Configuring In-Store POS Solutions

If you have experience in the retail world, you’re probably very familiar with the term POS. It stands for Point of Sale, and it’s the system an employee uses to enter an order.

They usually have a simple touch interface where you tap products, add them to the order, and pay for the order. And the POS system usually has the technology to process credit cards. Sometimes, it has more advanced functionality, such as adding a customer to the order so that customer data is synced between your online store and your POS system.

POS systems range in complexity. For a mall kiosk or for selling at a convention, you’ll probably want the simplest and most compact POS you can find. A bare-bones POS system will likely have the following two components:

• Credit card reader
• Receipt printer

If you have a department store with dozens of checkout locations, you might want additional functionality, such as the following:

...

Technical requirements

To use Square later in this chapter, you should sign up for a free account. You can do so here: https://squareup.com/signup/en-us.

Setting up WooCommerce POS

WooCommerce POS is a plugin built on top of WordPress. It’s similar to WooCommerce, the core plugin, which is free and available on GitHub (https://github.com/kilbot/WooCommerce-POS). It also has premium features that you can unlock by buying a license.

We’re going to explore the free version that anyone can experiment with. Follow these steps to set up the POS:

1. In your WooCommerce site, go to Plugins | Add New.
2. Search for WooCommerce POS. The plugin is shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 7.1: WooCommerce POS on WordPress.org

3. Now, you can install and activate the plugin.

Testing WooCommerce POS

WooCommerce POS uses the same database as your WooCommerce site. This is great in many ways but it also means that if you experiment with WooCommerce POS, it’s easy to clutter up your database. So, if you experiment with this POS system, I recommend you do so with a test site...

Setting up Square

If you’ve stepped into a coffee shop in the last decade, you’ve probably used Square. It’s one of the most popular and general-purpose POS systems. It’s designed for small businesses and excels at that role. It has competitive pricing and integrations with major platforms, and the product itself is really easy to use.

We’ll look into how we can connect our store with Square, set up the integration, and sync data between Square and WooCommerce.

Connecting with Square

To integrate with Square, you need a Square account, and you need to download the free Square extension for WooCommerce (https://woocommerce.com/products/square/). Let’s start by installing the Square extension for WooCommerce. Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin on your site, you’ll see a notice to configure it, which you can see here:

Figure 7.5: Active WooCommerce Square

Follow these steps to configure...

Syncing data in-store and with WooCommerce

In this chapter, we looked at two very different POS systems and learned how they work differently. WooCommerce POS is simple and fast to set up, whereas Square has a lot more flexibility when it comes to which data you want to sync, how often you want to sync, and which database should be the master. As your e-commerce business grows, you’ll integrate with dozens of different systems. One of the WooCommerce stores I worked on recently has close to 100 integrations with other systems and they also need to share product data with two other WooCommerce stores. When systems get that complex, it’s worth looking into all of the ways you can sync data so you understand which works best for you and your business. We’ll look into simple systems such as a single database, having one master database, and manually syncing data.

Single database systems

One of the most robust systems you can use is a single database. This is...

Summary

In this chapter, we learned how to set up two different POS systems: WooCommerce POS, which is built on top of WordPress, and Square, which is an independent system with a ton of settings. We also looked into how you can best sync data between your WordPress site and other systems.

You should now be familiar with the basics of setting up a POS system for your WooCommerce store. This will allow you to sell your products in person at a convention or in a brick-and-mortar store. As you complete orders in one system, they’ll be synced to the other system, keeping all of your inventories in sync and reporting accurately while also making new product launches no more difficult than creating a product in WooCommerce.

Depending on the POS system you choose, you might also be able to manage hourly employees who clock in and out of their shifts. There’s a lot of power in connecting your WooCommerce store to a POS system. Now that you know how to do this, your business...