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New technology brings new capability. Within the retail POS hardware industry, new technology is driving change in retail hardware platforms. Cloud-based software, coupled with the emergence of powerful and feature-rich mobile devices, offers new possibilities for retailers to better serve and engage their shoppers at the Point of Purchase. Typical construction of a Point of Sale cash register is centered on a PC workstation. These cash register systems are often positioned in one or more fixed locations in the retail store. They might be served by an array of peripheral devices: a touch display, a customer pole display, a handheld scanner, a receipt printer, and a cash drawer. These peripheral devices are typically configured with serial or USB interfaces and connect to a port on the PC workstation dedicated to each device. Software developers engage each device through OPOS or native DLLs drivers created by the hardware manufacturer. In this setting, a shopper is compelled to queue up at the cash register and stage their goods for itemized sale. By contrast, software functionality and mobile device technology allow a retailer to bring the Point of Sale transaction to the shopper at their Point of Purchase. In this way, a retailer can increase shopper loyalty by providing a more convenient, more personalized, and more interactive transaction experience. A purpose-built Point of Sale solution can be developed from the ground up for the mobile transaction faster than ever. Hardware manufacturers are creating new solutions to support this trend. By selecting hardware that maximizes the benefits of a mobile transaction, a retailer can significantly improve system performance and significantly reduce the total cost of the system. However, the current PC-centric workstation architecture presents several technical challenges as a retailer chooses to deploy a mobile POS solution. Consider this example: A mobile credit transaction performed on a smart phone

Beginning in 2018 the financial accounting standards for hotel business are changing. One of the changes is the way OTAs charge for the rooms. Typically the OTAs operate under two methods the retail model and merchant model. The retail model uses the OTA to reserve the room but the final payment is made to the hotel. The hotel then gives a commission back to the OTA. Under The merchant model the payment is made to the OTA. Then the OTA takes the commission off and sends the remaining payment to the hotel for the price of the room. This comes out as a net transaction. The new standard is saying that the company that controls the transaction for the room has to mark the transaction or sale as a gross transaction. The new model forces the hotels to record the transaction on a gross basis. This can be a big difference for hotels because now they will have to increase the amount of costs and reduce the hotels bottom line.

(1 of 3) POSUSA had originally published an article in 2017 about the definition of Point-of-Sale (POS) and a guide to understanding POS more in depth. This article was updated in May of 2021 to represent the ongoing challenges in the hospitality industry due to COVID-19. The article begins by defining a POS transaction as "what takes place between a merchant and a customer when a product or service is purchased, commonly using a point of sale system to complete the transaction." The original idea of a POS system was that of a cash register, but what is in the system make up today is far more complex. A POS system and a POS terminal are one in the same, as the terminal is the physical piece of equipment that processes the information for the POS. The system is composed of many different components as with any piece of technology. "The hardware components bundle will typically include a POS terminal, receipt printer, credit card reader, cash drawer, barcode scanner, kitchen or bar printer (for restaurants), and possibly even an on-site computer server for older legacy systems." These systems continue to make advancements that evolve with the times and can keep up efficiently with the business they are working with.

(2 of 3) The article continues on to discuss the many different types of POS systems and how they can be used for different types of businesses. The restaurant POS system, for example, is the most complex POS system and is the most commonly seen system in the industry. Through the restaurant POS, a business can have a restaurant management system, which helps them run the business efficiently through features such as recipe costing, customer management, reporting, and many other features discussed. Bar, nightclub, retail, small business, salon, and spa POS systems all have very similar features, but are catered to each businesses specific operational need. Cloud-based and mobile POS systems are also discussed in the article as a way to store all POS information in the cloud. The advantages of mPOS were discussed in depth as this can be accessed through an application, making mobility much easier in our ever-advancing technological world.

(3 of 3) The article also provided an introduction of how POS systems work, as a basic understanding is necessary when considering purchasing a system. Through understanding how the POS system works, we see that a POS transaction is "simply any transaction that occurs within a business." POS payment is "when a customer and merchant exchange products or services completing a POS transaction aka point of sale purchase," which can sometimes be referred to as point of purchase, or POP. Finally, the article discusses how POS systems have played a role during the pandemic. While online POS systems have been used for many years to keep businesses on their feet, during the current state of the world this has become even more necessary. The article discusses how important it is to keep the payment process simple, yet secure so that the business may rely on this as a way to make income and customers can enjoy a seamless experience. This article does a very good job of explaining in-depth what a POS system is and how it is relevant to every line of business in the hospitality industry. As online sales continue to grow and as the state of the world remains uncertain, POS system popularity will only continue to rise and advance to create the best possible experience for both the businesses and consumers involved.

This article does a great job of showing the history of the point of sales system and looking at the future of the POS System. Point of sales, or retail transactions, have been around since humans were created. Cash transactions took place between consumers and merchants, and the cash was kept in a box. The cash register, a mechanical cash box, was the first real POS System that kept track of revenues. It wasn't until businesses started using barcodes that the POS really started to change. Merchants could process sales more quickly and accurately. Restaurants were among the first to use mobile POS systems. Staff could process credit cards at the table, and place orders without ever having to write an order down. Apple, for example, eliminates the cash register altogether and handles all transactions from hand-held devices. These new systems of POS reduce labor costs and increase productivity. The elimination of written orders increases the accuracy of servers and gives customers a better quality of service. The future of the POS System is bright. Restaurants have created iPhone apps that allow customers to place their orders before they even reach the restaurant, while others let servers carry around a small computer that allows them to process transactions from wherever they are. Even more advancements are beginning to take place. Encrypted card readers and contact less payment methods will increase the security of mobile POS systems. Eventually a person's cell phone will be able to be passed over a terminal and act as a credit card. These advancements are ultimately to create more time for the guest and the business as well as make shopping more automatic. In today's society where people are controlled by the need to shop, a more automatic type of transaction is the best invention.

The geniuses over at Apple may have finally broken the code (so to speak) on secure transactions and electronic data interchange. Under their new Apple Pay program, arriving with the iPhone 6 in 10 days, users can pay for their transactions with a touch of their finger on their own phone. A unique transaction ID is created for each use, meaning the card data (secured by hardware, software AND biometrics on the phone) never leaves your hand, but the bank and the vendor conduct a highly secure transaction. Apple is launching with support for 83% of credit cards in use and a host of vendors who are ready to accept your digital transfer. Noticeably absent from the list was the world's largest retailer, Walmart. However, if Apples gambit is successful (as the majority of them are), Walmart would be crazy not to follow suit. I would gladly forego a few more things in my pockets if I can still have instant access to the same transaction power from my phone.

This article discusses the unknown impact on the structure of the fees of debit card transactions that is more commonly used in restaurants as a form of payment. The impact of the Durbin Amendment has not made an significant role in whether restaurants or hotels will feel the need to invest in anti-fraud technology. Even though most restaurants are in need of this type of technology. I wonder what the impact this would make on the restaurants if they were to invest in such a technology would it make it easier to track fraudulent charges made, and combat them. What do restaurants do in cases when fraudulent activity has taken place? How do they account for it on their inventory side? On the sales end the transaction will be decline by the vendor of the card but the options left for restaurants are to "eat the cost". How is this handled?

This article deals with the theft that happens on a daily basis in the hospitality field. It happens when credit cards are used to pay for something, like a reservation, and thieves want the information, so they can use your credit card number for whatever intentions they may have. As the article states, "our data is under attack". I can relate to those people that have had credit card numbers stolen, because it has happened to my husband and me, and it is a horrible feeling trying to get your life back on track and recover your money.  I think it would be a great idea, with some research, to get the point to point encryption technology in a field where credit cards are used so often, not only to cover the business (hotel), but also to protect the guest, so they feel at easy when they travel on vacation or business.  The overall point of this technology is to encrypt the information as close to the point of entry, i.e. the swiping of the credit card, as possible. This would in turn "significantly reduce a merchant's card data environment", as the program would encrypt the information so that hackers cannot access the customer's information. As I mentioned earlier, questions should be asked before buying this technology, as there is always something new on the market that may be better. Credit cards are not always swiped, but can also be manually placed in the system, so you want to make sure, that both transactions are protected. Overall, the establishment should always be concerned about the customer and their safety, whether physical or mental and always be prepared for the worse.

Great article! Personally after being a victim of credit card fraud, I'm very apprehensive of where I shop, who handles my card and how long it takes them to return it. I recently cancelled a large purchased after the cashier insisted on rubbing my card number on the reciept after the transactions had be approved. In my mind, I was thinking "If I let you do that, then I've open the door for anyone to charge thousand of dollars. I don't think so." As a manager, who hands credit card numbers for manual input, I'm very cautious of them and want to insure that they don't get into the wrong hand. Aftern each transactions is approved, that number is shredded and the credit card machine is batched out. Companies don't realize how important it is to PCI compliant. The risk in exposing sensitive information of our clients and customers can cost thousand of dolllars in fines and fee, in addition to the lost of that customer/client.

Marilyn, Great Article...as a Front Desk Manager, it is my responsibility to randomly check our computers to ensure employees are not placing USB driver to collect data from our system. Our company has taking this a step further by putting metal locked case around the PC to avoid possible fraudulent activity. If we have to open a PC, we must log it to show proof why a PC became unlock. Companies should adopt similar procedures to protect the consumers/guests. Nelson

The article gives a relative brief intorduction of how BlackLine's accounting software worke well in many brands hotels and casinoes.The Account Reconciliations and Transaction enables lots  of hotels such as Four Seasons, Royal Carriebean, Venetian Casino Resort and so forth can streamline the financial close and process the immense bolume of transactions they receive on a daily basis in a timely manner-especially credit cards, which will reduce more risk of credit cards frauds and maintian security  of cusotmers' consideration. One of good applications is SaaS delivery model. BlackLine enhances the application with a more unify  and complete structure and segregation, which prevents others from seeing its data. Another good example is Kempinski has greatly reduce their excess paper and simplified their account reconciliation process via BlackLine's tehcnology. The web-based application enhable hoteliers access to all stakeholders anywhere at any time, which makes hoteliers gain more valuable effiencies reducing time with audits.

Electronic commerce is a booming business during these years. For example, the United States attributed $300 billion in transactions in 2002. There are two types of E-commerce through Internet, one is Intranet and the other is Extranet. Also, according to the former data, E-commerce is becoming more and more importance. Among e-commerce transactions, individual transactions donate a lot. There are lots of benefits about the E-commerce. Through selling on the Internet, they often have lower transactions costs. Also, E-commerce is faster and more convenient so that shoppers are able to take a lot of time to buy. Although there are lots of benefits, there are still drawbacks like searching better prices. Organizations usually go through four phases, including Web Presence, Web Service, Web Transactions and Integrated Web. The purpose of the first one is marketing enhancing. The second one is setting for responding to product and services inquires. The third one make company get their Web Sites ready for transactions. The last one creates the value chain among the customers. In the future, there will be greater integration of Web Sites with backend customer databases and other business information systems. The organizations are developing micromarketing decisions at individual level. At the end, the article also listed a lot of questions about the issues about the e-commerce in the future.

Did you know that by the year 2016 e-Commerce buying and selling online would have made over 8.6 billion dollars! This article discusses the e-commerce currently and its future trends in the hospitality arena, which is one of the fastest growing industries to date.

This article is about the concern of customers paying their purchase online, and not through a machine as is the most typical way to do it. But for many this transaction is not safe at all, there could be hackers that can make fraud. This is why two of the most popular CC companies has developed the Visa's 3-D Secure™ and MasterCard's 28SecureCode™ to keep their customers safe, these cards requires a personal security code for every transactions and other personal information in order to keep the purchase safe and some others requires a monthly fee to obtain this service.

Nowadays, we can say each hotel must have the accounting department. Every successful goal needs a perfect financial management to consolidate it. In the hotel, accounting need to budget preparation, need to do the business planning, creating financial statements and payroll. Hotel needs to pay the salaries for employees and reporting sales and analyzing the profits. This is a huge process. A hotel must manage it efficiently. And owners can make decisions and improve their company. When you report the financial activities, you need to do the real report. A report can give you a chance to take the best decisions and make more profit. As a staff, you need to track cash flows and record transactions. If you have some trouble, you can let the expert help you to solve problems. They can help you to control your cash flows and maximize earnings.

For all businesses, including hospitality businesses, it is essential to have a properly organized accounting system. Every business needs solid financial management to achieve growth without which every business withers and dies. Proper accounting is at the heart of solid financial management. Hospitality accounting includes: preparing a precise collection of month end accounts, a trial balance, budget preparation, business planning, creating financial statements and balance sheets, and payroll. Not only does it enable you to track cash flows and record transactions, but it provides deep insights into the financial status of the business enabling owners to make proactive decisions and improve profits. So to excel in the dynamic hospitality industry seek professional help from expert accounting companies to set up proper accounting to have solid financial management. In my opinion, I believe that to have a successful business you need to have an up to date, accurate way to record your accounting transactions so getting professional help from experts would be wise.

This is a great short article which highlights the benefits of POS systems for hotels. It points out that these systems relieve employees of manual entry labor that used to be done for these types of transactions. It also allows for more accurate reporting, along with the benefit of keeping track of a guests transactions. Information that can be compiled on a guest can in turn be used to provide more personalized services. By being able to have faster and more efficient turnaround through the use of POS, hotel management can better assist guests and provide greater service, which should be of top priority for the guests satisfaction. This was a wonderful short read.

The role of GDSs in the travel industry has a major impact on revenue, competition, and reservations. In this article, Sabre, one of the largest known GDSs was sued by US Airways for failing to provide a fair contract to the airline. The lawyers from US Airways claimed that Sabre threatened to "cut off the airlines from a network of thousands of travel agents worldwide who depend on inventory that the tech giant provides via desktop software". The jury concluded that Sabre indeed violated antitrust law. Sabre, apparently, charged US Airways increased fees though their cost per transaction decreased because of the advances in technology. According to the article, Sabre argued that the fees were justified relative to the cost that an airline would incur to distribute its fares by other methods. This helped the agents have access to a plethora of information regarding price comparison. In my opinion, this is just a messy situation. However, it goes to show how important and how much of an impact that GDSs have on airline companies. They determine what consumers or agents readily see on the site. They determine how much of a presence a company has. The GDSs provide company information to a worldwide network that markets to consumers. Having a GDS system hold back or increase fees has proved to be detrimental. Ethical issues have come into play. The fact cannot be ignored that the technology being used by Sabre is helping lower cost for transactions. This decrease in cost should have resulted in a decrease in fees for the airlines. Nevertheless, the key to this article is that GDSs have the power (though Sabre did illegally) to determine which avenue a company goes through in regards to apparent competition and markets. The advancement of GDSs is resulting in lower cost transactions and giving agents and consumers "more bang for their buck". So it is important that the relationship between GDSs and airline companies remain ethical in all ways, especially dealing with

"You're probably already practicing basic online and mobile safety, but consider taking these credit card-specific measures as well: Know your merchant. When shopping online, look for sites with "https" in their web addresses (the "s" stands for "secured") and the green lock icon; make sure the URL includes the correct company's name, rather than a close-but-not-correct version; and, even on a secured site, share your information only if you know how it will be used. Type for each transaction. Never allow your credit card number to be stored on an online shopping site. Add a layer. Consider using an online payment system or mobile payment service like PayPal, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay or Android Pay to keep your credit card number out of the hands of merchants, so that if a merchant is hacked, it can't leak your account number. Watch out for public Wi-Fi. Don't shop or conduct financial transactions, including checking your accounts, using public Wi-Fi. Because it's a public network, your information can easily be viewed by anyone."

This article sums up the ways in which POS is currently changing. These ways include by using shared commerce POS systems, mobile POS systems such as Square and PayPal, integrated real-time transactions with CRM solutions, and POS security. 

This article sums up the ways in which POS is currently changing. These ways include by using shared commerce POS systems, mobile POS systems such as Square and PayPal, integrated real-time transactions with CRM solutions, and POS security. 

More establishments are going to unattended payment kiosk. I remember a little over a year ago McDonald decided to install unattended kiosk. I thought it wouldn't work . Due to taking away from the staffing of the restaurant. This article talks about attended or unattended kiosk. Shaving off 1-3 million dollars off your book will certainly will help profit margins.

This article states the differences between an attended and unattended payment systems. The article recommends asking your businesses financial getaway or payment handler to advise as to whether your business requires an attended or unattended payment terminal.

This article explained the differences between attended and unattended POS. The major difference between these two is based on the people who activate the transaction. Attended payment terminals are reliant on a member of staff being present to activate the transaction, while unattended payment terminals are for environments where there will not be a member of staff to assist the transaction. The customer instead will be the one to activate the payment. The conditions for the two are also different. Contactless is also an issue in POS selection.

This article explains all the advantages of having a POS system, especially for a small business. It emphasizes the different benefits from constant software updates, and the ability for the hardware to be transposed into different electronics for easy access wherever you go! It also highlights the increase in market value within the last few years, and the continued growth it'll attract.

Item Information Costs/Expenses Payment Methods Stock/Inventory Purchase/Transaction Records Employee Time Clocking Tax/Discount Calculation Are the main functions that this article highlight about having the POS system. This system would have all the information in one centralized area that may be accessed by many coworkers. This keeps track of the inventory, transactions and much more. There may be times where manual labor would still be the primary go to but this system will make things easier.

The article focuses on trends that companies utilizing a POS system should look at deploying. Bolstered by figures supporting the success of the emergent trends, the article seeks to encourage operators to make the move sooner rather than later. The most prominent trends revolve around more efficient payment access. Customers appreciate the speed and available payment options. Companies are also able to manage customer data effectively and securely while also managing inventory and marketing. AI integration is also a forward trend that is allowing businesses to tailor their tactics to each customer individually. Perhaps the most important trend that is affecting other transaction systems as well is cloud based POS.

With smartphones evlving and getting smarter, smaller and speedier it is allowing for advances in mobile point-of-sale technology especially in the restaurant industr. There are now numerous POS platforms that support both iPhone as well as android. Tablets and iPads are also supported so that restaurants can process payments in the field with a credit card reader. Traditionally POS have been very costly and structured; now with mobile technology the flexibility is convenient, fast and user friendly. New applications allow restaurants to store customer spending patterns without retaining their personal credit card information. the use of smartphones also opens up very exciting opportunities when it comes to business-consumer communication. Restaurants can send text messages containg discounted coupons to their establishments. The key is to not over do it as customers may become annoyed with too many text messages. This article delat mainly with the restaurant industry but did mention the evolution of technological advances with the use of smart phones. Form personal experience I have used my iphone and ipad to conduct credit card transactions utilzing squareD which provides free of charge a mobile credit card swiper that is connected to the microphone port of either the iphone or Ipad. there is not monthly contract or fee. The only charge is 2.5% per settled credit card transaction and the amount is automatically deducted from the batched amount and within 1-2 business days the funds are deposited directly into ones checking/savings account. This is convenient, fast, and easy. I have been able to secure payment right on the spot instead of either handling cash which is always a ahzard or the risk of accepting checks. the use of smartphones and tbalets have revolutionozed the way business is being conducted making it fast, easy, and convenient to both cutomer and busoness owner alike.