If you only sell new jewellery at ticket price and never take anything in, Shopify POS or Square is the cheapest credible till in the UK: Square's free plan at 1.75% per tap, or Shopify from £25 a month plus £69 a month per location for POS Pro with in-person card rates from 1.7%. The moment you take a part-exchange, hold a ring on deposit, sell a second-hand piece under the margin scheme or need to know which of three identical-looking rings went out of the door, the generic tills stop and the jewellery-specific ones start - Clarity & Success, Jewel-Master, Jewel360, The Edge and Milleso - and most of those will not print a price. The table below scores all nine on the four transactions that actually break a jewellery till.

The comparison table

As of August 2026, from each vendor's own UK pricing page unless stated. Card rates are for in-person UK consumer cards; online and keyed rates differ.

Till Monthly cost (GBP, ex VAT) In-person card rate Part-exchange Layaway / deposits Margin scheme receipt Serialised one-off items Accounts link
Shopify POS Basic £25, Grow £65, Advanced £344 (monthly billing); POS Pro £69 per location 1.7% / 1.6% / 1.5% by plan No Partial payments restricted to Shopify Plus (from £1,800 a month); otherwise apps No No - SKU and quantity; apps add serial tags Xero via third-party apps
Lightspeed Retail (X-Series) Basic £75, Core £149, Plus £189 Not published; quoted per account No documented function Yes - layby No Serial numbers against a SKU Xero, native
Square / Square for Retail Free £0; Retail Plus £49 per location; Premium custom 1.75% Free; 1.6% Plus No No native layaway No No Xero via the Amaka-built integration
Zettle by PayPal £0; reader from £29, terminal from £149, ex VAT 1.75% No No No No Xero, native
Clarity & Success Evolution Not published Depends on terminal Yes (buy-in module, July 2024) Yes Yes - margin scheme records in the buy-in module Yes Not stated on site
Jewel-Master Not published; fixed monthly fee Depends on terminal Not stated on site Deposits on repairs stated; sales layaway not stated Not mentioned on site Yes QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, MYOB
Jewel360 US$199 a month Startup; Core and Plus on request "Custom-quoted" Not stated Yes, per directory listings No Yes, Core plan and up QuickBooks (Plus)
The Edge One-off licence, not published by vendor; directories say from US$3,500 Not published Yes, per directory listings Yes, per directory listings No Yes QuickBooks
Milleso (our product - weigh this row accordingly) Counter £99, Trade £249 Via Dojo integration; no built-in terminal Yes - on the till, with the incoming piece booked at the allowance Yes - deposits on the till Yes - margin, standard and reverse charge in one sale, no VAT line on margin items Yes - serialised with all-in cost Xero and Sage export

Why is a jewellery till different from any other till?

Four transactions. A clothing shop never does any of them; a jeweller does all four in a normal week.

Part-exchange. A customer trades a ring in against a new one. Under paragraph 13.6 of VAT Notice 718, the selling price on which you calculate VAT on the outgoing piece includes the full value of the trade-in, and the trade-in allowance becomes the purchase price of the incoming piece in your stock book, "and you must not alter this purchase price". A generic till has no incoming-goods concept at the point of sale. The workaround is a discount, which understates the outgoing sale, and a separate manual stock entry, which is usually forgotten.

Layaway and deposits. A £250 deposit on a £2,500 ring creates a tax point when you receive it, under section 14.2 of VAT Notice 700 - it is an advance payment, not a security deposit. The till must record the deposit against the specific piece, reserve the piece, take instalments and know what VAT has already been accounted for when the balance is paid. Lightspeed's layby does this in retail terms. Shopify restricts partial payments to Plus. Square and Zettle have no native equivalent.

Margin scheme receipts. A second-hand piece bought from the public and resold is taxed on the margin. Paragraph 5.3 of Notice 718 says the sales invoice "must not show VAT separately" and must carry the words "Margin Scheme - second-hand goods". A till that prints a VAT breakdown on every receipt - which is what every generic till does - is printing the wrong document for those sales. The practical test: sell a margin scheme ring and a new standard-rated chain in the same basket, and look at the receipt.

Serialised items. A jeweller's stock is one of each. Three 0.50ct solitaires are three different stones with three different costs, three different certificates and three different purchase records for the stock book. A SKU-with-quantity till collapses them into "solitaire, qty 3". Lightspeed lets you record serial numbers against a product and pick one at the sale, which is better than nothing; Shopify and Square need apps; Zettle has nothing. The jewellery tills are built the other way up: every piece is its own record and the SKU is an afterthought.

Which is the cheapest credible till for a jeweller?

For a new-goods-only shop, Square. The free plan costs nothing a month and 1.75% per in-person transaction on UK cards; Square for Retail Plus is £49 a month per location and drops the rate to 1.6%, adding barcode labels, cost-of-goods reports and purchase orders. Online is 1.4% plus 25p and keyed-in is 2.5%. It reconciles to Xero through an integration built by Amaka. What it will not do is any of the four transactions above.

Zettle is the same shape with less software: no monthly fee, a reader from £29 ex VAT for a new account or a terminal from £149, 1.75% in person, 2.5% on invoices and payment links, and a native Xero sync. It is a card reader with a basic product list, and for a market-stall jeweller that is the right tool.

Shopify POS is the right answer if the web shop is the business. At £25 a month on Basic, plus £69 a month per location for POS Pro, you get the best e-commerce in the table, 1.7% in person (1.6% on Grow at £65, 1.5% on Advanced at £344) and 2% plus 25p online. Using a card provider other than Shopify Payments adds a 2% fee on Basic. Deposits are the trap: partial payments need Shopify Plus, from £1,800 a month, so the usual route is a layaway app from the Shopify App Store.

Lightspeed Retail is the only generic till with a published GBP price and a real layby function, at £75, £149 or £189 a month. Its UK page adds that prices "can vary" by industry, and its card rates are quoted per account rather than published. Serial numbers and the native Xero integration make it the best generic till for a jeweller with branches, though it still has no part-exchange, no margin scheme and a services module that is not a workshop.

Which jewellery till should a UK shop look at?

Clarity & Success Evolution is the UK incumbent and the only system in the table whose margin scheme handling is on the public record: its July 2024 buy-in module records pre-owned and scrap purchases, bins scrap for melt and keeps the margin scheme records, which means part-exchange and second-hand sales are native. The Standard edition launched November 2024 puts the till, stock and reporting at a lower monthly cost. No price is published. Jewel-Master, the other UK-built system, bundles repairs with its EPOS and links to Xero and Sage, but its site does not mention the margin scheme.

Jewel360 and The Edge are the US options. Both serialise stock, both handle layaway and both are deep on repairs; neither has a VAT model, and The Edge is a Windows install on your own server. Our head-to-head on the three US systems goes through what that costs a UK user.

Milleso is our product. The till is built around the four transactions above: part-exchange books the incoming piece at the allowance, deposits are taken on the till, a single sale can contain a margin scheme piece, a standard-rated piece and a reverse charge scrap line with the right wording on each, and every piece is serialised with its all-in cost. Cards go through a Dojo integration rather than a built-in terminal. Counter is £99 a month and Trade £249 a month, ex VAT, with one month free and migration done for you. There is no multi-store yet, so a chain should look at Clarity first, and it has no US tax model.

Two things the till must do that have nothing to do with cards

Cash thresholds. Since 30 June 2026 the High Value Dealer threshold is £10,000 in cash, single or linked. A jewellery till should warn before you take the note that tips a customer over it, and should be able to show the linked-payment history for one customer across months. None of the four generic tills has this. Our piece on High Value Dealer registration explains the rule.

Customer property. A repair envelope is not stock and must not be sold by accident or counted as an asset. If the till also runs the workshop, it needs a separate count of customers' goods in the building for your insurer. We cover that in jewellery repair tracking software.

What we could not verify

  • Lightspeed's UK card rates and annual discount. Neither is published; the UK page lists monthly prices only.
  • Lightspeed part-exchange. No help-centre article found; we have recorded it as "no documented function" rather than "no".
  • Square's Retail Premium price and rate. Custom.
  • Jewel-Master's handling of margin scheme sales and sales layaway. Not on its site.
  • Jewel360 and The Edge layaway and part-exchange. From directory feature lists, not vendor pages.
  • Clarity & Success pricing and accounting links. Not published.
  • Whether Zettle's £29 reader price is still a new-customer offer in your month. It is marked as an introductory price for new business users.

Sources

This is general information, not a recommendation to buy any product, and not tax advice. Card rates and subscription prices change without notice; every figure above was checked against the linked page in August 2026 and should be re-checked before you sign. Milleso is our product and appears in the table with that disclosure. Take VAT questions to your accountant.