velocipedio

I'm not sure if this belongs in this forum, but I don't have access to the bike shop professionals forum, and I'm sure there are a good number of shop rats around here.

We're currently evaluating a retail management/point-of-sale system for our shop. We have expanded considerably in the last couple of years, and plan to continue, and it has become obvious we need some kind of rms/pos to stay on top of everything.

What I'd like to know is what systems are your bike shops using [assuming you're using such a system]. Could you give me a brief review? Thanks.

fmw

I'm in more of position to tell you which systems not to get. Personally, I think there is one very important feature you want to have and that is stock number aliasing. Some systems require you to use the UPC code as your stock number. Others don't allow you to have a UPC code at all. You want to be able to use the Mfr. stock number, the UPC code and, if you like, your own stock number for the same item. You should be able to enter any of these aliases and get the same product from the database. That will make it easy to scan or manually look up products for check out, receiving or inventory counts. I think this is the critical feature. Everything else is accounting. Some systems are flexible and complex and some are more rigid and simple.

Biggziff

A friend and riding buddy has a consulting business and computer retail store here (15 years or longer in business). He has sold this one point of sale system for years and has a long list of happy clients. I've sent him the URL to this post. He'll probably reply to you directly.

nitropowered

We use Microsoft's POS (point of sale) program. I think its pretty good coming out of microsoft. We're a small shop so we dont use a barcode scanner but i'm sure its got the capability to do so.