What is a POS system?

What is a POS system? Well, it stands for Point Of Sales and it’s a place where people buy and sell. POS system is referred to as the set of electronic equipment and tools at the checkout counter or the terminal that you perform POS transactions. A POS transaction is the activity that takes place between a seller and a buyer when purchasing a product.

A POS system consists of hardware and software. The typical hardware that this system includes is a monitor to view the information, a barcode reader to scan the product details, a credit card reader to input the payment details, receipt printer to print the receipts and a cash drawer to keep the money.

POS software is the application that is running in the system. Usually, this software program can run in both online and offline mode. It must be able to handle the following functionalities.

1. Sales tracking and management to generate financial reports, manage pricing, taxes, and loyalty programs.
2. Customer management to store customer information and retrieve them later for marketing programs.
3. Inventory management to manage the stock flow and generate inventory reports.
4. Real-time synchronization to update product quantities in real-time.

Popular examples for POS systems

1. Retail – Designed specifically to handle the retail POS environment. The main features include tracking inventory, maintaining a customer database, handling purchase orders, money transactions, gift registry, and employee commissions.
2. Restaurant and bar – Designed to integrate the workflow and connect the order processing and kitchen setup. These POS systems work faster to quickly process customer orders, transactions, handle customer seating and reservations.
3. Spa and Salon – Designed to handle a set of POS options that is specific to the nature of spa and salon business. The main features include calendar, handling online appointments, appointment reminders, employee scheduling, and transaction processing.