Point of sale (POS) or checkout is the place where a retail transaction is completed. It is the point at which a customer makes a payment to a merchant in exchange for goods or services. At the point of sale the merchant would use any of a range of possible methods to calculate the amount owing, such as a manual system, weighing machines, scanners or an electronic cash register. The merchant will usually provide hardware and options for use by the customer to make payment, such as an EFTPOS terminal. The merchant will also normally issue a receipt for the transaction.For small and medium-sized retailers, the POS will be customized by retail industry as different industries have different needs. For example, a grocery or candy store will need a scale at the point of sale, while bars and restaurants will need to customize the item sold when a customer has a special meal or drink request. The modern point of sale will also include advanced functionalities to cater to different verticals, such as inventory, CRM, financials, warehousing, etc., all built into the POS software. Prior to the modern POS, all of these functions were done independently and required the manual re-keying of information, which resulted in a lot[vague] of errors.
