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The EPOS, or Electronic Point of Sale, is the digital system in retail establishments with which customers pay for items. It is, however, much more than this. With EPOS, you can track inventory and discounts, monitor hourly and daily sales and keep tabs on how much you are spending on employee labor. Each retail store, or franchise, has its own EPOS, but they work in fundamentally similar ways.
EPOS Requirements
To build an effective EPOS system, you must ensure a few issues: The EPOS should feature information about products at the point of sale, it must have a built-in system for discriminating products from one another and it must keep a running tab of items that the customer is buying as you or an employee is ringing them up. An EPOS system should keep data relating to price, stock number and quantity sold per transaction. The system should be able to total the running tab of items, including tax amount, and then present the customer with a grand total. You can then place the customer's money in the till and give the customer change, if applicable.
EPOS Features
While no feature of the EPOS system is more important than any other, you interact most frequently with the digital interface. In many establishments, this is a digital touch-screen computer. This screen is typically connected via Ethernet cable to a central computer running DOS or Unix. A till, or cash register, is usually connected to and located below the digital monitor and opens via commands integrated with the touch screen. EPOS's final physical component is a hand-held scanner. You use this device to identify the product and its price. On the digital side is a sophisticated accounting system capable of monitoring inventory as sales come through and applying discounts via coupons and gift cards. Your EPOS system should also feature a mechanism whereby employees can give refunds on the spot, as well as track whether employees reduced the order cost after the total was given.
The Barcode
The barcode is the tool that you're most likely to employ for the job of giving each item that you have for sale a unique identity within the EPOS system. Consisting of up to 13 numbers represented by vertical bars of varying height, you can read it quickly with a hand-held barcode scanner. Barcodes are typically applied by the manufacturer, but most EPOS systems enable you to create your own. Note that variants of a product must have their own barcode as well. Unreadable barcodes can sometimes be worked around by scanning a similar item with a working barcode, typing the barcode manually or using a code that has been set up ahead of time for such a circumstance.
The Product File
The product file is the heart of your EPOS system. This file, which contains your entire inventory, including each item's barcode information, is stored within the computer that runs your EPOS. Each product file should also contain that item's wholesale price and a description of the item as it is seen at the point of sale. Digital product files can be deployed to any number of outlets as well as updated from a central location. With most EPOS systems, you won't have to manually update the product file, but rather simply set a recurring date for updates to occur.
EPOS Requirements
To build an effective EPOS system, you must ensure a few issues: The EPOS should feature information about products at the point of sale, it must have a built-in system for discriminating products from one another and it must keep a running tab of items that the customer is buying as you or an employee is ringing them up. An EPOS system should keep data relating to price, stock number and quantity sold per transaction. The system should be able to total the running tab of items, including tax amount, and then present the customer with a grand total. You can then place the customer's money in the till and give the customer change, if applicable.
EPOS Features
While no feature of the EPOS system is more important than any other, you interact most frequently with the digital interface. In many establishments, this is a digital touch-screen computer. This screen is typically connected via Ethernet cable to a central computer running DOS or Unix. A till, or cash register, is usually connected to and located below the digital monitor and opens via commands integrated with the touch screen. EPOS's final physical component is a hand-held scanner. You use this device to identify the product and its price. On the digital side is a sophisticated accounting system capable of monitoring inventory as sales come through and applying discounts via coupons and gift cards. Your EPOS system should also feature a mechanism whereby employees can give refunds on the spot, as well as track whether employees reduced the order cost after the total was given.
The Barcode
The barcode is the tool that you're most likely to employ for the job of giving each item that you have for sale a unique identity within the EPOS system. Consisting of up to 13 numbers represented by vertical bars of varying height, you can read it quickly with a hand-held barcode scanner. Barcodes are typically applied by the manufacturer, but most EPOS systems enable you to create your own. Note that variants of a product must have their own barcode as well. Unreadable barcodes can sometimes be worked around by scanning a similar item with a working barcode, typing the barcode manually or using a code that has been set up ahead of time for such a circumstance.
The Product File
The product file is the heart of your EPOS system. This file, which contains your entire inventory, including each item's barcode information, is stored within the computer that runs your EPOS. Each product file should also contain that item's wholesale price and a description of the item as it is seen at the point of sale. Digital product files can be deployed to any number of outlets as well as updated from a central location. With most EPOS systems, you won't have to manually update the product file, but rather simply set a recurring date for updates to occur.
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