Point of sales (PoS) software is extremely useful to any business. It allows you to track inventory, pay bills, track payments, analyze many different aspects of your businesses like profit & loss, best profitable products, loyal customers, calculate commission, and a lot more. But there are a few points that might still be a bit confusing for businesses that are new to PoS. That’s when it’s helpful to have a point of sale system that is easy to use for both you & your staff.
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What is a point of sale application or POS software?
A POS or Point of sales software is sometimes also called billing software or inventory management software.
POS software is online or desktop-based software used by retail, wholesale or service-based businesses. It makes the task of billing & payment easier for cashiers.
It involves scanning the barcode of products chosen or ordered by the customer; automatic calculating of total invoice amount after applying discounts & taxes; accepting payments; printing & providing an invoice to the customer.
Why do businesses need POS software?
Gone are the days of using excel sheets to manage a business. Every business these days needs a point of sales application. It makes the life of a business owner easy, by eliminating the bookkeeping work of managing a business.
With this, you as a business owner don’t need to worry about business management instead shift focus from management to expansion.
Advantage of POS application:
POS applications keep track of every transaction happening in your business. All transactions related to Products, customers, suppliers, service providers, payments, staff, expenses, and all other things.
- Keep track of inventories
- No need to worry about low inventories – get alerts on low inventory so that you can refill again.
- Report analyzing trends related to your product, like profitable products, least profitable products, seasonal demands, brands-wise demand, category-wise demand, and every other thing you can think of.
- Keep track of customers – customer payments, due or overdue payments, customer reward points, loyal customers, and more.
- Get all data related to Supplier – Supplier previous price, Current price, payment due, notification of due payments,
- Keep track of Staff – give only required permission to staff/cashiers so that they access only what is required for them, staff commission, salary, attendance, and a lot more.
- Daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly reports of your business.
Along with the above mentioned, there are a lot of benefits which you discover when start using a pos software.
What is open-source software?
As compared to proprietary software, open-source software is mean that the source code has been made available so that anyone can modify it and make changes, subject to the license agreement.
Usually, open-source software uses open-source programming languages like PHP. An open-source language is one that is the result of a community of programmers who collectively decide what should be included in it. Since the language is open it helps to reinforce the quality & security by brainstorming from developers of different expertise.
What are the benefits of using an open-source POS application or OSPAS?
If you’ve been using a traditional/proprietary POS system, then you may be wondering what the biggest benefit of switching over to an open-source POS is.
The biggest benefit of switching to an open-source POS application for your business is that instead of custom building the POS software from scratch to meet your unique business-specific needs you can check the code logic & modify it for your business.
The second benefit is security. With the use of open-source programming languages & open-source code, it is highly secure.
With open-source code, if a bug is found on the software, anyone can fix it, and it increases the transparency of that software.
It’s not uncommon to hear people say, “I like the flexibility of an open-source POS system.” It’s because of the ability to add new functionality in the future without having to be able to build or maintain all the code. That’s where open-source applications can really help you.
Best open source point of sales application
If you’re looking for the best open source POS application, look no further.
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