After trying what I though was all of the open source web based POS systems, and most of the non web based ones I stumbled across Posterita POS.

This looks absolutely fantastic, and while it may not yet be as powerful as Openbravo POS, I think it does it’s job superbly.

As a web based system, there is a good chance it can be hooked up with Magento providing a complete system for physical shops with web presence.

I will take a more in depth look this evening, but I really feel like this could be the best system to try and integrate with Magento. Of course there is always the issue of internet connectivity with a web based POS, but where I live I have only had 1 day of internet outage in nearly 3 years that I am aware of so I am happy with this as a solution.

You can check it out here http://www.posterita.org.

Please reply with thoughts, if everyone is interested I suggest we work together to make things happen! I will do a feasibility analysis over the next few days.

Been thinking about this for a while ... here’s some thoughts:

1) Install Magento on the webserver (or have existing store already), configure it for ecommerce, etc.
2) Install Magento on a local server in your store. This can be done with some sort of pre-packaged LAMP/WAMP package integrated with Magento or whatever. This local installation will have a few modifcations (described below) and might be called MagentoPOS.
3) Set up the local installation to use the remote database. This will create 1 inventory, customer list, etc.
4) Set up a simple script on the remote server to back up the database on the remote server every night at, say, 2am.
5) Have a simple script installed with MagentoPOS on the local server to download the backed up database every night at, say, 3:30am.
6) One of the modifications on MagentoPOS would be the ability to switch databases via a drop-down box somewhere in the admin area. Then, if the connection to the remote server was lost (i.e. Internet goes down), you can switch to the local database that was backed up for relatively updated inventory and pricing.
7) MagentoPOS would come with 2 themes: one with bug buttons suitable for a touchscreen, and one with smaller buttons (for use if the store does not use touchscreens). Also, the first field in checkout would be for the product number, so that when one scans the barcode, the correct data is input. (Scan the barcode, then search the product database for the product is kinda what I have in mind).

This would be fairly easy to do. Two problems I see right away are: (A) if using the backed up database, synchronizing the data once the remote server is back online could be a problem, and (B) using the “search” function to find products in the database would be notoriously slow if the customer has purchased a lot of items.

We are willing to help with this sort of project ...

Early last year, I was looking for a simple POS script I could use with Zen to process in-store orders, I needed something that:

- was quick
- was allways in sync with the website
- did not needed user details to register a sale

And I found it, it’s called Ollacart - http://www.ollacart-pos.com/

Now, the product itself is not much of a looker, but it does the job quite well, you just click a button to create a new order, can assign an existing client to that order (if needed) .. add products, hit complete order and done, out it comes a nice receipt sized printout.

How hard can it be to create something like this for Magento ? it ties right into the zen database, so no sync needed.

Something like this is very usefull for those of us with a brick and mortar shop, the current system at Magento requires you to create a user for each order, not viable if you have a queue of 5+ people all in line to pay.

I’m not a coder, but i’d like people to take a look at it and let me know if it’s viable, I’ll even pay for the work if somebody takes on it