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.

PHP Point Of Sale 16.2 Released!

We are proud to announce that PHP Point Of Sale 16.2 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 16.2:

• Can now track opening and closing amounts for credit, debit, check, and gift card payment types
• In inventory logging you can now see how much quantity you did have at a point in time (Going forward)
• Now tracking weight and dimensions for products. This is also exported/imported from woo commerce
• Can now exclude/include variations from being available online in woo commerce
• Can now tweak barcode printing to support varied label sizes
• Added new filter to customers summary report that allows filtering by number of sales
• Added New Customers report that outputs how many customers were added for a given date range
• Added mode to purchase points to the sales interface
• Can now attach files to customers, employee, and suppliers
• Import shipping classes from woo commerce for use with shipping
• Added suspended sales section to closeout report
• Quantity and reorder level now displayed in item modal for all locations
• Can now re-order favorite reports
• Added grouping the week, month, and year to sales summary report
• Added Average number of sales for time period to sales summary report
• Added transfers report
• Can now show the items that were NOT counted for an inventory count
• Added item filter to sales summary report
• Average # of items for purchases AND average ticket size --> customers summary report
• Items summary report can now be split by variation
• Added custom date range to inventory expire report
• Can now sync Woo Commerce Tax Classes for items
• Can now receive serial numbers via receivings module
• Can now do item level tier pricing
• Added zip code reports to see which zip codes you are selling to most
• Added price rule summary report
• Can now display custom fields on receipts
• Added Default days to expiration for items
• Added total number of sales to the employees --> summary report
• Added store configuration option to set a minimum amount of points you need before redeeming them
• Now have long description for items
• Can now set an amount to spend on show coupon on receipt
• Display company logo, name, and website on customer facing display
• Can now export a PO/receiving to excel
• Now have option to disable confirmation for a receiving
• Display announcements/specials on customer facing display

PHP Point Of Sale Reviewed by Fit Small Business

Our product has been reviewed by the popular software selection site Fit Small Business. You can see our review at https://fitsmallbusiness.com/reviews/pos-reviews/page/4/. We are happy they have reviewed our product as we continue improving product and extend our reach!

PHP Point Of Sale Partners with Denver Business Design Consulting for eCommerce web site design

PHP Point Of Sale has partnered with Denver Business Design Consulting to provide our clients with an excellent and affordable eCommerce design company for our customers.

With the DBDC partnership they will be able to build a fully compatible and functional eCommerce site using Wordpress and Woocommerce that works right out of the box with PHP Point Of Sale. We are thrilled for this partnership and hope many of our customers can benefit from this..

Why Loyalty Programs Are AWESOME!

Loyalty systems are a great way to keep customers coming back! Many business such as hair salons, department stores, and many types of businesses have loyalty programs in place. Setting this up can sometimes be hard and time consuming. However if you use PHP Point Of Sale, we offer 2 ways to set this up and it couldn't be easier!

We have 2 loyalty systems in php pos a points based system (Advanced) and a frequency of visit (Simple).

1. Advanced point based system: This allows you to define a ratio of Spend amount --> Point Awarded. Then you can sent an amount that each point is worth. This works out really well as customers can collect points and use them as they want. The number of points is listed on their receipt so they are incentivized to come back!
2. Simple: This allows you to set a specific number of sales that a customer much achieve and upon meeting this goal their next sale then can get X% off. This works great for many businesses and is really simple to setup

All of this is easily setup in store config with a few clicks! It is really that easy and this will help customers keep coming back!