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Home | Business | Small Business If you want to understand what POS software is, you should first get familiar with the definition of POS. POS means point of sale or point of service, which is practically any place where transactions occur, like the cashing register of a retail shop or a checkout counter. As it follows from the definition,pos terminals can be found in restaurants, hotels, bars, shops, stores, malls. POS stands for both the hardware and software which make up the whole system. If you examine a given POS system, you will see that it's divided in two parts - hardware and software. Since we are discussing pos software in this article, let's start with a brief description of the history behind pos software. The early electronic cash registers had a special computer application, which provided some extra features, although they were quite limited compared to today's standards. But the main idea is that the ability to program a point of sale terminal allowed developers to be more creative and made way for a lot of new concepts, such as real time labor and food cost reports. A protocol is a predefined set of rules which computers follow when engaged in communication with one another. POS terminals communicate with other devices (peripherals) using a given protocol, so we can say that the protocol is the language that computers speak. Every pos software comes with a support of a certain protocol, so that it can succesfully interact with peripheral devices, such as POS printer, a bar-code scanner, and a credit/debit card reader. Some of the popular POS communication command protocols are EPSON Esc/POS, ADM 787/788, DSP-800, CD 5220. In an attempt to guarantee the compatibility between the different devices, pos software developers have to meet certain standards. Microsoft, NCR, Epson, and Fujitsu-ICL developed the first pos software standard, called OPOS. People know it as "OLE for POS", because it's based on Microsoft's COM technology, which makes OPOS language independent. The next industry standards was made by SUN, IBM and NCR, under the name JavaPOS. JavaPOS is programmed on JAVA, so it's platform independent. This article wouldn't be complete unless we examine the benefits of pos software. The first and obvious benefit is the increase of your profits as a result of using pos software. Benefit number two is that it will reduce the inventory costs. On top of that, it will improve the overall customer satisfaction, because of the higher level of customer service. It will also maximize the efficiency of your business with at least 20% thanks to repetitive task automation. There are a lot of Point-of-Sale software systems available on the market, so choosing the right one is never easy. There are several factors that should influence your buying decision. The first one is the turnover of your business. Second one is of course the industry in which your business operates, whether it's antiques, appliances, auto dealerships. Remember that the best way to see if a pos software really works is to check with the retailers already using it. The majority of POS software solutions are designed to operate on Windows. Linux and MAC machines are probably more reliable, but you will get a much more limited amount of choices in terms of software available for such UNIX based operating systems. When configured properly, Windows systems can work for months and even years without any intervention. POS software can support Windows 95, 2000, or XP, although some will only work on XP. Article Source: http://www.articlewheel.com
Point of sale is not something to just wade into, visit Retail POS Software for more direction. Author - Steve Arbor Jones.
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