Many enterprises integrate point of sale systems into their vendor platforms. Although this is an important factor for day to day business it can prove challenging since there are a variety of ways to accomplish this integration.
The Basics
A cash register is a point of sale (PoS) system that is common in almost every retail store. Organizing cash and calculating change are just two of the many functions of modern systems. It is a standard practice for POS systems to maintain an activity journal in which retail transactions are recorded. For example, it will track inventory turnovers as well as special activities involving cash, such as opening the cash drawer, refunds, or overriding price tags.
Video surveillance is commonly integrated with the PoS system. This allows video to be provided with the register’s ‘journal’. This allows for an easy comparison of register events and video recorded. In addition to assisting forensic investigations, this integration discourages employees from engaging in activities that are hard to detect, like sweethearting. In this case, employees steal merchandise by giving it to a friend, family member, or colleague at the cash register. There are a number of ways in which cashiers can do this, including scanning avoidance, price overrides, refund fraud, gift card fraud, void fraud, and invoice scams.
Overlaying Text
The most common ways to integrate video surveillance with POS information is, local POS insertion, text overlay and centralized POS integration.
Similar to how time/data stamps are incorporated into cameras, PoS data overlays the video stream. The simplest method involves ‘injecting’ an image of register information onto the image of the camera recording. It is difficult to find unique register events since the text is integral to the video image and is not searchable. This feature is usually installed separately from the DVR, camera, and printer/pole display at the PoS station.
Integrating Local POS
By using this approach, POS data is inserted into the VMS database by tying it into the onsite recorder. The benefit of these products is that they allow for all data and video to be viewed side-by-side. As a result, searching for a specific event or text will bring up the corresponding video. In comparison with simple ‘text overlay’, this level of integration is more expensive but easier to use. Three common variations are serial server, port sniffing and direct insertion.
Inserting Centralized POS
To access or download transaction data across the retailer, the VMS connects to a centralized PoS server. This method is often used by large retailers who have multiple locations as well as many PoS stations and have the infrastructure in place to support it.
This integration can often be used as a real-time searchable database. Instead of ‘receipt-only’ data, this integration provides access to the full scope of the PoS. The most common integrations consist of customer alerts (e.g. a cashier hitting the ‘refund’ button sends an email to management) and exception reports (e.g. Video records all large refunds).
If you are looking to update security features for your business, like PoS Surveillance Integration let RC Security help. Our continued research and partnerships with premium brands allow us to offer better quality every time.
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