The POS Portability Checklist

What portability means, and why demos never cover it

Portability is how much of your loyalty program you can take with you if you switch vendors: the customer list, the points balances, the enrollment surfaces on your counter and windows, and the legal right to keep marketing to the people who opted in. It is the one topic a sales demo is not built to raise, because switching cost is part of the business model in this category — not an oversight. The only reliable time to measure it is before you sign, with the vendor in the room.

Scoring works like this: ten questions, each scored 0, 1, or 2. A 2 means the answer was shown to you live or exists in the written contract. A 1 means a verbal yes, a partial yes, or a yes with conditions. A 0 means no, an extra fee, or an answer that changed the subject. Maximum score is 20. Bands and what to do with your total are at the bottom of the page — the short version is that anything a vendor will not put in writing during the sales process will not exist after it.

How to run this during a demo

This works best announced, not sprung. A vendor who handles these ten questions calmly is telling you something; so is one who doesn't.

1. 1

   Bring the checklist into the demo

   Print this page or keep it open on your phone. Tell the vendor at the start that you have ten portability questions to get through before the end. Their reaction to the announcement is itself data.

2. 2

   Ask each question verbatim and score it live

   Do not soften the wording. Score in the moment: 2 for shown-live or in-the-contract, 1 for a verbal or partial yes, 0 for no, an added fee, or evasion. Resist the urge to round up out of politeness.

3. 3

   For every 1, name the missing document

   A 1 becomes a 2 only when something specific exists: a contract clause, an export you watched run, an offboarding doc. Say out loud what that thing is, and request it in your follow-up email the same day.

4. 4

   Total the score and read the band

   Add your ten scores for a total out of 20, and record it in the score record at the bottom of this page along with every question that scored 0.

5. 5

   Re-score from the contract before signing

   When the draft contract arrives, run the ten questions again using only what is written in it. Demo answers do not survive signature; clauses do. The contract score is the real score.

The ten questions

Score each 0, 1, or 2. A 2 requires written or demonstrated proof — not a confident answer.

• 1. Can I export my full customer list myself — names, phone numbers, emails, and marketing consent status — today, in CSV?

  Score 2 only if they open the export screen and run it during the demo. An export that goes through a support ticket is a 1. A list with contact details stripped out is a 0.

• 2. Can I export points balances, tier status, punch counts, and full transaction history?

  Balances without history is a 1. Rebuilding customer balances by hand is where most loyalty migrations quietly die, so this question matters as much as the list itself.

• 3. Does the contract state in writing that customer data belongs to my business, including after termination?

  Look for a defined term like Customer Data and an ownership clause that survives termination. A reassuring line on the vendor's website scores 0; only the contract counts.

• 4. If I replace my POS, does the loyalty program keep working — and if I replace the loyalty program, does my POS?

  Ask precisely what breaks in each direction. Item-level bundling of loyalty into the POS means changing either one resets the program. A loyalty layer that runs beside the POS scores higher here.

• 5. What is the contract term, the cancellation notice window, and the total cost to leave mid-term, in numbers?

  Score 2 for month-to-month or a stated, capped exit cost. Auto-renewal with a narrow once-a-year notice window is a 0 no matter how friendly the rest of the terms are.

• 6. Do I own the enrollment surfaces — the sign-up URL and QR domain, the phone-number lookup at the till, any short code?

  QR codes on your tables and windows that point at the vendor's domain die the day you leave. Score 2 if enrollment runs on a domain you control or the contract commits to redirecting it.

• 7. What happens to the cards, app entries, and wallet passes already on my customers' phones if I leave?

  Wallet passes issued through platforms like PushNotice can be updated in place to point at a new program; plastic cards and entries inside a vendor's own app cannot. Artifacts that would freeze with dead barcodes and old branding score 0.

• 8. Is there a documented read API for my customer and transaction data while I am a customer — not only at exit?

  Ongoing access lets you keep a live backup and rehearse a migration before you ever need one. Export-at-termination-only scores 1 at best. Ask whether API access sits on your plan or a higher tier.

• 9. Is marketing consent collected in my business's name, so the exported list is legally usable on another platform?

  If the opt-in language names the vendor as the party collecting consent, your exported list may be unusable for SMS or email elsewhere. Ask to see the exact opt-in text a customer sees at sign-up.

• 10. Is there a written offboarding process — export formats, timelines, data-deletion confirmation, and who does the work?

  Score 2 if they can hand you the offboarding document in the demo. The answer we have never had anyone leave is a 0, not a compliment.

Translating vague answers

These phrases are not lies — they are compressions. Each one has a specific follow-up that turns it into something scoreable.

Comparison scorecard

Comparing vendors? Score each demo in its own column, 0–2 per row, and total out of 20 in the score record below.

Score record

Fill this in before you leave the demo, and again when the draft contract arrives. The second total is the one that counts.