How does age verification work when selling items?

With RetailVista POS, it is possible to display a message when certain products are sold. The messages can be customized, just like the products for which the message should be displayed. In the POS message maintenance, various types of messages can be created. Messages can be displayed for the sale of alcohol or cigarettes, but also for special remarks regarding certain groups of products.

By adding a line here, for example 'Alcohol 18+', a message can be displayed in POS when an alcoholic product is sold that requires age verification.

The title appears as the title in a notification screen in POS, and additional information is displayed below it. 

It is possible to display different warnings, for example when this system is also used for selling medication, or for upselling such as warranties, additional accessories, etc. The notifications are then displayed one after the other, and the individual notifications can be made visible using the 'Next' and 'Previous' buttons. The 'Warning' checkbox forces the user to read that message and prevents the POS notifications from being interrupted. The 'Close' button in the display screen below is not available until all mandatory notifications have been displayed. Notifications such as cross-selling are optional and should not be marked as warnings; such messages can be skipped and the user can choose to close the message screen prematurely.

It is possible that multiple alcoholic products are sold (for example). Fortunately, this does not result in the message being displayed multiple times. In that case, the corresponding message is only displayed once for all those products (and must be confirmed). The screen below shows an example of messages, and in this screen, message 1 of 1 is displayed.

From an optional message, a separate receipt can also be printed, for example, for certain medicine sales.

In the settings of RetailVista, it can be indicated whether the POS message should be displayed immediately after selecting a product or only when switching to the payment screen. The setting 'Show product comments immediately after scanning a product' ensures that the above message appears immediately after selection or only when switching to the checkout screen.

There is also a setting 'Product information as message'. If free information is provided for a product, that free information can be displayed as a message. This can also be used to display additional product information in POS for the sale of very specific medicines.

Linking POS messages to products

So far, this article has only discussed the creation and display of products. However, it is necessary to indicate in RetailVista ERP which notification should be displayed for which product. Currently, it is possible to indicate which POS message should be displayed in both the cash register group and the product itself. Below is a visible example in cash register group maintenance of how the 'POS message' field can be set to display a notification for the sale of groceries.

But it is also possible to display a notification per product, as visible in the screen example below. 

In the 2025 update of RetailVista, it is expected that it will also be possible to specify a POS message in the product category maintenance and supplier maintenance.