Hardware & Software
Choices for Integrating Point of Sale
Point of sale is actually an integration of several different components working together to give unified support in billing, accounting, inventory control and cash collection from customers. Some smaller businesses however choose to have one or more of the different components depending upon their scale of operation.
Here is the chief hardware of a point of sale system.
· Barcode scanners – for directly registering sale and invoicing
There are wide varieties of choices for scanners. Some better known brands are Motorola, iBall, Honeywell, TVS-E, Argox and Opticon. With each brand you can choose handheld or stand models. You can also choose between green and blue LED indicators depending on your preference.
· Receipt Printing machines – Printing invoice, reports and cash receipts
Your choice of barcode Printers will depend upon your scale of operation, and the main considerations are: speed of operation, maximum paper width that can be accommodated and the durability of the machine. Speed ranges are: 70 mm/second or 4.5/5 lines/second, 6 lines/second 160 mm/second, 100/200 mm/second and so on. Paper width can be minimum 2 inches or a maximum of 4.58 inches. Durability is measured in terms of maximum total print length, and it can be as much 50 KM and can go up to 100 KM for some machines.
· Barcode Printers – for printing machine readable price tags on products
There is a huge variety of barcode printers. The most common brands are Epson, TSC, Argox, TVS-E, Zebra and citizen. You should choose printers based on the label width, the printing speed, ribbon capacity, print resolution, label margins, connectivity to computers… and other factors.
· POS Terminal/Cash Registers – for receiving cash, debit/credit card processing
The points of sale terminal makers are Wep and TVS-E. Features to consider before ordering are number of functional keys, speed of the register, battery backup built-in, and print-roll size, bills per day printing capacity, screen display system, storage capacity, rate slab and durability of the machine.
· Cash Drawers – for keeping cash securely under billers’ control
Cash drawer manufacturers include TVS-E and Posiflex. Cash drawers are designated based on the number of number of trays (3 up to 5), lock positions available and the material used for making the drawers. Metal is commonly used for making cash drawers.
The other components that make the point of sale are:
· POS software – for integrating the whole POS system
· Barcode labels/stickers – for automatic sticking of price tags on products
· Display system – for interacting with customers at POS
Point of sale will work flawlessly only when all these components work in tandem, and therefore they need to be connected to a central computer. The most common way to integrate is through the use of special software. One of the follow software can be considered –
· SalonPro Salon & Spa Management Software
· Retail Expert Store Management Software
· Flexi F&B Restaurant Management
One of these should be able to integrate the POS for a wide range of industry – retail, grocery, cloth store, beauty salon, shopping mall and more.
Author
Mr. Priyankar Baid is the owner of the website www.smesauda.com, all the hardware and software related to the point of sale system such as a barcode printer a billing machine, cash register, etc are available on the website.
Website: http://www.smesauda.com/billing-machine-cash-register
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