Point of sale
Point of sale, or POS, is the system a store or outlet uses to record a sale, take payment through a connected terminal or provider, and pass the result to inventory and accounting so that stock levels and takings update without a second manual entry anywhere else.
Submit a project Plan a retail Odoo rolloutReviewed by Huy Nguyen (David), CEO · Updated 27 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
This term is one of the entries in the OutsourcingVN glossary of words buyers meet while planning a store's checkout and stock systems.
Why does point of sale matter?
A till that only prints a receipt leaves stock counts and the day's takings to be reconciled by hand later, which is where an evening's cash total and the shelf count quietly drift apart. OutsourcingVN is operated by Netbase JSC, and the practical reason a buyer specifies a point-of-sale system rather than a bare till is that every sale should move stock as it happens and reach accounting without anyone re-keying the day's receipts, so a manager can trust the numbers.
What is an example of point of sale in practice?
A cashier opens a session at the start of the day, rings up items as customers buy them, and takes payment through a card terminal connected to the till. Each sale reduces the recorded stock for the items sold, and the till keeps working even if the connection drops for a while. At the end of the day the cashier counts the cash and closes the session, which shows the number of orders, the total and the expected amounts for each payment method, and the posted session keeps a report of every order; a chain running several outlets sees the same data consolidated across all its shops.
What are the common misreadings of point of sale?
A point-of-sale system is more than the card terminal or payment provider it connects to: the PCI Security Standards Council counts PIN pads and other payment devices as possible parts of it, but the record of the sale itself, the stock it moved and the session it belongs to sit in the point-of-sale software. It is also not the same as an online store's checkout, which runs without a cashier, a physical till or a session to close. And it is not the enterprise resource planning system behind it: the point-of-sale system is what records the sale at the moment it happens, while the ERP is where that sale's stock and accounting entries end up alongside purchasing, production and the rest of the business.
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Common questions
Not continuously. Odoo's Point of Sale documentation for version 18.0, for example, says the app works on any device with a web browser, even if you are temporarily offline.
The session is closed and posted, and its report lists every order placed during it, so the day's takings do not have to be re-entered by hand.
Which decisions does point of sale affect?
Sequencing point of sale alongside store stock, replenishment and accounting into one rollout is the subject of Odoo implementation for retail chains, and the same question for an outlet that also prepares food is covered by Odoo implementation for food and beverage chains. When you know which tills and outlets need to run on one shared system, describe them and Netbase will respond through Netbase's own outsourcing-services platform; submit a project when you are ready.