Choosing which software to use for your new retail business is one of the biggest decisions you will make during the start-up process. The number of choices can make the process confusing for those with little retail experience. There is software to control inventory, software for accounting, software for employee management, and packages that promise to do it all.

An EPoS system or electronic point of sale is the most convenient system to use for retail. You can count sales numbers more effectively with bar-coding. This software is sold with cash registers that network with your computers, allowing for the ease of a cash register till with the sophistication of retail technology. Your business will run much more efficiently with an EPoS system even thought eh price of the investment may seem massive.

However if you do not want to buy an EPoS system, these are the alternatives.

The basic things that you will need are a database to control inventory and spreadsheets for accounting. Microsoft Office or similar technology would work for the spreadsheets but can be a real hassle for business owners to manage. And databases can be difficult to get to grips on if you are inexperienced.

This is where the all-in-one packages step in. There are already packages available that are aimed at the retail market. The more functions your package can do the more money it will cost. Be honest and think about how many customers will visit you on a weekly basis. Expensive large items might only sell a few per week so your accounts package can be run from one machine. You can use a cash register till to carry out the sale. Then you can record the sale on your computer once the customer leaves.

If you keep a lot of stock and sell many items this type of machine will not do. You need the accounting package to record each sale as it is happening which a simple till will not do. But the downfall is that you will still need another machine to print receipts and do credit card sales.