EPOS system needed

[Mark M]

Its for a small electrical/lighting shop that sells over a trade counter as well as online and via telephone. Counter sales are only a small proportion of it so dont really need an all signing and dancing system just something to scan the barcode, take the money and print a receipt.

 

Dont need stock management or any intergration but any suggestions of where to look greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks, Mark

[Andrew C]

Before anyone else thinks what I did :) , Mark sells theatrical lighting. This puts us just on topic, so no (more) "we don't do omputers" here.

[Robin D]

My first question was how many do you need, but then I thought best to try to answer in generic terms.

 

Electronic cash registers from companies like Sharp start at sub £100 and can be linked to a point with master slave. You'd set up buttons for categories rather than products so Disco lights, vs Movers vs..... The more buttons the greater the breakdown but the higher the cost and the greater the management overhead. You almost certainly would have a PDQ or similar for processing cards. Some smarter tills interface to save re-keying the value, but that can be a problem every time the PDQ hardware or software gets updated.

 

After that you are into small merchandise management systems with tills costing a few £k up to fully blown systems in five and six figures with more bells and whistles that you could ever dream of. It sounds like you don't need that.

 

At the lower end of the market there are scores of offerings. You need to be sure that the software has a future (if relevant), but I suggest the most important thing is to check out that you have local support. You will have problems, so buying it from XYZ Systems in the same county, is going to be easier than getting it from the other side of the counry and then having trouble getting an engineer to look at it when its got sticky button. I suggest a quick look in Yellow Pages under Cash register and EPOS. Make sure you ask for and take up local references. Do not believe the salesman's line. :)

 

My 'day' job is a retail IT manager albeit in much bigger organisations than we appear to talking about here and in a completely different part of the country. If I can be of further help, please PM.

[lx2010]

I have some very positive experiences with a piece of software called 'Dale Harris POS' its free software but it would knock socks of most of the fancy all singing and dancing attemps at a pos system some of its main features are (copyed off the website)

 

This is a complete Point of sale software / Cash register program.

 

This is not just the stand alone version it is for networks too..

 

This is not a demo version that you try out.

 

This is not a trial version that will quit working.

 

This is not a crippled version that is missing features.

 

This is not an evaluation version to see if you like it.

 

There is no shipping or handling charge, just download it.

 

This is not shareware, it is totally FREE.

 

If you download this file you will receive a complete point of sale software / cash register program that will work on any PC computer running any version of DOS or Windows. It is a DOS program. (Trust me, your money doesn't care.) It will work with almost any receipt printer or regular computer printer. It will work without a printer but then you can't print receipts.

 

It will pop open a cash drawer attached to a receipt printer or some serial cash drawers. You can use a scanner to read stock numbers.

 

Track up to 13,000 different items for a medium sized retail business or with almost no setup use in "minimal mode" for a garage sale, flea market, snack bar.

 

Heres Abit Of A Screen Shot

http://pages.prodigy.net/daleharris/pos.jpg

 

So yea, in conclusion I think this would suit the bill perfectly the only cost to you would be the hardware for the system barcode scanner etc. but this can be picked up fairly cheaply on the net if you look in the right places (google usualy helps) if you need any more info just pm me. Oh and yea heres the link you sould download it and give it a try remember it is FREE so wheres the harm in that

 

http://pages.prodigy.net/daleharris/pos.htm

 

Thanks Oli

[andy™]

Its for a small electrical/lighting shop that sells over a trade counter as well as online and via telephone. Counter sales are only a small proportion of it so dont really need an all signing and dancing system just something to scan the barcode, take the money and print a receipt.

 

Dont need stock management or any intergration but any suggestions of where to look greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks, Mark

 

http://www.creative-software-solutions.inf...tockcontrol.asp

 

use this myself. customer support is excellent

[dbuckley]

The real question is about barcodes; barcodes are a slackers way to enter a price lookup ("PLU") and most low cost tills have limits on how many PLUs they can store, though modern tills are more generous in this respect than older tills. Plus there is effort involved in setting the barcodes up and maintaining the prices attached to the PLUs. So if you are selling few items then the barcode integration (and indeed PLUs) may be more trouble than its worth.

 

Taking the money and printing receipts, on the other hand, any old till can do.

[Mark M]

Thanks for the suggestions, will have a look at them over the weekend. I stumbled upon Openbravo POS which seems pretty good but needs quite a bit of modification so may be beyond my technical skills.

 

Matk

[Mark M]

Just a quick update in case anyone is interested....

 

After spending quite a bit of time testing various pieces of software I went for openbravo POS in the end. It takes a little more setting up compared to an out the box package but considering it is open source I dont mind spending the time getting it right. I purchased a touch screen monitor, a thermal receipt printer, a barcode scanner and a till drawer for less than £600 to go with the software.

 

So far its been working flawlessly and been a huge time saver, Ive even implemented the stock control and now know at a touch of a button what my stock is and can even run a report for stick items which are below the minimum level.

[Junior8]

So far its been working flawlessly and been a huge time saver, Ive even implemented the stock control and now know at a touch of a button what my stock is and can even run a report for stick items which are below the minimum level.

 

It can be even more useful. 25 years ago a convenience chain near here implemented EPOS and using the data were able to fillet the average number of stocklines per store from 10,000 to 4,000 while improving profitability substantially. Up until then the only data they had was from 13 week cycle stock-takes and guess-work. I'm not saying you could do the same but it does point up the value of knowing where the slow moving stock is.