Point of Sale

Point of sale (POS) or checkout is the location where a transaction occurs in exchange for goods or services. The point of sale often refers to the physical electronic cash register or dedicated POS hardware (or "terminal") used for checkout, but the POS is simply the location where the sale is conducted, money changes hands and a receipt is given, which can also occur on a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or mobile POS device when the right hardware and POS software is combined with the mobile device.

The combined software, hardware, and peripheral devices at a POS station manage the selling process, typically driven by a sales associate or cashier. Modern POS systems now have stations created for the customer to check themselves out by scanning and bagging their own items, then paying with a debit or credit card. The POS is sometimes referred to as the Point of Purchase (POP) when discussing it from the retailers perspective.

For SMB retailers, the POS will be customized by retail industry as different industries have different needs. For example, a grocery or candy store will need a scale at the point of sale, while bars and restaurants will need to customize the item sold when a customer has a special meal or drink request. The modern point of sale will also include advanced functionalities to cater to different verticals, such as inventory, CRM, financials, warehousing, and so on, all built into the POS software. Prior to the modern POS, all of these functions were done independently and required the manual re-keying of information, which resulted in a lot of errors.