Case study of implementing an open source point-of-sale system

[Nicholai Burton]

We recently implemented an open source point-of-sale at the Film Society called uniCenta oPOS. Totally free and it took about 30 minutes to set up two computers and connect them to a central database. It's the best free one out there, after several months of trying different systems. Our volunteers, young and old, come out to work for an hour at a time, once or twice a month, so ease-of-use was very important. The system required about 10 minutes of training, after which everyone so far has picked it up pretty quickly. I highly recommend it if you're ready to move off paper at your gift shop, school store, or ticket booth.

It's touchscreen based so you can do it all without touching a keyboard. It integrates pole displays, receipt printers, and cash drawers. We're running it on 4-year-old donated laptops with very low system specs, and it's zippy and responsive. It's Java, so it will run on Windows, Mac, or Linux.

I'm working to get Internet access at our venue, so we're not taking advantage of the credit card integration and I can't speak to it yet. And our merchandise inventory is pretty small (fewer than 50 different items) so we don't use its barcode scanning features, though I've read up on some small convenience stores using it very successfully.

You can read more about it from my blog here: http://nicholaiburton.com/blog/2012/finally-a-decent-open-source-point-of-sale-system. I'm also a PATH volunteer, so post replies here with questions, or create a ticket if you're interested in implementing it at your nonprofit and I can help you get started.

[Michael Carnell]

Very cool!  Sounds like something you might need to do a session for PATH on in the future.

I assume it links to cash drawers and receipt printers?  As you can tell, I haven't read your full review yet - though I have it open in another tab.  

Did you look at the Square device when doing this? I know it isn't open source, but they just released full point of sale features for it - though you would need the Internet. And it is geared more to credit card sales.

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Michael Carnell
Charleston, SC
Contact Me     

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[Nicholai Burton]

I mentioned both of those hardware pieces in my post above. It integrates with all the normal POS hardware (including scales for pricing by weight).

We use Square sometimes when selling memberships offsite. However it's not feasible for regular operations, since it would require that volunteers at both the ticket booth and concession stand have a smartphone.

[Michael Carnell]

Just finished reading the review. Very cool.  Of course I could harass you that your blog is running on WordPress! ;)

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Michael Carnell
Charleston, SC
Contact Me     

On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Nicholai Burton <nichola...@gmail.com> wrote:

I mentioned both of those hardware pieces in my post above. It integrates with all the normal POS hardware (including scales for pricing by weight).

We use Square sometimes when selling memberships offsite. However it's not feasible for regular operations, since it would require that volunteers at both the ticket booth and concession stand have a smartphone.

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[James Moffitt]

Nicholai

You did a good job on the product review.  Thanks for taking the time to share this with all of us.  :)