Bookstore POS Software (Microsoft RMS Replacement)

Technology Software
1

In the next few months, our bookstore is scaling way back to more of a resource center with approximately 100 titles down from over 2000 titles.
We are looking to migrate away from Microsoft RMS to hopefully a cloud-based POS system.
I’ve done some research and there is Microsoft Retail Essentials, Lightspeed Cloud, NCR Counter point, and others.
I’m curious to know what others are using for a POS system?

2

@abaker Have you looked at Square? They’ve made a full-fledged POS application which is very easy to use and manage. They even offer a public web store you can use now.

We’re using two Square instances: one for our Cafe, one for our Bookstore.

I’m happy to show you how we’re setup and do a screen cast, if you want to see, but I’d honestly look into it. It’s easy and simple and the credit card fees are pretty low.

3

Hey Eric, thanks for responding. Yes, we have used square for special events and we also use it in our Cafe. I really hadn’t explored their POS app but I’ll give it a look.
Our bookstore is only open on Sundays nowadays and there aren’t a ton of transactions so Square may make more sense economically. We will just need to do the math to see.
Thanks again.

4

We currently use Counterpoint for our bookstore, coffee shop, and cafe, but we are looking into moving to Revel (http://revelsystems.com/)

5

Hi Matt,
Thanks for sharing. I’ve never heard of Revelsystems but will give them a look as well.

6

Another vote here for Square. We have it live in our Cafe, and we will soon be switching our bookstore over.

7

We use LightSpeed for our café and bookstore and love it. We’re currently on the onsite version. Not sure if there is anything different about the cloud version. Let me know if there are any specific questions you need answered.

8

Thanks Brandon. I appreciate your response.

9

We actually did the exact same thing. We moved our book store from a really large area down into our lobby with a much smaller assortment of titles. We also left RMS and switched over to shopkeep. For whatever reason our accounting department has banned square so we were never able to test it. So far they’ve enjoyed it. With RMS, there was quite a bit of IT support, whereas with shopkeep we’ve never taken a phone call or email since it was deployed. The only thing I would recommend though is to go all bluetooth unless you know your LAN and WLAN sit on the same subnet.

10

Thanks Steven. I do I give shopkeep a look as well.

11

Our Bookstore uses Booklog.

12

Thanks Brandon. Is Booklog cloud based?

13

Andy, It is not cloud based

14

Thanks Brandon. I will give it a look as well.

15

Hi Andy,

It’s been a few months since you posted the question but I still decided to share a suggestion. Maybe it will be helpful for someone in the future :slight_smile:

If you’re considering a cloud based Point of Sale, take a look at Poster (http://joinposter.com/en).

One of the advantages is that the system is nice looking and intuitive. It works great for cafes as well as shops. There are all essential features like inventory, reports, finances, promotions and POS itself.