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quicktill — cash register software

Copying

quicktill is Copyright (C) 2004–2024 Stephen Early [email protected]

It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see this link.

Features

  • Any number of departments, products, price lookups, users, etc.

  • Products sold can be entered through keys on a keyboard, on-screen buttons, or barcode scans

  • Works on multiple terminals at once; transactions follow users between terminals

  • Web interface for reporting and management

  • Flexible discount policies, and reporting on discounts given

  • Xero integration

  • Square Terminal integration

It should be possible to run this software on any system that supports Python 3.8. Usually it runs on Debian-derived Linux systems.

Misfeatures

  • Lack of documentation — you're reading it now!

  • Only one developer at the moment

  • Arguably: Configuration is written in python (although there is an ongoing effort to move configuration into the database)

Quick start

The till software includes an anonymised copy of the database from EMFcamp 2022 which can be used for testing. This guide assumes you have a fresh installation of Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop. (You will need a graphical user interface for the on-screen keyboard, and the Desktop version has the "universe" component enabled by default.)

Installing needed packages

In a terminal window, run the following to install packages the till software needs:

sudo apt install git postgresql python3-sqlalchemy
sudo apt install python3-dateutil python3-psycopg2

Configuring postgres

We need to set up postgres to allow your user account to create new databases. This procedure may vary from system to system, but on Debian-derived Linux systems will go something like this:

sudo -u postgres createuser -d your-username

You will need to substitute your own username for "your-username".

If you don't want to give your user account permission to create new databases, you could use the instructions here to do something more restricted.

Obtaining the till software and test data

We will create a clone of the till software from github:

git clone https://github.com/sde1000/quicktill.git

This puts the till software in a directory called "quicktill". From now on we'll assume that this is your current working directory:

cd quicktill

To create a database and install the test data in it:

createdb emfcamp
psql emfcamp <examples/data/emfcamp2022-anonymised.sql

If in the future you need to go back to the original version of the test data, you can delete the database using "dropdb emfcamp" and repeat the above two commands.

Running the till software

Check that the till software runs:

./runtill --help

The software can run in a number of different modes, defined in the configuration file. We're going to be using the configuration file examples/emfcamp.py. The commands shown here will specify this on the command line using the -u option.

The till software can also run both in its own window or in the terminal window you're using to start it. For a separate window give the --gtk option after the word start on the command line; to run in the terminal, leave it out.

To run the till software in "Stock Terminal" mode:

./runtill -u file:examples/emfcamp.py start --gtk

To run the till software in "Main bar" mode:

./runtill -u file:examples/emfcamp.py -c mainbar start --gtk --keyboard

At some sites the till software is used with a matrix keyboard, but these are pricey and hard to get hold of. The --keyboard option makes the till software display an on-screen keyboard instead.

Once the till software is running, you can exit it by pressing the "Manage Till" button (or 'M' if there's no on-screen keyboard) and picking option 8.

Using the till software for your own site

To use this software for your own site, you will have to write a new configuration file. It's easiest to do this by copying one of the example configuration files (eg. examples/emfcamp.py) and changing it. Once the software is configured, it's generally quite easy for staff to use. It's currently in use by Individual Pubs Ltd in all their pubs. It's occasionally used by EMFcamp and London Hackspace.

At the moment I'm not guaranteeing that changes from one release to the next won't break existing configuration files, although I aim to avoid this where possible. The database schema can also change; SQL commands to update existing databases are shown in commit messages. Generally schema changes can be made before installing the updated release, and won't affect older versions of the software; config file changes must be made after installing newer versions of the software and aren't backward-compatible. (So, to upgrade smoothly: make database schema changes, install the new version, then update the config file to enable any new features you need.)

Hardware

You can use a physical matrix keyboard, or an on-screen keyboard with a touchscreen. I generally use 16x8 matrix keyboards from Preh (MCI128), configured so that on each keypress they output a sequence of keystrokes giving the coordinates of the key that was pressed, for example [A01] for the bottom-left and [H16] for the top-right. If you have a different type of keyboard, or it is set up differently, it's fairly easy to write a new keyboard driver: see quicktill/kbdrivers.py

The software needs some way of identifying users. By default, there are three buttons at the top-left of the keyboard that can be used to log users in. If you have a keyboard with a magstripe reader, you can use magstripe cards to enable users to log in. At my sites we use ACR122U NFC readers along with some simple driver software (which should be able to support any CCID compatible NFC reader).

Receipt printers are supported (and required, if you want to use a cash drawer). The software has generic support for all ESC/POS receipt printers, and explicit support for the Epson TM-T20 (thermal), TM-U220 (dot-matrix), and Aures ODP 333. Label printers are supported for stock label printing. I use the DYMO LabelWriter-450 (cheap, works well) but anything with CUPS support will work.

Barcode scanners can be used to identify products as they are sold. You need some simple driver software to drive USB serial barcode scanners. Other types of scanner, for example Bluetooth cordless, are not yet supported but should be simple to add if required.

Setup

You must create a postgresql database and make it accessible to whichever user is running the till software. Name this database in the configuration file.

Put a URL pointing at the config file in /etc/quicktill/configurl (eg. file:///home/till/configweb/haymakers.py)

Create database tables:

runtill syncdb

Copy the example database setup file and edit it:

cp examples/dbsetup.toml my-database-config.toml
(edit my-database-config.toml)
runtill dbsetup my-database-config.toml

(There's an example edited database setup file at examples/data/emfcamp2022-dbsetup.toml)

Create an initial user; this will be a superuser that can do anything, you can use the user management interface once the till is running to set up other users:

runtill adduser "Built-in Alice" Alice builtin:alice

Run in "stock control terminal" mode and enter your initial stock (this mode doesn't require a special keyboard)

runtill start --gtk

Run in "cash register" mode, create stocklines, bind them to keys, put your stock on sale, and sell it:

runtill -c mainbar start --gtk --keyboard

A simple wrapper for the web interface can be found in this project.

Useful subcommands

The till software is invoked as runtill [options] subcommand [subcommand options]. Usually the subcommand is "start", to run the till interactively. You can get a list of all the subcommands with runtill --help.

Another useful subcommand is "dbshell", which starts an interactive python interpreter with a database connection already set up, a session started, and the td module and models.* already imported. So for example, to get a list of departments:

>>> td.s.query(Department).all()

A list of transactions in the current session:

>>> Session.current(td.s).transactions

A list of sessions and their totals (in a single round-trip to the database):

>>> from sqlalchemy.orm import undefer
>>> [(x,x.total) for x in td.s.query(Session).options(undefer('total')).all()]

Credits

This software incorporates code from the following projects, which may be under a different licence: