Electronic Cash Register

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What Does Electronic Cash Register Mean?

An electronic cash register (ECR) is a system designed to enable products to be sold at a retail outlet. Electronic cash registers help large retail outlets track sales, minimize register errors, collect inventory data and much more.

Techopedia Explains Electronic Cash Register

An electronic cash register typically processes goods by: Reading the information contained on a product label (usually using a scanner) Checking the price database for the price matching the label information Adding that price to the running total of all products being purchased by the customer Sending data to sales and inventory software after the sale is complete The sales system is incomplete without other software applications that turn ECR data into operational signals, such as an order to ship more or less of a certain product to a location based on sales.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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