Re: pos hardware information

["Chris Travers" <..hidden..>]

Speaking as someone who rewrote the POS module for one of my
customers, I think that Stoller has a point, but I want to expand and
in some cases clarify these.

1)  Software exists to support business processes, not the other way
around. Nothing is important besides the question of whether your
business processes are supported by the software.

2)  LedgerSMB's POS module works quite well for some kinds of
environments, but there is no single "POS workflow" that every
business should optimally follow, so it is not ready for every
business.  It works reasonably well for barcode+keyboard workflows
(convenience store/retail).  If you are trying to run a restaurant
with it, you are better off looking at other solutions at the moment.

3)  POS is a very specialized field.  A lot of things which are
tolerable in an accounting application are not tolerable in a POS
environment.  Furthermore, things that are tolerable in one POS
environment are not tolerable in another.

This really boils down to one simple matter:  You need to have a
strong sense of exactly what you need the applciation to do and what
business processes you need it to support.  If you don't have this
sense, it doesn't matter what you decide to buy, it will probably do
more harm than good.  Only by a careful evaluation can you have any
hope of getting a solution that works for you.

The major things that LSMB has to offer is that it can handle a lot of
volume without a lot of worries about data loss if the power goes out.
 It also allows ou to do a lot of the financial logic and planning
from in the same appliation or database.

Where it is limited is in its architecture (CGI app is not optimal for
POS applications), and the fact that it is there strictly for retail
businesses.  To accomodate these issues, we are plannong on splitting
off the POS module as of 1.4 so that it will be separately maintained.

Hope this helps,
Chris Travers