The Perfect POS System For Open Source Cyber Cafe

Few years ago, I had posted something about Point Of Sales System for cyber cafe business who was running linux or ubuntu and others open source operating system bases as their primary working os.

From my experiences running a cyber cafe business and provides certain solution to the others cyber cafe owners, Ubuntu Linux 10.04 or the previous version of it, is the perfect choice to be the server and the client operating system for cyber cafe purpose.

It has everything except POINT OF SALES software, dont believe on me? try to click ubuntu main menu > Ubuntu Software Center > Search for cyber cafe and you’ll get nothing except blank white page. But try search for point of sale and you will get “lemon point of sale” but this software wasn’t meant for cyber cafe purpose, it was created for general such as restaurant or book store.

One thing until now what Open Source Operating System such as Ubuntu or perhaps I should say Canonical still couldn’t beat Microsoft is the supports from game developer, but currently i heard that Steam is coming to Linux, until now we still need to using wine and other emulators to play warcraft III, counter strike and so on.

For me, that is why the progress in running gaming center or cyber cafe business based on open source software was far too slow and just few small company had put their interest to develop a billing system or pos system for linux operating system but still their software lacks many of important features, I didn’t say I am condemns their software, for me it’s a good effort for them and us, but we are still waiting for the perfect point of sales for open source cyber cafe.

Others POS system such as OpenbravoERP, OpenbravoPOS, OpenERP are good software makers but still the softwares wasn’t meant for cyber cafe, internet cafe or gaming center.

Why is this happen? I don’t know, or maybe they think that running cyber cafe and gaming center business using an open source product couldn’t help the progress to expanding the influences. Instead of that, still some of others contributor was willing to spend their time, money and privacy to creating POS system such as ccl, mkahawa, gbilling and others, but still to software need more support on their development. Ubuntu or Canonical should supporting them in their software development(cyber cafe billing system).

So if you asked me what is the perfect POS system for open source cyber cafe should it looks like? If you look to the Cafesuite.net features then we might get some point how it should be. And if we takes their features to suggest what kind of billing system we really need for cyber cafe cafe then it’s could be just like below:

Security

It should provides many levels of security, ensuring that your business is always under control.

Workstation lock

Unused workstations can be securely locked so that no one can use them without proper authorization from the operator.

Operator profiles

You can create many profiles for your employees with different access rights. Not every one should be able to change crucial options or pricing schemes.

Encrypted data files

All databases used by CafeSuite are encrypted which ensures they can’t be tampered with by unouthorized individuals.

Backups

It’s possible to create backups of data files automatically evey given period of time. Your data will be secure even when your system crashes.

Ease of use

The user interface is clean and feels very natural even to begginers. The integrated help system will guide you in case of any problems.

Customer accounts

It’s should makes it really easy to manage large database of customer accounts. You can create different types of accounts for your customers — time accounts, cash accounts, debt accounts and unlimited accounts. You can assign beneficial charging rates to customer accounts to reward devoted customers.

Customers will be able to log on by themselves using their account ID and password. It’s also possible to create smart, magnetic or barcode cards for your customers, so that a simple scan of their card will log them on.

Reservations

It should provides unique graphical workstation reservation system. Simply select a time period on the workstation chart to create the reservation.

In case of a very big traffic, you’ll appreciate the Waiting queue function, allowing you to manage the waiting list.

Reports and statistics

The software provides you with a range of reports and statistics summarizing your business performance. Starting with very general reports, you can even get a list of all operations performed by your employees minute by minute.

Flexible charging rates

Real strength of the software lies in the flexible charging rates system. You can configure many schemes of pricing, including periodical discounts.

You can assign different charging rates to computer groups, beneficial pricing can be used with customer accounts. You can even create traffic discounts that adjust prices depending on the number of free computers in your cafe.

Support for external devices

You can use barcode scanner, magnetic card or smartcard reader to logon users with accounts and sell products. the software also supports receipt printers for printing receipts and account tickets.

Integration with Printer

The software integrates with Printer allowing you to keep control over your printers. Once a customer prints some pages, the software will notify the operator about that and calculate the charge automatically.

For your information, I’ve waiting the Cafesuite for linux, they said to running the software on linux since 2006 but until now there is nothing at all.

For me I would like to add some features to the above, it should supports diskless terminal client, for now I’ve tested CCL to be able to lock down diskless client. I think I should makes an article or tutorial about it.