Really simple Point of Sale ap for Android

[DerbyBorn]

Any suggestions for a simple ap for an Android Tablet to help with catering van. Basic help with adding up orders and calculating change.

[Gareth's was W7 now W10 Downst]

What do they teach 'em in junior school today?

[spuorgelgoog]

How to download an app on an Android Tablet, then they pass their assessment for Digital Literacy.

Owain

[spuorgelgoog]

Make everything a multiple of 50p, and change does not have to be calculated, it's counted out.

Or, dare I say it, a cash register.

But these days if you want to go contactless, some form of app is probably necessary.

Owain

[The Natural Philosopher]

Write a web page and then you can record all the transactions remotely

[Brian Gaff]

I was going to ask, does anyone use pen and paper or mental maths? Its a lot easier now we are decimal than in my day. Bring back the abacus. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

I can only do it on the Iphone. to be honest i thought I was a beginner at smart phones but I've thus far had to help out many sighted people who get their phones in a pickle and I've only used on since last Christmas! People do not engage with their devices. If they did and understood the basically simple concepts they should be able to sort things out for themselves. It is not rocket science or 5 year olds could not use them. That makes me a mental age of 5, oh dear second childhood warning. Brian

[Gareth's was W7 now W10 Downst]

It's only in the past few days that out of interest I taught myself the long division method of calcualting a square root :-)

As to the days of £l.s.d, in my collection (for want of a better word) of calculating devices, I got one that did not seem to be working until my wife looking over my shoulder suggested that it was for £l.s.d and so the first column did not carry over until 12, and the second column at 20!

What with £l.s.d and imperial systems of units we did not have to learn about different number bases, we encountered them all the time!

12 inches for a foot 3 feet for a yard 22 yards for a chain 10 chains for a furlong 8 furlongs to a mile.

And there was one unit which was not an integer value, because the surveyor's chain was divided into 100 links, each being 7.92 inches!

[Max Demian]

What "calculating device" was that? I thought we went decimal before the first pocket (or even widely available desk) calculators were available?

We had to learn our 16x table (for ounces to pounds) and 14x (for pounds to stones). But why learn the eleven times, except for "completeness"?

What do kids learn nowadays, if they learn tables at all? All they need is 2-9x.

[Gareth's was W7 now W10 Downst]

Mechanical adding machine

[tabbypurr]

NT

[Dave Liquorice]

Android comes with a calculator app...

Is the serving hatch capable of having several people all being served at the same time? Just a single tablet would mean those arithmetically challenged would have to move to it do the calc, move back, give the total and get tendered cash, go back enter tendered amount, get change, move back to customer. A lot of moving and what happens if another server wants to use it when the device is waiting for an orders tendered amount to be entered? And the customer hasn't got their cash ready to tender...

Make mental arithmetic easier by having a simple price structure. Assuming a "burger van", base price for a burger in a bun, hot dog in a roll, £2.50; portion of chips £1.50; extras (cheese, onions, curry sauce, gravy, etc), all the same price, say 25p. Though that means you'll have to have 5p's in your float... 30 or 40p? 50p pushes a cheese burger to £3.00 which "feels" far more than £2.80 or £2.90... B-)

Have total prices for common orders burger and chips, cheese burger and chips, etc already worked out an posted, in decent sized font, on the inside of the van, either side/above the serving hatch. Only have to do the change bit then.

Or do you want something that tracks what is sold and for how much so you can cross check stock levels and takings afterwards?

Cash registers aren't overly expensive but would no doubt require mains and if they are all anything like the one in the local Age UK charity shop rather fussy about the quality of the mains...

[Gareth's was W7 now W10 Downst]

I'd love to have a Curta but at several £100s it's not going to happen :-(

[Tim Streater]

On 07 Jul 2019, Gareth's was W7 now W10 Downstairs Computer wrote (in article<qfts44$ie8$ [e-mail]):

Yes. We went decimal in 1971 IIRC. Meanwhile, at Uni, the Optics Dept had a Friden electric mechanical calculator that could do square roots as well as the standard four functions. When doing a root, it chuntered back and forth for some minutes.

[newshound]

As long as you remember what comes in sixths of a gill.

[spuorgelgoog]

Sixths? That's stingy (or normal for Aberdeen).

We were fifths of a gill, or quarter gills in the generous places, until Europe intervened.

If Boris Johnson can guarantee the return of the quarter and fifth gill to Scottish pubs he'd knock all this Brexit / Indie nonsense on the head quicker than an alcoholic ferret in a mash tun.

Owain

[Terry Casey]

There was even a pocket mechanical calculator!

It had sliders with holes in and a metal probe was inserted into the appropriate hole and pulled the slider down to the bottom of the slot it was in. When the total reached 10, the probe was pulled back up to the top and looped over to advance the next digit.

It was made from alloy and was very slim, with the probe housed in the side.

They were also available in different versions - for calculating hours and minutes or Pounds, shillings and pence.

The MD at the first place I worked had one and his was definitely for Lsd (this was in the 60s.)

[Terry Casey]

But as Scotland widely adopted the 35ml measure in place of the traditional fifth gill measure I would expect rioting and disturbance on a national scale if publicans went back to the old measure which is a hopping 6.6ml smaller than the measure that the drinkers will surely claim as their right now after a few months short of a quarter of a century.

[Adrian Caspersz]

Learning some things by rote damages some of the ability to find out things for themselves by intuition.

Like, if something looks vaguely similar to something else, there will be some that will throw the toys out of the pram as their nursery rhyme fed analogies are no longer compliant with changes forced.

I still have no idea why I was forced to learn word perfect, a passage in Macbeth, 'Is this a dagger....'

[Richard]

That last one is obvious. For use in situations like this.