Can You Access Your Own Cash Register Data?

jeronimo989 writes "A customer of mine has a small shop and asked me to look for an electronic cash register. One of the requirements is to retrieve the sales data from the cash register in some accessible format so he can import it in the software of his choice (which happens to be OpenOffice), either by downloading the data on a Flash card, connecting a laptop via USB, or even via a direct modem connection. As far as the cash register itself is concerned, he doesn't need anything too fancy; any 'entry level' machine for small businesses is probably OK (as long as it keeps an electronic journal, of course). Which options do we have? Are there cash register manufacturers out there that allow accessing the sales data directly in an open format? Does anyone here have experience with setting up a link between a cash register and PC, preferably using free/open source solutions?"

It really doesn't work this way...

[mridoni (228377)]

... modern cash registers simply output on a serial or USB port all the transaction data entered, and receive informations on goods for PLUs (Price Look-Ups): when a barcode on a product is scanned, the cash register "asks" to a server the corresponding price and description to be printed on your receipt, etc. Most cash registers are actually (at least here in Italy, and in a reasonably sized shop) just a specialized keyboard/screen/cash drawer connected to a PC, which in turn sits on a network: it's all part of a turn-key system, maintenance included. It's not like you go and read the data *from* the cash register: while you can query it for some daily report, you usually just store the data on a server and use some custom app or a DB frontend to read it.

Re:

[dbIII (701233)]

The problem is some of these things are not really modern cash registers but instead general purpose PCs not paticularly well set up to pretend to be a cash registers. I once had a short term contract with a place that made the things that will remain nameless. I can't mention the company name because that was the admin password on ALL of the deployed units! Changing the password prevented various things like updates from working. Windows CE would be acceptable for this sort of thing, Win2k possible giv

Re:

[Paradise Pete (33184)]

I once had a short term contract with a place that made the things that will remain nameless.

I'll bet sales would increase if they named them.

Re:

[innerweb (721995)]

Some solutions, not tested and not reviewed, but simply googled. I have used other solutions for clients in the past. They have worked well on an IBM systems that was networked. The data wound up on a postgresql database that was then linked through a client application and a web server for different kinds of reporting and control.

These are just a few of the listings off of Google on a search:

• One solution reviewed [open-mag.com]
• More solutions ... [emcelettronica.com]
• More solutions from tech republic... [com.com]
• An article on Infoworld [infoworld.com]

Rem

Put it on the Internet

[PartPricer (975066)]

Please tell him to make it accessible via the Internet and to not encrypt his credit card data. It would make life so much easier for my Russian friends.

Ever heard of PCI-DSS [pcisecuritystandards.org]?

A suggestion

[WindBourne (631190)]

If you are looking for all this, it would be nice to have register where the customer can plug in a USB drive and then have the register load the "receipt" on it. I am always amazed that none of the stores have this. I know that it would be useful to buy food from King Soopers and then take the info home and plug it into various applications including a kitchen app and a budget app.

Re:

[deniable (76198)]

Think about it from the point of view of the guys supporting such a setup. Think about the kinds of problem customers who would get involved and the people you have working the floor. Can you still guarantee security?

An alternative I could see working is for them to email a copy of the receipt, but it would probably only work if you had one of their loyalty cards or whatever. (I'm just as happy giving a random shop my email as I would be having random USB devices plugged into my financial systems.)

Re:

[Mathinker (909784)]

> fairly trivial to make secure. ... do not allow anything to moved from the plug to the register

All I can say is, I hope you don't work in the computer security field.

How is the driver going to access the USB drive without transferring data from the plug? You do realize that the driver is going to need to read a lot of data about the state of the filesystem, right? System drivers, especially third-party ones, are well known to be weak points in the security of a lot of systems.

E.g., A Linux kernel vulne [securityfocus.com]

Re:A suggestion

[Mathinker (909784)]

Now that I think about it, maybe that link isn't as connected as I thought... :(

I was looking more for something like this [secunia.com].

Too bad I can't make that post disappear by moderating the thread. :)

Re:

[God'sDuck (837829)]

Why does it need to be super secure? Credit card transactions are done using a separate "turnkey" machine. A small-store register receipt is nothing but a list of items with no name attached. If someone p0wned your machine the worst they could do that takes hacking knowledge (breaking the machine can be done with a hammer) is change some item to ring up at the wrong value -- or learn that people who by baby wipes also buy baby diapers. Whoopty do. So a basic firewall on an updated OS should be plenty.

Re:

[Kijori (897770)]

If you are looking for all this, it would be nice to have register where the customer can plug in a USB drive and then have the register load the "receipt" on it. I am always amazed that none of the stores have this. I know that it would be useful to buy food from King Soopers and then take the info home and plug it into various applications including a kitchen app and a budget app.

I'm not convinced. Sounds like it'll take longer, create problems when USB devices don't work, create problems when someone's stick uses a different file system, open a new vector for attack, increase maintenance costs and have no real advantage over an easy, secure paper receipt which most people will choose anyway. If you want to put your food into a budget/kitchen app you already can - you have the receipt and, failing that, the food itself.

Re:A suggestion

[Kijori (897770)]

hmmm. So you think that plugging in USB card in a system that OWNS the driver, that it will cross-infect the register? ha ha ha Start using Linux or something that is secure. You window nuts ARE sociopaths.

An excellent point, since Linux can never have any vulnerabilites [securityfocus.com] or bugs [securityfocus.com] ever.

Security requires more than just choosing the more secure operating system, you have to protect your system - for example by not letting strangers plug in devices.

Re:

[EdIII (1114411)]

LOL. I was just going for a +5 Funny mod.

I did not mean to start a flame war with an AC over Linux/Microsoft. "Securing the system" would preclude any activities like this. I can see a targeted attack by individuals to first infect a cash register, and then later on grab lists of credit card numbers, pin codes, etc. and transfer them to USB sticks covertly. It would not even matter if these covert files were placed on innocent customers sticks. All it would take is for one of the attackers to grab it at

Quickbooks Terminal

[Taelron (1046946)]

For a couple of hundred bucks he can get a Quickbooks terminal running on embeded Xp. Then all he has to do is export the quickbooks data or just access the pc for the info. The terminals are fully functional PC's, Registers, and loaded with Quickbooks.

http://shop2.outpost.com/%7Byf7-gwJCCQm5GvlczRQ4zQ**.node3%7D/product/5380498;jsessionid=yf7-gwJCCQm5GvlczRQ4zQ**.node3?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG [outpost.com]
QUICKBOOKS 2008 POS BASIC W/HARDWARE

INTUIT:
For Windows
FRYS.com #: 5380498
QuickBooks Point of Sale Basic is a complete retail management solution that tracks inventory, sales and customer information to help you save time and serve your customers better. Includes easy-to-use software and retail hardware including a bar code scanner, cash drawer, receipt printer and credit card swipe* guaranteed to work together.**

Re:Quickbooks Terminal

[timmarhy (659436)]

ever used quickbooks? no? that's why you think it's a good idea.

Re:Quickbooks Terminal

[Kalriath (849904)]

Since when has $1,300 been a couple of hundred?

Re:Quickbooks Terminal

[by Anonymous Coward]

Since before the US completly fucked their dollar. I think they're in competition with Zimbabwe.

Check out Circuit City

[londonit (1193627)]

I worked in a rollout project with Circuit City whenthey replaced some of their POS systems. The new boxes were some IBM POS solutions with linux on them - I dont know from the top of my head but they seemd out of the box solutions - They pulled OS and all from BOOTP server, but I suppose you could get them preinstalled and all. Maybe IBM has more suggestions.

Checkout (POS) for mac

[kalleh (678159)]

http://www.checkoutapp.com/ [checkoutapp.com]

FYI

[WK2 (1072560)]

Just so everyone knows:

POS = Point of Sale
POS = Piece of Shit

For the most part, the POS's in this thread are the first choice.

Re:FYI

[dwater (72834)]

Just so everyone knows:

POS = Point of Sale
POS = Piece of Shit

For the most part, the POS's in this thread are the first choice.

The actual posts in this thread, on the other hand....

Re:

[dattaway (3088)]

I thought it was management that referred to the *employee* operating the unit as a POS.

Re:FYI

[87C751 (205250)]

POS = Point of Sale
POS = Piece of Shit

For the most part, the POS's in this thread are the first choice.

Not after that second assignment.

It works for both

[DragonHawk (21256)]

For the most part, the POS's in this thread are the first choice.

Actually, in my experience as an IT consultant and admin, most POS systems are also a POS.

Like a lot of vertical markets, this one seems to be infested with companies producing poorly engineered products with no mind for security, usability, interoperability, or ease of IT management. They're usually highly proprietary and overpriced, to boot.

Re:

[AaronLawrence (600990)]

It's true. Basically it's a niche, and driven more by accounting and marketing than practicality and security. No vendor can afford to meet all the requirements including security, a nice easy user interface, rigorous testing, all the promotions ideas marketing can think of, the interface-du-jour to head office systems etc. So everybody just makes do with (barely) adequate systems.

I should know, I work on one ;)

Also, even now there are benefits to using hardware designed for the job rather than PC model #92

Maybe Stoq?

[GauteL (29207)]

I haven't tried it, since I'm not in the retail business, but Stoq [stoq.com.br] is an open source Point of Sale system supported by a brazilian company called Async [async.com.br].

It is GTK based and uses PostgreSQL for database storage (so extracting data should be a breeze). It also comes with a LiveCD so you can try it out yourself.

Sharp

[N3Roaster (888781)]

I see a lot of comments already jumping on fancy POS systems, but if a basic cash register is really all that is needed, get to your local office store and take a look at what's there. A basic Sharp cash register (and probably registers from other makers as well) will store this data on a SD card or allow a USB connection to a computer. The software they (Sharp, don't know about others) provide is crap, but the data you get back is CSV which can be imported into any spreadsheet program. It's basic, but if that's all you need it does the trick.

Re:Sharp

[supersnail (106701)]

Mod parent down!!
He answered the OPs question.
He answered it sensibly.
He did not recommend any Freeware, Payware or Painware.
He did not even critique the operating system used.

We cannot condone such postings. What if everybody came to expect Slashdot posting to be relevent, even credible.

DataSym

[shyster (245228)]

Since nobody else seems to understand the difference between an electronic cash register and a PC based point of sale system - I'll throw in what little I know of ECRs.

DataSym makes a software product called Comm2000 that communicates with their ECRs. It can poll nightly to retrieve sales information, or you can have the register output the data on each sale. You can also maintain SKU lists, etc.

We have a few DataSym and older Sharp registers on the network (with a serial-TCP/IP device server), and the sales are captured in real time without going through Comm2000. Formats are a little obtuse, but reverse engineerable without documentation if you needed to.

Nightly, there's a fairly old version of Comm2000 that sends out SKU lists, register layouts, etc. The processing is held together with shell scripts and some custom C code, but I think Comm2000 is the standard EXE. This is all on a UNIX box, designed circa 1993, so YMMV.

Fortunately for me, but unfortunate for you, I have very little to do with the ECR side of things. But, I'd imagine most ECRs these days offer something similar, and I see DataSym still has Comm2000 [datasym.com]. Since ECRs don't really seem to be in the /. sweet spot, I'd suggest giving your local distributor a call.

Why use a register in the first place?

[j35ter (895427)]

IMHO a POS system has a superior flexibility for small shops; especially if the developer is willing to alter the software to fit specific needs.

Been selling these little buggers for way under 1k$ and most complaints have been met with some coding, which helped me keep the whole matter modularized.

been their done that

[oliverthered (187439)]

A few year ago I had to write an application that linked up sales data to data from beer line flow monitors, all of the registers we had to operate with could provide sales information. Most often it was from a database that the till connected to, but sometimes it was directly from the till itself. To get good data (or any data) we usually had to contact the till manufacturers and ask them for details of how to access the data etc... they usually provided us with documentation we could work to, or sometime

Do not use PC based registers

[OzTech (524154)]

If you use any x86 based registers with a custom (or shelf) application which "mimics" a real cash-register, you will immediately be caught in vendor lock-in.

My suggestion is to look at what is available from real cash-register manufacturers. Most if not all of these vendors will have a serial (or other) interface which will upload/download data using standard ASCII, comma-delimited files.

This should reduce your task to a simple import/export routine with perhaps a little data massaging to get it into/out-of whatever back end system you want to use/develop.

I successfully used Sharp cash registers for this over 15 years ago. All of the PLU (Price-Look-Up) codes and pricing (stock levels, re-order etc) was stored on a DEC-VAX, basic reporting data was stored on a PC based SQL and generated using Crystal, Access or whatever. A single PC application spoke to the VAX every night, then contacted every register, downloaded sales data and uploaded new/changed PLU data, then massaged the data from the registers and sent it back to the VAX and also dumped what stuff into the SQL database.

With ASCII PLU/pricing/sales data coming from the registers it was a snack and allowed the company to move from a mini-computer architecture to a PC/LAN/SQL environment seamlessly. I'd be surprised if the current offerings from register manufacturers was much different today than it was back then as there really is no reason for it to be any different.

Open database

[Tumbarumba (74816)]

I had the same problem a few months ago. I really wanted an open POS system for the children's shoe shop [lillifoot.co.uk] my wife opened last year. We wanted a better system of managing inventory than the manual spreadsheet we were using.

I wasn't really that happy with any of the open source solutions I looked at (mainly LanePos and BananaPOS), mainly because I don't really have time to maintain these systems myself, and I wasn't convinced the support operations would work for us. We eventually did find a commercial provi

Re:

[Tumbarumba (74816)]

Sure: it's Montana [montanaretail.co.uk]. I didn't originally post the link because I'm not sure I'd fully recommend them at this stage. We've found the barcoding not quite up to scratch, minor usability issues with the UI, and I'm not fully happy with the support. Nevertheless, when I asked them to change their terms to allow open access to the database, they were happy to comply.

for a few hundred quid

[greebowarrior (961561)]

he could get a cheap mac off ebay, or a mac mini, and use Checkout [checkoutapp.com]

Try this one

[mopwr (512795)]

Give this one a try.

http://www.openbravo.com/product/pos/ [openbravo.com]

Its simple and has export options.

I've used it since it was tinaPOS and it has worked good for me.

Horse first, cart second....

[Ollabelle (980205)]

This is not a case of hardware hacking, folks.

These electronic cash registers are designed to have their collected data extracted from them in some fashion, so the logical place to start is the cash register vendors themselves to find out how it can be retrieved and the software systems that can use it. Something integrated with the accounting system/bank reconciliation would be nice. If it's a hard process, then that's likely the machine to avoid.

The second question, in fact should probably be the first, is to decide exactly what kind of data is to be collected: bar-code data, department codes, and the number of different sales taxes applicable to the site. These kind of questions will dictate the complexity of the machine to be purchased. All cash registers will do the normal daily control functions, running and daily totals. What you're looking for a machine that will deliver higher-level data to support the management of the business, so you need to start with those management objectives, then see how the extraction process fits into the accounting system, and only then decide on a machine to support those systems.

A Software Solution Is Available.

[AndGodSed (968378)]

Disclaimer - I do not work for this company, but I have used this software package(s) extensively.

Softline Pastel.

It is an accounting software, so he will be able to do accounting of everything that has gone through the books, includes a payroll package, tax package and among even more other things: support for P.O.S (Point Of Sale)

What Pastel allows you to do wit P.O.S is:

Every Transaction gets recorded real time.
Operates P.O.S drawer.
Your Accountant can access what sales are in your P.O.S remotely (via lan, or with an add on via web - IIRC on that last one)
Supports "cash up" end of day to a removable drive.

It runs on Windows unfortunately - if you are inclined to run other OS's. Has a server module and can run the server/client on the same machine - ideal for small business.

www.pastel.co.za

Apologies for the spammy post everybody - like I said I am not employed by them, but it is a good piece of software with support for international currencies/tax etc.

$250 gets you one with a scanner and data dump

[Tsu Dho Nimh (663417)]

For about $250 you can get this: http://www.cashregistersonline.com/store/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=387 [cashregistersonline.com]

Serial connection to connect the register to your PC or bar code scanner. Software includes a filter that downloads your end of day report totals directly to your QuickBooks Pro or Peachtree accounting programs.

Re:Lame

[by Anonymous Coward]

Did you even look at the page you're hawking? The features tab has only a place holder, the forum tab is utterly blank, and the manual is V 0.1.0, last updated 2004.

Re:

[TapeCutter (624760)]

"last updated 2004"

So your saying the term "functionally stable" is a bad thing?

Re:Lame

[by Anonymous Coward]

It is when the "b" is a typo.

Re:Lame

[The Ancients (626689)]

You know it doesn't hurt to do some research.

This IS slashdot. It doesn't hurt to RTFA either (when they're there) but there's still a large number of readers here that don't want to risk it .

But yes - a simple google search did turn up a number of solutions. My guess is that the submitter wants to short circuit the process of working his/her way through them, and tap into the collective knowledge of /.ers.

Re:LameNot /.

[OldHawk777 (19923)]

For the past decade the /. community has kept me more informed about technology than any other source. /. is not always first with some topics, but eventually almost all intelligent technology content leads to /..

I have noticed government/military/CoOpGhost and politicians/corporatist/religious trolls on /. all trying to become more informed or attempting to suppress the truth with plausibly_logical_spin-reasoning (they always fail). The truth always gains from their adamant refrain being discovered as far

Re:Lame

[alzoron (210577)]

Hell, he coulda have searched Slashdot alone:

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/24/2012230 [slashdot.org]
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/13/0116212 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/12/166251 [slashdot.org]

Re:

[wfWebber (715881)]

Well, the software you found is a real POS alright. Seems Google still does an intelligent search match :)

Re:Lame

[xtracto (837672)]

Everytime someone posts some question on slashdot there is inevitably some idiot who will answer to "goolge it" or "source forge it" or whatever similar.

I am sure the original poster did know about goolge and maybe he even did look in there before posting here but the idea of asking in slashdot is to see what the opinions of other people with *knowledge* (supposedly) are. For me as a slashdot reader is quite interesting, because the discussion usually brings several alternatives and answers which are up to date (instead of web pages that someties are outdated) and even some comments which are worthy.

Plenty of times I have recurred to an ask slashdot that I had seen before to look at what people *in the know* are using, instead of just looking at the advertisements thrown by each of the avaialble products (either Free or non Free).

So if the only advise you are going to give is to "google it", just shut up and go to troll to the next slashdot story. You are only polluting an otherwise interesting conversation.

Re:

[Bastard of Subhumani (827601)]

Everytime someone posts some question on slashdot there is inevitably some idiot who will answer to "goolge it"

Indeed, anyone who can't spell 'google' is a total fucking imbecile.

Re:Lame

[ATMD (986401)]

And I (native to England) would half expect to see a lot of Microsoft-funded pages when Googling for "linux pos".

Re:

[cerberusss (660701)]

Because software costs more than a bog-standard cash register.