Need Recommendations : POS Point of Sale Software..

[ctcsoft]

If anyone knows of some simple POS software that is FREE please let me know.

I have an old NCR 7402 Touchscreen POS and installed Win XP Pro.

What I'm trying to do is let me wifes school use this as a teaching tool. The things they would sell are mainly food items. It would be cool if I could find a POS program that will allow you to store pictures of the items. Then have them displayed on the screen so all they have to do is touch what somebody wants.

I'm out of my league here and looking for suggestions. I've never had to setup a POS before and have no clue what is out there for FREE software..

TIA to anyone who can help here.

I had to post here because I'm not sure where else to post on the forums. I posted in Software for Windows but this isn't your avg. request. Plus at the time I posted 124 people were viewing the software section as opposed to 900+ viewing in OT.

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Moved this from OT before I realized it had already been posted in Software for Windows.
admin allisolm

Locked original S/W thread (no reply) and unlocked this one which had replies

EK
Admin

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

There are some free ones out there but, NONE are simple whether paid for or not. As a teaching tool, a cashbox/tray would be much more useful. All POS systems are proprietary whether they are free or not. What this means is there is no way to easily reprogram or adapt them without paying the creator of the program. Trying to add pictures rather than text buttons even further complicates the issues. The reason why POS systems are so convoluted and difficult to manage is partially because of all the different tasks they seek to integrate. However, the main reason is because software companies get $15k to $40k for a small restaurant system.

OK, I'll climb down off the soapbox and ask what is your wife is teaching?

 

[Tsaico]

I had set up a http://www.myfreepos.net/ for a restaurant, but there was so much to learn to do the configuration, it wasn't worth the effort. had worked with others, like Squirrel, Micros, and Aloha, but it was just as complicated, we had to provide everything, and it took just as long to deal with.

I agree that most concepts would be better off with monopoly money and a cash box if this is an educational tool.

 

[JoeBleed]

I know you asked for free, but if it is being used as a teaching tool only, they may work with you for cheap or free.

http://www.pcamerica.com/restaurant-point-of-sale.html

I don't work in this field, but 7 or 8 years ago when i was unemployed and doing any work i could find. someone sold our local grocery store on computerizing their inventory and thus upgrading their registers to PCs. I don't know the name of the company that screwed them, but this is the software they sold them.

Don't confuse the two. The software and the direct support for the software was decent at the time and they're still getting support from them. Basic usage is straight forward. Setup, well it was difficult as i didn't actually install it, just trying to clean up the mess the installer left behind that didn't work. I spent several hours on the phone with their support to straighten it out. A couple years latter they got an upgrade and asked me to do it for them. It went fairly smooth.

As far as PC based POS systems go, it seems to work well; but i don't have anything to compare it for installing and maintaining.

 

[BrokenVisage]

Why would you want a POS Point of Sale package? Should be looking for a good one.

 

[tranceport]

Why would you want a POS Point of Sale package? Should be looking for a good one.

Beat me to it.

 

[oogabooga]

The quick answer is that there is no real good free software. POS is big business, companies can make a lot of money off of this so they do.

Even for the good paid software, there is rarely a simple product. POS is designed to handle many of the things businesses do and link them together. All POS requires some level of training to use, though some are a bit easier/more intuitive than others. There are some decent restaurant softwares, but again, since they are meant to help a real restaurant work they have to handle a ton of feature you may or may not need.

The power of a good POS is information it can return to you. Inventory, how fast items move, popular menu items, etc. Hence the more information it gets (which requires more setup) the better it can be.

Rather than setting up a point of sale, you might want to just outline what it is you're trying to accomplish. Maybe a POS system isn't the best way to spend your time to accomplish that goal.

 

[akugami]

Pretty much what others wrote.

POS software setup is incredibly complex due to how much the software has to do. These are tasks that used to be tracked, sometimes not very well, by hand or at least manually entered into a computer. The whole point of POS software was to integrate the sales data directly into tracking software so you didn't have to gather everything by hand. The other major aspect is of course the use of scanners to quickly identify a product and make a sale.

I would look up free point of sale software, but know that most are not designed for quick and easy setup.

I think you need to identify all of your wife's goals and put that in writing. A POS system may not be the best use of your time. There's a reason why stores have a dedicated inventory manager handling the POS system.