What Hardware You Actually Have To Buy
A shopping list is the first thing anybody asks for and the last thing most software will give you. Here is the whole list, what each item is actually for, and the four things people buy that connect to nothing.
Hardware is where an operations software budget quietly doubles. Not because the equipment is expensive, but because nobody says which pieces the software actually uses, so the list gets built from what a hardware supplier recommends — and a hardware supplier recommends hardware.
This is the list. It is shorter than most people expect, four common purchases are on it for no reason, and one line on it is usually free.
The short answer
| Item | Needed? | What it is actually for |
|---|---|---|
| A computer or tablet per working position | Yes | Everything. This is the only unavoidable line. |
| A barcode scanner | If you handle stock | Speed and accuracy at receiving, counting and the till |
| An 80mm thermal printer | If you sell over a counter | Receipts |
| Smartphones for field staff | If work happens away from a desk | The four offline operations, and attendance |
| A tablet at the entrance | Optional | The attendance code display — a printed sign does most of the job |
| A cash drawer | Only as furniture | Holding money. It does not open on its own. |
| A weighing scale that connects | No | Nothing — the weight is typed in |
| A biometric time clock | No | Nothing — attendance uses the employee's own phone |
| A card or badge reader | No | Nothing here reads them |
| A fiscal or tax device | No | Filing happens through the software, not a box on the counter |
The bottom four are the ones worth reading twice, because all four are commonly bought during an operations rollout and none of them connects to anything. Each is examined below rather than dismissed, because in every case there is a reason people expect them and a reason they are not needed.
The scanner, which you may already have
Scanners come in two broad kinds. The cheap kind behaves exactly like a keyboard — you point it at a code, it types the characters and presses enter. The expensive kind is a small computer that runs software and manages its own connection.
Buy the cheap kind. There is nothing here that the expensive kind does better, because the resolution of a scanned code happens on the server rather than on the device — the scanner's only job is to get the characters into a field, and a device that types is perfectly good at that.
And the line that is often free
A phone with a camera can be linked to a desktop session and used as the scanner for that screen. If you have staff with phones and a workflow that only occasionally needs scanning — a monthly count, a receiving desk that runs twice a week — that may be the whole answer, and the correct number of scanners to buy is zero. Buy handhelds where scanning is continuous all day, because thumbs get tired and a dedicated trigger is genuinely faster.
One thing to check before buying in bulk: that the scanner sends an enter key after the code. Nearly all do, and most that do not can be configured to by scanning a setup code in their manual. It is a two-minute check on one unit that saves a frustrating afternoon on twenty.
The printer, and the drawer that comes with it
Any 80mm thermal printer. There is no compatibility list, because printing goes through the browser the same way any other document does — so buy on price, on whether paper is easy to get locally, and on whether the supplier will replace a failed unit quickly.
Those last two criteria matter more than the specification. A till printer that dies on a Saturday is an operational emergency, and the difference between a supplier down the road and one who ships next week is worth more than any feature on the box.
The drawer usually arrives bundled with the printer, and it is worth being clear about what you are getting. It will not open automatically — that requires the software to speak the printer's command language, which is exactly the dependency that browser printing avoids. Buy it if you want somewhere secure to put money. Do not buy it expecting a control, because the control is the float-and-count cycle in the software and that works the same either way.
Phones, and what they are for
Two separate jobs, and it is worth knowing which one is driving the purchase.
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Field work without a connection
Four operations work offline on a phone: raising a stock transfer, checking stock out, checking stock in, and recording an asset movement. If your storekeepers work where the signal does not reach, this is the reason to put a phone in their hands.
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Attendance
Clocking in uses the employee's own phone — its unlock, and its position. This usually needs no purchase at all, because the phone is already in the pocket.
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Scanning, sometimes
A phone can stand in for a scanner on a desktop screen, which occasionally removes a hardware line entirely.
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What a phone does not do
Selling is not offline. A phone will not keep a shop trading through an outage, and no amount of hardware changes that.
On specification: what matters for the field is a reliable position fix, because a phone that reports its location as accurate only to within a hundred metres will be refused at clock-in and will have its location-carrying operations rejected. That is a real constraint on very old handsets, and it is the one specification worth caring about. Camera quality, storage and processor barely matter here.
The four purchases that connect to nothing
Each of these is bought during operations rollouts for a sensible-sounding reason. None of them is read by anything.
What people buy
- A biometric time clock for the wall
- A weighing scale with a data port
- A card or NFC badge reader
- A dedicated fiscal device for the counter
What is actually used
- The employee's own phone, its unlock, and a server-side distance check
- Any scale — somebody reads it and types the figure
- Nothing. There is no badge path at all.
- Filing happens through the software; the receipt prints the result
The biometric clock is the most common and the most expensive of the four. The reasoning behind it is sound — a fingerprint cannot be handed to a colleague — and the phone-based approach reaches the same place by a different route: the clock-in must come from that person's registered handset, unlocked by them, physically within a set distance of the site, with the distance calculated on the server rather than reported by the app. That is three checks against the wall clock's one, and it costs nothing.
The scale is the one that causes genuine disappointment, so it is worth stating early in a project rather than discovering at installation. If you sell by weight, the weight is typed in. A scale with a data port will work fine as a scale and its port will go unused.
Four of the most common hardware purchases in an operations rollout connect to nothing here — and the reason each seems necessary is a good reason.
What to do with the money you did not spend
This is not a rhetorical flourish. A rollout that skips the biometric clock, the connected scale and the badge readers has a real amount left, and there are two places to put it that will do more for the operation than any of them would have.
- Spare units. A second receipt printer in a cupboard, two spare scanners, a spare phone. Every one of these fails eventually and always on a busy day, and the difference between a spare on the shelf and a supplier visit is the difference between a ten-minute interruption and a lost afternoon.
- Better network coverage where the work happens. A wireless access point in the warehouse removes more friction than any device on this page, because it moves work from the offline queue into the live system where everybody can see it.
- Paper. Thermal rolls, and enough of them, because nothing warns you when a roll runs out and the discovery point is a customer waiting.
- The time to set it up properly. Making the printer default, turning off the print dialog, testing a receipt on paper, checking a scanner sends an enter key — an hour of this on setup day is worth more than any single purchase.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- Any keyboard-style barcode scanner works, with no driver and no configuration beyond confirming it sends an enter key.
- A phone can be linked to a desktop session as a scanner, which sometimes removes the purchase entirely.
- Any 80mm thermal printer works, because printing goes through the browser rather than a printer protocol.
- Attendance runs on the employee's own phone — its unlock as one factor, a server-side distance check as another.
- A kiosk display is any tablet or monitor with a browser, and a printed sign covers most of what it does.
- Four field operations work offline on a phone: stock transfer, check-out, check-in and asset movement.
- Cash control comes from the float-and-count cycle, which needs no hardware at all.
What it does not do
- No cash drawer kick, no printer status, no paper-out warning, no software control of the cut.
- No weighing scale integration. The weight is typed in.
- No biometric reader support — no fingerprint hardware, no facial recognition device.
- No card, badge or NFC reader path.
- No integrated card terminal. The sale records the payment method; the terminal settles separately.
- No customer-facing pole display.
- No fiscal printer or dedicated tax device driver.
- No hardware register with service or replacement scheduling. Devices are things you own; tracking their maintenance is not something this does for you.
- Selling is not offline. No hardware purchase changes this.
Not ours, by choice
- We will not tell you to buy equipment that connects to nothing in order to make a rollout look more substantial. A biometric clock on the wall is a visible sign that a project happened, and it is also money that would have bought spare printers and a wireless access point.
- We will not publish a printer or scanner compatibility list. A list is a promise about hardware we do not control and cannot re-test as models change, and it would be less true every month it stayed up.
Drawer kick, printer status and scale integration all require a small local component running alongside the browser. That is scope rather than a ceiling — worth pricing against what it actually buys, which for most counters is a faster drawer rather than a better control.
If you are being quoted for a hardware package as part of an implementation, take this list into the conversation and ask what each line connects to. The four items above are the ones where the answer will be a description of what the device does rather than what it does here, and that distinction is worth the money it saves.
A buying checklist
Before you sign a hardware quote
- One computer or tablet per working position. This is the only line that is never optional.
- Scanners only where scanning is continuous. Where it is occasional, try a linked phone first and buy nothing.
- One 80mm thermal printer per selling counter, chosen on local availability and replacement speed rather than specification.
- A drawer only if you want the furniture, and with everyone clear it will be opened by hand.
- Phones for staff who work where the signal does not reach — and check the position accuracy on the model you are considering, because that is the specification that matters.
- A tablet at the entrance only where there is real footfall. Elsewhere, print the sign.
- Nothing biometric, nothing weighing, nothing badge-reading, nothing fiscal.
- Spares of everything on the list, and enough paper. Budget for this before adding anything not on the list.
The detail behind each line: scanners in the scanner you already own, printers in the printer is not integrated, attendance in the QR that changes every thirty seconds, field phones in the device that has not phoned home, and what happens to a handset that leaves in the phone that left with the storekeeper.
Our take
Buy computers, cheap keyboard-style scanners, any 80mm thermal printer, and phones only for staff who work away from a desk. Skip the biometric clock, the connected scale, the badge readers and the fiscal device — all four are commonly quoted and none of them is read by anything here. Then spend what you saved on spares, on paper, on wireless coverage in the warehouse, and on an hour of proper setup, because those four are what people actually notice in the first month.
See what runs on the hardware
Scanning that resolves twelve record types, receipts that print to any 80mm printer, attendance on the employee's own phone, and four field operations that work with no connection at all.
Explore the mobile sideFrequently asked questions
What is the minimum hardware to get started?
A computer or tablet for each position where somebody works. That is genuinely the only unavoidable line. Everything else on any hardware list is driven by what your operation does: a scanner if you handle stock, an 80mm thermal printer if you sell over a counter, phones if work happens away from a desk. A business doing procurement and accounting with no counter and no warehouse needs nothing beyond the computers people already sit at.
Do we need a biometric fingerprint clock for attendance?
No, and none is supported. Attendance uses the employee's own phone — that phone's unlock as one factor, and a distance check calculated on the server from the submitted position as another, against a radius you set per site. Where you want a third factor, a code on a screen or a printed sign adds one. That is three checks where a wall clock offers one, and the hardware cost is zero because the phone is already in the pocket.
Which barcode scanner should we buy?
The cheap kind — the sort that behaves like a keyboard, typing the characters and pressing enter. Nothing here benefits from the expensive kind, because a scanned code is resolved on the server rather than on the device, so the scanner's entire job is getting characters into a field. Check on one unit that it sends an enter key after the code before you buy twenty; nearly all do, and most that do not can be configured by scanning a setup code from their manual.
Can we use phones instead of buying scanners?
Often, yes. A phone camera can be linked to a desktop session and act as the scanner for that screen, which for occasional scanning — a monthly count, a receiving desk that runs twice a week — may mean buying no scanners at all. Where scanning runs continuously all day, buy handhelds: a dedicated trigger is genuinely faster and holding up a phone for hours is not sustainable.
Will a connected weighing scale work?
It will work as a scale, and its data port will go unused. There is no scale integration, so if you sell by weight somebody reads the display and types the figure. This is worth raising early in a project rather than discovering at installation, because integration-capable scales cost more and that premium buys nothing here.
Do we need a fiscal device for tax compliance?
No. Filing happens through the software rather than through a box on the counter, and the receipt prints the filing details — the assigned number, the signature and a verification code — where a sale has actually been filed. Where it has not, that block does not print, which is deliberate. There is no fiscal printer driver and no dedicated tax device to buy or maintain.
What should we spend the hardware budget on instead?
Spares and coverage. A second receipt printer in a cupboard, spare scanners, a spare phone — every one of these fails eventually and always on a busy day. A wireless access point where the warehouse work happens removes more friction than any device, because it moves work out of the offline queue and into the live system where everybody can see it. Enough thermal paper, because nothing warns you when a roll runs out. And an hour of proper setup, which is worth more than any single purchase on the list.
