My kids read "POS System" as "Piece Of Shit System"

Not that it would be totally wrong, though, since a lot of them are pieces of shit. When I was learning my first job, my boss told me "This is the POS system. It doesn't mean what you think it means." I actually didn't know what he thought I thought it meant, so he had to tell me. 

I'm pretty sure POS was Piece of Shit long before it was Point of Sale. Whenever a new acronym tries to supplant an old one, it has to overcome the old meaning. Like when Disney made that movie "The BFG." You know they knew Doom had already used BFG over 20 years prior as "Big Fucking Gun." So when they marketed it, they made sure you knew they meant "Big Friendly Giant." Because a lot of people (gamers) would see BFG and think of the Doom weapon.

It's really infuriating how technology and data systems today are relatively advanced – but as soon as they are implemented in a business context, everything goes to shit. Don't get me wrong, I love what the system brings to the table- we've tripled our YoY sales with it and it costs 1/5th of what the competing system costs. But it's just a little software glitches and unforeseeable hardware failures that have been the issue.  I really mean it when I read it as "Piece of Shit system".

So, what does POS mean in retail?

Point-of-sale (POS) transaction databases are the central source of information for retail RM. These systems collect information from the point of sale, that — combined with product, inventory, price, and promotion information — gives a highly accurate picture of all shopping transactions in a store. A retail store management system (RMS) consists of a number of elements: POS terminals with attached bar-code readers, databases with product and inventory information.

Point-of-sale computer technology is used at the point where the guest makes a purchase. In a dining room the guest tells the food server which items he or she would like. The food server transfers the guest's request to the point of sale terminal. Then the order is printed in the kitchen. The sale is recorded within the point-of-sale system, along with the amount of money the guest owes for the meal. With point-of-sale systems, transactions taking place at the cash register update all inventory, COGS, and sales information throughout the system in real-time as the transactions occur.

Let’s say you go into Target and buy a birthday card for a friend. As you check out, the point-of-sale software is updating the greeting card department records showing that one less birthday card is available for sale. The software is also updating COGS showing the cost for the card, and it’s updating revenue to reflect the retail price (what you just paid) for the birthday card. Even if a company uses a point-of-sale system, taking a physical inventory at year-end (or periodically) is still very important to verify that the perpetual system is working correctly. Taking a physical inventory is also the best way to identify breakage and employee or customer theft issues.

Anyway, POS is more of a B2B (business to business) term. The company selling them calls them that. At the retail level, most just call it a cash register, which doesn't cover the computer part so much, or the customer-facing part, but for customers and retail workers alike, the colloquial term "cash register" is most appropriate. Only a nerd would actually call it a POS system. (I'm a nerd, and I think of it as both.)

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