Full Form of POS

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Blog Author :

WallStreetMojo Team

Edited by :

Ashish Kumar Srivastav

Reviewed by :

Dheeraj Vaidya, CFA, FRM

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Full-Form of POS (Point of Sale)

We can define the full form of POS or Point of Sale as a final step in the completion of purchase where the customers pay for the goods or services they are willing to buy at a retail store. In other words, a Point of Sale is an arrangement in a store that sells goods or services, which includes processing orders, payment of bills, and checking out.

Table of contents

Features

  • These systems help in sales reporting by recording and analyzing sales data to make informed decisions related to the business.
  • These systems help in inventory management by managing inventory quantities, which helps determine the reorder points of a particular product.
  • These systems even take care of customer management by ensuring customer details and purchases are recorded and frequently updated about upcoming offers and other information via marketing tools.
  • These systems help in employee management by tracking the productive hours devoted and sales conducted by the personnel and evaluating the best performers for a particular period.
Full-Form-of-POS

Terminology

Terminology of POS

The terminologies used in point of sale are often confused with one another. Below are the different terminologies used in POS, along with what they mean and function, which perform in the world of sales management, inventory management, employee management, and customer management:

#1 - POS System

We can define it as a combination of software and hardware systems used for billing in a retail store with a POS. A POS system contains a display screen that shows the billing amount, a touchscreen, or a keyboard device to select the products and record data. Moreover, a printer for printing the bill, a barcode scanner for scanning the billed products, and a cash register for storing money that customers paid against their purchases. Also, the software interface for completing the whole process of sales.

#2 - POS Software

We can define it as software that runs on the point of sale system. It helps retailers to process their orders in their retail stores through the hardware. Furthermore, it helps users input product data, tally costs about orders, and make financial transactions.

#3 - POS Terminal

We can define it as the moment when the payment for a transaction one can make with the help of a point of sale system.

#4 - POS Payments

This can be defined as the moment of time when the payment for a transaction is made with the help of a point of sale system.

Types

  • For retailers dealing in apparel, they will need to upload pictures of the digital catalog products.
  • Retailers dealing in electronic items must upload serial numbers into their point of sale software.
  • Retailers dealing in packaged goods can identify products that will expire anytime soon based on their expiry dates.

Example

Examples of point of sale include Magestore, Shopkeep, Shopify, Lightspeed, Vend Pos, etc.

Magestore is intuitive and has a user-friendly interface. Therefore, it helps retailers manage their inventories and speeds up revenue generation by easy conversion of sales. In addition, Magestore point of sale is equipped with numerous payment methods like online and offline payments, partial payments, split payments, etc., to enhance the user's convenience.

Uses

We can use these systems to have access to the inventory, customers, and annual sales information anytime and from anywhere, managing sales returns, business expansion, fast checkouts, inventory control, enabling retailers to conduct their business online, management of accounts, management of employees and management of customers as well.

Advantages

  1. Anytime Access: Retail storekeepers can access the desired information wherever they feel. It might relate the information they seek to inventories, customers, employees, annual sales, etc., which can be accessed by them anytime and from anywhere.
  2. Return Policy: One can use this system to manage sales returns.
  3. Online Shopping: It enables retailers to conduct their business online.
  4. Business Expansion: It enables retailers to grow their business by catering to more and more customers and earning higher profits.
  5. Fast Checkouts: This enables retailers to provide a mechanism where the customers will not have to wait in long queues for billing. Hence, ensuring faster checkouts.
  6. Inventory Control: This helps retailers manage and control their stocks and protect them from being stocked. The quantities of the stocks are easily known to the retailers, which helps them evaluate the reorder points for each product.

Disadvantages

  1. Expensive: Installing and managing POS systems can be costly for retailers. It is mostly why the installation of point of sale systems is highly discouraged by a few retailers instead of being aware of the benefits that it has to offer.
  2. Security Risks: These systems are vulnerable to security risks. If the software is not updated promptly or correctly, a security breach might occur.

Conclusion

  • It can be hectic and exhaustive for retail stores to conduct their day-to-day operations. Installing a perfect and compatible point of sale system enables retail stores to ease out the important and most difficult day-to-day business operations with great excellence and proficiency.
  • These systems offer a lot of ease and flexibility. These systems are user-friendly too. These days, POS systems are designed and installed to offer ease, flexibility, and much more in daily business operations.
  • Modern point of sale systems are a central point where sales, inventory, and customer management occur. As a result, today's point of sale systems tend to offer effective tools that help streamline business operations.