What is a POS (aka Point of Sale)
POS, acronym for Point of Sale, as the name suggests, is the transaction technology used by businesses with a physical store to (but not limited to) accept orders of walk-in, over-the-phone orders of customers. POS is a very generic term used to feature the technology used by in-store to accept, process and manage orders.
Point of Sale System generally comprises of (but not limited to) one or more Processing units (such as a Tablet or Touch-screen PC), the Point of Sale Software/App a receipt Printer (generally a Thermal ink-less printer, a dot-matrix printer or a traditional A4 printer), a cash-drawer, an optional digital barcode scanner (mostly in retail outlets to fast process items with barcode).
The Processing Unit (generally referred to as the POS Terminal) is usually anything ranging from the most common all-in-one touch-screen PC or a tablet or can even be a traditional desktop/laptop comprising of a separate processing unit and a digital display Touch-screen. The processing unit in a nutshell consists of the central processing unit, the memory, i/o ports all of which reside on the motherboard. The operating system or the OS (predominantly Windows, Linux, iOS or Android…) runs off the hard-drive and essentially acts as a communication channel between the user that operates the processing unit and the hardware components. The OS houses the the Point of Sale Software/App which does all the magic.
The Point of Sale Software/App is run on the Processing unit. The point of Sale Software/App usually comprises of the Software/App that communicates with a database that stores all the contents. The POS Software essentially acts as the brain and accepts and processes orders that the user inputs. The POS Software acts as the GUI between the database and the user. The POS Software accepts user commands, stores it in the database and then interacts with other input/output peripherals such as printers, bumper-screen, cash drawer. When a user inputs an order via the Touch Screen, the POS Software processes the order and then accordingly directs the order to the corresponding printers.
Most businesses operate with more than One Point of Sale Terminal. One terminal behaves as the Master/Server that hosts the database (if not a cloud based system) and all other terminals communicate with the server via the database. Think of the Server as the brain in the anatomy of human-body and all the other peripherals (Slave POS Systems, Tablet POS, Printers, Bumper Kitchen Display Screen, Cash Drawers, Barcode Scanner) as parts of the body. Obviously, each part is vital, however, everything coordinated by the brain.
