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

Quickbooks Terminal

[Taelron]

For a couple of hundred bucks he can get a Quickbooks terminal running on embeded Xp. Then all he has to do is export the quickbooks data or just access the pc for the info. The terminals are fully functional PC's, Registers, and loaded with Quickbooks.

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QUICKBOOKS 2008 POS BASIC W/HARDWARE

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Check out Circuit City

[londonit]

I worked in a rollout project with Circuit City whenthey replaced some of their POS systems. The new boxes were some IBM POS solutions with linux on them - I dont know from the top of my head but they seemd out of the box solutions - They pulled OS and all from BOOTP server, but I suppose you could get them preinstalled and all. Maybe IBM has more suggestions.

DataSym

[shyster]

Since nobody else seems to understand the difference between an electronic cash register and a PC based point of sale system - I'll throw in what little I know of ECRs.

DataSym makes a software product called Comm2000 that communicates with their ECRs. It can poll nightly to retrieve sales information, or you can have the register output the data on each sale. You can also maintain SKU lists, etc.

We have a few DataSym and older Sharp registers on the network (with a serial-TCP/IP device server), and the sales are captured in real time without going through Comm2000. Formats are a little obtuse, but reverse engineerable without documentation if you needed to.

Nightly, there's a fairly old version of Comm2000 that sends out SKU lists, register layouts, etc. The processing is held together with shell scripts and some custom C code, but I think Comm2000 is the standard EXE. This is all on a UNIX box, designed circa 1993, so YMMV.

Fortunately for me, but unfortunate for you, I have very little to do with the ECR side of things. But, I'd imagine most ECRs these days offer something similar, and I see DataSym still has Comm2000. Since ECRs don't really seem to be in the /. sweet spot, I'd suggest giving your local distributor a call.

Open database

[Tumbarumba]

I had the same problem a few months ago. I really wanted an open POS system for the children's shoe shop my wife opened last year. We wanted a better system of managing inventory than the manual spreadsheet we were using.

I wasn't really that happy with any of the open source solutions I looked at (mainly LanePos and BananaPOS), mainly because I don't really have time to maintain these systems myself, and I wasn't convinced the support operations would work for us. We eventually did find a commercial provider based upon a recommendation from a friend with a small shop nearby. One of the things I really liked about this system was the fact that the vendor was completely happy for me to be able to access the database used by the POS software without any restrictions. I wasn't that happy with a number aspects of the system, but being able to access my own data was critical for me.

Horse first, cart second....

[Ollabelle]

This is not a case of hardware hacking, folks.

These electronic cash registers are designed to have their collected data extracted from them in some fashion, so the logical place to start is the cash register vendors themselves to find out how it can be retrieved and the software systems that can use it. Something integrated with the accounting system/bank reconciliation would be nice. If it's a hard process, then that's likely the machine to avoid.

The second question, in fact should probably be the first, is to decide exactly what kind of data is to be collected: bar-code data, department codes, and the number of different sales taxes applicable to the site. These kind of questions will dictate the complexity of the machine to be purchased. All cash registers will do the normal daily control functions, running and daily totals. What you're looking for a machine that will deliver higher-level data to support the management of the business, so you need to start with those management objectives, then see how the extraction process fits into the accounting system, and only then decide on a machine to support those systems.

Re:LameNot /.

[OldHawk777]

For the past decade the /. community has kept me more informed about technology than any other source. /. is not always first with some topics, but eventually almost all intelligent technology content leads to /..

I have noticed government/military/CoOpGhost and politicians/corporatist/religious trolls on /. all trying to become more informed or attempting to suppress the truth with plausibly_logical_spin-reasoning (they always fail). The truth always gains from their adamant refrain being discovered as far less than accurate.

The important side for me (I have an odd job), each year, I balance and document my pay to what I directly save this company by supporting or rejecting technology application and acquisition. If I cannot after my annual review clearly show I have saved the company $1M, I feel guilty about my pay (less than $100K). My best year yet was almost $4M, my worst was about $500K (last year), this year 2008 will be worse, but for our next FY2009 it is already at $5M. About a quarter of all that money is due to some discussion on /.

I had no direct input to one acquisition decision, but it is a well known example of clueless CIO staff/management. In 2006/05, I was told by a senior CIO staffer that by 2006/08 M$-Vista would be installed on all desktop computers. My immediate reply to him, thanks to the /. community comments, was that M$-Vista would not even be on any company computers in 2007/08.

So %~P, I promoted myself this past August from the Technology Information Adviser (TIA) to the illustrious sounding position of the Technology Innovation Adviser ..., next time I will pick a more enigmatic job title for my BizCard ... maybe Technology Implicit Adviser ...; anyway it is important to keep it consistent with TIA for the signature block (my insanity %~P).