gas station back office software
Gas station back office software, built for independent operators.
Cash reconciliation, lottery accountability, fuel margin tracking, vendor invoice OCR, daily close, and multi-store reporting in one place, without the ERP cost or training cycle.
Who this is for
Independent gas station and c-store owners running 1–50 locations, where the "IT department" is the owner and a phone, and where a multi-week ERP rollout is not realistic.
Why the current workflow breaks.
POS reports tell you what happened. They don't tell you what went wrong.
Every POS at every station produces a daily report. The report shows sales, voids, refunds, tender breakdown. What it does not show, and cannot show by design, is whether the $42 cash short on Tuesday correlates with the four large voids by the same clerk, whether the lottery serial gap lines up with the same shift on Friday, or whether the fuel margin compressed because dispensed-volume reconciliation drifted three days ago.
The spreadsheet workflow doesn't scale.
Most independent operators stitch the back office together with a master spreadsheet, POS export here, lottery sheet there, vendor invoices typed in by the bookkeeper, deposits pulled from the bank app. It works for one store. It breaks at three. By store six, the spreadsheet is a part-time job for someone, and the loss attribution that was supposed to be the point of the whole exercise gets done at month-end, after the loss is already locked in.
Enterprise ERPs aren't built for independents.
PDI, Petrosoft, Series2K, and Pinnacle were built for chains with IT teams, training budgets, and multi-week procurement cycles. The cost isn't the license, it's the operational ceiling. A clerk who can't complete the close in three taps will revert to the paper workflow within a week, and the back office buys an ERP whose only daily user is the owner.
The workflow
How it actually runs.
The same sequence on every store, every shift: pre-populated where possible, with attribution baked in.
- 01
POS feed ingests automatically.
Verifone Commander, Gilbarco Passport, NCR Voyix, or Toshiba, pick yours. Shift sales, tender breakdowns, voids, refunds, and pump totalizer reads flow in nightly (or hourly via the modern POS APIs). No clerk types tender from the X-report.
- 02
Daily close pre-populates.
The EOD form opens with POS-side tender already there. Expected cash is computed live against sales × (1 + effective tax rate). The clerk enters the till count once; variance, tolerance-band status, and tax allocation all compute in real time.
- 03
Variance surfaces the same shift, not month-end.
A $42 short over the configured tolerance blocks submission, requires a reason code, and alerts the owner via SMS within minutes. By the time the clerk leaves the building, you know what happened and you can act on it.
- 04
Vendor invoices become 30-second mobile work.
Clerk snaps a photo of a McLane / Core-Mark / Eby-Brown invoice. Line items extract, cost increases are flagged against the prior invoice from the same vendor, the bookkeeper reviews and approves, the entry posts to QuickBooks. No more 20-minute hand-keying per invoice.
- 05
Lottery serials reconcile against state-commission reports.
Scratcher packs scan in and out. The system tracks serials, flags missing tickets with the on-shift clerk attached, and reconciles daily against the CA Lottery (or other state) settlement report. The slow leak gets caught in week one, not at the quarterly true-up.
- 06
Owner gets the morning brief at 7 AM.
A single email, sales by store, EOD status by store, top three variance events, top three lottery exceptions, fuel margin band per grade. Drill into any line in one tap. Replaces the "let me pull a report" workflow with a five-minute glance.
Who uses this, and how.
Owner-operator with 1–3 stations.
Replace the spreadsheet workflow. The bookkeeper stays; the data entry disappears. You get the daily close + loss-attribution view that was the original point of the spreadsheet, in less time than building one yourself.
Multi-location owner (5–20 stations).
Roll up KPIs across every station. Scope managers to specific stores. Stop the cross-store reconciliation spreadsheet entirely. New store onboarding takes minutes, not weeks.
Bookkeeper / back-office team.
Invoice OCR replaces 20 minutes per vendor invoice. EOD totals post to QuickBooks as journal entries automatically. Sales-tax filings (CDTFA, ABC, CARB) generate ready to submit. Roughly 80% of the data-entry hour budget disappears.
Accountant / CPA reviewing the books.
Read-only seat in StationPro. Full audit trail with before/after on every adjustment, queryable by store/date/actor. Year-end pack with P&L, balance, vendor 1099 source data exports cleanly into tax-prep workflows.
Side by side
StationPro vs. spreadsheets + pos reports.
| Dimension | StationPro | Spreadsheets + POS reports |
|---|---|---|
| Time per daily close | ≈5 minutes (auto-populated) | 30–60 minutes (manual) |
| Cash variance attribution | Shift + clerk attached at variance | Spreadsheet column; usually orphaned |
| Lottery serial accountability | Barcode scan + serial-gap detection | Manual count vs. commission report |
| Vendor invoice entry | 30 seconds (OCR) | 15–25 minutes (hand-keyed) |
| Multi-store rollup | Real-time portfolio view | Cross-store spreadsheet, updated weekly |
| Owner alert on missed close | SMS within minutes | Caught the next morning, or later |
| Audit trail | Immutable, queryable, 7-year retain | Email threads, paper notes, spreadsheet history |
| Onboarding new store | Minutes, same configuration shape | A new spreadsheet column structure each time |
Questions, answered.
Is StationPro a POS replacement?
No. StationPro is the back office that sits behind your POS. Keep your Verifone, Gilbarco, NCR, or Toshiba, we ingest from them and reconcile the operational layer (close, cash, lottery, fuel margin, invoices) on top.
How does this compare to PDI or Petrosoft?
PDI and Petrosoft are enterprise ERPs built for chains with IT teams. StationPro is built for independent operators running 1–50 stations who need fast deployment, shift-level loss attribution, and a workflow clerks can finish on their first shift. Same data, very different operating posture. See /vs-pdi and /vs-petrosoft for honest comparisons.
What does onboarding look like for one station?
Day 1 wires the POS feed and trains clerks on the new EOD form (about 30 minutes). Days 2–5 backfill 90 days of historical data, configure variance tolerances, and validate the daily close workflow. Most independents are live and reconciling within five business days.
Does this work for a single-store operator?
Yes. The Starter plan ($149/store/month) is the same product as the multi-store plans, every feature available on day one. Single-store operators typically see the biggest week-one impact from invoice OCR and the cash-variance attribution.
How do I export my data if I cancel?
CSV export of every table in your tenant from the owner settings page, one click. No retention hostage-taking, your operational data is yours.
Is there a free trial?
No free trial; instead, a 30-day pilot at $149 for a single station. Same per-store rate as the regular Starter plan. If the pilot doesn't prove out, you cancel, no commitment to roll the rest of your portfolio.
Keep reading.
Related features
Loss Radar
AI anomaly detection across cash, fuel, lottery, and inventory.
Daily Close (EOD)
5-minute close with tax-rate-aware reconciliation.
Invoice OCR & vendor management
Drop a PDF. Line items, prices, vendors. Done.
Lottery accountability
Serial-gap detection with shift attribution.
Fuel reconciliation & margin tracking
Pump, POS, BOL, and ATG, matched daily with margin visibility.
Multi-store portfolio
One owner pane of glass, with per-store drill-down.
Tools and templates
Gas Station Daily Close Checklist
12-step checklist for closing a gas station or c-store the right way, every shift.
Cash Variance Calculator
Compute expected cash for a shift and identify variance in 30 seconds.
Lottery Shrink Calculator
Estimate weekly lottery shrink exposure given your pack volume and shrink rate.
From the blog
Loss attribution beats theft prevention.
Why the goal isn't to stop shrinkage at an independent station, it's to know who, when, and how. A field guide to building an attribution system instead of a security one.
Why independents shouldn't use ERP.
ERPs assume an IT team, a training budget, and a procurement cycle. Independent operators have none of those. The cost of that mismatch isn't the license, it's the operational ceiling.
EOD in 5 minutes.
A teardown of the daily-close process at a typical independent gas station, what takes 45 minutes today, why it takes that long, and how the same close can be done in five minutes without cutting corners.
See where your station is leaking money.
A 30-minute call. We build the demo around your stations, not a generic deck.