Open Source Point-of-Sale program?

[Tom Diehl]

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005, peter kostov wrote:

> Hello!
> I am from Bulgaria, and I am not sure if I can describe in English
> exactly what I need, but I will try.
>
> I am working in a photographic studio. Except that we make all kind of
> pictures, we sell films, cameras, bags, etc. (it is a small business)
>
> I need to find a program:
>
> 1. that can keep track of the prices of all the stock in the shop and
> the amounts on hand (the availability of each article) - stock and
> inventory menagement;
> 2. that supports barcode readers;
> 3. that can print invoices;
> 4. and make various reports at the end of the month (incl. financial)
> 5. is customizable. (so we can use it to make the monthly reports to the
> taxation authorities and our accountant)
>
> The machine on which I will install that program is from the past
> century :(. In order to install Fedora I will add a CD ROM device, but
> other hardware upgrades are not planned.
> Currently it runs M$ Windows 98 SE and a closed source and payed
> bulgarian program with which my boss is very dissatisfied. Paying a
> programmer to write such a program especially for us is too expensive
> and currently impossible. So it will be not so hard to convince him in
> the advantages of the open source. He will be especially happy if we can
> modify and customize this program.
>
> Googleing I found references to SQL-Ledger, Aria, Tina POS, but I will
> be happy to hear some advice, especially from those of you that use such
> software.

Sql-ledger works well here. I know nothing about the others. I have never
used the pos functions but others on the SL mailing list say it works
well. In addition I have found the paid support to be very good. The
software is GPL but the official documentation is by subscription only.

Hope this helps,

Tom