What Retail is for
Retail is for a company that sells goods over a counter. It keeps the product list, counts the stock, runs the tills and sends what was sold, what it cost and what was paid to your books. It is a connector: an area of its own in the switcher at the top of the sidebar, beside Accounting.
It has two halves. The Retail area in this dashboard is the back office: products, stock, goods received and sent back, moves between places in a store, sales and refunds owed, register sessions, card settlements, the books, reports and setup, and on the larger editions buying, transfers between stores, stock counts, batches, promotions, customers and online orders. The Retail POS app is where the shop works: a Sales till sells, and a Registration terminal receives goods. The app is opened from Apps and runs in a browser on each device.
Setting a shop up
- Open Retail › Retail setup. On General, check the time zone, whether your prices include VAT, the usual VAT code, the discount a cashier may give and how many days a return is accepted.
- On Accounts, check the account each kind of entry lands on. Sensible ones were created for you; somebody with the Retail accounting permission confirms or changes them, after confirming it is them.
- Open People and access, press Give access, and give each person a Retail role. A cashier needs Cashier; whoever counts goods in needs Product Registrar, or Stock Receiver to receive deliveries only; whoever approves at the till needs Sales Supervisor or Store Manager, or Refund Supervisor for refunds only, and sets their own approval PIN.
- Open Stores and tills and press Register a till. Choose the store and the register, and read the activation code. On the device, open the Retail POS app, sign in and type the code.
- Register your products, on Products here or on a Registration terminal, then receive your first delivery or enter opening stock.
- On the Sales till, open the register with its float and sell.
The dashboard
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Gross sales, Average sale, Returns | For today, this week or this month, whichever you choose. Totals include VAT, are net of returns and leave out voided sales. A sale is a transaction that sold something: beside the sales it says how many of them were exchanges and how many refunds there were. A refund only took goods back, so it is not a sale, and the average sale leaves it out. |
| Margin | Sales before VAT less what the goods cost. Shown only to somebody who may see costs. |
| Sales this month, day by day | A chart of each day's gross sales this month, for the store chosen. Table shows the same figures as a table. Shown to somebody who may read Retail reports. |
| Needs attention | What is waiting for somebody, each line opening the page that deals with it: alerts from the tills, entries the books refused, stock below zero on record, products running low, cash differences waiting for a manager, refunds owed to customers and card payments not yet settled. Where your edition has them, it also lists purchase orders and stock counts waiting, transfers on their way, batches near their date, online orders to pick, deliveries that came back and online orders still to be refunded. |
| Open tills | Register sessions that are open now. |
| Paid by, today | Today's takings by how they were paid, as a bar for each with its share, or as a table with Table. A refund owed, or more given back one way than was taken, is a figure below zero and has no bar. |
| Stock | How many counted products are out, running low or below zero on record, across the company. |
| Top products | What sold most this month. |
Editions
Retail comes in three editions, so a small shop is not shown what it will not use. Lite is one shop. Every edition, Lite included, sends goods back to suppliers, moves stock between places inside a store, and records card settlements. Organizational runs several stores and warehouses in one company, and adds purchase orders, transfers between stores and warehouses, stock counts with a review, batch and expiry tracking, promotions and coupons, customers with loyalty points and store credit, the management reports, a price for each store and approval limits. Enterprise is for chains and large markets, and adds serial numbers, reorder amounts worked out from how fast things sell, online orders, gift cards and loyalty tiers. The edition is chosen under Retail setup › Edition, up to what your plan allows.
An edition changes how much there is to manage. It never changes how stock is counted or what reaches the books: those are the same in all three. A page for something your edition does not include is left out of the Retail menu. What an edition is planned to add but cannot do yet is listed on that page as Not available yet.
What reaches the books
Retail posts through the accounts chosen under Retail setup › Accounts. A cashier never chooses an account.
| What happened | What is posted |
|---|---|
| Goods received | Debit Retail inventory, credit Goods received not invoiced, at the cost entered. |
| A register's sales for a day | One entry when the session closes: debit cash and card receipts clearing; credit sales and VAT output; debit cost of goods sold and credit inventory for what the goods cost. Returns debit sales returns. |
| Opening stock, a count, a write-off | Inventory against opening balance equity, stock count adjustments or stock losses. |
| A purchase order | Nothing. The goods post when they are received. |
| Goods sent back to a supplier | Debit Goods received not invoiced, credit Retail inventory, at what the supplier is to credit. |
| A transfer between places or stores | Nothing. What was sent and did not arrive posts as a write-off. |
| A stock count with a review | Nothing until it is approved. Then one stock correction for the differences. |
| A promotion | Nothing of its own. A sale posts what was actually charged. |
| Points | Nothing of their own. Points used are a discount on the sale. |
| Store credit and gift cards | Store credit owed to customers and Gift cards not yet spent, with the register session's sales. Store credit corrected by hand posts at once. |
| An order paid online, when it is completed | The sale, at once, with the money on Online payments clearing. |
| A card settlement, when it is posted | Debit the bank account and Card provider fees, credit Card receipts clearing or Online payments clearing. |
| A till's cash | A difference at the count to Cash over and short; cash paid in or out to Till paid-outs. |
| A refund owed | With that register session's sales, the refund is credited to Refunds owed to customers. When it is paid: debit Refunds owed to customers, credit Card receipts clearing (paid on the card terminal) or the bank account (paid by bank transfer). |
| A supplier's bill | Drafted from a goods receipt and approved in Purchases › Bills, where it clears Goods received not invoiced. |
| A supplier's credit note | Drafted from goods sent back as a debit note and approved in Purchases › Debit Notes, or entered in Accounting by your company. |
An entry the books cannot take, because a period is locked or an account is not chosen, never stops a till. It waits under Retail › Books with the reason, and is sent again from there.