Magazine: Tablet solutions will be the biggest hit among online cash registers

2013 and 2014 were all about the introduction of online cash registers and the related problems, from authorisation to the subsidies given to retailers. The biggest winners were the companies selling and installing online cash registers.

According to data from the National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV), the 2014 budget revenue from VAT was HUF 3,035.6 billion, HUF 226 billion more than in 2013. As for 2015, until 31 July the state’s net revenue from VAT was HUF 1,739.4 billion, exceeding the level of the first seven months in 2014 by 6.9 percent at HUF 111.6 billion. It is doubtless that the increase had to do with the mandatory introduction of online cash registers, but there is no NAV data available specifically about this. According to NAV, at the end of July there were 203,125 online cash registers connected to their system – their number has been growing by 2,700/month on average in 2015. Szintézis Zrt. CEO Dávid Szabó is of the opinion that online cash registers have made store management work faster and more transparent. Szintézis keeps developing its online cash register systems, improving both hardware and software, e.g. by offering numerous new extensions. Ervin Szabó, the managing director of Laurel Informatics Kft. talked to our magazine about their new product: the XML cash register information package shows retailers how many annulments a cashier had to do on a given day or in how many cases did customers pay using multiple currencies. Jenő Madarász, the managing director of Alt-Cash revealed to us that a growing number of retailers are connecting barcode scanners to their cash registers, and they tend do stock management using computers in either online or offline mode. Szintézis Zrt. is putting a new small-size cash register on the market, which is strong, portable and no bigger than the size of an A5 sheet of paper. Laurel’s experience is that for more and more retailers small-size cash registers aren’t suitable for more complex business processes, so they either switch to PC-based, barcode systems or use the Laura cash register software with SAP, Axapta or NAVISION systems. Shops are beginning to replace small cash registers with intelligent ones. Szintézis reckons that 2015 is a difficult year as most shop owners have already substituted their old cash registers with modern ones last year. A large proportion of Alt-Cash’s sales is customers replacing simpler online cash registers with higher-quality new models. Mr Jenő Madarász reckons that the size of small cash registers is expected to reduce further. Stylish and durable tablets have appeared in the segment of computer-based systems, which can also be used to register orders or to scan barcodes; systems running on Android are also about to hit the market. Mr Ervin Szabó talked to us about how useful tablet-format cash registers can be for less busy shops. Laurel’s solution has a stylish design and takes up little space. Mr Dávid Szabó revealed to us that Szintézis sees great potential in automated cash register processes and in the integration of systems serving other purposes. Smartphone use for self-scanning and payment purposes (e.g. NFC) is also of interest to them.