Can You Access Your Own Cash Register Data?

jeronimo989 writes "A customer of mine has a small shop and asked me to look for an electronic cash register. One of the requirements is to retrieve the sales data from the cash register in some accessible format so he can import it in the software of his choice (which happens to be OpenOffice), either by downloading the data on a Flash card, connecting a laptop via USB, or even via a direct modem connection. As far as the cash register itself is concerned, he doesn't need anything too fancy; any 'entry level' machine for small businesses is probably OK (as long as it keeps an electronic journal, of course). Which options do we have? Are there cash register manufacturers out there that allow accessing the sales data directly in an open format? Does anyone here have experience with setting up a link between a cash register and PC, preferably using free/open source solutions?"

Comments

Re:Lame

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even look at the page you're hawking? The features tab has only a place holder, the forum tab is utterly blank, and the manual is V 0.1.0, last updated 2004.

It really doesn't work this way...

[mridoni]

... modern cash registers simply output on a serial or USB port all the transaction data entered, and receive informations on goods for PLUs (Price Look-Ups): when a barcode on a product is scanned, the cash register "asks" to a server the corresponding price and description to be printed on your receipt, etc. Most cash registers are actually (at least here in Italy, and in a reasonably sized shop) just a specialized keyboard/screen/cash drawer connected to a PC, which in turn sits on a network: it's all part of a turn-key system, maintenance included. It's not like you go and read the data *from* the cash register: while you can query it for some daily report, you usually just store the data on a server and use some custom app or a DB frontend to read it.

Checkout (POS) for mac

[kalleh]

http://www.checkoutapp.com/

Re:Quickbooks Terminal

[timmarhy]

ever used quickbooks? no? that's why you think it's a good idea.

Re:Lame

[xtracto]

Everytime someone posts some question on slashdot there is inevitably some idiot who will answer to "goolge it" or "source forge it" or whatever similar.

I am sure the original poster did know about goolge and maybe he even did look in there before posting here but the idea of asking in slashdot is to see what the opinions of other people with *knowledge* (supposedly) are. For me as a slashdot reader is quite interesting, because the discussion usually brings several alternatives and answers which are up to date (instead of web pages that someties are outdated) and even some comments which are worthy.

Plenty of times I have recurred to an ask slashdot that I had seen before to look at what people *in the know* are using, instead of just looking at the advertisements thrown by each of the avaialble products (either Free or non Free).

So if the only advise you are going to give is to "google it", just shut up and go to troll to the next slashdot story. You are only polluting an otherwise interesting conversation.

Maybe Stoq?

[GauteL]

I haven't tried it, since I'm not in the retail business, but Stoq is an open source Point of Sale system supported by a brazilian company called Async.

It is GTK based and uses PostgreSQL for database storage (so extracting data should be a breeze). It also comes with a LiveCD so you can try it out yourself.

Sharp

[N3Roaster]

I see a lot of comments already jumping on fancy POS systems, but if a basic cash register is really all that is needed, get to your local office store and take a look at what's there. A basic Sharp cash register (and probably registers from other makers as well) will store this data on a SD card or allow a USB connection to a computer. The software they (Sharp, don't know about others) provide is crap, but the data you get back is CSV which can be imported into any spreadsheet program. It's basic, but if that's all you need it does the trick.

for a few hundred quid

[greebowarrior]

he could get a cheap mac off ebay, or a mac mini, and use Checkout

Re:A suggestion

[Mathinker]

Now that I think about it, maybe that link isn't as connected as I thought... :(

I was looking more for something like this.

Too bad I can't make that post disappear by moderating the thread. :)

Try this one

[mopwr]

Give this one a try.

http://www.openbravo.com/product/pos/

Its simple and has export options.

I've used it since it was tinaPOS and it has worked good for me.

Re:Open database

[Tumbarumba]

Sure: it's Montana. I didn't originally post the link because I'm not sure I'd fully recommend them at this stage. We've found the barcoding not quite up to scratch, minor usability issues with the UI, and I'm not fully happy with the support. Nevertheless, when I asked them to change their terms to allow open access to the database, they were happy to comply.