PHP Point Of Sale 16.5 Released!

We are proud to announce that PHP Point Of Sale 16.5 has been released and now available.

This is a big upgrade and we are proud to announce! This is recommended for all users to upgrade.

New Features/Improvements in 16.5:

• Can now track appointments for customers and assign them to employees
• Ability to collect and track partial payments for store accounts
• When doing a return you can now track how many were damaged so they are NOT returned to stock
• Added image custom field type
• Added quantity multiplier for scanning type 5*12345 where quantity is 5 and code is 12345
• Can now do location-specific pricing per variation
• Can now disable item & item kits from price rules
• Can now override taxes for sales & receivings at an item level
• Can now disable gift cards from loyalty (As a store config option)
• API now has sort col and sort dir
• Can now add a second language to appear on receipts (Store config option)
• Added an optional shipping cost field to receivings
• Can now hide tier on receipt (Store config option)
• Store account payment type is hidden if over credit limit or the credit limit is 0
• Added option to only send stock alerts for re-order level only (NOT out of stock)
• Can now E-Mail all purchase orders or sales to a specific e-mail
• Minor bug fixes and Feature improvements

PHP Point Of Sale 16.4 Released!

We are proud to announce that PHP Point Of Sale 16.4 has been released and now available.

This is a big upgrade and we are proud to announce! This is recommended for all users to upgrade.

New Features/Improvements in 16.4:

• Can now sync with quickbooks online
• Can now have price rules apply at only specific locations
• Can now have kits inside Kits
• Added average cost per unit to price variance reports
• New permission "process returns" that can restrict employees from doing returns
• New permission "suspend sale" that can restrict employees from suspending sales
• Can now hide expire date on barcodes
• Added web hooks for creating a new customer or a new sale
• Can now have a default quantity for items & item kits which is used when selling or receiving
• Can now override taxes on the fly for sales + receivings
• Added option to hide prices on recv. receipts
• Added payment type for expenses
• Now able to save settings for barcode labels
• Can now edit overall subtotal of a sale or receiving
• Employee can be assigned a default register

PHP Point Of Sale 16.3 Released!

We are proud to announce that PHP Point Of Sale 16.3 has been released and now available.

This is a big upgrade and we are proud to announce! This is recommended for all users to upgrade.

New Features/Improvements in 16.3:

• Added support for square credit card processing
• Added option Allow price override regardless of permissions for items and item kits
• Now showing item description in stock alerts
• Can find out the balance of customer and supplier store accounts on a given day
• Can now support items that are bought in series such as 6 pack of haircuts that have an expire date
• Can now attach custom fields to sales and receivings (Up to 10)
• Now support merchant supplied gift cards for processors using a USB integration or tran cloud
• Added alerts for when cash drops below or goes above a configured limit for a register
• Added time off requests to time clock section. Employee can request paid or unpaid time off which can be approved
• Can now assign a customer to a location
• Improved items not counted page to count variations and items directly from the report/page. Can also filter by category
• Can now search by variation in the custom report
• Now can set "Only allow items to be sold in whole numbers" for items and item kits so the quantity can't be changed to a non integer
• Added COGS to sales --> detailed report and items --> Summary report
• Can now set for items + item kits if the items is barcoded. When printing barcodes only items that have this option will print barcodes.
• Added internal notes field for customers that you can set during a sale or outside to make internal notes about a customer
• Added employee permission "See inventory count when counting inventory"
• Can now specify main image for use with grid and item search
• Added employee permission "Can edit suspended sale"
• Added margin calculator for items + item kits
• Can now track cost price per serial number
• Enhanced category report to show inventory data along with sales data
• Added store config option to allow customer to be scanned into the item field
• Many minor fixes

PHP Point Of Sale Featured as Companies To Watch by Software Executive Magazine

PHP Point Of Sale was recently featured is Software Executive Magazine in their recent issue for companies to watch! We are honored to be featured in this publication!


About Software Executive magazine:

Software Executive magazine helps software businesses grow by showcasing the business best practices of our readers, executives from a wide variety of B2B software companies. Software Executive’seditorial is vertical and platform agnostic, and covers startups to mature companies. Our thought leadership articles, feature stories, executive profiles, and guest columns help software companies understand how to finance growth, implement sales and marketing solutions, build effective customer service and customer success operations, price their software effectively, prepare an exit strategy, build indirect sales channels, and more. Software Executive is not a tech-focused publication, it is a business-level resource to help executives grow and scale successful, profitable, sustainable software companies.

PHP Point Of Sale Featured as Front Runner by Gartner Digital Markets

PHP Point Of Sale has been featured as a front runner based on how well our customers have reviewed our product. We are humbled with this honor and thank our customers for reviewing our product so well!

FrontRunners is a 100% data-driven assessment, positioning the top scoring products based on usability and user recommendations for small businesses, published on Software Advice. Scores are largely based on end-user reviews of your software across the three Gartner Digital Markets sites (Software Advice, Capterra and GetApp). Promotional assets are free and available for use as outlined in the FrontRunners External Usage Guidelines.

10 MUST have features your Point Of Sale System Should Have

Choosing a Point Of Sale (POS) system can seem like a big task and is one of the most important business decisions when starting out. With so many options and different cost for systems it is hard to choose. Below is a list of 10 features every POS system should have.

1. Inventory Tracking: At a basic level a POS system needs to tell you how much you to have in stock so you know what you have at the store without counting every item. Alongside this feature it should have a detailed log of what caused the inventory to change (Such as having a sale or receiving a PO).
2. Sales Tax Tracking: The only things that are certain in life is death and taxes. If your POS system cannot track tax; then it will be hard to pay your taxes each month. It should also be able to handle different types of taxes for items. Depending on the state certain items (such as food) are taxed differently than others.
3. Advanced Reporting: Reporting should be included to help you make good purchase decisions. The reporting needs to tell you which items are selling well and which aren't. There should also be reports to see which categories and manufactures are selling well also.
4. Customer Tracking: Many businesses will find it beneficial to track the customers they get. This is very useful for email marketing, sending receipts, and just knowing who your best customers are.
5. Emailing and printing of receipts: Modern POS systems should be able to email receipts and print them on a receipt printer or even a letter sized printer. The more advanced ones should be able to print from any device such as a phone or tablet. Generating a receipt from a sale should be a fast process when you evaluate POS systems.
6. Credit card processing (including EMV/chip processing): In this day and age many customers prefer to pay by credit card or debit card. If your system cannot accept modern payment; your customers will be frustrated that they can't pay with credit card. Apple Pay and Android Wallet are also great additions.
7. Employee accounts and permissions: If your business takes on employees you will want to give them access to your system; but you will want to limit their ability to change pricing and view reporting. A modern system should provide the ability to setup custom permissions so the employee can only do what is allowed
8. E-Commerce integration: Many customers love the convenience of shopping online. A good pos system will allow them to sell online. This is a great revenue stream for businesses and selling online should be included.
9. Purchase Orders: Generating purchase orders can save time when it comes to reordering product. A good pos system should make this easy based on stock level and supplier. This can save a business a lot of time to be able to generate these fast.
10. Cash Management: It is important to make sure your cash is correct in register and employees are stealing from you. A good cash management system is important when choosing a POS system.

Picking a POS system and starting a business is hard enough. The list above should help you narrow down what you need to focus on when picking a system. PHP Point Of Sale has all of these features and is very affordable and easy to setup.

Choosing a cloud vs on-premise point of sale software system

In the POS industry there are a wide variety of products out there. Before narrowing down your list of providers; it is important to decide if you want to choose a cloud based solution or an on-premise/downloaded solution.

What is the difference between a cloud and on-premise (download) solution?

A cloud (sometimes called hosted) means that all the data (inventory, customers, sales history..etc) are stored outside of your computers/systems. This means that you are entrusting the service provider with storing, backing up, and maintaining their data. They are also responsible for hosting the application on their servers and keeping it up and fast.

A download solution means that all the data is stored on your computer/server. You are then responsible for backing up and maintaining the service. This means you are responsible for keeping the software running, up to date, and available.

Advantages of cloud solution

• No software to install; turn key
• Backups and upgrades are taking care of by service provider
• Can easily be made accessible from any device
• Generally can be paid month to month with little startup costs

Advantages of on-premise solution

• You control your data; not stored in the cloud/with service provider
• Can be installed behind company firewalls for security
• Depending on the solution; you could customize to fit your needs

Disadvantages of cloud solution

• An outage at your service provider could happen; making it inaccessible 
• Always requires an internet connection
• Data might not be as portable/locked in to provider

Disadvantages of on-premise solution

• Data loss is more likely as backups systems most likely not as robust as a cloud solution
• Application upgrades are not automatic
• Generally larger up front cost; but could be cheeper in long run

How to decide between cloud and on premise

What it comes down to is weighing the pros and cons. Some service providers only offer one solution so it would be your only choice. Based on PHP Point Of Sale's experience we have found as long as your internet connection is reliable that the cloud is generally the best solution for most businesses. But if your company has strong technology the on-premise/download could also be a perfect fit.