Complete POS and Accounting Software Together?

omalleygallery

Grumbler in Training
Joined
Mar 21, 2002
Posts
3
Location
Farmington, MN
'Cuse me! I originally posted this as a reply--- I really wanted this to show up, up front, for people to reply to and hopefully give me "the answer"
Who has found POS that, either, links (completely) to accounting software or does the complete job?
Can we run accts rec'vbles, accts pay'ble, enter and pay bills, run our inventories, etc, etc. and run customer (and prospects) mailing lists with the capabilities of a Lotus Approach or MS Access?
If we are using POS to save time (not to mention accuracy in pricing), why do we have to spend time compiling data and transferring it to whatever brand of accounting software is used.
"Double Entry Accounting" is fine by definition
and for Accounting 101 but not when I have to double my efforts when I have to run two types of software to maintain busness books.
 
As a former "BEAN COUNTER" I would like to have a complete system as well.
However, Everyone wants something just a little different and I have yet to see a single software vendor do everything we want. If you have an extra $50,000 - $100,000 or more --- you might want to design a system that 1/10 of 1% of ys might want.

What I am saying is that there is not enough market for software suppliers to design such a specialized system and make a profit at a price that framers would be willing to pay.
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I really almost don't believe that the industry standard POS systems don't include AR, AP and GL.

How are you supposed to collect the money for the work orders you entered in the POS system, or pay the suppliers you ordered the material from? This is ridiculous. And they charge you how much for this pleasure of this "true double entry accounting"?!!! Sounds like a home brew to me. :mad:

At the very least they should incorporate some sort of interface or export to the more popular "general small biz" packages like QB Pro, Peachtree and MYOB.

I think it's time for a revolution.
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I agree about how difficult it would be to incorporate everything into one software package,
and that it still wouldn't meet our individual needs.
I strongly believe that to overcome this problem we need to take a different approach. eg
1. let an accounting package be an accounting package.
and 2. find some other system to suit our needs for the framing part of our business.
If a framer relaxes a bit about how much the second (framing) package is expected to do, and uses the pricing & quoting component only, Then the accounting package can take on the rest of the task of running our business's.
I have used this method for 18 years now. with great success.
I also believe that less is more. When it comes to
pricing for customers, the less effort need to come to an accurate price - the better.
 
it would be nice if a framing software company could contract with intuit who makes Quickbooks and create an add-on or plug-in or whatever they call them.
 
I have recently done a pretty thorough survey of framing POS systems in order to find one that will help me manage my business and also not make me go crazy trying to deal with an idiosyncratic user interface. While most packages out there do a pretty good job on the former, the state of the POS picture framing user interface is not a pretty one. However, that is a topic for another time. As far as accounting goes, as long as the POS system you purchase can produce a daily export of all your key transactions, then you can take this file and import it into your accounting system.

If you are like me and use QuickBooks, your POS vendor needs to produce a file, in a specific format, that contains these transactions ( other accounting packages have similar processes) . If you can produce this file, then all you need to do is import the file and viola, your books and records are updated!

I would recommend that you get your POS vendor to produce these files (if they are already not doing this). It is good for you and very good for the marketability of their product.

As far as a single product that does it all goes, don't hold your breadth. The price points on these software products don't justify it.

Anyway, I'd rather have two products that can interface and that do their job really well, than one that does it all but has severe limitations in things like flexibility and usability (see first paragraph).

-FBIll
 
I'm really the contrarian tonight! I LIKE having different programs doing different functions. I also use a different computer for my sales counter and my accounting. I wouldn't want it all together. Too much to go wrong -- too much to loose -- and more administrative time for me, not less.

I like a Fancy Cash Register Point of Sale system at the order desk that keeps great customer records, etc. as well as price and print out my work order forms. Of course, that is what the program I use is -- a Point of Sale Register with a frame shop edition add on.

And, though I don't get as good reports as I would like, I do easily get a list of accounts receivable's for COD clients (just have to add the figures--which I'm grumbling about so this gets improved) and statements for customers with billed accounts. (Same thing, I'd like a list)

Artisan was doing an export to QB function at one time -- I just don't know if it is operational or effective as I haven't tried it.

I really don't understand why a SALES program would have AP or GL. Everything having to do with income, YES, but expenditures? No matter what one would have to reconcile what was ordered with the invoices?

I guess I'm just happy with the simplified system I set up wherein I only record sales (by categories) and deposits on a regular basis and don't get involved with accounting caring about where every penny came from (just making sure it all balances!!). I let POS handle income and Accounting handle expenditures. It's pretty simple for me to get accurate sales and deposit totals from my POS when "closing out" the cash register.

I guess this is all one reason why some people like one Framing POS system and some another -- the programs AND the frame shops can have remarkably different needs.
 
We use Posperfect for as the POS software, this includes all of the modules that we need. The ability to control stock levels for retail items is essential for us as we have over 4000 different stock items at any given time. The additional capabilities that we use are the Debtors Module and also the Creditors module, as this information is all on one system it is very easy to keep control over the 250 Vendors that we have supplying various product lines, including all workshop expenses.
The single best thing about this software is the reporting which is very quick with extremely easy operation (even the old bloke can get the info he wants).
We do still however use a seperate programme for generating quotes for framing work, which are then entered into this system as Customer Orders which are then tracked through the production stages for easy reference when customers phone two or three days early to see if their work is complete.
Lance
 
Like Ronny from Melbourne, I think it's a mistake to ask too much from the POS framing software that's out there now. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. Get a good small business accounting package you can tailor to your liking and run your business on that.
 
Originally posted by rosetl:
I really don't understand why a SALES program would have AP or GL. Everything having to do with income, YES, but expenditures? No matter what one would have to reconcile what was ordered with the invoices?
If your purchases for materials were in a Purchase Order system, then when you got the bill for the materials the stock would be automatically put into inventory at whatever cost you paid for it, and your average cost for that material updated. Then when it came time to pay the bill you'd just print the check.

I guess it depends on what you want. When in a business that deals with inventory, the cost of that inventory, and tracking it as it changes, seems pretty important to me. The reason being that the costs of the materials purchased are linked to the sale.

As far as I can tell the only way to have accurate COGS on an individual job/customer/type of customer basis is one where everything is tied together.

Maybe it doesn't matter to you, but it does to me
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That's why there are so many options in this world today. Ain't it grand?
 
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