What’s the Point of a Point of Sale (POS) System?

A point of sale system, or POS, is the place where your customer makes a payment for products or services at your store. Simply put, every time a customer makes a purchase at your store, they’re completing a point of sale transaction.

The POS serves as the central component for your business; it’s the hub where everything—like sales, inventory and customer management—merges.

As evident as the benefits of a POS system are, we found that 56 percent of single-store retailers are still not using one. Instead, we found, many are still using a combination of manual methods, cash registers, QuickBooks and Excel for bookkeeping.

So why have retailers not taken that step to POS yet? To begin with, implementing new technology—especially technology that’s central to your business process—can be scary and overwhelming. Retailers need to consider the negative consequences of failing to have a POS in place.