Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with POS

Good typeface for a point-of-sale receipt printer?

herzigma — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:32:02 -0800

Does anyone have suggestions for a good typeface for a point-of-sale receipt printer? I have a project to design messages printed on the bottom of a cash register receipt. These are B&W thermal printers, about 200-250 DPI. The text is 6-12 points. We're going primarily for readability and cleanliness and we're happy to pay for quality. Before we go with what we already have (Verdana, Arial, etc.), we'd love suggestions for what might be better.

How did I get made party to a scam?

stupidsexyFlanders — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:31:25 -0800

A random person in a city I don't live in called me and said he was seeing two charges for $155 each on his bank statement, and his bank says I'm the party that the payments were made to. What kind of scam is this, how did I get involved, and what's my responsibility? These are point-of-sale charges his bank says were made with his debit card. On his statement, where the merchant information is, appears a domain name that happens to be where I have my resume, and then the first few lines from my resume appears, including my contact info.

Is this a result of something I might have done, or did somebody just scrape my website randomly to populate the merchant information? Why would the bad guy go to that trouble, rather than just putting in something like ACME Widgets, 1234 Main Street, Anytown USA? Am I at risk at all here? It's obviously not my money, but this is the second call I've gotten in the past few months like this. How can I end this?

I should note that each of these two callers seemed satisfied when I explained that I had nothing to do with their charges and they should work it out with their bank.

Point of sale shenanigans

zap rowsdower — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:52:32 -0800

Cash back? Why? Why is the burden of choosing "NO" to the cash back option placed on me every time I use my debit card to purchase something? Am I atypical? Does the rest of the world routinely get cash back?

Why aren't there a few more options on the initial screen- Debit, Credit, Debit w/ Cash Back? Surely there's enough screen real estate.

Is it just a really poor design choice or is there some other reason I'm just not aware of?

Simple Point Of Sale software solution

shinynewnick — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:01:25 -0800

Help me find an easy Point of Sale software solution for our business I've just gone through two months of absolute frustration dealing with a custom FilemakerPro programmer that my company hired. Unfortunately, he is not good at what he does, accepts no fault for the constant errors and mistakes in his program, and we are ready to dump him and count the 2/3rds payment as a loss and move on to another solution.

Our needs are fairly basic:

1. Seven registers selling various items within one location. Three registers sell Concessions, three sell Souvenirs, and one sells a single separate Concession item.

2. Centralized data for the registers. We need basic reports by station, items sold, etc.

3. A very, very easy touch interface. Virtually none of our items are barcode scannable, so a series of buttons with items on screen is ideal.

4. IP based credit card support.

I've been looking at several other solutions lately (this wasn't my project when the decision to go custom was made), and Quickbooks POS doesn't look good for a touch screen setup; Microsoft Dynamics POS looks promising, but haven't had a chance to give it a test drive.

I'm fairly certain there are good Filemaker programmers out there who have quite possibly made a POS solution; we already purchased 7 copies of Filemaker Pro and the Filemaker Server to run the data.

We have the Dell POS hardware in place already, so looking for any experience you have with PC based POS software.

How do I get terminal services to keep a port connection?

KevinSkomsvold — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:49:45 -0800

How do I make a USB port map permanent with terminal services? Here's the situation:

I set up a USB CC reader on a local workstation. This workstation connects to a Point of Sale software package via TS which uses the card reader. I am able to configure the card reader just fine and it will work perfectly. As soon as the user logs out for the day and tries to use it the next morning, the USB card reader isn't recognized in the TS session. The cashier has to run the card reader utility again. I'm guessing its because TS only uses the port mapping on a per session basis. What is the best way to make this connection permanent? Or better, what would be the best way to set it up so that the user can log out and log back in without having to run the card reader config utility each time?

Thanks.

Windows Update borked my Vista laptop

AstroGuy — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:05:41 -0800

Vista hangs while switching to/from Secure Desktop after Windows Update installed a new sound driver. Please help me fix it. HP Pavillion dv6449 laptop with pre-installed Vista Home Premium.

Recent Windows Update attempted to update Conexant sound driver. Install failed. Upon reboot, no sound. Went into device manager, removed driver, Window reloaded it, sound fixed.

Ever since then, the PC hangs 5-20 seconds coming back from secure desktop. I've disabled UAC eliminate some of the lags. I have the system configured to require a password on wake-up from standby. Laptop wakes up instantly, login screen appears instantly. Type in password, screen goes blank, hear the "da-dink" sound effect, then screen stays blank for 20 seconds or more before desktop appears.

Actions that would invoke the secure desktop (UAC, ctrl-alt-del) act the same way, but delay is only 5 to 10 seconds of blank screen.

This definitely did not do this before the borked driver update. Secure Desktop activations/UAC prompts flickered and appeared instantly. Now these delays are driving my nuts. I hope the pending release of SP1 on Windows Update might fix this, but if there's anything I can do in the meantime to troubleshoot and fix this please let me know.

I'm quite technically experienced on older versions of Windows, but my technical knowledge and troubleshooting skills are limited on Vista.

Fired/Sued/Quit?

converge — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 05:03:20 -0800

I work as a freelance tech in the POS industry. What can I do to avoid litigation? A huge part of my job involves teaching people how to run their businesses. Another huge part involves me having access to their financial records to troubleshoot (usually their screw-ups). And, if I refuse the above responsibilities I get massive shit from my client (my employer). So, how does one balance exposure versus doing a decent job, situationally specifically? Well, even other non-situational examples might help.

Need a cheap retail POS system.

tucsongal — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 14:24:51 -0800

What is the best POS / inventory software for a music (instruments and accessories) store? My friend has been using the same POS / inventory system at his (single) music store for almost 20 years... and they system just completely died thus they finally want to buy a new system. They have the need for up to eight terminal stations between POS and doing inventory.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

Unused checkouts

hodyoaten — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 11:24:44 -0800

If retail space is really lorded over by bean counters, why do big boxes build so many checkouts that sit unused? On the morning after Thanksgiving, the north Dallas Super Target I went in briefly only had 9 out of 24 registers open. Why do they build them this way? Has anyone ever seen 90%+ of them open?

What a POS

bjork24 — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 19:44:35 -0800

I just bought a couple used VeriFone Tranz 330's for use in my POS system, but I can't figure out how to reprogram them! I downloaded all the manuals from VeriFone's website, and I know that I need either TCLOAD or ZONTALK to communicate with the terminal. Unfortunately, I have no idea where to find either of those programs. Does anyone have experience reprogramming these things? Any tips or hints?

PS - This Google Answers post isn't as helpful as it seems.

DIY P.O.S. System

bjork24 — Mon, 02 May 2005 07:23:06 -0800

How can I build a custom P.O.S. system with an old computer and my internet-programming-biased skills? The system will be used in a small, single screen movie theater, so I'll need to roll one for the ticketing window, and one for the concession stand. It doesn't have to necessarily be a full-fledged P.O.S. system (cash drawer, customer display, etc.), but at the very least it needs to track transactions and store them for daily reports.

My skills fall on the side of internet programming. I know HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DHTML, PHP, and mySQL... I can make a mean web app, but a P.O.S. system? Is it possible with these skills?

I guess I could install a server on each computer and have them run off a localhost app... I don't know. Any suggestions?