POS or PoS is an acronym for point of sale (or point of service). This can mean a retail shop, a checkout counter in a shop, or a variable location where a transaction occurs. In Europe, the acronym EPOS for Electronics at the Point Of Sale is used in preference.
A check-out counter, checkstand, or checkout is the aisle where people place items they have chosen to purchase from a store, such as a supermarket or department store. This is typically a long counter, which usually contains a moving belt or sometimes a rotating carousel, and a photocell to stop it when items reach the end. The cashier rings up each item on the cash register and obtains the total. The items are placed in bags and the customer can take them after paying.
Marketers design special advertising vehicles, called point-of-sale displays
that may be found near a checkout counter, however, the term also applies to
displays strategically placed in a store for special promotions. This type of
display is designed to stimulate impulse purchases or they may be tied to
various seasonal marketing promotions, such as "Back to School",
"Tax Time", or holidays.
The term is often used in connection with hardware and software for checkouts, and in the case of variable locations, with wireless systems.
POS systems evolved from the mechanical cash registers of the first half of
the 20th century. Examples of this type of register were the NCR registers,
operated by a crank, and the lever-operated Burroughs registers. These
registers recorded data on journal tapes or paper tape and required an extra
step to transcribe the information into the retailer's accounting system. The
next step in evolution was to move to operation by electricity. An example of
this type of register was the NCR Class 5 cash register. In 1973 new registers
that were driven by computers were introduced, such as the IBM 3653 Store
System and the NCR 2150. Other computer based manufacurers were Regitel, TRW,
and Datachecker. 1973 also brought about the introduction of the UPC/EAN
barcode readers on the POS systems. In 1986, the POS systems became based on
PC technology with the introduction of the IBM 4683. In 2005, the retail POS
systems are among the most sophisticated and powerful computer networks in
commercial use.
POS is an acronym for Point of Sale. In Europe this is known as EPOS for Electronics at the Point Of Sale. POS software enables an efficient and automated recording of the data that comprises a business transaction when the sale of goods or services to the customer occurs.
POS software often feeds data to other software modules to create a more comprehensive and useful array of software tools, including merchandising, forecasting, accounting and inventory control. Some POS software packages feature these functions fully integrated.
POS software can cost anywhere from many thousands of dollars to free.(ned)
The early electronic cash registers (ECR) were programmed in proprietary software and were very limited in function and communications capability. In August of 1973 IBM announced the IBM 3650 and 3660 Store Systems that were, in essence, a mainframe computer packaged as a store controller that could control 128 IBM 3653/3663 Point of Sale Registers. This system was the first commercial use of client-server technology, peer to peer communications, Local Area Network (LAN) simultaneous backup, and remote initialization. By mid-1974, it was installed in Pathmark Stores in New Jersey and Dillards Department Stores.
Programmability allowed retailers to be more creative. In 1979 Gene Mosher's
Old Canal Cafe in Syracuse, New York was using POS software written by Mosher
that ran on an Apple II to take customer orders at the restaurant's front
entrance and print complete preparation details in the restaurant's kitchen.
In that novel context, customers would often proceed to their tables to find
their food waiting for them! This software included real time labor and food
cost reports.
In 1985 Mosher introduced the first touchscreen-driven, color graphic, POS
interface. This software ran on the Atari ST, the world's first consumer-level
color graphic computer. By the end of the 20th century Mosher's promotion of
his unpatented software paradigm had resulted in its worldwide adoption by
cash register manufacturers and other POS software developers as the de facto
standard for point of sale software systems.
Initiatives to standardize development of computerized POS systems have been made to alleviate interconnecting POS devices. Two such initiatives are OPOS and JavaPOS, both conforming to the UnifiedPOS standard, a standard led by The National Retail Foundation. OPOS, short for OLE for POS, was the first commonly-adopted standard and was initiated by Microsoft, NCR Corporation, Epson and Fujitsu-ICL. OPOS is a COM-based interface compatible with all COM-enabled programming languages for Microsoft Windows. OPOS was first released in 1996. JavaPOS was initiated by Sun Microsystems, IBM, and NCR Corporation in 1997 and first released in 1999. JavaPOS is for Java what OPOS is for Microsoft Windows and thus largely platform independent.