Software for shops and retail: one till, stock and a clean cash-up

A shop makes its money in small sales, one after another, and loses it in small leaks: an offer keyed in wrong, a size sold that was not on the shelf, a return that went back into stock damaged, a drawer that is short with nobody sure why. Good shop software closes those leaks without slowing the queue. The rest of this page walks through a trading day and shows which screen handles each job.

What goes wrong in a shop without a proper system?

Most of the trouble is not dramatic. It is the same few problems, every week.

• Stock you think you have. The spreadsheet says six, the shelf has two, and the customer who wanted three leaves with nothing.
• Options that blur together. A cushion in four colours and two sizes is eight different things to count. Treated as one product, nobody knows which colour sold out.
• Offers that depend on memory. A 10% spring offer on two candles works only if every person on the till remembers it, and stops on the right day.
• Returns with no trail. Money goes back out of the drawer, the item goes back on the shelf, and nobody records whether it was chipped.
• Reordering in a panic. The bestseller runs out on a Saturday because the order to the supplier went out on Thursday, a week late.
• A cash-up that only gives a total. The drawer is short, but there is no line between what should be there and what is.

Each of these is a records problem. When every sale, return and adjustment lands in the same place, most of them stop happening.

How does a shop's day look in EasyTaskr?

The day runs through six screens: Home, Offers, the till, Products, Returns and Purchase orders, then the cash-up at the close. Staff mostly live on the till. The owner moves between the others.

The numbers below are a sample gift shop with plain example figures, not real customers.

Step by step

1. Open Home before the doors open. Home shows today's sales so far, the month to date, and a Running low list with how many of each product are left. Below that are the latest sales, newest first, and a line of sales for the last seven days, before tax. If the fig candle is down to three on a Saturday morning, you know before a customer asks.
2. Set up an offer. From Home, go to Offers. Running offers and paused ones are listed together, so last year's spring offer can be switched back on. For a new one, give it a name customers will understand, choose a percentage or a fixed amount off, a start date and an optional end date, then pick Apply to all products or Choose products. Tick Featured to show it in the banner and Active to switch it on, then Create offer.
3. Sell at the till. Scan the barcode and the item is in the sale with its price. Scan the same item again and the quantity goes up by one. If a product comes in options, pick the colour and size the customer chose and the till shows how many of that exact option are left. Any line in an active offer gets its discount automatically, and the receipt shows the saving.
4. Take payment. The total includes VAT, shown on its own line, worked out from each product's rate. Choose Card or Cash and the next customer is up. Walk-in sales need no customer name.
5. Add a barcode to a product you already sell. In a quiet minute, open the product, go to More details, and scan the maker's barcode into its box. The scanner's Enter stays in the box, so the form is not saved by accident. If the code already belongs to another product, a warning names it, and a true duplicate is refused. A gift box of four can have its own code under Other barcodes with Units in pack set to 4, so one scan adds all four.
6. Handle a return. In Returns, start a New return and scan the receipt. The sale comes up showing how many items can still come back. Mark each one Good to sell again or Damaged, don't sell. Then choose Give the money back now, up to what they paid, or Keep it as credit on their account, and press Refund and finish.
7. Reorder what is running low. In Purchase orders, Order from low stock gathers every product under its reorder level and groups the lines by their usual supplier, with the total at cost. Change any quantity, leave out any line, then Review the drafts. Drafts are not sent: open each one, check it and send it.
8. Receive the delivery. When the boxes arrive, record a goods received note against the purchase order so the stock goes up by what actually came in, not by what was ordered.
9. Cash up and close. On the till close screen you see the day's takings by how people paid and how many sales each. EasyTaskr works out what should be in the drawer from the opening float plus cash sales. Count the drawer, type it in, add a note if it is out, and close the till for the night.

Which screen does each job, and what does it save?

How should a shop set up its products?

Spend an hour on products before the first trading day, because everything else reads from them.

Give every product a barcode. If it has a maker's barcode, scan it in. If it comes in an outer box that you also sell whole, give the box its own code with its pack size. A code the till has never seen opens a New barcode sheet at the counter, where you can type a name and price and save it straight into the sale, or link the code to a product you already have.

Use variant families for options. A mug in three glazes is three products in one family, each with its own stock. That is what lets the till say "two left in blue".

Set a reorder level on the products that matter. Only products with a reorder level show in Running low and in Order from low stock. You do not need one on everything; start with your top sellers and anything a supplier takes a week to deliver. The reorder point guide shows how to work out the number.

Check each product's VAT. A product can carry its own rate or be marked not taxable, and if it has none it uses your company rate. Get this right once and every receipt is right.

How do you keep stock honest between sales?

The till takes stock off as it sells, and goods received notes put it back on. Everything else is an adjustment, and adjustments are where shrinkage hides. Record each one with its real reason: damaged, theft or loss, samples, internal use. A month later the reasons tell you whether your loss is breakage in the stockroom or something walking out of the door.

A regular count keeps the figures true. Count one shelf or category at a time rather than the whole shop in one evening; the stocktake guide covers how.

What reports does a shop owner actually need?

Three questions cover most weeks: what sold, what made money, and what is sitting still.

Sales reports answer the first. Profit by product and the margin report answer the second, and they matter more than turnover for a shop, because a busy line with a thin margin can take a lot of shelf space for little return. The stock value report shows what you hold at cost and at selling price, and products priced below cost are listed with the loss if each one sold. Sales before and after discount show what your offers actually cost you. Any report can be exported to CSV for your accountant.

For how to set prices that leave a margin after offers, read how to price products.

How EasyTaskr helps

EasyTaskr runs the till on a tablet, desktop or phone, with barcode scanning, variant families, offers that apply themselves and VAT on every line. The same records feed stock across your locations, returns, draft purchase orders from low stock, the end-of-day cash-up and the reports above. The built-in AI assistant can answer questions such as "what were my top sellers this month?" from your own sales.