card hardware will work depends on your credit card processor. To find out if you hardware works, just email us at support@springboardretail.com.