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  • Portable registers?

    Anyone work in a store with a portable register?

    We have one we use for special events. Around Valentine's Day, we'll set up a flower shop in front of the store and wheel the portable register in there. During other holidays, we'll set up grills in front of the store (we have a dining patio just outside of one of our doors) along with the register. We're using it for the holiday weekend. We used to grill outside every weekend until the city told us in a not so kind way "Hey you have to pull a permit every time you grill, and oh BTW you can only get 6 permits a year". One permit can cover an entire weekend, but still...

    The "portable" is an entire regular checkstand.. scale, normal register, credit card reader, printer.. everything. Except it has a wireless network card in it. It's on a wooden cart with a couple of ... what can be best described as car batteries, hooked up to a charger/inverter to power the whole thing.

    It also REALLY sucks to move. It's a super heavy cart on 6 wheels, probably pushing 400 pounds or so. Since it's on 6 wheels instead of 4, it goes whatever damned direction it wants. 1 person can't even think about moving it, 2 people might be able to if they're real careful. Realistically it takes 3 people.

    My main gripe about using it is... once it's outside the doors it has almost no range whatsoever (thanks to some chucklefuck who broke the antenna on it). And the inverter gives NO warning when the battery is about to die. No beep, nothing, it just shuts everything off, and only then does it let out an ear splitting screech (and it won't shut up until it's been plugged in for awhile). And plugging it back in won't bring it back to life, it has to charge for several hours before it'll allow the register to power back up. ESPECIALLY annoying because there's no "emergency" release on the drawers we use (and even if there was, if a register isn't shut down properly, the last logged in cashier shows up as logged in and our registers won't let them log in to another register until... they're signed off from the original one). So we do everything we can to keep it plugged in. And I should mention our register systems track drawers by cashier number, one cashier per till period. So whoever's unlucky enough to be on it when it dies can't sign in to another register until the mobile cart can power back up and connect to the network. We do have a way to force a cashier off of a register, but if it died immediately after a transaction and before the transaction info could go to the server, their drawer will be way off.
    Last edited by bean; 09-05-2009, 07:49 AM.

  • #2
    I think we still have one. It is on a cart with 4 wheels, just a till, pin pad, scanner, and screens, etc. No scale.

    It is usually used by the florist fro valentines day and in the warm weather outside to sell the plants we have out front on the first nice day when everyone buys them. Their are several nearby outlets so we halve always plugged it in, but i think it has a battery. Before we would have to keep it in front of a window, but they upgraded the WiFi, after they finally realized that the Symbol guns didn't always work in some areas was actually a major problem. Now we can theoretically use it in the parking lot.

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    • #3
      What kind of POS system are you using? Most POS systems I've seen today are nothing more than computer with the programs in it. You could easily make one if you can find the supported software:

      One laptop, even a current "low end" one would be able to handle the POS system.
      One USB scanner - symbol makes some cheap ones
      Cash box - any office supply store.
      Printer and credit card reader should be OK
      Wireless card - either get a new one for the laptop or use the one that's with the register now.

      The scale might be the hardest part. Does it need to be tied into the system? if not, any digital scale will do, if not, I'm sure the ventor for the scale has a portable version.

      Minus the cost of the scale and software it should be under $2000 (way under if you shop around). Get a good battery back up (under $100) and you're good to go!
      Quote Dalesys:
      ... as in "Ifn thet dawg comes at me, Ima gonna shutz ma panz!"

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      • #4
        Is there some reason why an extension cord duct taped securely to the ground wouldn't work?
        Aliterate : A person who is capable of reading but unwilling to do so.

        "A man who does not read has no advantage over a man who cannot" - Mark Twain

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        • #5
          Quoth draggar View Post
          What kind of POS system are you using? Most POS systems I've seen today are nothing more than computer with the programs in it. You could easily make one if you can find the supported software:
          We use NCR's grocery version of their RealPOS system. It's ALL NCR hardware, though the checkstands run low end (for today) PCs with Windows XP Embedded. I'm not sure what's going on on the server side of things (since all of that is in a locked closet), but I suspect the servers are off the shelf units running NCR software. Our deli/meat/seafood depts use Toledo touchscreen scales, with a wireless adapter inside the scale, with their own set of servers. Those aren't interfaced to the registers in any way.

          Each checkstand costs about $11,000. The portable register is a complete checkstand, though I don't think we've ever used the scale to actually weigh anything. Same with the registers at our coffee bar and smokehouse, the scales are never touched on those, but we want every checkstand to be identical.

          Problem is, we have a support contract with NCR. If anything related to our point of sale system breaks, they come out and fix it. We're a large corporation, with our own help desk, so we kind of like everything to be uniform across the board.
          Last edited by bean; 09-06-2009, 07:52 AM.

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          • #6
            We have a couple portable setups in the spring and summer, mostly for use in the garden center at the far end of the parking lot. I believe they're usually plugged into an outlet at our fuel station, located nearby, but they also have a UPS in case of a problem. The registers are connected to the main system via satellite.

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