What skills are required to create a POS system?

What skills are required to create a POS system?

I am a tax accountant and I would like to create POS system that starts at the tax requirements (sales and income) and works back to business functions. What kind of programming skills do I need and how do I create a POS system?

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2 Comments for What skills are required to create a POS system?

  • 1. Gardner  |  February 15th, 2011 at 8:18 am

    If you’ve never written a program in your life, figure 2 years minimum to develop this and get 60% of the bugs worked out.

    You’ll need to know how to program
    You’ll need to learn a language to program in
    You’ll need to learn how to build & maintain relational database systems
    You’ll need to learn how to interact with other devices, scanners, receipt printers, credit card processing, cash drawers, etc…

    There will be a huge amount of trial and error involved in this. Good luck!

  • 2. Ratchetr  |  February 15th, 2011 at 8:30 am

    POS systems today are very complex. Taxing is just one of the many complex problems they need to deal with.
    First you would need to pick a vertical market to target. POS for a lumber yard like Home Depot is vastly different than POS for a quick serve joint like McDonalds.
    You need a broad range of skills to pull it off.
    * Programming, database, UI design, human factors engineering for starters.
    * Hardware integration. Most POS systems today are PC based, but they have a set of peripherals (mag card, bar code, cash drawer, etc) devices that aren’t typical off the shelf PC devices. You need to write code that works with all the devices your customer owns. (and no….you can’t dictate what they buy…sorry).
    * Operating system integration: Most POS systems run on Windows or Linux. But out of the box, Windows and Linux aren’t all that suitable to the POS world. The OS needs to be tweaked and tailored to fit the needs of a POS environment. Otherwise, the employees just play solitair all day long. ;-)
    * Security: There are a number of security issues you need to deal with in POS. PCI compliance is probably the biggest. But you also need to deal with employee theft issues. Franchisee’s cheating corporate issues, and so on.
    * System Integration: No POS system is an island. It has to integrate with external systems. Payment processors. Inventory systems. Time and attendance systems. Data warehousing/reporting systems. The list goes on.

    To be honest, starting with the tax requirements and working backwards seems like the wrong approach. You have to start with the fundamental business objectives of your customer. And…well…I know of no companies whose fundamental business objective is to collect taxes. Taxes are a necessary evil, but they are not why the business is in business. You have to start with the business requirements (one of many of which is paying taxes) and work backwards from there.

    HTH.

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