With the advent of the regular POS machines, you

Within the last ten years or so, the changes to how you keep track of all of the products grew from just one to the barcode system that we normally take for granted nowadays. Before, you just had the keyboard and a type of scanner to read the barcode. You still had to manually inventory the total sales of that cash register at the end of each day and using the columnar pad (the predecessor to the spreadsheet), put the sales of the day there as one entry.

You do not even have to think about it nowadays. You just let the scanner read the barcode of the product and most of the time, just enter how much money the customer gave to you. The result of that is displayed and printed on the paper receipt.

In more upscale stores, they have what is called a 'touch screen' POS. Essentially, this type of POS looks just like any POS that came before it with the sole difference of having no keyboard present. What you will see is a bigger screen, various graphical icons being displayed on that screen and the usual parts of the POS that stores the money.

You simply touch the screen on the icon that you want to use. These 'icons' that I keep telling you are just a visual representation of the POS feature that you want to use. The POS that are being used now are in fact computers, and computers are controlled by what is known as 'programs'. These programs have different features that operate the POS.

Now, when you want to access any of these features, you touch an icon on the screen that is associated with these features, hence the name 'touch screen', instead of typing it in with the keyboard, you simply touch the icon of the feature that you need to access.

Now, there seems to be a new revolution to further evolve the programs that run these POS systems being used. Before, you had to hire a programmer to make a system that is specific to that machine only and can never be used anywhere else.

Nowadays, you can choose from a wide variety of companies that specialize in making systems that cater to the specific needs of your company by the use of standardized programming languages and usually runs on most POS machines being used today.

A lot of companies have been making one such type of POS system since 2007. They even offer a web based retail POS system that ensures a perfect complement to any type of business that wishes absolute control of information that your company has.

This web based POS system run just like any other POS program, the only difference is that is it connected securely to the internet and the world wide web and to any of your stores that use the same system. This gives you absolute control of information from you and any of your stores anywhere.