A new version of WooCommerce POS is available for download via WordPress.org. Version 0.3 allows you to add a customer to the order during checkout. It also allows you to set the default customer via a new settings page, for example, instead of using Guest you may want to create a new user called Walk-in Customer.
Adding a customer to orders brings much needed functionality to WooCommerce POS, but it is not the reason for the jump from 0.2.15 to 0.3 …
Also released with version 0.3 is WooCommerce POS Pro, a new paid plugin which sits side-by-side with WooCommerce POS to add extra functionality. The plugin is ‘pro’ only in name at the moment, it adds no extra functionality but over the coming weeks I will be adding features as requested by Pro users. If you are able to contribute to project financially please consider upgrading to Pro.
The addition of the Pro plugin is good news for all users of WooCommerce POS – including users of the free plugin. By putting a business model behind the project I can commit more hours to development and get things moving quickly. Just like WordPress and WooCommerce, a free version of WooCommerce POS will always be available on WordPress.org and the development code will always be open source on GitHub.
The new Pro plugin is also good news for web developers. The Pro plugin ‘hooks’ into the free version of the plugin, so any functionality that is added by the Pro plugin could equally be added or changed by a third party plugin. As I add hooks to the core plugin they will be documented with example code. Using hooks like this imposes modularity onto the core plugin which in the long run will mean a more flexible, future proof POS plugin.