Point of sale (POS) software is used by retail businesses to manage their business and keep track of sales and inventory. It interacts with the sales cash register giving businesses better control of what happens within their retail location. Point of sale software has become a very competitive business with a variety of service levels and pricing structures.
Common features available in POS packages include:
- Inventory module
- Sales records
- Credit card processing
- Gratuity tracking
- Remote order printing
- Barcode printing
- CRM capabilities
- Invoices and quote capability (on higher level packages)
- Built in interface to accounting packages such as Quickbooks
Some POS retail software packages provide interfaces into standard business software packages such as MS products and Quickbooks, but others try to be a complete provider of all business software requirements with a complete business solution. Other software providers offer add on modules specifically designed to meet the needs of the specific industry (Grocery store, restaurant, auto parts store, etc). Free pos software is available, but offers few features and generally isn't well supported.
Major Vendors providing POS retail software include:
- Buyerzone
- POSguys
- Pos-software
- Everest
- SAS
- HP
- SAP (and other ERP systems)
Some of the factors to be considered when purchasing software to manage your point of sale location include:
- Sales agent skills
- Current integration levels of inventory
- Speed to integrate with other business systems
- Support and trouble shooting provided
- System resources: Not usually an issue, but sometimes small business environments are on over-taxed hardware already.