NexSigns DataStream - POS Integration Comparison

Written by AI, not reviewed by a human. Please apply the written-by-ai-not-reviewed label. Capability rows are drawn from each integration's shipped field picker and resolver, so they describe what the code actually offers. Several sources have never been run against a live vendor account — see Verification status before relying on a row for a customer commitment.

This is the single side-by-side view of every POS/ordering data source supported by the NexSigns DataStream subsystem, which feeds live menu data into the Digital Menu Board (Smart Menu) Editor. Each source also has its own page — linked in the last section — for configuration, troubleshooting and gaps.

This page is the one place comparison tables live. The individual POS pages deliberately do not repeat them, so there is no second copy to drift out of date. If you change a capability here, change it only here.

1. What a menu board can actually display

Start here. This is the table to check before promising a customer a design, because it is a property of each vendor's API rather than of our integration.

Source	Images	Descriptions	Sizes / variants	Calories	Allergen / dietary	Availability

Source	Images	Descriptions	Sizes / variants	Calories	Allergen / dietary	Availability
ToastPOS	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Optional
OLO	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No
GeniusPOS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
SquarePOS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
CloverPOS	No	No	Yes	No	No	Yes
PARPOS	Yes	Yes	Yes (opt-in crawl)	Yes	Yes — allergens	Optional
NCRPOS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Tags + serving size	Yes
RevelPOS	Yes	Yes	Yes (3 mechanisms)	No	No	Optional
SimphonyPOS	Yes	Yes	Yes (native)	No	Yes — dietary labels	No
LightspeedPOS	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes — allergens + alcohol	Optional
LoyversePOS	Yes	Yes	Yes (native)	No	No	Yes
CloPOS	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	Optional
SpotOnPOS	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
Eats365POS	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	Optional

"Optional" means the integration can read availability but the switch is off by default, because the vendor exposes a bare stock number rather than an operator-set flag — and a number is meaningless for the many products a site does not inventory-track, where it sits at zero forever. Turning it on there would black out a board.

Only three sources carry anything usable for allergen or dietary signage: PARPOS (a readable allergen list, e.g. "Gluten, Dairy"), LightspeedPOS (allergen codes plus alcohol content, and only with rich content enabled) and SimphonyPOS (Oracle's dietary labels). NCRPOS has free-form tags and a serving size, which an operator may or may not be using for that purpose. Nothing else has a field for it.

The two to be careful about. SpotOnPOS gives a menu item a name, one price and a category and nothing else — a SpotOn board is text and prices. CloverPOS has sizes and availability but no images, descriptions or calories. Both are properties of the vendor API, not gaps in our work.

2. Data fields offered in the Smart Menu Editor

Exactly what appears in the field picker for each source. Anything not listed resolves to a blank rather than an error token, so a design carried from one POS to another degrades quietly.

Source	Fields

Source	Fields
ToastPOS	name, description, price, plu, sku, unitOfMeasure, calories, inventoryStatus
OLO	name, description, shortdescription, cost, basecalories, maxcalories
GeniusPOS	name, caption, description, item_description_short, unit_price, product_id, calories, image, inventoryStatus
SquarePOS	name, variation_name, description, price, calories, image, id, inventoryStatus
CloverPOS	name, variation_name, price, alternate_name, sku, code, unit_name, stock_quantity, id, inventoryStatus
PARPOS	name, variation_name, description, price, calories, calories_from, calories_to, allergens, image, thumbnail, external_id, id, inventoryStatus
NCRPOS	name, variation_name, description, price, calories, calories_from, calories_to, serving_size, tags, availability, image, thumbnail, pos_name, reference_id, product_id, external_id, id, inventoryStatus
RevelPOS	name, variation_name, description, price, availability, stock_amount, image, thumbnail, sku, barcode, uom, course_number, point_value, currency, currency_symbol, business_name, id, inventoryStatus
SimphonyPOS	name, variation_name, price, description, image, thumbnail, alt_text, object_num, dietary_labels, prep_time, menu_level, def_sequence_num, currency, id, inventoryStatus
LightspeedPOS	name, variation_name, price, extra_price, description, image, thumbnail, raw_image, sku, allergens, contains_alcohol, alcohol_percentage, stock_count, menu_name, currency, id, inventoryStatus
LoyversePOS	name, variation_name, price, description, image, thumbnail, sku, barcode, reference_id, option_names, cost, in_stock, store_name, business_name, currency, id, inventoryStatus
CloPOS	name, variation_name, price, description, image, thumbnail, barcode, cost_price, cooking_time, product_type, venue_name, currency, id, inventoryStatus
SpotOnPOS	name, price, plu, location_name, currency, id, inventoryStatus
Eats365POS	name, variation_name, price, price_dine_in, price_takeout, description, image, code, external_id, remaining_quantity, restaurant_code, currency, id, inventoryStatus

inventoryStatus shares a "1" available / "0" out-of-stock contract across every source that has it, so the same menu template works anywhere. OLO is the only source with no availability field at all.

3. Price units — the most dangerous axis

Getting this wrong renders every price a hundredth (or a hundred times) its real value, and nothing on screen shows it happened. Never copy a price path between sources without checking this table.

Units	Sources	Handling

Units	Sources	Handling
Integer minor units (÷ 100)	SquarePOS, CloverPOS, PARPOS	Square and Clover carry a zero-decimal ISO currency table (JPY, KRW, VND …) and skip the division for those. PARPOS does not — PAR sends ×100 for every currency including JPY, so a zero-decimal table there would be wrong.
Decimal major units (no division)	ToastPOS, OLO, GeniusPOS, NCRPOS, RevelPOS, SimphonyPOS, LightspeedPOS, LoyversePOS, CloPOS, Eats365POS	`8.49` means eight dollars forty-nine. Formatted `N2` invariant, except where noted below.
Decimal string	SpotOnPOS	`"1.4"` means $1.40. Parsed once at sync time into a real number, then treated as major units.

Three sources do not hard-code two decimals:

LoyversePOS reads the merchant's own currency.decimal_places — the only source of the fourteen that reports its own precision, so it needs no ISO table at all.
SimphonyPOS and Eats365POS take a PriceDecimalPlaces setting, because neither names a currency anywhere on its menu resources. A JPY restaurant sets 0.

4. How each vendor expresses "size"

Upcharge versus full price is the single most consequential difference in this table. Confusing them silently doubles or halves every sized item.

Source	Mechanism	Price of a size

Source	Mechanism	Price of a size
ToastPOS	`SIZE_PRICE` pricing strategy, dereferenced through a modifier group	the modifier's own price
OLO	none projected	n/a
GeniusPOS	`options[]` on the item — a sized item has no top-level price at all	the option's own price
SquarePOS	native item variations	its own price
CloverPOS	an item GROUP holding N separate items, folded into one logical item — the inverse of Square	the member item's own price
PARPOS	product groups, via an opt-in resumable crawl (the only way to get sizes at all)	its own price
NCRPOS	link groups / linked items, inline in the one menu call	upcharge
RevelPOS	three ways: a required single-select modifier class, a matrix parent product (opt-in crawl), or neither	modifier class = upcharge; matrix child = its own full price
SimphonyPOS	a menu item master owns up to 64 definitions — native, and the only source needing no heuristic	the definition's own price record
LightspeedPOS	required single-select modifier group	upcharge
LoyversePOS	native variants (`option1/2/3` values)	its own price
CloPOS	"modifications" — child product rows	its own full price
SpotOnPOS	none exists	n/a
Eats365POS	required single-select modifier	upcharge

The single-select heuristic, and its known trade-off

NCRPOS, RevelPOS, LightspeedPOS and Eats365POS all infer "this modifier group is the size" from required, single-select, two or more choices. That also matches a required choice which is not a size — "choose your bread", "ice level", "temperature". Those fold into the Variation dropdown too.

This is harmless in practice and deliberately accepted: the item's own price flows through to every variation, so the price binding stays correct either way and the design merely gains a usable variation name. SimphonyPOS, SquarePOS, LoyversePOS and CloverPOS need no such inference.

Variation ordering

Order	Sources

Order	Sources
Operator's own order (Small, Medium, Large)	SimphonyPOS (`defSequenceNum`), LightspeedPOS, Eats365POS, NCRPOS, RevelPOS
Alphabetical — so Large sorts before Small	CloverPOS, LoyversePOS, CloPOS — these vendors expose no ordinal on a variant at all, and stability matters because the change-detection hash runs over the document

Ordering affects the dropdown only, never the price; the customer picks a default explicitly in the design.

5. Credentials and authentication

Source	Whose credentials	Scheme	Token life

Source	Whose credentials	Scheme	Token life
ToastPOS	Kuusoft (company-level)	OAuth client credentials; customer supplies the restaurant GUID	cached on the shared template row
OLO	Customer	Key + client credentials; `ExtRef` resolved to a RestaurantID at save time	n/a
GeniusPOS	Kuusoft (company-level)	Integrator token; customer supplies CompanyID + SiteID	21 days, shared across all GeniusPOS streams
SquarePOS	Customer	Personal access token (bearer)	permanent
CloverPOS	Customer	Merchant API token (bearer); every store is its own merchant	permanent
PARPOS	Customer	Per-brand Application Key + three mandatory headers; nine environment hosts	permanent
NCRPOS	Customer	BSP access key pair, HMAC-SHA512 signed per request	n/a (per-request signature)
RevelPOS	Customer	Two schemes by `AuthMode`: merchant key:secret header, or partner OAuth2 bearer + `Client-Id`	permanent / 24h
SimphonyPOS	Customer	3-step OIDC + PKCE (authorize → signin → token); bearer is the `id_token`, not the access token	14 days (refresh 28d)
LightspeedPOS	Customer	OAuth2 refresh-token grant, HTTP Basic client auth	25 min; refresh token rotates every use
LoyversePOS	Customer	Personal access token (bearer) — the simplest of the fourteen	permanent
CloPOS	Customer	Four credentials incl. a partner `integrator_id`; JWT rides in `x-token`, not `Authorization`	1 hour