Weighing Scale Software

bigneacy

Ok, so I don't know a whole lot about software and would appreciate any help...

I need software for my business that will enable me & my staff to capture weight, customer details, and (variable per sale) price for several products, then for 2 receipts to print - both with shop name and address, date/time, staff members name and then:

• one with the individual weights and product names, the price, the customers name & address, a bit of text about the business and finally a strip for them to sign
• and the second receipt with a list of the products they have bought (no weights), total price and their name and address.

This is how I want the software to work:
Member of staff places Product A on the scale - scale sends the weight to the computer. Staff member can change the price of the product to, say, €65 per gram - product is 6.9 grams so subtotal is 448.50, staff member also puts product B on the scale - it weighs 52.9grams. staff member agrees with customer that product B will be €11.22 per gram, (593.54) so total is now 1042.04

The staff member puts the customers name and address into the system - computer tells printer to print the two receipts, customer signs the first one & keeps the other.

So basically a piece of software that will take information from a weighing scale - allow the price to be altered based on that information and other details added and then send that information for printing

Does this type of software exist or is it possible to utilize another existing piece of software to act in this way?

EDIT: I should also mention that the "receipts" don't necessarily need to be from a receipt printer - a normal A4 inkjet will do perfectly fine!

seamus

I imagine any standard piece of point-of-sale equipment will be capable of being customised by the vendor to do exactly what you want it to.

Really it comes down to how you want it to work. If you would like the weight of the item to be automatically fed into the software, then you will probably need to buy a piece of bespoke software written specifically for the set of scales that you're using.

If on the other hand you're happy to use a standard scales and the member of staff manually types in the weight, then there are tonnes of free point-of-sale software packages out there, and it's a matter of giving them a go to see which one you like best.

The latter might be desirable if you're working with very sensitive scales as it might be quite expensive to get (for example) a jeweller's scales that will connect to a computer. However you also run the risk of an assistant mistyping the weight into the software.

At a very basic level, you could also write your own system in MS Access or similar.

croo

OpenBravo POS can interface via serial port with scales.

As the name indicates it is open source so you can test it out with no cost. It's java based so will work on any OS system you wish. I've installed it a few times on linux boxes and it was a nice little application with no downsides I am aware of.

stevenmu

Simplifying it down, isn't that basically how a butchers scales work (and similar for fruit and veg etc). Obviously at €65 a gram, you might need something a little more accurate, but I'd bet if you start by looking at the manufacturers of butchers/fruit/veg scales then some of them will also manufacture more suitable products for yourself.