Method and apparatus for filtering point-of-sale data

A technique for capturing only selected event data in a point-of-sale system (12), to avoid the burden of capturing and processing all point-of-sale event data. The invention provides for the filtering of event data at the point of sale (38), in accordance with any of a number of filter types (50). Thus transactions can be filtered at an item level (54(a)), to facilitate a variety of useful applications, such as inventory control, shelf space allocation, price sensitivity analysis, and product promotion analysis. Other types of filters are defined to facilitate analysis of cashier activity (54(b)), system events (54(c)) and errors, tendering operations (54(d)), consumer diary transactions (54(e)), and random purchase (54(f)) and user-defined transactions (54(g)). Some of these applications, such as user diary operations (54(e)), use customer identification data to trigger the monitoring of purchase transactions (42). Other types of applications do not involve customer identification, such as inventory control, shelf space allocation, or price sensitivity analysis.