POSitive Retail Manager and POSitive For Windows point-of-sale software systems serve businesses from a wide variety of industries in verticals that include retail, wholesale/distribution, e-commerce, and mail-order. Even though each product is built around a different database technology, they share many common features:
E-mail
Confirmation of Invoice, Order, Quote, etc.
When you are creating, reviewing, or completing a transaction, you can e-mail the information directly to the customer as a confirmation of the products and services being provided.
Marketing
As you gather e-mail addresses of your customers, you may choose to use POSitive's E-Mail Marketing tools to thank customers for their patronage, to announce new products, to reward them with special offers and discounts, and to promote new services and benefits. These tools allow for targeting precise groups of customers ranging from those who have purchased specific products, to those who have spent a total amount of money for a given time period, or those who have made no recent purchases.
Vendor Orders
You may use e-mail to confirm your purchases from vendors by providing them with a e-mail copy of your purchase order or by sending them a compiled file in EDI format.
Restricted Access
E-mail functions of POSitive are restricted to authorized employees
Top of Page
Purchase Orders
Vendors
An unlimited number of vendors of products and services can be maintained. Information about the vendor can be stored in notes. And various statistics are constantly updated. Ready access to inventory available from the vendor as well as status of open purchase orders. Simple AP processing.
Purchase Order - Open Entry
Once a purchase order is started, more items can be added either manually or automatically until you decide to process it and place the order with the vendor.
Rapid / Accurate Receiving
Several tools are available to assure that quantities received on purchase orders are accurate. To minimize human error one can use scanners, hand held collectors, and import files. Other visual effects are helpful. A purchase order can be saved for review before processing. And receiving can be done in stages, perhaps one box at a time.
Automatic Handling of Vendor Backorders
If a product is not yet received, POSitive retains the item on the original purchase order. If the item is never going to be shipped, the item can be removed from the purchase order or the purchase order voided in full. The item needing to be ordered can be sent back to the order list in search of another vendor.
Immediate Notification of Cost Changes
When vendor costs fluctuate, POSitive allows for immediate changes to your selling prices and printing of price labels to reflect those changes. You may choose to update vendor cost and/or inventory item last order cost.
Support of Special Pricing
If your vendor sells you some product at greatly reduced prices (trade shows, promotions, close-outs), POSitive will track the true FIFO costs and profits and you can choose to update or not update either/both vendor and item last cost values.
Purchase Order History / Modification
Purchase Orders can be reviewed, reprinted, and modified to some extent. For example, if you learn later that the cost of an inventory item is different than originally thought, you can edit the PO and change the cost of the item. This cost is automatically applied to un-sold items. As for sold items, there is a "cost verifier" feature to adjust invoice history so that past profits will be correctly calculated and reported.
Top of Page
Stock Counts
Common to all point-of-sale programs is the function of keeping current stock counts; increasing as purchase orders are received and decreasing as sales are made.
Some additional features are as follows
Pre-Sale
When times get exceptionally busy, POSitive will allow you to sell product right out of the box before your purchase order has been processed and stock counts updated. Later, when you have more time, POSitive will receive the purchase orders and automatically reconcile with pre-sold items, thereby making the stock count accurate.
Hold Back
While creating an invoice, you may over-ride the delivery quantity and force a backorder of some items. For example, although you have some stock on hand, you may not wish to deplete your entire stock count just to fill a customer order. Instead, you can choose to deliver some product now and backorder the rest for later delivery.
Special Order
POSitive knows you cannot or choose not to stock every product available to you from your vendor. It’s easy to create an order for an item that may not be normally stocked, or has never been sold at all. When the item is received, POSitive will prompt you with the name of the customer.
Partial Delivery
Customers are often anxious to take their purchases home. POSitive supports partial delivery of layaways and orders retaining some items for later delivery while releasing items currently in stock.
Returns
Return of products from customers couldn't be simpler. POSitive links to the original invoice, flags the reason for the return, and refunds in a variety of ways including exchange product, cash, check, balance to store account, or issuance of a gift certificate.
Once the customer is happy, then POSitive allows for careful redistribution of the returned merchandise back to stock, back to the vendor, or discards with appropriate documentation of each.
Top of Page
Transactions
All point-of-sale transactions with customers are fully documented and can be printed to full-page printers or 40-column receipt printers whenever needed. The print-outs contain your store policy statements per transaction type. The printout includes customer, clerk, purchases, and tendering details including split tender transactions and deposits applied.
Invoices
Every sale is recorded with a unique invoice number, details about what was sold, who sold it, how it was tendered. Every invoice can be recalled and reprinted and even e-mailed at any time.
Invoices are a permanent document and can not be altered. However, invoices can be voided by authorized employees and an identical invoice recreated to make corrections or adjustments.
Layaways
POSitive maintains full layaway functions including setting pickup/expiration dates, issuance of periodic layaway statements, payment processing and receipts with balance due, and partial delivery of items on layaway. Monies collected are retained as deposits and can be refunded with a fee assessment if the layaway is voided. At any time, a lookup can be made on a customer's list of pending transactions and adjustments made.
Inventory is reserved and on a case by case basis can be relinquished as needed to fill other orders.
Quotes
Many calculation and quote preparation tools are provided to assure that you are able to provide highly competitive bids and retain a workable profit. Quotes can be replicated to provide various alternative proposals including notation of extra fees to make upgrades of some line items.
Two printouts of the quote are available: one for the customer and one for store use which details the costs and profits. You may set a date when the quote will expire which can hasten the decision making processes.
Unlike invoices, orders, and layaways, quotes do not impact your current stock counts. Quotes can be instantly converted to a Service Order, Layaway, or Order for later delivery or converted to an Invoice for immediate delivery if all items are in stock.
Orders
A good starting point for many customer transactions which may require special orders, detailed notes on specifications, and delayed delivery. Deposits in full or in part can be accepted at any time. Changes to the order are easy to make and full cost and profit calculations are readily visible. Special order items are tracked and updated automatically. Partial delivery of items on the order can be processed as needed.
Internet Orders
POSitive has an exceptional shopping cart capability which can link to your current web site or a web site presence created for you with a wide range of styles and features. Customers see rich documentation and pictures of items available for sale. As customers place orders, POSitive effortlessly stores and processes the orders. Pricing of items can be varied depending upon customer account settings.
Service Orders
From start to finish, extensive notes on work to do, work done, and internal commentary is saved and retrievable. As specific products are repaired or serviced, a history on those items can be generated and reviewed at any time. Multiple service technicians can clock time spent and add separate labor charges. A call log documents conversations with the customer regarding the service order and decisions reached will the service order is underway. Once completed, the service order is processed as an invoice and can be reviewed and reprinted as needed.
Recurring Invoices
Recurring invoices are ideal for sales of standard consumables or regular services. POSitive can generate a master invoice and make an unlimited number of iterations of that invoice on a daily, weekly, monthly, or other specified frequency. The invoice can be automated to charge a designated credit card or to place the charges on accounts receivable.
Top of Page
Employees
Security Access Levels
Security options can be enabled for a wide variety of access rights. These security options can be defined into job groups such as: Bookkeeper, Cashier, Manager, Service Tech, Stockboy, etc. which can then be applied to specific employees.
Internal Messaging (POSitive Mail)
Send and receive "interstore" messages for individuals or groups of individuals. When the employee logs in, mail messages can be read now or later.
Top of Page
Data Handling
POSitive supports single user and multiple computer use over standard networks. The POSitive program and data are independent of Windows registries, thereby allowing data to be moved from one computer to another if the need arises.
Internal Backup Options
Independent of any other backup systems, POSitive can make automatic backups of your data to the same or a different hard drive. These backups are easy to use if the need for restoring data ever arises.
Import & Export functions
Much of POSitive's data can be imported from comma or tab delimited files provided to you from your vendors or other sources. One can import inventory, customers, vendors, and zip codes to save time and effort.
From time to time you may find it helpful to export POSitive invoices, inventory, customer data, and other information for review and manipulation outside of POSitive.
Both importing and exporting are standard features of POSitive.
Top of Page
Consignments/Used Inventory
If you are willing to sell products on a consignment basis, POSitive has the tracking and documentation capabilities. Consigned products can even generate commissions for the sales staff. Consigned inventory is excluded from your overall store assets, but can be reported on separately.
If you take used inventory in trade or for cash, POSitive can track used items and print separate labels with separate pricing.
Top of Page
Invoicing Tools
POSitive supports three different invoicing screen designs. Touchscreen and Register styles are for the fast-paced cash and carry industry. Invoice style works well when detailed notes, product information, and commentary is needed.
Suspend Invoicing
Temporary Suspension
While in the middle of an invoice, you can suspend processing or editing, to allow the customer to leave temporarily. This allows you to start transactions for waiting customers and then resume with the original invoice when the first customer returns.
Long-Term Suspension
An invoice can be changed to an order, layaway, quote or service order to allow for more detailed review before delivery of the products.
Invoice Buttons
Shortcut buttons on screen are readily accessible with hotkeys or mouseclicks (or by touch) and are definable by management at the system level. These Buttons can be arranged into groups and color coded.
Product lookup
Products can be found and added to an invoice by scanning the barcode, typing a SKU, or manually look-up of the product.
Products can have more than one SKU. Alternate SKUs are used to indicate catalog page numbers, superseded part numbers, manufacturer codes. An option in POSitive will also search for vendor SKUs if the item is not found otherwise.
Fast Add Inventory
If inventory is not yet in the system, it can be added quickly while at the register to accommodate customer needs. Later, the inventory item can be further defined by management to make it uniform to the overall inventory system.
Price Overrides / Cost Review
Only authorized employees are empowered to make price adjustments, but such adjustments are a powerful tool in satisfying the demands of a competitive business.
Research Tools
While invoicing you have tools for reviewing customer credit, payment history, purchase history, and detailed information about products including product facts, vendor information, and stock status.
Release Backorders / Hold Back Quantities
If products are being held on a pending order for a different customer, one can choose to release the item for an immediate sale when you know the vendor can send you replacements in timely fashion.
If you choose to not deliver all products in stock, you can force a backorder status of an item for later delivery.
Product Identification
Pictures of the inventory being purchased can be displayed on screen for cross-checking or verification purposes. This is primarily used for big ticket or sensitive items.
Coupons Honored
Manufacturer and in-house coupons are defined in advance and applied as needed to an invoice in process. Only qualifying products will be discounted by the coupon.
Invoice Receipt
The receipt or invoice can be printed to a full-page printer or a 40-col receipt printer. Items on the invoice will be sorted alphabetically or listed in the order added to the invoice. The receipt can include customer name and address and always includes your store policy statement.
Top of Page
Cost/Profit
Detailed Notes
Commentary about specific inventory items can be automatically applied (Transaction Note) or manually added by pressing CTRL-N. Hotkeys/SKUs can be created to automate notes to explain reasons for refunds, special return policies, payout notations, and other unique but often used indicators.
Age Verification
Products of a controlled nature can require positive proof of identification before the cashier can proceed with the transaction.
Top of Page
Accounting
Accounts Receivable
You control customer credit limits, assign payment terms and can assess finance charges. AR Statements are of two types: Balance Forward and Transaction Based. These statements can be printed on a designated day of the month and/or interim statements can be generated at any time. AR transactions are cycled through Open, Closed, and Processed stages automatically.
Accounts Payable (PRM Only)
Payouts to vendors are tracked. As purchase orders are received they can be posted to Accounts Payable or not. Once in AP, adjustments, credits, and combined totals can reviewed and when processed posted to POSitive Checkbook.
General Ledger Journal
POSitive has an default chart of accounts and activity links which is automatically applied when you install POSitive and create your own company. You may, however, change the chart of accounts to your own system either though an import routine or manual changes.
When transactions are made, the GL Journal is updated for review. Transactions not related to point-of-sale activities, such as rent and phone, can be manually entered into the journal before posting. Once posted, the GL History allows for export of an ASCII file of account totals and some detail. Various GL related reports are available.
POSitive Checkbook (PRM Only)
Although the check supports only one GL account, POSitive can print standard or voucher style checks on any laser printer using your own pre-numbered stock. The check layout can be customized. The payee is auto-linked to your vendor and customer lists and depending upon POSitive setup options, vendor AP is automatically inserted for check printing.
Top of Page
Customers
Purchase History
Review and reprint all invoices. Tally sales and returns. Report on all inventory purchased.
Pending Transactions
In addition to invoices, keep open multiple pending transactions per customer.
Accept and Refund Deposits
Location Map
With the click of a button on the customer record, an internet map of the customer location can be printed to expedite delivery to the customer.
Multiple Ship To Addresses
Each customer can have multiple ship to addresses. Taxation can be based on the ship to address.
Customer Rewards Program
Reward your customers with points or store credit as they purchase qualifying products.
Categorized
Types of customers can be defined and special options applied to customer categories such as default price levels, discounting, terms, and user-defined fields for further categorizing customers. When a new customer is added, these pre-defined settings are automatically assigned, thereby reducing the tedium and focusing more promptly on the customer's needs.
Notes
Unlimited number of notes
Authorized Buyers
For business accounts, POSitive will keep a list of individuals authorized to make charge invoices. Extensive notes and additional phone numbers allow for ready access of critical information. You can even capture and call up pictures of your customers.
Top of Page
Special Pricing
POSitive provides you with several tools to set pricing and discounting, thereby giving you the advantage in a competitive market.
Multiple Price Levels
You can categorize your customers in broad groups such as retail, club, wholesale, employee, etc. and automatically set blanket prices on everything you sell. As customer loyalty goes up, you can advance them to a better price level.
Permanent Discounts Per Customer, Per Category
For your most loyal customers, you can offer permanent discounts on specified products on top of the assigned price level. This can be done on a per customer, or per customer group.
Contract Pricing
You can promise your priority customers a fixed price for a contractual time period for all or specified products. When the contract date expires, all prices revert to their normal pricing automatically.
Promo Pricing
Promotions can be established to run for just hours, to weeks and months. Pricing can be set at a fixed sale price or a percentage discount from the regular price. Your clerks don't have to worry about watching prices, POSitive does all the work. When the final minute of the promotion ends, all prices automatically revert to regular pricing.
Price Breaks
Offer your customers incentive to stock up by buying multiples of a product at a savings to them. POSitive supports the traditional 2fer, 3fer pricing as well as "quantity breaks" which sets price ceilings on items and an each price reduction when the ceiling limits are met.
Mix & Match
Similar to Price Breaks, Mix & Match will watch as products are sold and automatically discount qualifying items when the set limits are met.
Coupons
POSitive supports "in house" and "manufacturer" type coupons. When a customer makes a qualifying purchase, the coupon becomes valid and discounts by percentage or dollar off amounts. Taxes are charged appropriately and reports can be run to see how often specific coupons have been tendered.
Price Over-rides
Various methods are available in POSitive for allowing some employees to override existing selling prices while creating invoices. For example, you could allow an employee to discount the line item, choose from a list of preset prices, or edit the price field directly. No matter what method is used, PFW will report on these price exceptions on an employee sales report.
Packaging / Kits
Common to the computer, furnishings, and hobby industries, POSitive allows you to sell groups of inventory items for one, all-inclusive, package price. The customer sees an itemized list of what products and services are being purchased, but does not see line item pricing.
A variation on this feature is the ability to create kits wherein even the components are hidden.
These packages and kits are defined in advance and are added to the customer invoice with just a keystroke or swipe of a barcode. Once on the invoice, you may wish to make slight modifications or adjustments to better suit a customer's needs.
Top of Page
For more information about POSitive for Windows visit their website |
