Point of sale Wikipedia. Points of sale at a Target store. The point of sale POS or point of purchase POP is the time and place where a retail transaction is completed. Terminal Server 2008 Licensing Hack' title='Terminal Server 2008 Licensing Hack' />At the point of sale, the merchant calculates the amount owed by the customer, indicates that amount, may prepare an invoice for the customer which may be a cash register printout, and indicates the options for the customer to make payment. It is also the point at which a customer makes a payment to the merchant in exchange for goods or after provision of a service. After receiving payment, the merchant may issue a receipt for the transaction, which is usually printed but is increasingly being dispensed with or sent electronically. To calculate the amount owed by a customer, the merchant may use various devices such as weighing scales, barcode scanners, and cash registers. To make a payment, payment terminals, touch screens, and other hardware and software options are available. Windows_server_2008_r2_rd_licensing_activate.jpg' alt='Terminal Server 2008 Licensing Hack' title='Terminal Server 2008 Licensing Hack' />The point of sale is often referred to as the point of service because it is not just a point of sale but also a point of return or customer order. POS terminal software may also include features for additional functionality, such as inventory management, CRM, financials, or warehousing. Terminal Server 2008 Licensing Hack' title='Terminal Server 2008 Licensing Hack' />MS Paint, the first app you used for editing images, will probably be killed off in future updates of Windows 10, replaced by the new app Paint 3D. Microsoft lists. Businesses are increasingly adopting POS systems, and one of the most obvious and compelling reasons is that a POS system does away with the need for price tags. Selling prices are linked to the product code of an item when adding stock, so the cashier merely needs to scan this code to process a sale. If there is a price change, this can also be easily done through the inventory window. Other advantages include the ability to implement various types of discounts, a loyalty scheme for customers, and more efficient stock control. Remote Desktop Connection Terminal Services Client 6.1 For Windows Vista. Terminal Server 2008 Licensing Hack' title='Terminal Server 2008 Licensing Hack' />TerminologyeditRetailers and marketers will often refer to the area around the checkout instead as the point of purchase POP when they are discussing it from the retailers perspective. This is particularly the case when planning and designing the area as well as when considering a marketing strategy and offers. Some point of sale vendors refer to their POS system as retail management system which is actually a more appropriate term given that this software is no longer just about processing sales but comes with many other capabilities such as inventory management, membership system, supplier record, bookkeeping, issuing of purchase orders, quotations and stock transfers, hide barcode label creation, sale reporting and in some cases remote outlets networking or linkage, to name some major ones. Nevertheless, it is the term POS system rather than retail management system that is in vogue among both end users and vendors. HistoryeditSoftware before the 1. Early electronic cash registers ECR were controlled with proprietary software and were limited in function and communication capability. In August 1. 97. 3, IBM released the IBM 3. IBM 3. 65. 33. 66. This system was the first commercial use of client server technology, peer to peer communications, local area network LAN simultaneous backup, and remote initialization. By mid 1. 97. 4, it was installed in Pathmark stores in New Jersey and Dillards department stores. One of the first microprocessor controlled cash register systems was built by William Brobeck and Associates in 1. The point of sale POS or point of purchase POP is the time and place where a retail transaction is completed. At the point of sale, the merchant calculates the. Mc. Donalds Restaurants. It used the Intel 8. Intel 8. 08. 8 processor used in the original IBM Personal Computer. Each station in the restaurant had its own device which displayed the entire order for a customer for example, 2 Vanilla Shake, 1 Large Fries, 3 Big. Mac using numeric keys and a button for every menu item. By pressing the Grill button, a second or third order could be worked on while the first transaction was in progress. When the customer was ready to pay, the Total button would calculate the bill, including sales tax for almost any jurisdiction in the United States. This made it accurate for Mc. Donalds and very convenient for the servers and provided the restaurant owner with a check on the amount that should be in the cash drawers. Up to eight devices were connected to one of two interconnected computers so that printed reports, prices, and taxes could be handled from any desired device by putting it into Manager Mode. In addition to the error correcting memory, accuracy was enhanced by having three copies of all important data with many numbers stored only as multiples of 3. Should one computer fail, the other could handle the entire store. In 1. 98. 6, Gene Mosher introduced the first graphical point of sale software5 featuring a touchscreen interface under the View. Touch6 trademark on the 1. Atari 5. 20. ST color computer. It featured a color touchscreen widget driven interface that allowed configuration of widgets representing menu items without low level programming. The View. Touch point of sale software was first demonstrated in public at Fall Comdex, 1. Las Vegas Nevada to large crowds visiting the Atari Computer booth. This was the first commercially available POS system with a widget driven color graphic touch screen interface and was installed in several restaurants in the USA and Canada. In 1. 98. 6, IBM introduced its 4. POS equipment based on Digital Researchs Concurrent DOS 2. Flex. OS 1. xx, a modular real time multi tasking multi user operating system. Modern software post 1. In 1. 99. 2, Martin Goodwin and Bob Henry created the first point of sale software that could run on the Microsoft Windows platform named IT Retail. Since then a wide range of POS applications have been developed on platforms such as Windows and Unix. The availability of local processing power, local data storage, networking, and graphical user interface made it possible to develop flexible and highly functional POS systems. Cost of such systems has also declined, as all the components can now be purchased off the shelf. In 1. 99. 3, IBM adopted Flex. OS 2. 3. 2 as the basis of their IBM 4. OS in their 4. 69x series of POS terminals. This was developed up to 2. Toshiba, who continued to support it up to at least 2. As far as computers are concerned, off the shelf versions are usually newer and hence more powerful than proprietary POS terminals. Custom modifications are added as needed. Other products, like touchscreen tablets and laptops, are readily available in the market. And they are also more portable than traditional POS terminals. The only advantage of the latter has is because they are typically built to withstand rough handling and spillages a benefit for food beverage businesses. The key requirements that must be met by modern POS systems include high and consistent operating speed, reliability, ease of use, remote supportability, low cost, and rich functionality. Retailers can reasonably expect to acquire such systems including hardware for about 4. US as of 2. 00. 9 per checkout lane. Reliability depends not completely on the developer but at times on the compatibility between a database and an OS version. For example, the widely used MS Access database system had a compatibility issue when Windows XP machines were updated to a newer Windows OS. No solution was immediately offered by Microsoft. Some businesses were seriously disrupted in the process, and many downgraded back to Windows XP for a quick resolution. Other companies utilized community support, for a registry tweak solution has been found for this.