POS system for Northwest Territories businesses

Northwest Territories sales tax at a glance

Businesses in the Northwest Territories charge GST at 5%, registered and filed with the Canada Revenue Agency. There is no territorial sales tax, so one rate covers most sales in Yellowknife, Hay River, Inuvik and the smaller communities. Your GST number can print on every receipt.

Basic groceries are zero-rated, which matters to the many stores where groceries are a large share of sales. Some services are exempt. Restaurant meals and most retail goods are taxable at 5%. Confirm the current rate and your product rules with the CRA as of 2026 before you set up.

Setting up GST in SeroPOS

In the back office go to Settings, then Tax Rates, and add GST at 5%. Add a 0% rate for zero-rated and exempt items, with a clear name such as "Zero-rated". In the SeroPOS app the same list is under Admin, then Taxes, where you can make GST the default so every new product starts with it.

No tax group is needed. Assign GST or 0% to each product as you add it, or fill the tax column in a spreadsheet and import the whole catalogue. Products priced tax-in can be marked "price includes tax". Your GST registration number can print in the receipt header from the app's Edit Restaurant screen.

• GST 5%: the default for taxable sales
• 0%: zero-rated groceries and exempt items

Selling when the connection drops

Internet in the Northwest Territories can slow down or drop for hours. The SeroPOS app doesn't wait for it. Each sale is saved on the device with its own reference and uploaded every few seconds in the background, backing off when the line is down. An indicator on the till shows whether it is online.

After repeated failures a sale is parked on the device and kept, never thrown away, until it can be sent. Kitchen tickets and receipts print from local printers while offline. A few screens need the internet, such as the Daily Sales Report and Recent Transactions, and Sync DataBase in the drawer forces a full sync once you are back.

Grocery and general stores

A community general store sells groceries at 0% alongside hardware, clothing and snacks at 5%, often in the same basket. In SeroPOS the tax sits on each product, so the cashier scans and the till taxes each line. A USB barcode scanner types straight into the search field, and the device camera can scan when there is no scanner.

Stock levels, low-stock alerts and purchases are managed in the back office, which is useful when the next delivery is a week away. Set an alert quantity on each product and the low-stock list shows what to reorder, so you can include it in the next shipment. Stock history shows every movement.

Taking Interac, Visa and Mastercard

The cashier picks Debit or Credit on the payment screen and SeroPOS hands the amount to the terminal. Moneris Go is set up in Moneris Pay Settings with your merchant, store and terminal IDs. Global Payments connects through Global Pay Cloud by binding the terminal's device reference to the till, or by running SeroPOS directly on a T650P with Terminal Plus.

A tip typed on the terminal comes back and prints as Tip / Gratuity. If a card is approved but the sale doesn't save, SeroPOS keeps the approval in an outbox and records it again, and a duplicate-charge guard warns before the same card is charged the same amount twice. Check on Terminal reads the batch when you're not sure.

Already have a merchant account? Keep it if your processor is supported. If you want to compare costs, send us a recent statement and we'll quote a rate. Card processing is arranged separately from your SeroPOS plan. Tell us your monthly card volume and the terminals you use today, and we can say which setup fits your counter before you commit.