Sports shop software: sizes on the till, repairs, kit printing and team orders

A sports shop looks like any other shop from the door: shelves, a till, a queue on Saturday morning. Behind the counter it often runs two more businesses. One is a workshop that strings rackets, services bikes and tunes skis. The other is a print press that puts names and numbers on shirts, sometimes for a whole club at once. EasyTaskr's sports shop setup is the retail setup with a Sports area on top, so the shop, the workshop and the press share one stock list and one till.

What makes a sports shop hard to run?

Sizes, and the work that is not a straight sale. A shirt comes in six sizes and a boot in a dozen, so stock that looks healthy on paper can be missing the one size a customer asks for. The workshop and the press add jobs that take days, belong to a named customer and must be paid for at the end.

The problems tend to look like this:

• Selling a size you do not have, because the shelf count covered the style, not the size.
• Repair slips that go missing, with the string tension or the promised day written on the back.
• Racks of finished rackets and bikes waiting for customers who were never told they were ready.
• Printing priced by guesswork, a different amount for the same name depending on who served.
• Club kit orders on a spreadsheet, with sizes changing by text message after the order went in.
• Deposits taken in cash and forgotten when the invoice is raised.

Each of these is fixed the same way: one record per job, with its customer, its price rules and its status, connected to the stock it uses.

How is the sports setup different from a retail setup?

It is retail plus one area. A sports shop gets the same menu and the same till as any shop: products, stock, customers, offers and reports. The sports preset switches on sizes and colours for products, and the Sports area adds Sports settings. Repairs, Printing and Team orders appear only when you switch each add-on on, so a shop that only sells never sees empty workshop screens.

Step by step

Here is a Saturday in a shop that sells, strings rackets and prints club kit.

1. 09:00, the till. A customer wants running shoes. The shoe is one tile; tap it and the size picker shows each size with how many are left. The size 9 says None left, so you show the half size above it before the customer asks.
2. 09:20, a racket comes in. Open Repairs and press New repair. Find the customer, choose Racket stringing, and set the mains and crosses. The customer had it strung here in spring, so Same as last time fills in the tensions and the string. Pick In 3 days as the ready date and press Take it in and print the tag. The tag goes on the racket and the stub goes home with the customer.
3. 10:00, the bench. The Repairs board has four columns: Booked in, On the bench, Waiting for parts and Ready to collect. Start work moves a ticket on. A bike needs a part you do not stock, so it goes to Waiting for parts until it arrives, then Parts are in: back to work.
4. 11:30, a price change. The bike needs more than the quote. Needs the customer's approval holds the ticket until you mark Customer approved.
5. 12:00, ready. Mark ready, then Send ready message. Ready tickets that nobody has told carry a Not told yet pill, so none sit on the rack unnoticed.
6. 13:00, a shirt with a name. On the till, New print sale: pick the shirt, the size, then Add printing. Choose the position, the name or number, the font and the colour, and the till prices it from your rules. After payment the job joins the print queue.
7. 14:00, the press. The queue runs Queued, Printing, Ready to collect, Handed over. Start printing, Mark ready and Hand over move each job on. Put on hold parks one while you check a spelling.
8. 16:00, a collection. The racket owner returns. Collect & pay takes the payment as a normal till sale, and the string comes off stock at that point.

How does a club kit order work?

A club kit is a project with many small orders inside it, so it gets its own record. Press New team kit, add the club or school, the kit name, the season and the date it is needed by, and choose who pays: The club pays (one order and one invoice) or Each player pays (parents order from a kit store link, if that add-on is on).

The kit has four tabs. Roster holds each player's name, the name on the back, the number and a size for each garment; Paste a list of players takes lines copied from the club's spreadsheet. Size run adds up the sizes against your stock and shows any that are short, and Order the missing sizes turns the gap into a draft purchase order you check before sending. Approval sends the club a link, after locking the sizes so nothing changes behind your back. Money takes the deposit and raises the invoice.

Statuses follow the work: Draft, Collecting sizes, Waiting for the club, Approved, In production, Ready, Handed over and Closed. Starting production puts a print job in the queue for every name and number on the roster, so nobody types them twice. Closing a kit removes the parents' contact details once they are no longer needed.

How do you price name and number printing?

Price by the letter or digit, with a least charge, so a long name costs more than a short one and a two-letter name still covers your time. In Sports settings each print position (Back name, Back number, Front number, Shorts number, Left chest, Sleeve) gets a flat price, a price per letter or a price per digit, and a least charge.

A worked example in plain numbers. Say the back name is priced at 1.50 per letter with a least charge of 6, and the back number at 2.50 per digit.

A shirt with "OKAFOR" and 10 carries 14.00 of printing on top of the shirt. The till applies the same rules for every member of staff, which ends the "it was cheaper last time" conversation. To check the printing still pays once the transfer film and press time are counted, the markup vs margin guide shows the sum, and how to price products covers setting the rule in the first place.

How do you keep the right sizes in stock?

Watch stock by size, not by style. A style with forty units left can still be out of the two sizes that sell most, and a customer who cannot get their size leaves without the style too.

With sizes switched on, each size keeps its own count and the till shows what is left of each one. Before a busy season, compare what sold last year by size with what you hold now. The stock control guide walks through reorder levels, and a team kit's Size run does the same check for one club before you promise a date.

Which screen handles which job?

How EasyTaskr helps

EasyTaskr gives a sports shop the retail till with sizes and colours, and stock counted by size. Add-ons you switch on as you need them add repair tickets with tags, a board and ready messages, name and number printing priced by your own rules with a print queue, and team kit orders with a roster, a size run, club approval and a deposit taken off the invoice.