The Point of sale system or POS or a Checkout spot as it is been called is a place where the sale transactions are executed. At this point a consumer clears all his bills, the bills that are related to the articles and services he has bought from the retail outlet. The salesperson who is at the POS counter will ascertain the amount that has to be paid by the consumer. He would also give the consumer all the payment gateways that are available for him to pay through, for whom a sale receipt will be provide to the consumer.

There is an air of change in the environment, and the retail industry as well demands a POS hardware and software that is customized to suit the requirements of the business.SMESauda.com provides the best POS software in the market.

1) Retail Expert Store Management Software

2) Flexi F&B Restaurant Management Software

Different types of equipment such as cash registers which may be manual or electronic, EFTPOS terminal, weighing scale, scanners, touch screen a various other types of hardware and software that is available for use with the POS system. A bar or a restaurant in the city will require a POS software that would customize the goods and services to the consumers who have a specific drink or meal request, whereas a simple grocery store would employ a scale at the point of service.

The point of sale cannot just be considered a counter where all the sale transactions are been done, but the consumers can also use this place to return their orders. It is a boon for the retailers and people in the hospitality industry. Read more on this here. It has features that can cater to different functionalities such as warehousing, CRM, financials, inventory management, etc. all this is already built into the POS software. The POS software has come as a great relief for the retailers who earlier had to manually feed the information as all of these functions were independent that usually led to errors.

Hardware Interface Standardization

The retailers and vendors both are working towards standardizing the development of a computerized POS system and make the POS devices more simple and convenient to use. Some of the initiatives are OPOS and Java POS.

There are a number of communication protocols that are employed by the point of sale system, so that it can control the peripherals attached to it. The POS system has an interconnecting nature, and due to that the peripherals of the point of sale system, such as the touch screen display support, printers may demand protocols so that they can work with various brands of POS terminal and computers, www.smesauda.com has the best POS terminals at the lowest prices

1) WeP Bounti BP 85 Retail Billing Printers

2) TVS- E PT 262 Cash Register, etc.

Cloud-based POS system

The cloud computing has brought great advantages with it, this has increased the chances for the services of a POS system to be able to be accessed anywhere directly in the world by using the World Wide Web. Earlier the advancements in the communication protocols have been used to control the hardware for the POS system, but the cloud based systems for the POS are free from both the operating system and the platform. The cloud based POS systems have been created to be able to work with a wide range of POS hardware.

The cloud based POS system are different from then traditional POS system, this is because the POS systems that are cloud based are not same as the traditional POS systems, this is because the inventory and sales data are not stored locally ,but a remote server is used for their storage. Installation is not necessary as the information is not stored locally.

The biggest advantage of a cloud based POS system is that, the data can be shared everywhere through the internet connection and at a very low cost, which otherwise would have been higher. It has also helped to expand the POS systems to the cellular devices.

POS in the Retail industry

The Retail Industry just cannot think of surviving without the Point of Sale System.

The most important component of a point of sale system is a cash register, which is accompanied by a computer, monitor, receipt printer, cash drawer, barcode scanner and a customer display, and most of them have a debit card and a credit card reader which is in built. It might also have a weighing scale, a conveyor belt, an integrated credit card processing system, a customer pin pad device, and a signature capturing device. The POS monitors usually found today have touch screen, which makes it faster and more convenient to use. An entire computer system is built into the monitor and is seen as an all in one unit. This technology has made the counter space for the retailer a fun place.

The POS system is not only used to manage the sale transactions that have taken place with the clients, as this is only one face of this system. It can also take care of the back office systems such as purchasing, receiving and transferring of the products from one place to another, it also sees inventory control. Another important function of the point of sale system is to store the sales information for enabling customer returns, sales trends, cost-price-profit analysis, and reporting purposes.

POS in the Hospitality Industry

The point of sale system used in the hospitality industry is not much different from the ones used in the retail industry. The system includes cash registers, peripheral equipment like the computer network used in a hotel or a hair salon. The POS systems maintains a record of all the sale transactions, labor and payroll, it can also generate records that can be used in accounting and book keeping.

This software has brought about a lot of drastic changes in the restaurant industry and particularly in the fast food segment. The cash registers have now transformed into touch screen computers. It has actually revolutionized the industry. They connect to the main server which is the store controller or a central control unit.

The POS systems that are used now a days are much more sophisticated than they were earlier and they are moving far away from the old central ‘file server’ type database to what is called a cluster database. This has minimized and almost eliminated the chances of crashing of a system downtime that can be traced to a back office server file.

The POS is made for various kinds of clients, which can be programmed accordingly to work as per the business requirements of an individual or an industry. Few of the big business houses provide their own specifications to the vendor to implement it. These are usually sold and supported by some third party distributers or it can be received directly from the vendors.

See More: TVS-E POS System | Posiflex POS System

Benefits of Using a POS System Date: January 26, 2013                   Author: Amit Prakash Point of Sale System is the computer hardware and software to track inventory and sales together of your business as and when it happens. The benefits of a POS system are manifold. There is no more hassle of tracking and tallying of the cash and the stock and trying to figure out where there is a di  more... Tags: POS Equipments, billing machines, point of sale, pos machine, POS System Categories: POS Equipment