Point of sale or point of service (POS or PoS) can mean a retail shop, a checkout counter in a shop, or the location where a transaction occurs. More specifically, the point of sale often refers to the hardware and software used for checkouts -- the equivalent of an electronic cash register. Point of sale systems are used in supermarkets, restaurants, hotels, stadiums, and casinos, as well as almost any type of retail establishment. POS Point of Sale Software is used by a wide variety of industries and business owners to manage daily customer, employee, and inventory activity. Some examples of these point of sale activities include: real-time tracking of customer purchases, returns/credits, employee activity, inventory, orders, and more. Enterprise versions of POS Software, or multiple stores, can be networked together or operated independently of eachother. A POS Software system can vary in size from a stand-alone computer, to thousands of linked workstations.