Point of Sale Software

Here are some Articles from the Blog Subject - computer -

World Wide Web today

POS SOFTWARE

It's World Wide Web Day or #WideWebDay for computer people.

It's staggering when you think that its 30 years since they came up with it. Remember the dodgy telephone connections we used to use?

Click here for a video in 1981, of the first newspapers online. It had a few pictures, no videos and was about an hour to get the paper on the computer. We unquestionably have come a long way since then so I wonder what'll be next?.

Do you remember your first introduction to the web? A friend came down to see me and then started to talk of surfing the internet, and I had no clue what he was talking about with this. So he then took me to a cyber cafe, with great fanfare. Only when we arrived, the computer in the cyber cafe was dead, so I still had little clue what it was about, but I knew I had to investigate this further.

Looking at our records, it was in 1998 when we had our first website, that was impressive and remarkable technology then. Few companies then had a website and none in our marketspace. Then in 2000, we dropped our individual internet accounts for work and introduced a company email account. I can still remember our receptionist, telling me proudly that "I emailed an enquiry", he had never done anything like that before.  

Can you imagine what the world would look like without the internet? 

Our software is now completed embedded in it. 

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Tablets in point of sale software

POS SOFTWARE

A lot of people like to use standard computer tablets in retail POS systems which work beautifully with our system.

The immediate problem is that people, including staff as well as customers, have been known to steal them. As such what they need is some way of protecting them so what retailers do is have strap like this

 

 

or stands for them. This works but does cause a loss of its most significant advantage of the tablet, its mobility.

The big plus of the stand is that those on the strap can still be dropped. When it drops, the glass in the front sometimes cracks. Unfortunately, this is not covered under warranty as accidental damage generally isn't covered by the supplier warranty or by consumer law.
 

In my experience, if you want to use tablets in retail, the best tablets are windows based. The costs are generally cheaper, and they do more as they are designed for a business in mind.

 

 

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Mesh WIFI

POS SOFTWARE

What is proving very useful in many retail shops now is mesh WIFI. What is happening is that it is excellent to rig a computer and use it around the shop. Some uses are free cash registers and stock control units where it is convenient to be able to move the computer to the point where it is needed. 

The problem can be that often people have dead spots or areas of horrible reception. You can get an app on your smartphone to identify these spots.

What you do is move around the shop with the app going seeing where there are spots with lousy coverage and then try is to avoid those areas with WIFI. If its an area that you have to have what you can try to do is try to move your internet WIFI router around so that it can reach those areas, but often this has limited success. Plus in a shop, it can be an eyesore. What we did in one shop is put the WIFI router high up on the ceiling with the security camera. Looks great there but the problem here is if someone has to change a setting on the router, it is now impossible.

The most popular way today to extend the WIFI around the shop is to use now mesh WIFI. You get boxes like this.

These you place around the shop to improve the WIFI signal, so you tend to get better speeds as well as less dead zones.  Plus you get a more extended range. One client of mine now can use his WIFI in the coffee shop over 100 metres away.

The other big plus is that most of the good ones also give you better management of your WIFI, e.g. you can set someone up with WIFI for a limited time, e.g. 2 hours and then it automatically cuts off their WIFI. You can also restrict people from accessing sensitive equipment. 

If any of this interests you, please let us know.

 

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Is this the future of home delivery?

POS SOFTWARE

Robots doing home delivery

Check out what a robot home delivery could look like one day.  The first of these robots are expected to go on sale early next year in 2020.  It would be great to see one in action. 

Check the video out here.

 

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Weight and scale integration

POS SOFTWARE

Scale integration to point of sale software

With your point of sale for retail, many businesses have many products that can be sold by weight. If so, we provide a fast, simple to use and accurate integrated software and weight scale together that will instantly boost your efficiency, processing speed and customer service. 

As it is integrated, it can help decrease shrinkage.

Also, we can use scales to create a weight-embedded bar that can be read by the barcode at the point of sale, increasing checkout speed and improving your efficiency.

 

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Barcode scanning

POS SOFTWARE

Here are seven tips to improve your barcode scanning rates at the point of sale.

Experiment with your scanner what height it reads best the barcodes that you use. This will vary depending on what barcodes you use and your barcode reader. Take a few items, try and scan them and see what works best.

Try if possible to avoid scanning the barcodes in places with bright lights eg outside on a sunny day and clients of mine in a bar have reported problems with the lights flashing in the bar. What you want is a low steady continuous light.

Make a convention in your shop where you are going to stick the barcode, front, top, back, etc and try to stick with it and if possible this will save people having to hunt for the barcode.

Try an put the barcode straight, as well as making it less of an eyesore, sometimes not having the barcode straight can cause problems to a scanner to read the barcode.

Try and avoid putting barcodes on shiny objects, for example, a product like this when scanned as the light will reflect back into the scanner can cause problems. 

Cleaning your barcode scanner and printer can help a lot. A rag and some cleaning material can often do wonders.

Remember dirty or wet barcodes or barcodes with staples are not good for scanning. 

 

Note: A better printer and barcode scanner can help too. 

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i5 vs i7 computers

POS SOFTWARE

Now as it is coming close to the End Of Financial Year when people often decide to upgrade their POS computer systems, many people are wondering whether to buy a cheaper i5 or the faster i7 computer or whether to splurge on the i9. Now there are several technical advantages that the i7 and i9 has over the i5, eg  Hyper-Threading which will give a significant performance boost in point of sale software processing.

The first point to remember is that the difference in price is not that great between the i5 and the i7, but there is quite a lot of difference in price between these two and the i9. Also that there are many points that go into buying a computer and the speed of the processor is just one of several factors, eg a faster hard drive.  But for this article, I will concentrate solely on the speed of the computer.

On this site, I ran some results from the large number of speed tests done.

i9 vs i7

Now as far as speed is concerned we are not looking at gaming, in point of sale software, most of the work is done primarily on the workstation. 

The i9 gave 124% on the workstation compared to the i7 at 96%, effectively 29% higher which is quite a considerable speed increase. 

Similarly, on the same system configuration, I decided to test an i7 to an i5.

 

i5 vs i7

The i7 gave 96% on the workstation compared to the i7 at 76%, effectively almost 26% higher which is quite a considerable speed increase. 

Interestingly the speed increase of going up from an i5 to an i7 is about the same as going from an i7 to an i9.

That sort of speed increase you will notice. When we did some tests internally here we found that this speed increase resulted in about a 10% speed increase, mainly because as I said there are many other factors like the hard drive that come into play here.

Still for an hour task on an i5 you would be looking at about 54 minutes on an i7 and about 48 minutes on an i9.

Since a point of sale software tend to run continuously over an 8 to 24 hour day, this time saving would quickly add up.

Ultimately it is a choice many of you will need to make, I would say for the slight difference in price not to look at the i5 but make a decision between the i7 and i9. As over the lifetime of the computer, you would more than get your money back just on time saved 

 

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Dual touch screens

POS SOFTWARE

 

Dual screen touch

What most people like about them is they are ideal for places where space is at a premium. What people like is that they can quickly be adjusted to provide an optimal viewing angle for the people serving and the customer.

For Point of Sale software, one problem in retail is that computers are designed with airconditioned offices in mind where people tend to be gentle with them. Shops are dirty, often they are not airconditioned and often people are not gentle with them. I have clients that have tire shops, their hands are covered with grease and they use the computers all the time with a bang, bang and bang.

So we recommend these Dual Touch Screen Terminal. The cases are much tougher  then normal computer cases, since they do not have vents, they have no dust problem and so can take grease and  liquid spills too.

Check them out.

 

 

 

 

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Low cost way to speed up your computers

POS SOFTWARE

Computer RAM

 

Point of sale computers needs to run fast particularly at the front counter. If you’re thinking about a cheap way of speeding up your computers, then almost certainly adding more RAM to your computer will do more to speed up your computer than any other upgrade you can make. 

 

 

 

 

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Next month Windows 7 End-of-Life

POS SOFTWARE

Windows 7 end of life popup

Next month, Windows 7 users will start getting pop up reminders from Microsoft that Windows 7 will no longer be supported after January 2020 and that its life is up after ten years.  

If you want to know more then, I found this excellent article which discusses in depth the details. 

Windows 7 Users of End of Support Date

We recommend that if you are still running Windows 7, that you update to Windows 10 as most computers that can run Windows 7 can run Windows 10. It does not involve for most of you a change in the computer.

Comments

So our server runs Windows 7 professional - will this no longer be supported as well??

Jenny Scullin, Windows 7 professional will soon not be supported it will be safe to use it till January 14, 2020, although no new features will be added. So they are giving you about nine months.

Ripped receipts

POS SOFTWARE

Receipt_message.png

One problem I have noticed is that sometimes people ripping a receipt or if two purchases come in quick succession, they give one customer two receipts. So if you are thinking of updating your point of sale receipt printer, one option I recommend is that you look at one with an automatic paper cutter. It makes it much easier to use as receipts come out pre-separated. In the past, the cutter used to be sometimes a big problem but the modern printers have solved most of the problems and now mostly guaranteed for over a million-plus cuts

 

 

 

 

 

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Anti virus and old versions of windows

POS SOFTWARE

Microsoft antivirus no longer supports XP, AVG anti-virus no longer supports XP, AVAST no longer supports XP,  etc. Most no longer support Windows 7 either. 

As such some of our clients, of our point of sale software are running into a problem that old versions of windows are no longer supported and now it appears that most of the antivirus companies are not supporting XP either.  This leaves them open to most viruses and ransomware. 

For these users, I am recommending

 

360 total security

 

Details here

 

It is a free product for commercial use, it has no licenses, no expiration and no hidden fees. It is also a first-class product which runs on just about any computer and is fast. 

 

 

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Ransomware

POS SOFTWARE


 

Currently, I estimate that every month we have at least one point of sale client having issues regarding Ransomware and unfortunately many of our customers are falling victim to Ransomware attacks. We have had three (3) such attacks this week.

Our support manager Phil has put together step by step notes for you.

 

What it does

This form of attack encrypts all of your data and prevents you from using your computer unless you pay a fee. If this happens to be your server then this means your shop will not be able to trade.

What to do

Your only other option is to reformat your server and restore from a backup.

However, in many cases, we are finding that despite our best efforts there are no backups available as they too have been encrypted.

 

What can you do about it?

 

Your choice of Operating System

Firstly you should think about the version of Windows you use in your store. Windows 10 has a lot of features built in that make it much harder for Ransomware to take hold of your system.

 

If you are not running Windows 10 in your store, especially on your server and the computers you use to connect to the internet, then you should consider upgrading these as soon as possible.

 

While not as good, if you must or insist on running Windows 7, you should at least ensure that all Windows Updates have been installed. Windows Update includes many security patches, some of which may stop Ransomware from taking hold of your system.

 

In Windows 7, Click the Start button and in the run (or search box) type “windows update” and then press enter.

Click on the Check for updates and install updates button.

Windows Update may want you to restart your computer at some point and you should do so.

Remember that if this is your server then your shop will not be able to trade while your server is restarting.

When you have restarted, repeat the above process until there are no more updates to install.

 

If you are running Windows XP, then you are leaving yourself wide open to attacks from Ransomware. Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP in April 2014, so for five years there has not been any security updates for this operating system.  There is little you can do apart from replacing the computer with one that has Windows 10 as its operating system.

Make sure you have a backup

 

Ransomware attacks are happening, and as much as you may try to prevent them, it may happen to you. If it does, you either have to pay up and encourage these criminals to continue their actions or have someone reformat and reinstall your computer system.

 

Reformatting and in reinstalling the operating system is the easy part. What nobody can replace is the data. Your customers, stock, sales history etc.

 

To protect yourself and ensure you will be able to replace this, you should be taking a regular backup copy of your data and remove it from your network so that Ransomware cannot access it.

 

I will deal with Posbrowser, but you should also find out how to do the same with your other important data such as your accounting and payroll data and any documents you may store on your local hard drive.

 

Posbrowser uses SQL server. One of the features of SQL server is that you can take online backups.

This means that you can take a backup without having to bring the system offline and stop trading.

 

So find a time during the day, a regular time. 

Also, find a USB stick. Now go to your server and plug in the USB stick.

 

Open Posbrowser and from the main menu select System Maintenance / Backup and Restore.

In the “Backup to a location” section click the three dots and navigate to the USB drive you just plugged in and click OK.

Note that if the three dots are greyed out, you are NOT on your server!

 

 

Then click the Backup button and the backup will start.

Wait until you see a message telling you the Backup was complete.

 

 

 

If you see any other message, you should contact POS Solutions Support for advice.

 

When it finishes,

DO NOT JUST TAKE OUT THE USB STICK – REMEMBER TO EJECT IT SAFELY.

This is the only way you can ensure that the backup has been written to the USB stick correctly.

 

If you want to be double sure, after you have removed the USB stick, you can insert it again and restore the backup to your training system via the “Restore to Training” tab in the Backup and Restore document.

 

When you have removed the USB drive, place it in a safe place, and DO NOT put it into a computer again until you are ready to do another backup of your system.  Don’t let Ransomware have a chance to get access to it.

Even if this backup is a couple of days old, because you are not in on the weekend, it is a lot better than having nothing at all.

You should take the time and make an effort to protect the most valuable part of your business – your data.

 

 

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XP almost dead

POS SOFTWARE

Recently Touch, a major supplier of electronic services in our market space announced it was dropping XP. This is the last major supplier left that was using XP. The reason is just that there are not enough users of XP to justify the cost of supporting it.

Windows Australian Market

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Windows Version Market Share

As you can see in Australia, it has dropped from almost 60% in 2010 to 1% usage. 1% cannot pay for much which is the problem here. The other problem is that most computer suppliers of hardware and software have long dropped XP. I know that one of our competitors is now telling to all its XP users that they have to upgrade and are planning soon an increase in support fees to those that people that stay on Windows XP. 

We are not advocating the use of Windows XP now.  Microsoft no longer supports Windows XP, it has limited support by antivirus software and so is an insecure and out-of-date operating system. 

Comments

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Wireless security cameras

POS SOFTWARE

What is saving retail now are security cameras from shoplifting, it seems to be the only evidence that the courts are accepting. However, have a read here on monitoring and the law if you have or intend to have cameras.

For retailers, the best security systems are those that are directly connected to your point of sale software. With such a system if for example, a customer said, I gave you a $50 and you gave me change from $20, well you just press a button on the cash register, find the transaction and playback it back. Every till should have one.

However, there are many more places to cover than the till for example the shop itself, the front and exit of the shop, the back room and some parts outside. For these often you need wireless security cameras.

They have one great advantage that they are easy to move around. However unlike wired security cameras, wireless security camera are funny things, you install in one shop a few and they work perfectly, you put the same cameras into a similar shop and it is nothing but trouble so we have to pull them out and replace them.

Here are some points

Map out your requirements on paper.

Do it carefully as I assure you that paper will get a lot of use. Try to draw it to scale if possible.

Now, put on the paper where you feel the cameras should go, generally, to save cost people follow the power points as much as possible. 

Now measure the range of these camera positions to your camera base. You will need to know the range before you can buy the camera.  What you also need to determine where you will need a narrow vision and where you need a wide-angle camera.  If you are not sure the salesman can tell you what cameras they have for such range and angles.

If you are in an area of a lot of WIFI you need to make sure that it will operate in these areas. I have seen WIFI security cameras fail in shopping centres.

Camera requirements

You want cameras that are easy to install and setup. Over their lifetime, you are going to want to move them around. This, after all, is the point of having them wireless.

Most important it is easy to change the Date and Time, you do not want to have to try to explain to a judge why the alleged robbery took place at this time but why your camera showing a different time. If you are in an area that has daylight savings you, make sure your camera has daylight savings enabled and check to make sure it does automatically adjust the cameras time. 

I would say 1080p should be the standard resolution that you should use. With prices today there is little savings going much lower and often you need that extra resolution. Remember a shoplifter can be out of your shop in seconds and you need often to make an instant decision. 

Check how good the motion cameras sensor is, you do not want lags.

Make sure the camera got decent night vision, you do not want anything that looks grainy. Some of these cameras have a function that I love when it is dark a red light like a gun shines out, it helps to deter undesirables as they can see the cameras are working.

Final note

Much of the camera software supplied by the security companies are full of bugs. I would not count on it despite what the specifications say. 

How much to budget?

Impossible to say for the $800 they spent it was much for what they need, others that spent $20,000 will sigh and say that it was not enough.

 

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Your old printers do not work

POS SOFTWARE

Old printers being prepared for the tip

Something goes wrong in the computer and attached to it say was a point of sale receipt printer which although old worked well and now suddenly it no longer works. This is happening with all versions of windows although the problem is much worse on the old versions of windows.

Here is why:

Your old printer works through a driver which is a software package written by the manufacturer of your printer. This driver then talks to Windows. As windows updates, these drivers often need changing however there are several issues.

1) Manufacturers of printers often no longer update the drivers required to get the older printers to work with the latest Windows updates. After say five (5) years they just stop doing it. Their view is that you need to get a new printer.

2) Sometimes the manufacturers of the printer, just have not got around to fixing the driver. It can take time before their users notify them of a problem, before they can verify it, before their programmers can write a fix, before it can check the changes and then time before it can be released. In the meantime your printer is unusable.

3) If your brand is obscure, it may not be trusted by Microsoft so Microsoft does not support it and distribute it. 

However, now there is a new problem.

Microsoft will start excluding printers from the upgrade process.

 

Microsoft is moving to a new standard in printers "Mopria" and is dropping support for many of the old printers. This is stated as due to lack of space which is true but I am sure it is partly that Microsoft has had enough of supporting the old stuff.

If you have an old printer that is not working here are three tips that might work.

1) Try using advanced setup

2) Try installing the printer manually from the manufacturer's website.

3) Try installing a printer driver for a printer that is similar to yours. Generally, you will not get all the functions but you may get the functions you need.

Failing that get a new printer. 

The picture above is of old printers that worked being prepared to go to the tip.

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Today is "Clean Out Your Computer Day"

POS SOFTWARE

It is a fun holiday but it has a real and necessary purpose.

Like much else mechanical, dirt, smoke, dust and pet hair can damage your computer. In a computer generally, the problem is two-fold

1) These products settle on your computer components and as they are an insulator act as a blanket and making the computer run hotter then it is designed to run. What this does is reduce its life expectancy and cause parts of your computer like the memory, the processor and the power supply to misbehaviour or stop working. I have seen several short circuits of delicate electrical components caused by dust too generally in the CD and DVDs. 

As a rule, try to put a computer in a clean location, near a fireplace, where your dog sits on, dusty place, etc is not suggested.

In an effort to overcome the heat what the computer does is push the fan to run faster which can cause the fan to break from overuse which brings us to the second problem

2) The computer has several moving parts and vents mainly in the ventilation system. The dust, hair etc can reduce the ventilation system efficiency. If enough cold air cannot come in then the computer is going to run hot. If they jam the fan they can break it too.

As a rule, try to put a computer in a spot where its air vent has access to cold airflow. Next to heating vent is not suggested.

Now, what can you do about the dust already in the computer?

If you have seen the movie Zoolander and this is you on the computer mechanics, now stop reading and ask someone else to help out.

Here is a video that I do suggest the person cleaning your computer views first and remember there is a good reason why this holiday was set up on a Monday if something goes wrong on a weekday you can get professional help if something goes really wrong.

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More companies dropping support for Win XP

POS SOFTWARE

 

If you sell Telco products through Touch systems, Touch now requires that all their clients upgrade to the new version.

The kicker is that the new version requires Win 7 or Win 10 which means that the software will not run on an XP  computer.

One point to consider is that the wholesale price is always set to $0 in the new version which means that some reports will show all sales as 100% profit.  Also, there is no GST coming through but as all Touch products are GST free anyway this is not an issue.

 

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new i9 computers

POS SOFTWARE

i9 intel

Point of sale software has to be fast, so people are switching over their old processors to the new i9 processors because of the speed increase. In retail speed is everything and the i9 is a fantastic piece of hardware.

So even though our system is the fastest point of sale system, I know, check out the transaction speeds in yellow below 

Transaction speed raw data

the big issue in business is that old computers run slow and employees are paid for in time. A shop assistant costs you $19 hour, once you include holiday, sick pay and superannuation, that comes to about $24 an hour and that is the cheapest you can get. Currently, if an old computer say with slow processors, without a touch screen or an SSD drive costs an employee about 10 minutes more a day. Over a year that works out to costing you over a $1000 for that employee just in salary! Now add in that many people will work on overtime rates. Then there are senior staff members costs on the computer! Now add in the cost of your customer service being 10 minutes per employee worse a day, your own time etc. With probably even the cheapest employees from a business point of view, a computer upgrade can be justified as it's false economy to hang on to old computers in business.

If you are looking to upgrade let us know. 

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Current point of sale computers

POS SOFTWARE

Point of Sale computers

No one has much space nowadays behind the counter it is in the checkout area, and people want to use the space for practical things that sell rather than big computers. So here is a picture of our current computer specially built with a point of sale areas where it is often hot and dusty. 

You can have it in i3, i5 or i7.

On speed test we did, the i5 was very fast. 

 

 

 

 

 

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