Open Source Point-of-Sale - What's Out There?

aztektum asks: "I have taken on the task of designing a building a networked Point-of-Sale system for a friends new restaurant/club. We have looked at out of the box solutions, but their upfront costs are a bit staggering, so I suggested a DIY approach. We are going to buy hardware outright, probably using Elo touch-screens and basic white boxes. It's the software that we're coming up short on. We are looking for a system that has good back-end management (running reports for end of day, from a central location and other such features), has a flexible/customizable UI, and as a bonus doesn't suffer from too much proprietary lock-in. Since Elo's screens have Linux support, I wanted to see if anyone on Slashdot has worked on similar projects and has experience with open source POS solutions. I have Google'd a bit and found some options, but I cannot spend a lot time testing out multiple setups because of a firm deadline. Quite bluntly, what's the best but least expensive option that you know of?" This is not the first time this particular issue has appeared on Ask Slashdot. The last discussion on this particular issue was way back in 2003. What has changed since then?

Comments

OSS, Free or a Few Dollars?

[eldavojohn]

Since Elo's screens have Linux support, I wanted to see if anyone on Slashdot has worked on similar projects and has experience with open source POS solutions.

First, I would like to say that the acronym "POS" means point of sale in the business world but in the computer science world, it tends to mean "piece of shit" (at least in my experience).

I know of solutions out there. They're all web solutions. You might not be looking to implement web solutions, however, isn't it possible to set it up on a local network? Maybe this is your strategy but I'm a bit confused as to what you're willing or desiring to do.

I'm also confused if it has to be "open source" or merely "free." On one hand the title says OSS but you seem to be only concerned with price. Just make a note that "free" and "OSS" are two different kinds of software. If you googled, you probably found a smattering of both. The two I suggest you investigate are purely OSS as I prefer that over free. Your last question ("Quite bluntly, what's the best but least expensive option that you know of?") seems to imply that you're willing to spend money if we can verify it's worth it. What conditions are you working under specifically?

Look into MozPos & freepos. They are web based and maybe you could install a very simple sleek version of Linux with merely Mozilla. The homepage would vary between computer and you could have a pop up keyboard or swipe strips for authentication. You would probably need a swiper that supports Linux but that's another issue.

If you're truly looking to get out of the box open source solutions, look into using websites instead of networked applications.

If you're willing to get your hands dirty, I encourage you to look at the engines some of these OSS things are based on and maybe make a GUI network application that is built on top of a layer of abstraction allowing you to use an already designed backend (database & reporting features). This is a lot of work but would be a great addition to the community if you subsequently made it available since Elo screens seem to be the leader in touch screens.

With a web based OSS application, you can download the source code and change the PHP/JSP/ASP/whatever interface code so that the HTML suites your liking considering the specifications of your Elo screens. That's why I suggest a web application and that's why I think that you'll be most satisfied if you pick one in a language you know and invest two or three solid weekends in tailoring the interface to precisely what you want.

Most importantly, change the system based on feedback from the workers.

Just a thought, I encourage you to post your choices and results here on Slashdot when you do make a selection and attempt to do it yourself.

Least expensive - how do you define that?

[tftp]

Quite bluntly, what's the best but least expensive option that you know of?

It depends on how much you value your time, inventing something from scratch, building it out of disjointed components, or supporting it when things start failing.

Most importantly, think what happens to your friend's enterprise when you disappear from the scene. Will there be manuals and instructions to rebuild and restore everything? Who will do that, and how fast? Will the replacement hardware be available, and how soon? Things like that tend to stop many a DIY project, once you realize what the hidden costs and risks are.

Given that restaurants and clubs already have some serious price tags, I do not think you should dismiss COTS solutions just because of their absolute price. It may be less than 1% of your friend's other costs. There is such thing as "cost of doing business" and a POS is part of it. I'd tell the owner to pay the man and live happily ever after - unless you want to carry the burden of tech support whenever a PC goes down. Most normal owners just call the manufacturer (IBM etc.) and have the till swapped out within a few hours.

Re:Least expensive - how do you define that?

[GalileoPilot]

My brother runs a pretty nice bar / restaurant and marina and I'm a professional computer nerd, so a couple of years ago we looked at the major Point Of Sale systems. Sure, some were expensive but probably excellent. Some seemed cheesy and cheap. With some you knew the support would be third-rate...I'd be happy to help with the installation but I didn't want to be waken up at 1:00 AM 'cause they had trouble with the beer inventory and would rather have the vendor support the software. Finally we decided to go with what seemed like a pretty good DOS-based application. My brother pays the vendor for support. We bought Dell (not clone) boxes and LCD's and we purchased the touch screen and ticket printers directly from the vendor. In two years there's been two minor glitches. It's been very reliable and it hasn't been expensive and the employees find the system very easy to use. What's more, we find it easy to manage the product - like adding another computer for expansion or adding a printer in the kitchen. My advice? Building a POS from the ground up, including writing the software, wouldn't be recommended. But, instead of spending $15,000 on their computers and LCD's, buy name-brand computers for $2,200 instead.

Cause for concern..

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a "former" employee of a credit card machine/POS company.. you might not have much luck creating this piece of software.

Mainly in part to a majority of POS software having a protocol that you pretty much have to pay for to use as code in your software. It's a standard created by MCard/Visa.. a basic way to how the transaction as carried out as a user going to a website on the net.

When you register a POS software, it needs to have hard-coded a TID/MID.. which is how the processor uses to identify a) the merchant of the account, and b) the actual device being used to do your transactions.

There might be another way around this. I am not too sure. Your best bet would be to contact a major processor/platform (Omaha, Nashville, Nova, etc..) This website ( http://www.authorize.net/solutions/resellersolutio ns/resellerprogram/processorlist/ ) should help for more info on that..
Otherwise than that (bullshit licensing, standards) you should be fine..

Good luck

Re:Cause for concern..

[Anonymous Coward]

PC Charge sucks total ass, but there are plenty of products of the same nature. There's no reason to deal with the credit-card
processing on a low level, dealing directly with the processors. Just interface your POS software with something like PC-Charge,
or use an internet based settlement processor. The company I used to work for - when I was doing this type of stuff - switched from using PC-Charge internally to using LinkPoint, an Internet gateway and found that worked reasonably well.

BananaPOS?

[jhnphm]

http://www.bananapos.com/pos/home.html perhaps?

Have a banana

[charlie763]

The banana POS (http://www.bananapos.com/pos/home.html) software has been around for a while, but does not seem to be developing at a rapid pace. Maybe it's already mature. Check it out.

came across this a few days ago

[narkotix]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/tinapos looks interesting!

Buy a real restaurant POS

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in Point of Sale for restaurants and I am an open source / Linux advocate. Unfortunately, restaurant POS is a complicated thing and there are no open source solutions meet my needs. There is just too much money to lose when computers dont work at a restaurant. A restaurant POS doesn't just count the cash transactions. It also handles employee timecards (payroll info), processes credit cards and gift cards, displays output to a customer (pole display or drive thru verification), sends orders to kitchen (on a screen or through a printer), stores recipes for mixed drinks, keeps track of tables and guests, allows waiters to transfer checks, does all calculations for closing out each waiter and bartender, and a lot of other stuff.

I doubt your friends want to deal with the problems that you will encounter when you experiment with software that is not stable and is not fit to run their restuarant.

There is a Linux based restaurant POS, but it isn't free. I think it is called ViewTouch.

The POS that we use at work is called VersiTouch (versitouch.com). It is pretty solid. Compared to the numerous retail POS software packages I have had to support, VersiTouch is great. I prefer the DOS version, which they try not to support anymore (the DOS version is called RCS). The Windows version has hardly any additional features and it requires the constant headache of maintaining numerous windows machines. I use the mars-nwe Netware emulator on a Linux box to share files with DOS clients.

I think the biggest restuarant POS software is Aloha. Positouch is also kinda popular. Both of these are windows-based.

I have tried to configure an Elo touch on Linux, but I could never get the pointer calibrated. The documentation is sparse. I haven't tried again since about a year ago, so maybe it has gotten easier.

Re:Buy a real restaurant POS

[Danny Rathjens]

I have tried to configure an Elo touch on Linux, but I could never get the pointer calibrated. The documentation is sparse. I haven't tried again since about a year ago, so maybe it has gotten easier.

I added the ability to calibrate Elo touchscreens to firecast(commercial linux distro for kiosks) years ago. I used a java app called EloVa. Oh, funky, my google search for it brought up my own post to our LUG 3 years ago. I forgot about the way they changed names of settings like MinX. That might help you get it working: http://www.flux.org/pipermail/linux/2003-June/0131 07.html

OFBiz

[DavidNWelton]

OFBiz, at http://www.ofbiz.org/ has a POS component, although the whole application might be a bit heavyweight/require some customization/slimming down for your needs. It's worth a look, though.

Re:If you want Linux, low cost, and *supported*...

[Anonymous Coward]

Novell NLPOS doesn't provide the software but the basic infrastructure for the POS image building. Same with IRES (IBM's solution), which is built on top of NLPOS. Both NLPOS and IRES are designed for large-scale POS deployments where managing the tills is the biggest headache. IRES also provides drivers for the IBM kit with auto detection, NLPOS is somewhat lacking in that area but can be used on non-IBM hardware. I have built systems with NLPOS and IRES, both are solid architecture which are easy to administer and setup, but are not POS software themselves. Coming NLPOS based on SLES10 promises a lot (on paper), we'll see if it will delivery anything real.

IRES has substantial add-ons to NLPOS, especially in management and hardware detection, it is not a simple rebranding exercise.

I don't work for Novell but work for a POS software company and we deployed a large number of Linux based projects in the last couple of years.

Re:Take a look at ntpv

[WindBourne]

Sorry. Here is a link for you. One nice thing about it, is that once you have it set up, if need be, you can walk away and turn the support over to these folks. They are approaching this as a normal OSS project (give away the app and sell the support).

Restaurant POS - ever try myhandyrestaurant?

[0x1b]

Never worked with it, but interested in hear of any expericnes.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/handyrestaurant/