Solutions · Retail & shops
Putting a shop on it without shutting the shop.
Billing, stock and customers for a retail shop, switched on in the order a counter can actually absorb. A counter cannot stop for a fortnight while somebody types the shelf into a computer. So for a shop the order things go in matters more than the list of what you get — and the part that makes the first week work is not the part a shop is usually sold first.
The order it goes in
What has to exist before the shop can raise a bill
Each of these has to be in before the next one is worth doing. None of it needs the shop closed, and the last is the one you are meant to start rough and improve every week.
The things you actually sell
Not the whole shelf. The items that move, each carrying its category, its brand, the unit it is sold in and the attributes you let it vary by — for most shops that is size, colour or pack. The slow tail can go in as it sells.
Until this is in, there is nothing to put on a bill.
What each of them is sold for
Prices sit as lists held against that same catalogue rather than being typed onto each sale. Do it before anybody bills anything: a bill raised at a figure that is on no list is a figure nobody can look up afterwards.
Until this is in, the counter is quoting from somebody’s memory.
The bill itself
Bills raised against a customer you already have, or one added while they wait. Part payments, and whatever a regular has left on account, are recorded against that customer rather than in a notebook of their own.
This is the day the shop is on it. Everything above exists to make this quick.
The godown, once billing is running
Stock held per item and per variant, in the place it is really in, with every movement in and out written as a document of its own. Opening figures can be brought in rather than typed item by item.
Deliberately last. A shop that waits for a perfect count before it bills anything never starts.
One day, and where it lands
What a shop’s day actually touches
A shop keeps fewer records than it is usually sold, and this is very nearly all of them. What happens across a day on the left; the records each of those moments reads or writes on the right.
That is the whole of a shop’s record-keeping, and it is worth knowing before anybody shows you a menu. Almost everything else a shop is offered is furniture standing around those.
What we would leave switched off
A shop is not a small version of a wholesaler
These are the parts a shop is most often sold and least often opens. Each of them costs nothing left off — so here is the specific thing it costs you switched on.
- Orders
- A stage and a promise date on every sale. At a counter the goods leave with the customer: there is nothing to promise and nothing to chase.
- Projects
- Tasks, deliverables and sign-offs hanging off a sale that took four minutes.
- Forms
- Another inbox to work through. People walk in, and the enquiry is the conversation you are already having.
None of them is a wall. Each is a switch, thrown on the day the shop starts doing something it does not do today.
The decision to make before you type anything
What counts as one thing
The same shirt is one item with sizes, or it is several items. Whichever you decide, you decide it once — and everything entered afterwards is shaped by it.
A shop’s catalogue is built out of categories, brands, the unit a thing is sold in, and the attributes you let an item vary by. Those attributes are the decision: colour and size for a garment shop, pack and weight for a grocer, length and rating for a hardware shop.
It matters more than it sounds, because the price lists are held against that same catalogue and stock is held per item and per variant. Split the shirt into separate items and you get separate prices and separate counts for each of them, which is right for some trades and miserable for others. Keep it as one item with sizes and the shelf reads the way a customer asks for it.
The test worth using: split by what somebody asks for at the counter, not by what the supplier prints on the box.
What a shop asks first
Three questions, answered the way we would answer them on a call
None of these is about features. They are the things that decide whether the first month goes well.
- Do I have to count the whole shop before I can raise a bill?
- No, and we would rather you did not. A bill needs the item and its price; the stock figure is the part that gets better every week rather than the part that has to be right on the first day. Goods received and counts are written down from the moment it is switched on, and a shelf counted corrects that shelf, so the figure becomes true without the shutter ever coming down.
- Can I sell the same thing at two different prices?
- Yes. One item can sit on more than one price list, so a trade rate and a shop rate are two lists rather than two catalogues that have to agree. A bill starts from the Retail list, and the rate on a line can be changed.
- Does my website have to wait until the shop is on the system?
- No. A website is its own thing and plenty of shops buy only that. Where both exist, the site is given a key that lets it read your catalogue and your live stock — and until that day it is simply a website, with nothing missing from it.
What your website is allowed to see
A door with one thing behind it at a time
A site that reads your records is only worth having if you can say precisely what it can reach. Each kind of record is switched on or off on its own, on a key you issue, tied to the branch you issue it for. A new key starts with everything on, and you switch off what it should not have.
What you would open
- Your catalogue — so the site shows what you actually sell, in the shape you entered it rather than in a copy somebody keeps in step by hand.
- Live stock — so a page can say what is on the shelf now, instead of what was on it when the site was last edited.
- The checkout path — an order placed on the site is priced again from your own catalogue before it exists at all, and the buyer is matched to the customer you already have or added as a new one.
What stays shut
- Your customer records — a shopfront never needs to know who owes you money.
- Your bills and payments — nothing about what the shop has taken is reachable from the internet because a page wanted to show a price.
That distinction is the reason this is worth a section rather than a line. What your site can do is what you granted it, and what you did not grant it cannot be reached by a mistake on the website’s side.
Tell us what is on your shelf.
The shape of your stock and the way you price it is most of what we need. We will say what we would switch on for the first week, what we would leave until the shop asks, and you can try it on your own items before anything is decided.
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