ElitePoS is a standalone, general purpose, customizable PoS application for small business owners. Besides recording transactions, the application tracks inventory items, print informative invoices and receipts, produce report using analyzed transaction processing data and manage entities related to the business.
Summary of scope
- Billing
- Invoice generation
- Purchasing
- Inventory management features with bar codes
- Employee management
- Report generation
- Access control
- Customization features for small business owners
Detailed Functionality
Stocks
System allows entity management for suppliers, categories, products and employees. Stocks obtained by various suppliers can be recorded, and subsequently updated when reductions and returns are made. Discounts can also be added to stocks.
Billing
An easy to use billing interface is provided by the application for sales people. They will have to input the stock Id of the product to keep clear track of the inventory status. Upon billing, stocks would be automatically deducted.
Access Control
Divided access and limited control of the application are provided for varying levels of employee responsibilities
- Sales Person would directly access the sales section of the application.
- Store manager would have access to Inventory segment to keep the stocks up to date. He would also be allowed to access and manage Suppliers, Product, Category, Discounts, Returns and Reductions due to the possible compartmentalization of the business model
- Administrator (Business owner) would have access all of the above and reports made from the raw data of the database. He would also be allowed to make basic decisions about how he wants to handle the application.
Settings
Following settings will be provided to administrators
- The ability for the user to host the database in a convenient location
- Enabling/Disabling barcodes – User could choose to not have a barcode reading process involved. In this case, owner can disable or enable barcode printing for stocks in future as required.
- Stock selection procedure – User could be only purchasing one stock at a time, which would render the stock selection element of the point of sale section useless and time consuming. A custom setting disable stock selection is provided.
- Backup procedures for system log and current database
Reports and statistical summaries
- Product Analysis
- Profit margins
- Sales growth – Current year and last year current month’s sales
- Supplier Analysis – Discount percentage, refunded amount of all returns, reasons that items were returned
- Overall statistics of products and stocks
- Profit and loss report for the month regarding sales and purchasing
- Monthly Employee analysis
- Analysis of overall returns and reductions
Recommendations for practical use
A stable internet connection is required in order to prevent data loss if the mysql database is hosted online. If not, the local server should be maintained in a proper way to serve the same purpose. The database is made in mysql in order to give the user a chance to develop a website if needed. The stocks could be updated as the people place an order and check out from the shopping cart so the reports produced by the application could still be consistent with marketing. It is further recommended that the administrators back up databases and logs frequently with the options provided in the application, as well as from the mysql host.
Conclusion
ElitePoS is a general purpose point of sale application that includes functionality of a transaction processing system which provides certain decision support capabilities. Options to customize the product according to the customers’ needs are provided to assert the general-purpose nature. In the interest of enabling small business owners, providing insights and summarized analysis of sales and inventory are further integrated to the system.
As further improvements, employee analysis report could be updated to include overtime and other salary increments in the payroll system.