Chromis POS has only just started on it journey of evolution, but it originally started its life after I came across an open source pos called Unicenta, which itself was a fork of Openbravo, when looking for a Point Of Sale (POS) solution for a friend to use in his tropical fish shop.
The software was downloaded and tested, and it was at this point that, its unsuitability for use in the fish shop, ( as it stood), was discovered.
The main problem was how do set up the product file for the fish species, when the range of these is so large. The first approach was to set up a fish product to the smallest possible price, 1p in our case. That would mean if the fish was £5.00 then the user needed to enter 500 x fish (1p), the only issue on the receipt it printed as 500 units at 1p. A better solution was needed.It was at this point in time that I decided I needed to get the software fit for purpose, with at that moment time a single function, ‘the ability for a variable price product’.
The first update I released, addressed the pricing issue for my friend. This was the variable price product, which allowed the user to set up a product with no fixed price. On use, the user enters the price and then selects the product. I released this code to the other users of the product, via the forum.
The next item I needed to address was, my friend had over 5000 products to add to the software, what a task that would be. We had a conversation with his suppliers who said that they could supply the details in a spreadsheet, great I thought how to get them into the software? The next item that I spent time on writing, was the CSV import tool. Again which was released to the general users via the forum. I watched the forum and responded to some of the requests for changes. If I thought the idea was worth the effort, I tried to work on a solution. This resulted in a large number of updates to the software, which were incorporated into a release in 2013.
As time followed more features were posted on the forum, and these generated a number of followers.I always had a policy of making the source code for my changes available on the day of release, this will remain one of the guiding principles for ChromisPOS.
At this time I had a number of users who respected the changes and implemented them in to their operations. This was where a problem started to arise, as a new release of the Unicenta oPos software appeared I needed to write the features again to work with the latest code.
Following a number of events, the decision was made to start my own fork of the software. I had already been asked by a number of forum members if I had ever considered that option prior to the decision. I started to work with a number of members on getting a release available, this was made available at the beginning of September 2015, ChromisPos was born.
Chromis is currently under going a number of changes to get to a point where more of the features I had been planning to add to the list on forum, can be implemented.
Features :-
- Runs on Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 & 10, Linux
- Supports extensive range of hardware
- Java 1.8 supported
- Multi sale modes
- Screen resolutions from 1024×768
- Built in powerful scripting language, allowing user customization
- CSV import for product list
- Barcode supported, including variable price or weight (GS1 standard)
- Supports range of open source database platforms
- Built in reporting and reports
- Supports USB printers
- Ability to migrate from Derby (single user) datebase to MySQL or Postgresql
- Remote Kitchen printing
- Chromis Kitchen Screen support
- Use security
- Customer database
Want to try Chromis pos Download here
If you need assistance, we have a ‘support forum’ for users.
Great software, using it in my small convenience shop. Thanks
Nice website John.
Felicidades! Excelente software. Gracias.
Desde Nicaragua les instamos a seguir con el proyecto.
Congratulations! Excellent software. Thank you.
From Nicaragua we urge them to continue with the project .
there are many forked of openbravo and unicenta..but all are almost same.can you update this Chromis to have Purchase and Order Module which will be exact similar to sales screen but all records should go different table like tickets_purchase,tickets_order..
when you will add Purchase and Order Module it will be complete ERP module ,,and will be a great software
Hi Thank you for the comments. At this moment in time we are still working to get some of the bugs resolved and then we will concentrate on new features. Suppliers is on the list of proposals and this should then enable proper order management. Johnl
Thanks for your work.
Would it be a lot of work to modify the CSV import for stock lines to make it work for customer data too? We are currently still on Unicenta and I’m going to migrate from Unicenta at some point very soon but likely to wait until after Christmas just to avoid any disasters over the busiest period if I mess it up. The facility to import customers would be the kick I need to get it done.
Are you able to supply a sample csv, that we can look at?
We are using it for a medical dispensary and so are bound by rules on confidentiality but basically would have fields such as:
ID, Title, FirstName, LastName, Address1, Address2, Address3, Address4, Postcode
These could be adapted and re-ordered in order to fit in with whatever mandatory and optional fields were needed to work for everyone else.
All things are possible, as the source is available. With the new change sin data regulations coming to the EU for 2018, all data will be looked at in a few months.
Dose it have Service Charge available in Chromis ?
Hi
This is in the beta release at the moment and should be available shortly.
Thank you very much for your great job! From Argentina, I’m installing it with some modifications in my customers.
i don’t know how to work in chromis pos software, so please let me know, is there any study material or video avaliable to learn and work in this software.
Hi
We are still working in the manuals, but lots of help can be found on the forum
http://sourceforge.net/p/chromispos/discussion/
Hello Guy’s [ I wanna know how to configure Chormis on SQL and also i wanna know if i could make i every single user has his reports ]
Thanks
The best place is to go to the source forge site for Chromis and the guys on there will be able to offer guidance.
http://sourceforge.net/p/chromispos/discussion/
We are currently looking at the way locales work. Any help with translation is appreciated.
I can help localising for the philippines.
That would be appreciated.
Hi John,
Great work with Chromis, man 🙂
Do you think it already has reached a state that, it is stable and now can focus on new feature development?
I would like to have a wishlist, maybe its good to get inputs for others as well and the create some kind of roadmap and also open for potential sponsored development, to speed up and also to cover your coffee 🙂
Here’s my list:
The UI is quite dated, will be good if we can get some good UI/UX guys to help redesign all pages. Will be definitely good if we can have some modes as well, like tablet, desktop, phone (responsive :)) so that usability improves many folds
Add Purchasing features [saw its already in roadmap, great]
Add Promotions Module, where we can define, Product A is 50% off on weekend, or between certain dates, or Buy 1 Free 1, Buy A get B for free or at 50% discount, etc
Membership for Customer (Gold, Silver, Bronze, etc). link it to Promotions, like Gold members will get 20% discount on Product A, etc
Customer Loyalty Points, accumulate points with purchases. Each Product shall have fields to store how many points or we can do by defining how many points for how much sales amount
If you like we can work together with you on some of these enhancements to speed up work
We do cloud-based CRM and would like it to be integrated with Chromis as well [need to plan API based data sync, etc]
Let me know if you wanna catch up offline to discuss it further.
Keep it up 🙂
Regards,
Deep
Very nice software and SUPER support team! Thank you FANZAM for all your help!!!
Thank you, we are glad you like the software and what is happening with it.
What is the difference between unicenta and chromis?
Chromis is fork from Unicenta with lots of the features that ‘John l’ implemented but was never added to Unicenta. If you wish to get new features for Unicenta you now have to pay a subscription cost.
Having recently started in business, I need a till system of some kind, the biggest problem was cost. I started with a small Casio till but soon became disillusioned. I emailed John when a friend of mine mentioned about looking at epos and gave me the Chromis web site details. After a few emails and advice on hardware, which john also helped me source, I had the software installed and running all within a month of the first email. All I can say is great and thanks.”-
Alex
We are a family business of 35 years, and felt that we needed to change with the times. John helped source and recode the software to suit our needs. That was back in 2013, once Chromis was released in 2015, we moved over to that. It is great we can now get reports of all kinds, making things like checking best sellers simple. We have had no problems in training the new staff we had to employ when we moved to bigger premises; it is so easy for them to use.
Phil Lawton – Kidsgrove Tropicals