How does DHPOS compare to real POS software.

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ZakB
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Re: Re:

Post by ZakB » Fri Jun 06, 2008 11:08 am

tbr1967 wrote:
bdude wrote:CONGRATULATIONS DALE!!!

NO OTHER POS PROGRAM CAN COMPARE TO YOURS!

ESPECIALLY FOR THE PRICE WHICH IS:


FREE!
Yup! I totally agree with bdude. I have tried several other POS systems and the one easiest to use was Dale's.
Second was Volutive (http://www.binarema.com) it came close, but the simplicity of dhpos was much better than Volutive.
The others were just so complicated, and some of them did not even work!
One point though-
the thing I like about Volutive is that there are types of receipts (Invoice/delivery order/quote) and it was easy to convert between them.

WELL DONE DALE !!!

I agree with both of you. I have been using Volutive to do our quoting and invoicing. I have been working on a interface that will let Dales POS push charges into Volutive.

EST
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Re: First.

Post by EST » Sat Aug 30, 2008 8:10 pm

Dale Harris wrote:Well someone has to go first so it may as well be me.

Things I do not like about the POS system I have to use....

It takes 7 minutes to load in the morning.
I have to go into the main store office to change prices.
I cannot add new items into the stock table (only from the home office.)
I cannot make services "non-taxable" by default, I have to jump through hoops to remove sales tax from services every time I sell one.
I have to add up sales from each employee to get a total sales reading.
You cannot look up an item, if you do not know the stock number you are dead.
Which also means that you cannot view the stock table from the register.
You have to enter a "department" number for everything you ring up.
All stock numbers are 5 digits long even though I only need 3 digits and only need 1 digit for 80% of what I sell.
It does not print store information (address, phone) on the receipts.
Even though I sell keys I have to tell the register that I do not want them delivered.
"Voids" are not "clean", you have to into the office the next day to argue about how much should really be subtracted from yesterday's sales.
To find the transaction count for the day I have to subtract the opening transaction number from the ending transaction number.
Register has no calculator function.
Also no date or time on the screen.
No sale parking, if your customer cannot find her money everyone just waits or you void out the sale and start over when she can find her money.
All reductions and discounts have to be "explained" even though none of the explanations apply to the key shop.
<hr>
Things I like about my host's POS that I wish my POS would do...
Integrated credit card validation.
Could there be a way for you to add a way to make clerks explain reductions, discounts, voids, etc.? If you cannot then I can just keep it password protected, but would like my associates to be able to do it without me hovering over. If you can add the feature, could you make it so you can add your own explanations into the system so they have to pick ones set-up by the admin?

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daleadmin
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Re: How does it compare to real POS software.

Post by daleadmin » Sat Aug 30, 2008 8:22 pm

Est,

I could add it by making room by deleting another feature. But I so like the features that are already there. So probably not.

Dale

BTW, this subject is about comparing DHPOS to commercial POS software.

Douglas
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Re: How does it compare to real POS software.

Post by Douglas » Fri Oct 24, 2008 5:21 am

I've used a few pieces of POS software:

1. DHPOS
2. Compris Tricon (Restaurant POS, I use this at work, ours is much uglier than the one pictured here - PDF Link)
3. MYOB RetailManager

I like DHPOS because:
1. It's simple
2. The price
3. It's laid out in a logical manner.
4. It will run on anything mage in the last 16 or so years.

I don't like DHPOS because:
1. No touchscreen
2. The beep is annoying.

Tricon is interesting, especially because it's a native Windows application, as opposed to DHPOS, which makes comparing the two tricky. So, I like tricon because:
1. Touchscreen capable!
2. It's more logical than MYOB.
3. If you know how, you can get out of it and into Windows and fiddle. (But you can do this in DHPOS anyway, provided you're running Windows)
4. It can be locked down to the nth degree.

I don't like Tricon because:
1. Our incarnation is ugly. Blergh!
2. The layout can be confusing.
3. The magical Sub button (for substituting items in meals) doesn't like being used on any item but the last one rung up.
4. Items jump around when you hit Total. For instance, you might have an X meal large, Y meal with Mountain Dew and a Z meal with no mayo on the burger, you hit total, and the customer then wants cheese on the Z meal, you hit Modify Order, and it moves everything around, making some buttons not behave well.
5. Possibly horrendously expensive. I know it's not free.
(Some of these things might be specific to where I work, so, meh).

I haven't used MYOB in ages, so it would be unfair for me to pick at it's fault, because they could have been fixed by now. But I did like it, it was just difficult to setup, although they do now have Retailbasics, which is more simpler, apparently.
Goodbye and thankyou!
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Andrew
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Re: How does it compare to real POS software.

Post by Andrew » Fri Oct 24, 2008 6:09 am

The beep is annoying? Do you have "key press beep" turned on? That's an option in POSCONFG.
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daleadmin
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Re: How does it compare to real POS software.

Post by daleadmin » Fri Oct 24, 2008 8:41 am

True, it does not work with a touch screen. But read this about using "Groups" http://www.dhpos.com/postip8a.htm#rest

Dale

Douglas
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Re: How does it compare to real POS software.

Post by Douglas » Fri Oct 24, 2008 7:41 pm

Andrew wrote:The beep is annoying? Do you have "key press beep" turned on? That's an option in POSCONFG.
Yeah, I know about that. One of the first things I turn off, it doesn't play nice in an XP window.
Goodbye and thankyou!
My blog

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daleadmin
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Re: How does it compare to real POS software.

Post by daleadmin » Fri Oct 24, 2008 8:44 pm

And it still beeps?

Dale

Douglas
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Re: How does it compare to real POS software.

Post by Douglas » Fri Oct 31, 2008 7:03 pm

daleadmin wrote:And it still beeps?

Dale
When you open POSCONFG, it does on each of the info screens, which annoys me greatly.
Goodbye and thankyou!
My blog

Desphil
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Re: How does DHPOS compare to real POS software.

Post by Desphil » Fri Sep 11, 2009 10:44 pm

Dale

I have worked on a wide range of software packages in various applications for many years, some retail store POS systems, cash registers, mainframe networked systems and hell - even a telex machine..... (if anyone remembers what those are)

When I started trying to modernize the way things work in our small farm store I did a google search for Point of sale software and came across your site. I basically said, "This is too good to be true." I was wrong. It is true - and its GOOOOOD!!!

I dont think I have ever used any POS software which is quite as well laid out, and user friendly. My 8 and 10 year old daughters both picked up how to use the software within minutes, as did my 60-something store clerk..... that speaks volumes about your software, Dale!

Now if only I could explain to them what WINDOWS is.....

cwathen
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Re: How does DHPOS compare to real POS software.

Post by cwathen » Sun Sep 13, 2009 4:59 pm

What I like about DHPOS is that it's written from the point of view of the people who have to use it and thus everything is well laid out and clear. No feature is added without serious throught being given to it's usability and how that will affect existing features. Whilst this seems obvious, 'real' EPOS systems don't seem to have this goal in mind, where the goal seems to be to do things in a way which suits the programmer rather than which suits the people using the software (I know you believe you do that too Dale, but actually you give a lot more thought to us poor souls than do the people who are paid to write software for their job).

Apart from experimenting, there are two main EPOS systems I've had to use at work:

Relief Manager Plus - DOS EPOS system designed specially for running a pizza shop (although it's so versatile that you could actually use it for any food business and even some non-food ones). Although notionally 'updated' by current owners Intura Solutions (copyright date in the current version is 2006) it only gets bug fixes - no significant features have been added since version 3.00 in 1997 (current version is 3.71), and the fundamentals of how it works have been unchanged since it first came out in 1991. Domino's Pizza in the UK still run this system in all of their stores (was used by the US stores until 2001 too).

Very powerful at what it does, but somewhat unwieldy and often illogical - the system is divided up into 8 separate programs which get loaded separately to access various parts of the system. In recent years they've 'helped' you by adding a windows-based toolbar to move about between the modules rather than the simple DOS text menu it used to have, although this actually makes things slower.

Falls into the trap which commercial EPOS systems always seem to fall into of the Escape key not doing what you expect. When taking an order, instead of Escape exiting out of an option, it instead attempts to cancel the entire order. Requires the remembering of lots of odd key sequences - instead of asking whether the order you're entering is for delivery or collection, the system will assume you want it delivered unless you remember to press F2 to tell it that you don't. When going on deliveries you press F1 to tell the system that you've gone but F4 to tell it that you've come back. I could go on. Has a rather odd on-screen calculator which needs to be seen to be believed - to find out 2 plus 2 you don't press 2, +, 2 but instead press 2, decimal point, enter, 2, decimal point, enter, +.

In fairness, the bits the normal people see (order taking, routing for delivery orders and makeline) aren't too bad to learn but the back office side of the system is something else - even simple things like adding new items are needlessly complicated and even the most cursory bits of analysis are accessible only from a monolithic 'custom marketing' module.

It also doesn't know what the current date is - you enter a start date when you first use the system and this gets incremented by one each time you end the day. So if you're closed for a day you have to run the end of day process an extra time or you'll be a day behind. If I'm testing it (which I do a bit of at home) and haven't run it for 3 weeks I'd need to complete the end of day process (which requires a minimum of 4 options in 2 modules) 21 times one after the other in order to advance the system on to the current date.

But RMP really only suffers from being old. Which is nothing compared to the EPOS system I use in my main job, Reference Point.

On the face of it, it's powerful stuff. It does serial number tracking, warranty tracking, can automatically generate chase letters for defaulting customers, is multi site and multi till, has a powerful report generator which lets you create your own reports on any criteria and present that data however you want rather than being restricted to what the developer has included in the program, has full accounts built in which can do payroll, can track comission and bonuses for employees, and it can track deliveries. It's also the only piece of software which the development company (Reference Point Computers) makes, so all their time and energy can be devoted to it.

However, what you get is a system which is hacked together and a nightmare to learn. Pressing the wrong key in the wrong order at the wrong time can have disasterous consequences as there is often no way of undoing what you've done.

Key sequences are beyond illogical (this is a system where you press escape to confirm things!) and it's ridden with bugs and half-completed features.

Worst of all is their shambolic testing procedures. Unlike the usual way of developing software where updates are thoroughly tested before being deployed, Reference Point will write a new update and after only the most cursory of testing will suddenly deploy it onto your system and leave you to report the bugs in it - that's right, your live system which your business runs on is frequently running beta-grade code!

This lack of proper testing has meant that on more than one occasion an update has caused something which used to work to stop working - so not only does it have bugs, but it can mutate new ones! On top of that, old ways of doing things are usually left in place after having been replaced with new ones, even though you can run in to problems if you attempt to use them (the best example probably being that on back office logins an old version of the sales screen is still freely available - but if you use it to enter a sale it won't go through properly).

It also suffers from frequent crashes and downtime - with the usual policy being to restart routers or the server and hope that it comes back up again with no real effort being made to correct these problems.

Alan
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Re: How does DHPOS compare to real POS software.

Post by Alan » Thu Oct 08, 2009 2:17 am

Finally working on EPOS equipment again.....those self service checkouts!

The biggest thing when comparing DHPOS to "real" POS software is speed! It is so quick to load, especially if you are using a MS-DOS machine!

The closest real POS program I've seen runs from DOS, connecting to a SCO-UNIX server.

I would say that maybe 50% are using IBM software with dumb terminal tills (no HDD), occasionally with a Java pos touchscreen, the rest are using XP and some are using Linux (very slow however!)

Alan

vie_ascenseur
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Re: How does DHPOS compare to real POS software.

Post by vie_ascenseur » Fri Apr 09, 2010 4:55 am

I have to say, DHPOS has stacked up amazingly compared to others.

It's quick, easy, simple and damn useful. (Oh, and FREE!)
The only niggle I have with it is that the Customers feature is yet to be fully implemented. Not a major problem, but for me to implement it fully in my Mum's business, it needs this function.
Also, perhaps magnetic-swipe reader integration? i.e. read/write customer loyalty cards, gift cards etc.

Just my 2p.

Thank you so much Dale!

Joe

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Re: How does DHPOS compare to real POS software.

Post by UnDefined » Sun Jun 03, 2012 8:00 pm

Well I work at a small non-profit home improvement thrift store which utilizes QuickBooks 2007.

I came upon your/this website when I was in search of knowledge when I decided to look into what's needed to start a small business myself. So I haven't actually used the program for real sales, so pardon any mistakes I write beyond this point as there may be features your program has that I haven't familiarized myself with yet.

QB7 is proprietary software that doesn't have the flexibility like yours does Dale which can work with virtually any type of business as long it's small enough in scale. I like the fact that I can still record the credit card sale without having to mislabel it as cash since I can process it separately with another program like Square or Mobilize. Since it's not proprietary I don't have to worry about what hardware is compatible because of corporate dealings that and it allows for more homebrew fixes and ingenuity. I love modding and creating my own devices so this simple program is great! This is a great for diy-ers like me who dabble in computer programming and tinkering with hardware.


Pros over DHPOS that I have encountered working with QB 2007 lots of detailed sales reports you don't need to be able to render them visually but a simple spreadsheet function would be helpful so I could make visual charts and graphs for presentations about my business if you already have it I have no clue as to where to find those files so I could make charts with them. I would also like that to work with the customer information such as creating an email list without looking at them individually.The streamlined way to upload a logo for receipts but honestly being able to try out our hand at making an ASCII version of the logo could work but it's not a deal breaker.

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Unrelated to this topic but Dale what would you do with this program after you pass your "life expectancy"? I mean like this is very helpful and useful program but I don't want it to end up being lost and forgotten on the internet. Would you give this program open source license and hope that a group would work on it... ?

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daleadmin
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Re: How does DHPOS compare to real POS software.

Post by daleadmin » Sun Jun 03, 2012 9:37 pm

UnDefined,

Thanks for the thoughtful comparison of DHPOS.

Most of the reports / data that the program generates can be exported when the report is on the screen to a data file. This is a comma delimited file that can be uploaded into any spread sheet program. You can also make a .CSV file from all or any part of the stock table, read this http://keyhut.com/postip6a.htm. You can also make .CSV files from the record of past transactions, read this http://keyhut.com/postip11.htm#rec2csv So if you can generate the reports, data ‘R’ us.

The customer database can also be saved as a .CSV data file.

While I am approaching my “life expectancy” ( I am 63) I am currently doing my best not to die. Even when I do die the then current version of the program will probably be out there forever. Hopefully by then it will have all the features that it should have.

Or I may just give it to Jon.

The main problem with making the program open source is that the has many things that must be hidden like the passwords and PIN numbers. It also has things that users must not be able to change like sales and tax amounts and transaction numbers. These things could easily be changed by anyone who has the source code and anyone with the source code could write a program that would change the hidden things and then release it on the internet making my program useless.

I plan to do my best to stay alive, really, just to make the DHPOS users happy,

Dale

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