Built by a store owner,
for store owners.
LocalTab didn't come out of a software company. It came out from behind the counter.
I run five convenience stores in Rutherford County, North Carolina. For years, our best customers wanted to run a tab — the regulars who come in every day, the contractors, the folks we've known forever. And our staff needed a clean way to grab a sandwich on shift without raiding the drawer or scribbling an IOU.
So we did it the way every store does it: paper, a clipboard, and a lot of trust. It worked right up until it didn't. Pulling a month of statements took a whole weekend, limits were a guess, and at any given moment nobody could say what a customer actually owed without digging through the stack.
So I looked at the big POS vendors. I sat through the sales calls and the Zoom demos and hit the same wall every time — their charge-account tools were built for gas-station chains with a corporate IT department, and priced for them too. For a five-store operation like ours, the number was never close. There's a particular kind of defeat in knowing exactly what you need and being told, politely, that it isn't made for stores like yours.
So I built it myself. First, just at one location. Then, once it was running in every store I own, I cleaned it up so any store could use it. Now statements go out on the 1st of the month on their own — not days late when something comes up — and I know every customer's balance at any moment, not after a weekend buried in paperwork.
That's LocalTab.
It runs my own stores — every day
This isn't a product I sell and walk away from. The same software, cards, and statements I'm handing you are the ones ringing up my own customers right now. When something needs to be better, I feel it at my own register before you ever would.
That's the difference between a tool built for corner stores and one built by one. I'm not guessing at how your day works — I'm living it.
You own your accounts — and your data is always yours
A few things I insisted on from the start, because they're the things I'd want from a vendor:
Your data is yours
Your customers, balances, and history belong to you. Export everything to a spreadsheet anytime — including a clean QuickBooks file. If you ever move on, your data moves with you.
No nickel-and-diming
Flat per-location pricing — no per-transaction fees, no surprise tiers. The price I wish I'd heard on those sales calls.
No years-long lock-in
A first year to cover setup, then month-to-month. No multi-year contracts, no exit penalties — stay as long as it's working for you.
A real company behind it
LocalTab, LLC is a registered business, not a side project. It's the system my own livelihood depends on too.
I built LocalTab so I'd never be at the mercy of a vendor who didn't understand my store. I'm not going to put you in that spot either.
If you run a store and you've got regulars worth keeping, let's talk.
— John Harrill, Founder