How to Integrate with POS system?

I've got a potential client who wants to integrate their in store POS (point of sale) system with an e-commerce program to sell their in-store inventory online and keep their inventory synchronized. Is this possible? Any ideas where to start? Has anyone had any success with this and Hikashop?

Thanks!

I'm looking for it too, i stay tuned with this post.
By now i'm just analizing the way it should work.

Lets say, the POS system of my hikadreams should have IMHO:

-The possibility to sync the client data with hikashop bi-directionaly (good for having automatically created registered users on the webshop if they buy on your fisical store)
-It could retrieve your categorie tree directly from your webshop (think something like sync during installation of the software on you computers)
-It must integrate a function to update products in real time on the computer and with a button update it on the webshop in the moment i finish the modifications
-Another really usefull feature could be the batch modification of lots products, imagine the posibility to change prices by percentage to a whole category, or to change the parent_category atribute to lots of products at once, something similar to the way you can change language and category and etc to various joomla articles in the article manager.
-If you can retrieve from the website the product data you can import the images too so some kind of touchscreen enabled device can benefit of having the "so-loved" interface alla McDonalds for use in kiosk mode
-It MUST have a very efficient search engine that works in real time
-The products on the POS software should have a barcode atribute, think about having colums on the database like
"barcode_type";"barcode_number;"
"EAN-13";"1256780245689";
-If you're creating a new product an it doesn't have a barcode by itself it should be suggested by the system to create a new one.
-If it can have some sort of automation for label creation that would be really cool altought automating label creation on printers like the DYMO's (and it software) shouldn't be that hard if you can have an option to export a csv (or an xls) file having only the products you select with the data you choose (mailchimp has a very cool way to handle csv's that could be a very good place to start with a wise csv handling system)
-The pos system need to talk receipt-printers language
-It should talk in some way with cash registers
-A barcode scanner

There are a lot of other options needed to have a usefull and rock solid pos system well itnegrated with real life situations, i'm actually dealing with a very similar situation right now and another absolutely needed feature is the possibility of create custom documents for credit, transport, etc.

By this time i'm just figuring out a sort of graphical "wireframe" (in my head) of how a project like this could see the light.

Hikashop already is the ecommerce plattform i've choosed to sell ecommerce web creation services and the posibility to integrate it with a POS system is something i'm just dreaming all day long.

Let us know your progress on this POS adventure.

Protorob,

Thanks for adding your info about POS integration. I've just switched to Hika from VirtueMart and this POS integration might be my third Hikashop installation but as far as I can tell, Hika isn't quite ready for that yet, but perhaps I'm wrong?

I did some preliminary research and found a couple of POS integration add-ons for Magento but I'd strongly prefer to keep using Joomla/Hikashop.

I'd think the biggest hurdle would be the POS software that the retailer is using? It would have to have the ability to sync their data online (or actually store their inventory data online) in real-time so that any online e-commerce application would be able to access it.

In my case (and i think in yours too) my client is actually using a weird POS system in DOS (and currently supported by just one developer) but that pos system is the world's most easy to use pos system and is widely used in more than 300 activities only in Sicily! i'm trying to integrate it with some sort of cronjob/csv thing with the help of that developer but honestly i'm feeling like wasting time on some outdated program and is for sure that there will be lots of features (like image rendering) that will be impossible to integrate into that pos system so is much mor a one way integration (so boring)

But by the other side the simplicity of the architecture of that pos system let me import with almost no trouble at all all that data into any other application.

So i'm begginin' to evaluate how fast can i import all that product and client data directly into a hikashop fresh install using csv and mysql tables manipulation so i can make some money bringing a lot of existing activities that are using that pos program to ecommerce. If everithing goes as i expect may be i can pay someone to help me develop that pos system.

Honestly i'm not that prepared in programming but Hikashop's guts are very easy to understand and that's why i'm so convinced to continue developing on it.

I've realized that no matter wat cart you use you will always find something that doesn't work as expected so is better to change the approach and offer/use the best way possible what one software does better.

There are lot's of people asking for functionality based on mere fantasy.

Hikashop is already packed with everithing you really need to start a webshop in almost no time at all if you discover how usefull is the csv import feature.

Having tried almost all of the shopping-carts available on the JED i convinced myself that Hikashop will be my #1 ecommerce developping platform just because this forum is so active and the people behind the software are the most comunicative ones you can find arround in the joomla cart universe, sometimes it feels more like a chat room than a forum.

If i got some time this weekend i want to make some mockups of how kikaPOS could look to clarify my ideas on that matter

To add to this, this potential client is also in the middle of a search to switch to a new POS because they hate their current system....

I'm hoping that Nicolas will add his input on this topic as well....

I'm not too much convinced with an automatic and realtime update of both a hikaPOS and hikaShop because i think it could only complicate the first stage of the development.

The pos system should be able to work completely stand alone and without internet conection, may be you can simply sync on-request or by time intervals.
In that case could be helpfull the ability to have the posibility of set a safe number of a certain product available in your webstore while having in the fisical store and iin the hikaPOS/INVENTORY the real existence of that product and have a clever warning system when you begin to reach those limits, you could also have the option to have products exclusively online or exclusively on the fisical store.

Talking about this helps me a lot on understanding how something like this could be created.

oh yes, nicolas' opinions are more than welcome on this topic.

We integrate Magento shopping carts all the time with various POS , Accounting, Inventory Management / Fulfillment software.

The key to integrating Magento with any other types of systems is the API that Magento has.

It is a very good and robust api that allows you to retrieve, update, delete, create, etc. anything pertaining to orders, customers, products, etc.

Hikashop does not have an API like magento, so it is much more difficult to integrate other systems.

If Hikashop had an API system like Magento that would allow you to create API users, API keys, and API permissions to Create/Update/Retrieve/etc. Customers/Orders/Products/etc. , then the sky would be the limit in terms of integrating other systems like POS or accounting.

Nicholas, have you looked into what it would take to create an API system for Hikashop like Magento currently has?

We would be willing to contribute financially to this as I am sure several others would too, if there was a clear budget and development plan laid out that we could see.

We could even help with the programming side of things if you are able to organize it into a clear plan that we can all rally around.

We have a lot of higher-end clients that require integration with other systems and we have to use Magento for all of their sites instead of hikashop because of their need for an API system like magento has.

Anyways, that is my two cents on it all.

Hi Dave,

I appreciate your input on this topic. What POS systems have you successfully integrated Magento with? It's likely my client will want recommendations since they are currently looking to move systems...

Thanks!

Most of our clients use Microsoft Dynamics and other .Net applications for POS, Accounting, etc.

Often times the actual POS interface is custom programmed and pulls / sends data from and to a CRM / Accounting system based on Microsoft Dynamics or an Oracle or SAP system.

These systems often costs several hundred thousand dollars to implement and manage so they are probably not the best for smaller start up businesses.

Most of our clients that need a Magento API to integrate with their other systems are doing minimum $5 million in sales each year.

If your client is not doing enough in sales to justify spending that much, then the best POS system we have seen for Small Business is the one Quickbooks (Intuit) makes.

However, quickbooks does not make it easy to integrate things with their system. I have seen some other scripts out there for Magento that integrate quickbooks but I have never tried them, so I don't know how well they work with the quickbooks POS system.

Just a quick side note: We have never found a good open source POS system.

So if anyone has ever seen a POS system that is opensource (GPL) and is really good, we would love to hear about it.


It would be nice if Hikashop had an interface for admins to easily create orders and bill credit cards, take cash payments (calculate change due back to the customer), scan barcodes, etc. for customers that visit their brick and mortar stores to make purchases.

That way our small business customers that have kiosks in the malls or other small shops could manage all their order processing with hikashop.

Thanks again for your feedback. This is a small boutique type shop that I don't think is doing anywhere near that amount and since they aren't selling online, I doubt they'd invest that much into it yet.

Has anything transpired with this yet since 6 years ago.

Everybody is looking for this solution!

Please advise.

FYI, POS For Webshops no longer seems to be in business. The website is full of broken links, the last update on the software (according to the website) was in 2016 and they are not answering emails.