Squirrel Credit and Gift Card Architecture

March 26, 2009

Squirrel Credit/Gift/debit Card Workflow and Architecture

The Squirrel Restaurant POS system provides core support for credit/gift/debit card payment methods. They also provide the infrastructure to allow some customization of this support and require customization for communicating with the Payment Processor.

Squirrel is a client-server system. The Squirrel POS workstation is a Java application which usually runs on a diskless POS workstation with a touch screen and magnetic card reader (as well as peripheral interfaces for printers, etc). The POS workstation itself usually runs an embedded Linux OS which is booted over the network. It is possible to run the Squirrel POS workstation application under Linux or Windows, though this is rare.

The Squirrel Application Server

(called the Squirrel Host) runs under Windows XP or Server and communicates with Microsoft SQL Server and the Squirrel POS Workstation applications. Read more

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Control Access to Paid-Out or any button in the Squirrel POS System

September 14, 2008

The SecurityLock Squirrel POS extension allows you to control access to the PaidIn function in Squirrel by Badge Number.

This extension will work with Squirrel version 1.4x and above. Read more

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Squirrel Web Portal

April 6, 2006

Well, more product ideas today. Let’s build a business around providing web access to essential Squirrel functions and data for restaurant owners and managers and employees. So, what does this look like?

A suite of small apps. All accessible via our website. Customers pay a monthly subscription fee for the services they want. First month could be a free trial. We get everyone’s email. Everything is accessed via a browser, probably using Javascript/Ajax to provide an interactive, desktop-like experience. Needs a connector service on the customers Squirrel Host to provide a pipeline into the Squirrel System. Keep it simple. Read more

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Money Bar Interface

April 4, 2006

Well, I’m finding out how much fun it is to get a routing issue resolved. What’s wrong is that it seems impossible to ping or traceroute (or send data over port 4554) to website.moneybar.net. This is a problem from my hosting account at site5.com as well as from home here in Vancouver (via Novuscom.net and Peer1). HTTP traffic is okay, and evidently pinging works from some other sites. Everyone says the issue is with someone else and that they have no problem. I’m waiting on yet another callback now. Read more

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Squirrel Requisitions

April 2, 2006

It occurs to me that there is possibly a business opportunity in developing new requisition, check, receipt, and credit card voucher formats. If it were possible to produce a new format inexpensively, have them available on the web through a catalogue, and then retail them for an acceptable price, then I believe that restauranteurs would be open to paying for formats that more closely match what they like. In addition, if customizations were inexpensive as well, they would be more likely to pay for those as well. Read more

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