Point Of Sale Posts

As an owner of a retail store, utilizing point of sale (POS) system can help you manage your store better. photo credit: Little Yiye

The key feature of every POS system has to be its ability to record and track sales and inventory.

If you are managing multiple stores, web based POS systems can provide multiple benefits such as providing some real time information on the number of items sold, customer details, supplier info and many more.

A complete POS system usually includes the common hardware such as the barcode scanner, receipt printer, cash drawer, monitor, etc. Something like what you see below.

Besides the POS hardware, an equally important component has to be the POS software. Both the hardware and the software must be able to work together seamlessly to ensure an effective sales / inventory tracking.

In today’s post, I’ll be introducing a free web based SaaS Point of Sales (POS) software for retail stores which may benefit from implementing a POS system. Continue Reading »
Free web based SaaS Point of Sale (POS) software

Looking for a point of sale software for your retail store?

One of the biggest challenge when it comes to choosing the right point of sale software for your business is selecting and evaluating the right POS software and hardware which fits your requirements.

A good way to choose would be to research the web for several local POS software vendors and ask them to provide a demo together with a price quotation.

But if researching on the web is too tedious for you and you rather get your hands dirty quickly on a point of sale system, then I’ve got a POS recommendation for you – Quickbooks Point of Sale.

Quickbooks point of sale is actually a desktop application. In the past, in order to give the software a try, you would need to either download a trial version or check out a friend’s copy.

Now, with the power of the Internet, anyone can actually try out Quickbooks Point of Sale. All you need is an Internet connection and a compatible browser to test drive the software. To check out Quickbooks Point of Sale online, click here. Continue Reading »
An easy way to try out QuickBooks Point of Sale

Are you an owner of a bar or restaurant? If yes, are you running any POS software to better manage your business?

One really tedious task for all owners at the end of the day includes calculating and summing up the total sales made for the day. Imagine if there are a total of 500 customers in a day. We are talking about manually calculating 500 bills in a day just find out the total sales made for the day. This problem will not exist if your bar or restaurant is running on a POS software. Photo by The Consumerist

There are many advantages of running a POS software which includes:

• Track orders
• Check totals
• Manage payments and changes
• Manage customer details
• Manage tables and seatings
• Manage time clock

Any of the following food and beverages (F&B) business can benefit from implementing a POS software:

• Neighborhood Bar & Grill
• Fine Dining
• Fast Food
• Pancake House
• Chinese Restaurant
• Mom ‘n Pop
• Drive In/Thru
• Steak House
• Buffet
• Japanese Steak House
• Pizza / Italian
• Coffee Shop – Cafe
• Wireless Handhelds
• Bar / Night Club

There are many POS software out there in the market today. Some can even cost up to $40,000 to implement. Unless your F&B outlet makes a lot of money, it’s best to start of with something which is more affordable. Continue Reading »
FREE to download POS software for bars and restaurants

Are you planning to start your own of a restaurant business, grocery store or a book shop? If you are, then you must be looking for a Point of Sales (POS) system to help manage store bills and purchases. With so many different types of POS system out there in the market today, it’s definately not easy to choose one. For sure a POS system has to be reliable and accurate as we are dealing with money management, order and inventory tracking.

For those with high startup capital, choosing a POS system shouldn’t be a problem as one could easily go for branded and reputable ones such as IBM POS and Lightspeed POS for Mac OS X. But what if cost is problem? You’ve just paid for the renovation of the store and cannot afford to purchase high end POS system. There must be a cheaper solution!

What about an open source POS / Retail Management Solution? One such system is Openbravo POS, designed specifically for touch screens. Openbravo POS (previously called Librepos and TinaPOS) is a point of sale which supports ESC/POS ticket printers, customer displays and barcode scanners. It is multiuser providing product entry forms, reports and charts. Openbravo POS can be configured to work in any Point-of-Sale environment.
Openbravo POS features includes:

• Sales, refunds and cash management
• Master data management
• Warehouse management
• Restaurant module
• Reports and charts
• Security

Openbravo POS supports a wide list of POS hardware including:

• Touch screens
• Bar code scanners
• Scales
• Receipt printers (Epson TM88iV, Star, Ithaca…)
• Customer displays (Epson LD110, L200…)
• Cash drawers
• Magnetic card readers

Openbravo POS is developed using Java but you can run it on various types of Operating System.

Sample screenshots:

Openbravo POS is a system rich in features and is capable of challenging other POS systems for the retail industry. Since it is open source you can be assured of its quality. Even if the features does not suit your environment, you can always customize it or hire someone to do it for you since the software is open source. One day when I start my own retail store, I will definitely give Openbravo POS a try before even looking at any other systems out there. Download Openbravo POS

* Updated 14th Jan 2009: You may also be interested to look at a FREE to download POS software for bars and restaurants.