The Casio SE-S400 is one of our most popular retail cash registers. The SE-S400 replaced the outgoing SE-S300 model in the spring of 2013 and has several key features, which have helped make the 400 one of the best-selling cash registers in the UK over the last few years. One of the first features that make the SE-S400 stand out from the crowd is the large tilting multi line LCD operator display. The operator screen clearly shows both the price entered and the name of the item or department sold. This makes it very easy for the cashier to spot an incorrect entry before they quote the subtotal to the customer or cash off the sale. The SE-S400 has a review order screen, allowing them to easily void the incorrect line. This cuts down on over rings and the resulting discrepancies in the till takings reports. In addition to the operator display, the pop-up customer rear display is also alpha numeric so the customer can see what items are being rung through giving them confidence that the correct amounts are being rung through the cash register.

The next advantage of the SE-S400 is the professional, fast, quiet thermal receipt printer. The SE-S400 is flexible enough to use the printer in a variety of ways. So to start with, depending on your business operation, you can set the SE-S400 to work in either receipt or journal mode. In journal mode you are unable to issue customer receipts through the till, but you have an audit of every transaction recorded saved on the take up spool. In the more popular receipt mode you can choose to issue receipts with every transaction, or you can have the receipt function switched off so it is only issued on customer request. The SE-S400 can also be programmed to enable copy or duplicate receipts on request. The receipt header can be customised to include your shop name and promotional details. As with most cash registers you can issue an end of day sales report, in addition to this the SE-S400 also provides the ability to issue a journal report of the days takings (providing you run the report prior to the Z report.

In terms of other cash register features, the SE-S400 has a secure key lock ensuring manager control over reports and programming. The SE-S400 has 25 department keys allowing sales to be easily split into different categories. Should you have more than 25 categories of sale, then the SE-S400 could still be the answer as it has a total of 200 departments, with numbers 26-200 accessed via the shift or hash functions. The SE-S400 also supports up to 3,000 plu’s and barcode scanning with up to 2,000 barcode lines. At the time of writing the SE-S400 is the most competitively priced barcode scanner friendly cash register in the UK, making it the perfect entry level scanning cash register.

The SE-S400 has a full size metal cash base. The removable plastic insert has 4 note holders and 8 coin pots – enough to cover the UK denominations. The dimensions of the SE-S400 are 400mm wide x 450mm deep with a height of 220mm. The ‘low-slung’ profile of the Casio SE-S cash register range in general make them popular to retailers who prefer sleek design to the more bulky, traditional style of other manufacturers.

The SE-S400 also has an inbuilt SD card slot, which can be utilised for backing up the cash registers programming – a big advantage should your business utilise multiple tills with the same products – and for extracting your end of day reports into a spreadsheet.

The only limitation we can find on the Casio SE-S400 is the single station thermal printer, but should you need two printers (one for receipts and one for audit) please see our review of the SE-S400’s ‘big brother’ – the SE-S3000.

For more information on the SE-S400 and other Casio cash registers please check out our website in full: http://www.shopstuff.co.uk/