Imagine queuing in line with a laden grocery cart, in an unairconditioned hall filled with musky, musty boxes of unopened you-dont-know-whats.
It’s your turn at the checkout counter and the cashier is acting as fast as she can, carefully jotting down the items inventory number, and double checking the price. One mistake, and it is back to square one. The long queue, the tedious process of writing down inventory numbers and prices and brands and product names…
Ah… thank God for the bar code and the bar code reader, eh?
The bar code and reader has been something that we have taken for granted because we see it everywhere, or every time we transact business in shops, and grocery stores.
But it has considerably decreased the time between buying and actual payment.
This is were Point of Sale comes in.
Michael Angelo Salvio, owner of MSalvio Software & Hardware Technologies, specializes in Information Systems specifically Inventory, Ordering, and Point of Sales (POS).
MSalvio’s POS is accredited by the Bureau of Internal Revenue, so this allows the machine to print Official Receipts and/or Sales Invoices.
“POS or Point of Sale is a place where a sale transaction (goods or service) is completed,” Salvio tells DNX.
One feature of this is identifying the price of the item through its SKU or barcode.
All items stored in the POS have prices attached to it and stored.
One example is our imagine spot at the start of this article.
“In a manual process, if you have a cart full of items, the cashier writes down the items one by one and identifies the price of each item. If POS is utilized, the items are scanned through the barcode, and the system will identify the price each item scanned and will automatically compute the subtotal of all the items,” he explains.
The POS also works during payment as it prints out a sales invoice (for goods)/Official Receipts (for service) of all the items purchased. The printed receipt is detailed per item bought.
“For businesses that cater to a lot of customers, POS would be of great help to them because it helps the transition of its customer faster, which in turn lessen the number of customers within the area,” he said.
This, Salvio stresses, is quiet important now that there is a pandemic.
“Businesses now are directed to limit the number of customers within their area. If the business can transition their customer faster, it would mean an increase in sale because the business can cater to many customers at a faster transition rate,” he said.
For restaurants, the POS can be an advantage by having the orders printed to the kitchen through the kitchen printer.
This would minimize going in and out of waiters into the kitchen which means less contamination, he says.
“Not only are restaurants looking into serving tasty food but also prioritizing food safety in its preparation and environment. When customers are finished eating, waiters can just print out the bill for the customer’s payment reference and print the receipt upon payment. With this system, restaurant businesses would be able to operate at its maximum capacity while ensuring the safety of its staff and customers,” Salvio adds.
And with business slowing down, there is a need for them to adjust or think of some ways to improve efficiency and to increase its sales while ensuring the safety of environment.
Salvio believes that the POS is one way to do just that.
Point of Sale System is one system that could help businesses through technology and the goal of the company is to streamline all the business processes through technology and reduce workload of every employee so they can have more time on analysis rather than clerical works.