Point of Sale Business Report

This report discusses the importance of Point of Sale (POS) system in business transactions. It highlights the advantages and disadvantages of using a POS system, its configuration, security, and competitive advantage. The report recommends all businesses to get a favorable POS that suits their business to manage the sale of products and keep track of inventory, sales, customers, suppliers, and employees.

Running Head: POINT OF SALE
POINT OF SALE BUSINESS REPORT
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Contents
List of abbreviations..................................................................................................................................3
Statement of Purpose.................................................................................................................................4
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................................4
Introduction................................................................................................................................................4
Advantages of the POS system..................................................................................................................5
Disadvantages of the POS..........................................................................................................................6
Competitive advantage...............................................................................................................................6
Configuration of the POS...........................................................................................................................6
POS security...............................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................7
Recommendation.......................................................................................................................................8
Bibliography..............................................................................................................................................9
Appendices...............................................................................................................................................11

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List of abbreviations
POS - Point of Sale
ETR -Electronic Tax Register
LAN - Local Area Network
IP - Internet Protocol
DHCP - Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
US - United States
Wi-Fi -Wireless Fidelity
CAT 5 -Category 5

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Statement of Purpose
The purpose of this report is to depict the importance of small, large and medium businesses. POS is
valuable system in the businesses transactions as it helps to track the sales of various products in a
business. Most people have not incorporated the use of POS in their business transaction. This is
because most businesses are in doubt of the importance of POS in their sales. The medium-sized
business and small-sized business are more doubtful.
Executive Summary
The aim of this report is to prove that the Point of Sale system have helped in the growth of big and
small business. The research on the effectiveness of POS was done. Much information was deriving
from asking question from businesses that have already incorporated the POS use in their businesses.
Also some business that do not use POS in their sales were gave some information about the challenges
they face in their business. Some research was done in the internet about the advantages of having the
POS in their business. Some case studies were done to find out the effectiveness of POS in the
business. The main assumption about the research is that the sources of information especially the
business, is that, the information given is true. As from the information collected, analysis was done
and a conclusion was derived on the effectiveness of the POS in the business. An example of the small
businesses is Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. A research on the solutions the POS system has
provided makes the business make valid decision thereby making great profit margins.
Introduction
POS is an inventory software that helps business track the usage, monitor the prices of product, change
the prices of various products depending on the analysis made from their sales, calculate the profit
made and analyze inventory level per item. The POS basically records every sales of a product that
happens in a business. The POS give much information as compared to the information derived from
making the sales manually. The POS displays reports from the sales made thereby assisting the sales
and marking department make valid decisions. The POS has a better look than the cash register. It is

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used in checking the customers, recording sales data and compiling sales information. Also the POS
brings the sales, inventory, customers and employees together. This creates an effective environment
for the business managers and business owners (Coleman & Peasley, 2015). Most POS run on
desktops, laptop and on smartphones. The data generated by the used of the POS should be safe and
secure from hacker. The business owners can also implement cloud storage of the data. There are quite
a number of vendors selling the POS. One has to make a decision with the type of POS a business may
require. The POS has to fit in the businesses’ processes and requirements. Finding the POS to offer the
best solution could be challenging and overwhelming. Before deciding on which POS to buy a business
must confirm factors such as the services, the payment process, the hardware availability, the terms and
costs of the venders and will fulfil the need soft the POS in the business (2018).
Advantages of the POS system
There are quite a number of the POS system (Taylor, 2012). The advantages are similar in all the
business sizes. Depending on a case scenario of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery which is a
small business that has incorporated POS system in the sales of the product there are quite a number of
advantaged that have resulted.
First, POS has helped in the tracking of the sales and inventory of the business. For the goods whose
sales a quick, then the business tend to add them often. For the slow goods, the managers tend not to
add less compared to the fast moving products. The POS helps in efficient staffing. The business owner
tends avoids paying wages to the employees when business is slow to cut on overhead costs. The
business owner can tell when there are more sales in the business or when the sales are lower than
expected.
Secondly, the POS helps in the inventory control. When there is a track of the inventory, the less the
goods are stolen. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery experienced theft from the employee earlier.
After implanting the POS in the business the loss of item reduced. This is because it became a bit
difficult for the employees to steal from the business owner.
The third advantage is that the POS helps in solving the employee accountability. The POS tracks the
employee actions. It keeps track of the inventory, the event logs of the items sold, the time the products
were sold and the employee accountable for the sales. If the employees realize that they can be tracked
depending on the sales they make, they tend not to steal from the small company.
Finally, then POS helps in tracking the customer purchase and the return history. Tracking customer
purchases’ shows the customer confidence with Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery products. Also,
when a customer makes a return of the goods purchased. This return of goods is simple a record of the

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goods return and the reason as to why they were returned. The POS helps in good inventory
maintenance and display the customer and suppliers of various products (McCarthy, 2018).
Disadvantages of the POS
Despite the advantages highlighted above, there are some challenges experienced while using the POS.
The challenges include lack of expertise in using the POS by the employees. Four Seasons Greenhouse
and Nursery had to incur some express in training on how to use the POS. Despite training some took
long to adapt to the usage of the POS in the transactions. Some of the employees were rendered jobless
on realizing that the employee could not adapt to change and others opted to leave as they were not
ready to be accountable on the sales of the products. The other disadvantage of the POS, is that it is
expensive to implement into a business. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery, used an approximate of
1000 US dollar in the purchase and implementation of the POS.
Competitive advantage
The POS has a competitive advantage in that one can change the price of products for promo (JONES,
BARRIE, ROBINSON, ALLSOP & CHIKRITZHS, 2012). Some product may have a slight decrease
in price to attract more customers. This doesn’t necessary make loss to the business. The business
makes a plan on how to slightly lower the price of products but increase the number of items sold thus
making much profit. The POS can generate some coupon for customer to use in buying products. This
help in retaining the customers for a long time. Most customer will flow to the business thus the
business makes a greater profit margin.
Configuration of the POS
The POS is installed in computer within a network. The computer should be having the same operating
systems for convenience. The computers are supposed to be connected to a router. The router is set up
to handle DHCP so as to give each computer an IP address. The identification of the devices in the
network is determined the IP address. The POS vendor’s advisee that, all the networks handling the
POS system, should be connected via a LAN cable. To be specific on the type of the LAN cable
advised, CAT 5 or higher is advised ("Point of Sale Manual - POS Network Setup", 2018). This is to
ensure that the network connection not intermittent. With the use of LAN, the businesses is assured of
no loss of data, no interruption by other items that emit the frequencies ("POS configuration", 2018).
With the LAN network connection, the data transfer, request and response to and fro respectively are
efficient. Use of wireless connection ("Wi-Fi at the point of sale", 2013), there might be the

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interruption of frequencies leading to delays and loss of data (Castro & Shaikh, 2016). The data should
be centralized. This ensures that all computers in the network and connected to a single database, get
information from a similar with similar information. This ensures that the information view for any
computer id up-to-date. Also, if one employee sells all the products of a certain type, the other
employees will that the product is finish. With the inventory o the POS, there is no need of looking for
products manually ("MyPMS POS Setup Guide | BookingCenter PMS", 2018). The POS shows the
number of items in the inventor. Therefore, the business owner therefore easily make decision to
determine what is going to be bought next and the quantity to be bought. For safety measure, the
database could be on cloud. This will reduced the chances of the data mishandled. When data is stored
in the internet, the data is safe and it is easy to access from anywhere. The POS should be connected to
the ETR printer to print the receipts of the products sold. The POS is also connected to a card reader.
The card reader is used for credit card payments. Other devices that are connected to the POS include
scanners, touchscreens and others to making payment process more efficient ("Point of Sale Hardware
Setup — Odoo 9.0 documentation", 2018).
POS security
The POS should be secure from hackers or malware. When the system is secure, then, the business is
assure of secure data hence making good decision for the business. Every employee to access the
system by logging in by his/ her own password. If the system is set to have strong password for the
employee’s accounts, it becomes difficult for the hacker to get to the system. The employees are not
required to share the login details. This helps in tracking the employees’ actions and events in the
system. Every system that accesses the internet must be secure to reduce cyber-crime (Gomzin, 2014).
Conclusion
From a look at the uses of the POS in business, it is very importance in the business compared to
mankind decision from the information that is manually computed. If data is done manually the
business miss a lot of information in making decision thus making poor decision resulting to failure.
The quite a number of question a business owner can answer from the report given by the POS system.
The questions include: how much profit is made monthly? Who are the royal customer? Which product
make the most sale? And more questions. The POS is so effective in the business processes ("Point of
sale: The last chance to get it right", 2013). The POS technology is dominating in the emerging and the
developing technologies. Business that have no POS installed are dragging behind loosing much of

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their customers. POS system is an important aspect in business today. It does not matter whether big-
sized, medium-sized or small-sized business. The POS system is helpful. The POS are sold by different
vendors but can be customized to suite different retail and wholesale businesses. The POS is also linked
to the merchant account. The POS can also process the traction immediately as the events occur. The
POS enhance accurate recording as the item are feed in the database. The employees work is to add
products purchased to cart and generated a receipt. This enhance the employee efficiency in the daily
activities (Syed, 2015).
Recommendation
I would recommend all the business to get a favorable POS that’s suite their business to manage the
sale of products and to keep track of the inventory, sales, customers, suppliers and employees ("How to
choose a point-of-sale system for your business", 2018). The POS will help the business in making
valid decision for the business (Reinartz & Imschloß, 2017). Valid decisions result in making more
sales and increasing the margin profit and eventually the business will grew, The POS may be
expensive during installation but later, the benefit will be many. The result of the POS system is that, it
will lead to effective and efficient management of sale of products. A good POS will help in reducing
the costs, increasing the profit margins and improve efficiency in the business.

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Bibliography
MyPMS POS Setup Guide | BookingCenter PMS. (2018). Retrieved from
https://www.bookingcenter.com/point-of-sale-pos/pos-setup-guide/
\ Point of Sale Manual - POS Network Setup. (2018). Retrieved from
http://www.accupos.com/support/management-operation-manuals/pos-network-setup/
Point of Sale Hardware Setup — Odoo 9.0 documentation. (2018). Retrieved from
https://www.odoo.com/documentation/user/9.0/point_of_sale/overview/setup.html
POS configuration. (2018). Retrieved from
https://www.secureclub.net/Help/acm/UG/ug_pos_config.htm

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McCarthy, M. (2018). The Benefits of Moving to a Point-of-Sale (POS) System | AllBusiness.com.
Retrieved from https://www.allbusiness.com/the-benefits-of-moving-to-a-point-of-sale-pos-system-
10206841-1.html
How to choose a point-of-sale system for your business. (2018). Retrieved from
http://www.businessinsider.com/point-of-sale-system-features-2018-3?IR=T
(2018). Retrieved from http://firmology.com/2012/08/13/6-reasons-why-all-small-businesses-should-
use-point-of-sale-software/
JONES, S., BARRIE, L., ROBINSON, L., ALLSOP, S., & CHIKRITZHS, T. (2012). Point-of-sale
alcohol promotions in the Perth and Sydney metropolitan areas. Drug And Alcohol Review, 31(6), 803-
808. doi: 10.1111/j.1465-3362.2012.00440.x
Syed, I. (2015). Sales Spotter: An Algorithm to Identify Sale Prices in Point-of-Sale Data. SSRN
Electronic Journal. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2616090
Castro, L., & Shaikh, N. (2016). A Reference Point Logit Model for Estimating Substitution
Probabilities Using Point of Sale Data. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.3121822
Reinartz, W., & Imschloß, M. (2017). From Point of Sale to Point of Need: How Digital Technology Is
Transforming Retailing. Gfk Marketing Intelligence Review, 9(1). doi: 10.1515/gfkmir-2017-0007
Point of sale: The last chance to get it right. (2013). Pharmacy Today, 19(6), 84. doi: 10.1016/s1042-
0991(15)31318-9
Coleman, J., & Peasley, M. (2015). Demonstrating a lack of brand/cause effects on point of sale
donations. Management & Marketing, 10(3). doi: 10.1515/mmcks-2015-0016
Taylor, J. (2012). The point of sale. The Philosophers' Magazine, (59), 115-118. doi:
10.5840/tpm201259130
Gomzin, S. (2014). Hacking point of sale. [Indianapolis, IN]: Wiley.

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Wi-Fi at the point of sale. (2013). Card Technology Today, 15(11), 6-7. doi: 10.1016/s0965-
2590(03)01113-7
Appendices
LAN- This is a connection of computers connection to a common server within the same Geographical
location.
IP – Connectivity guidelines that determine the computer networks
DHCP – a network that enable a server to assign an IP to a terminal
Wi-Fi- Connection to the network using waves
ETR – A device use to print invoices
POS – A system used to manage the transactions of a business and helps in monitoring the transaction
logs.

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