LHS Retail/Inventory POS software?

[atomicpunk5150 2]

Here is a question for the Pro Shop managers or workers. Hopefully this is the right forum.

What Retail/Inventory POS(Point of sale) software are you guys using? Also what are the pros & cons of your software package. Is it good for doing Inventory?

To make a long story short we(LHS) have been open for 10 years and used a variety of POS/retail/inventory software. Currently we use RMS POS/Office, it is a touch screen system that is used at the front desk, hockey dept, cafe as well as Pro Shop. While it is a great POS system, doing inventory is a NIGHTMARE. It has no handheld remote inventory scanner gun, so inventory is done by hand using a piece of paper & pen. So possibly we need an upgraded software package with a inventory scanner or something new all together. Or just a compatible hand held inventory scanner that would work with RMS-POS/office.

I have tried a few on line searches, but didn't come up with much.

So are there any good Pro Shop retail software packages that are also great for inventory?

Any suggestions, recommendations or comments would be great.

Thanks

[Chadd 916]

I've had issues with just about every package that I've tried

[Monty22 833]

Our shop uses "Retail Pro" . It's not perfect, but seems to be OK.

[Chadd 916]

Depending on what format your POS stores the data in, you might be able to access it another way. Worst case, you should have the option to import/export to a csv or db of some type.

[UMWhockey 0]

quickbooks isn't all that bad a system... much better for the pro shop then RMS

[atomicpunk5150 2]

quickbooks isn't all that bad a system... much better for the pro shop then RMS

That's the other thing that I mentioned, we are connected to the entire rink (cafe, hockey, front desk, ect..), so RMS is great for all that and even great for POS, the inventory problem is our main issue. The lack of a compadible handheld scanner is really our problem. The inventory is on a database connected to RMS, it is just a pain to count by hand then input via the keyboard. If you have worked with guys in their younger 20's (18-22) you relise that some of the hand counts may not be to accurate, hence our problem. It may come down to our manager doing another inventroy count by himself.

We used retail pro in the past, it was ok. As well as that Big Dog package almost 10 years ago. My favorite was writing out sales receipts by hand back in the day.

Thanks for comments. Anybody else work in a shop with something different?

[UMWhockey 0]

i know of a couple rinks that use quickbooks just for their pro shop and RMS for the rest of the rink, since yes, RMS is very good for the rink side of everything (skating school, LTPH, ect...)

[JR Boucicaut 3803]

Our shop uses "Retail Pro" . It's not perfect, but seems to be OK.

We use Retail Pro as well. I don't have any problems with it - and I have to use the other features as well (for buying)

[#44wannabe 4]

Just google EPOS systems and it will come up with a lsit of suppliers that will provide you with all the set up needs. EPOS (electronic point of sale) allows you to configure your current inventories barcodes with system that is in place. If you want to be really swish you could even just get the hardware supplied then hire an IT Contractor for a month or so to configure and build a bespoke software system with interface that will alow you to add and remove products with ease. the cheapest and easiest way to this would be to hire an ASP.Net C# SQL Developer contractor to set up the whole system for you. Of course going down this route you would need to have your servers etc. but this would allow you the option of directly linking your own databases to your manufacturers B2B system allowing to be able to tell customers exactly when you will recieve the goods on the same screen as the sales screen.

[DarkStar50 679]

We use RMS here. It is a PIA with inventory. Just like everyone else, it is great for the rest of the building on RMS but far from perfect for the pro shop. We close our shop and take a physical inventory on January 2nd each year. We get it done in 2 days working like mad.

[jimmy 194]

We use Quickbooks, other than small screen receipts page, it works well. We hand count at end of year, 2days of boring hell. IMO hand counting isas accurate as scanning. Who's to say the tag your scanning is correct too. There's problems no matter how you do it.

[Chadd 916]

We use Quickbooks, other than small screen receipts page, it works well. We hand count at end of year, 2days of boring hell. IMO hand counting isas accurate as scanning. Who's to say the tag your scanning is correct too. There's problems no matter how you do it.

Scanning doesn't account for theft either. You really should do a hand count unless you have giant/monkey-sized warehouses.