cash registers

conman

Im trying to get to the bottom of the range of options there are for cash registers.

basically, what im hoping to get is one that will be able to have many statistics retrieved from it each month or week or whatever..

forinstance, If i was running a pet shop..
id like to be able to get stats of the following

type of animal,
subtype of animal,
age,
brought in by male / female?
time of day,
day of week,
was there a voucher used,
regular customer,
medical insurance used?

etc etc,

now i imagine the types of tills that we see in fancy pubs have this type of feature available in them, and i imagine that they tell the vendor what their requirement is, and it gets programmed and labled accordingly before being delivered.. but i simply dont know, this is my assumption.

can someone tell me a little more about cash registers,
if the type of requirement im looking for is available,
how much they cost, and who i can buy them from affordably.

thanks in advance

jimmmy

I know someone in your position a year ago, he priced around + researched + found the suppliers in the UK were half the price of any supplier in Ireland of the exact same machine. He got his delivered from England...

Atlas_IRL

I think you need to research the software rather than the cash register. You can buy generic cash registers that just open/close but if you want stats then that will be your software that you use for your inventory.

padocon

This has lots of stats! Try a demo see if you like it.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/business_finance/poshier.html

jimmmy

There is a wide range of cash registers available - most can be programmed to give whatever statistics most shopkeepers need. The amazing thing was the huge difference between the UK and Ireland for the exact same spec machine. Maybe things have got more competitive here now in that market.

DubTony

A google search bring up this

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=cash+register&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryIE

My experience has been that it's really all about the software. And these fellahs are very good at charging for their stuff. They all buy hardware from outside that's readily available anywhere, but aren't too keen to put their software on "someone else's" product. Unfortunately I think it's a bit of a closed shop here in Ireland.

Go foreign imo.

DubTony

conman wrote: »

forinstance, If i was running a pet shop..
id like to be able to get stats of the following

type of animal,
subtype of animal,
age,
brought in by male / female?
time of day,
day of week,
was there a voucher used,
regular customer,
medical insurance used?

etc etc,

now i imagine the types of tills that we see in fancy pubs have this type of feature available in them, and i imagine that they tell the vendor what their requirement is, and it gets programmed and labled accordingly before being delivered.. but i simply dont know, this is my assumption.

can someone tell me a little more about cash registers,
if the type of requirement im looking for is available,
how much they cost, and who i can buy them from affordably.

thanks in advance

The information you say you would need is all very well, but every extra piece of info you need has a cost. Not just in software but in actual operation time. If you're standing at the cash register and want to collect all the information, it takes time (especially stuff like the male / female item above)

My advice would be to break the information required down to the absolute necessities. There's a lot of info available in many EPOS systems these days, but most of it is never used. Ask yourself why you want so much information? What will you do with the information etc? If you want certain info but aren't sure what you're ever going to do with it, there's a good chance that you'll never actually use it, and will have spent unnecessary capital putting it on the system and wasted time inputting the info.

The till suppliers will bend over backwards to help you, but the word affordable will not come into it. Every extra piece of info you want added will cost a lot. They have their standard stuff which is quite complex, but in retail environment most of the info you seem to want isn't used, unless it's with some sort of loyalty scheme, and that's a whole other system.

If you have an Apple computer, check out the software padocon posted. It's an excellent starting point. For $129 you could not do better. I've never been able to get the real software cost of the stuff I used, but based on the hardware prices I've seen you'll be looking at a very large multiple of that price

conman

thanks for the replies lads, you provided a good insight.

@DubTony, you are right, but i havent defined what statistics i want yet, but my aim is to be able to use the register speedily, and efficiently whilst getting what i want. so i will not have too many options in it that would make it too long to get the customers through.

A lot of the statistics are self generating anyway, for instance: time, date, month, day, price, group booking etc.

thanks again

antoinolachtnai

You can often find sector-oriented solutions. For example, there are systems for bike shops and photo labs and restaurants and dry cleaners. These are basically PC's that have touchscreens and have special software.

What sector are you talking about?

It is really a matter of what turnover you are doing. I would suggest as a very rough rule of thumb that you spend 1 percent of gross yearly turnover on a POS system, complete. You will also be looking at spending for maintenance/support. You cannot skimp on maintenance/support. Your business depends on this thing. If you can't afford all this, then get a simpler system.

The main thing you are actually buying is the expertise of the company and the staff, rather than the software itself, or for that matter, the hardware. You need to recognise and accept this at the outset. The pc based POS systems are inevitably complicated and time-consuming to get up and running and get a staff trained in on.

The system you choose should really have the reports you need as standard, if you are a small business without very specialised requirements. This is the whole point of buying packaged software.

You may find a good reason to get particular reports, and that will obviously depend on your business. Again, it's a question of whether the cost is justified.

conman

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

You can often find sector-oriented solutions. For example, there are systems for bike shops and photo labs and restaurants and dry cleaners. These are basically PC's that have touchscreens and have special software.

What sector are you talking about?

It is really a matter of what turnover you are doing. I would suggest as a very rough rule of thumb that you spend 1 percent of gross yearly turnover on a POS system, complete. You will also be looking at spending for maintenance/support. You cannot skimp on maintenance/support. Your business depends on this thing. If you can't afford all this, then get a simpler system.

The main thing you are actually buying is the expertise of the company and the staff, rather than the software itself, or for that matter, the hardware. You need to recognise and accept this at the outset. The pc based POS systems are inevitably complicated and time-consuming to get up and running and get a staff trained in on.

The system you choose should really have the reports you need as standard, if you are a small business without very specialised requirements. This is the whole point of buying packaged software.

You may find a good reason to get particular reports, and that will obviously depend on your business. Again, it's a question of whether the cost is justified.

thank you for your reply..
the business im preparing will focus on tourists, business parties and kids mostly

im looking basically at some basic stats...
so the options id like available for staff to press on would be:

kids price / adult price / discount price / family?
male / female?
discount used / group rate?
tourist?
if its pre booked, then id like to enter the name of the school/company.

and then it should automatically count the following..
time, day, month, ..

what im aiming to calculate from this is to find the busy times, keep a record of companies that visit, and schools too. see the comparison of discounts used incomparison to full prices, ratio of kids to adults, and then kids that attend with adults and so forth.. but a lot of this can be calculated automatically without having an option to press for it, for instance an adult will pay for a kid, so that should calculate itself.

maybe i could add a barcode scanner for a loyalty scheme, or for discounts and so on.. anyway, a lot of ideas floating around in my head, i havent narrowed it down to what i want yet, but a lot of that will come down to cost and maintenance..

what id like to know are the price ranges, and companies that supply them,
however im a few months away from purchasing.

antoinolachtnai

don't know what you'd use for that. It's event ticketing. The cinemas have a system they use, and you could try to figure out what it is. You could try to figure out what they are doing in a place like guinness storehouse or Trinity Library (these are two of the biggest paid destinations for tourists). Whatever they do, in particular Guinness is probably pretty close to best practice. You might know other similar operations which you could check out to see what they are doing.

You are going to have to look at a lot of software packages to find a match. I would really keep it simple to start with. Are you realistically going to turn over more than a million a year? If not, I would keep it really, really really simple.

Hardware like barcode readers are really really cheap to add. The cost is the software to manage something like a loyalty scheme.

If you want a budget figure, I'd say that if it's one POS, budget say, five grand, eight grand for two. (A lot of people will be shocked at this figure, but if what you want is specialised, it could come to this. Is it worth it? Depends on your business, your scale and your requirements. )

conman

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

don't know what you'd use for that. It's event ticketing. The cinemas have a system they use, and you could try to figure out what it is. You could try to figure out what they are doing in a place like guinness storehouse or Trinity Library (these are two of the biggest paid destinations for tourists). Whatever they do, in particular Guinness is probably pretty close to best practice. You might know other similar operations which you could check out to see what they are doing.

You are going to have to look at a lot of software packages to find a match. I would really keep it simple to start with. Are you realistically going to turn over more than a million a year? If not, I would keep it really, really really simple.

Hardware like barcode readers are really really cheap to add. The cost is the software to manage something like a loyalty scheme.

If you want a budget figure, I'd say that if it's one POS, budget say, five grand, eight grand for two. (A lot of people will be shocked at this figure, but if what you want is specialised, it could come to this. Is it worth it? Depends on your business, your scale and your requirements. )

thanks again..

The price you quoted was what i had imagined it would cost. Im trying to look at the big picture from the outset. i believe firmly that i have a great idea, If i can market and implement it successfully enough to bring in customers, then I have 2 more important steps to take..

1. Retain customers
2. Figure out what aspects of the market I have not yet attracted

I think in this line of business, I would gain a lot by knowing pretty early as much about my company as i can, so i can grow it better. A relatively expensive Cash Register is a small price to pay, if you are in a highly customer centric business.

jimmmy

conman wrote: »

im looking basically at some basic stats...
so the options id like available for staff to press on would be:

kids price / adult price / discount price / family?
male / female?
discount used / group rate?
tourist?
if its pre booked, then id like to enter the name of the school/company.

and then it should automatically count the following..
time, day, month, ..

.

If your business is less than a million a year turnover, any decent owner / manager should have all the stats they need in their head anyway....without having to delay customers with staff pressing too many buttons...which they may not always do correctly if in a hurry...eg what do they care if the person paying is male / female ? Will it affect your business decisions if its 38% female instead of 40% female ?

antoinolachtnai

I agree with this. If you are managing it yourself, the till system isn't so important. Even if you are operating on a large-ish scale, you might be better to do the odd survey to get an in-depth insight into the customers.

conman

thanks lads.

well, im at the ideas stage, so all avenues are available.

• i might get this type of register.
• i might not get it.

lots to think about, lots to consider..

PhatPiggins

Can I suggest that you dont use your Boards username on ebay

conman

PhatPiggins wrote: »

Can I suggest that you dont use your Boards username on ebay

haha... i know, ive thought of changing this a few times.
fact is, it was a gaming name :P