What are the Advantages of a Point of Sale - POS - System?

POS stands for Point of Sale - POS technology is used mainly at retail locations such as stores, supermarkets, restaurant, etc. POS system is extremely useful when a customer would like to purchase an item or pay a bill.  POS system can register sales, monitor your inventory, monitor sales information such as time, date and place of sale and all the data stored in the database. These data can be later used for different purposes.

POS systems have changed the face of retail. Now, in a small or large business, you can accurately track which products customers buy. You can keep data of all purchases and compare this data with sales data of the last year or with sales data from other stores.
POS systems usually work with barcode scanners that are connected to the POS system and through which the POS system enter information about the articles. For example, when you go to the supermarket, you put items on the conveyor belt and the seller then scan them using the barcode scanner. At the same time, you see the price of scanned items and the total cost of purchased items in the moment. A lot of data, including all information about the product (price, size, name, etc.) and information about time and date of purchase, is saved in the computer for later use and analysis.

With POS systems everybody wins. The consumer wins because the check out is fast, reliable and accurate. The retailers win because they are able to easily  keep track of sales, inventory and have tons of data available for further analysis.

POS systems continue to become more powerful. Many supermarkets now keep track of their customers by starting customer rewards program. Most  customers join the rewards programs and they receive a small key fob with a barcode to distinguish them in the computer. Now supermarkets are not only able to keep track of which items are purchased, but who purchased them. The same can be said about store credit cards. When a store has your personal information, they can easily keep track of certain customers and the purchases they make. These innovations have made marketing to customers extremely focused and profitable.

Bar Codes are part of the POS process. A bar code is a bunch of vertical lines that an barcode scanner can read and interpret as data. The bar code includes a UPC number which stands for Universal Product Code. A large number of items that are sold in retail has its own UPC code, so that they can be effectively sold and registered in the POS system.

In addition to barcode reader or scanner, the UPC code can also be added directly (via keyboard) or in the computer. Sometimes if the barcode is unreadable (damaged), the seller will manually enter the code using the keypad.