What is a point of sale (POS)?

The phrase covers both the counter where you take payment and the system behind it. A basic cash drawer is a point of sale. So is a phone app that lists your products, adds up the bill and keeps a record. The useful part is the record: every sale is written down once, at the moment it happens, instead of being rebuilt from memory at night.

A good POS for a small shop does four jobs:

• Finds the product fast: by search, category, favourites or a barcode scan.
• Works out the total: quantity x price, plus any sales tax and discount.
• Records how the customer paid: cash, card, bank transfer, wallet or other.
• Keeps stock honest: each sale reduces the quantity on hand, so the count stays close to the shelf.

A customer buys 2 bottles of juice at $3.50 each and 1 loaf of bread at $4.00. The POS adds the lines: 2 x 3.50 = 7.00, plus 4.00, for a total of $11.00. The customer hands over $20.00 in cash, the screen shows $9.00 in change, and the sale is saved with the time, the items and the payment type. Juice stock drops by 2 and bread by 1. At closing time you can see every sale of the day, not only the total in the drawer.

• Treating it as a cash register only. If it does not record items, you lose the stock and best-seller information.
• Skipping the record on busy days. Sales rung up later or not at all make the stock count drift and the day's total unreliable.
• Choosing on features, not speed. At a busy counter, the number of taps to finish a sale matters more than a long feature list.
• Sharing one login. If every cashier uses the owner's access, anyone can see cost prices and change settings.

Shopkeepa's point of sale runs on a phone, tablet or computer, with search, categories and favourites for fast picking. The payment type is recorded for each sale, and receipts can be shown on screen, printed or shared by link. Shopkeepa is not available yet, and it records payments rather than processing them. Join the early-access list to hear when it opens.