electronic stock control systems
Hi I am interested in electronic stock control systems and wonder if any community shop has had experience of installing a system, and if so how much did it cost and was it worth it?
I attended a seminar recently where someone was promoting an all singing and dancing system but it cost £7,000. While it may have been worth it it would need to make a huge improvement to justify the expense.
Hi Peter,
There are suitable systems available for half that cost £3.5/£4k. If used to full potential with all your stock accurately entered on the system it is an invaluable tool. There are two shops in Devon that have recently installed systems that I know about - they are Berrynarbor and East Budleigh, their contact details are available on the Plunkett web site and I sure they will be only too pleased to talk to you. If you would like to talk more detail I would be pleased to help 01726 73816.
Best Wishes
David Geeves
Hi
We just bought a new Epos on a deal from YP electronics for about £4k with integrated scales for the fuit and veg. It has made a huge difference to help mange margins. I would recommend that new shops don't spend such a huge amount of money upfront though. I would operate with a very basic till until you know what you are doing. Also, when YP came to transfer all our info from our old till to the new one I made a mistake by allowing them to transfer lots of old out of date info into our new system. It then took me 6 months to get 5000 barcodes deleted so we were operating with just the 5000 we use.
Electronic Delivery notes and e mailed product updates from P&H do make a huge differece and putting in stock from other suppliers is so laborious that it's worth the money alone.
YP aren't great though. Quite a few glitches and the support is a bit slow in getting back to you, but I suspect all suppliers could be similar.
Chris
Blockley
There is little doubt that an EPOS helps enormously in managing margins and down loading performance data - ie best sales hours during the day, best sellers, av spends etc etc. However I would not recommend the use of a stand alone EPOS as a stock control system. If you are small (as we are) trying to input data when the delivery arrives and people are queuing to be served is no fun. We ignore the stock control side of things and focus on the management data that can be extracted. This has enabled us to confine the production of our monthly accounts to about an hour per month.
Re the cost of EPOS - we put together a system using a standard pc + software + Till drawer + touch screen + scanner + network link for less than £3000. We do not have a link with the scales but would recommend this feature. We can access the system remotely which is very useful if any of our helpers goes a little adrift with the system (ie finger problems!). It means I do not have to dash up to the shop!
Our card machine is not linked but we have a button on the system for recording a card transaction. No problems with this so far.
The system does need spring cleaning every so often as out of date bar codes quickly fill up the system. Most times we do this out of hours and where possible from the comfort of my armchair.
A common system for community shops sounds interesting and could save money - probably needs to be intially addressed by Plunkett or similar.
Best regards
Bryan Casbourne
Mortimer Country Stores
Thank you for the post - I am interested in what was provided for 4K, particularly with the integrated scales, because they have quoted us £5k without a scales, but with a second back office terminal, which I think is essential. They didn't want to use our laptop because they said it would get too hot and possibly cause data corruption, and insisted that they provide a PC as part of the package.
Also interested in the comment about the out of date data and the obsolete bar codes. The salesman made a great thing of the fact that they update their database regularly and when the system comes it is complete with the latest data, but seemingly not in your case. Something to look out for if we decide to go with YP. I tried three other companies off the internet and not one of them responded to my intiial enquiry. YP came back within 24 hours. Thanks for the comment on the service - It is useful to know exactly how they perform - doesn't match their sales enquiry service obviously!
RVS Treasurer
Hi Radley
Yeah we paid for a reconditioned till system but actually got a new one during a promotion last March. The scales cost £1k but are definately worth it to keep our queues down. We got the one with the seperate back office computer, really useful so that you can dial in from home and actually get some work done and check on other things !!
Previously we had a very old YP system with lots of old info on it and so to ensure ease of transition from one till to another they transferred all the info. With hindsight I would have just had lots of things that didn't scan and entered them in manually at the time to keep the info streamlined and relevant. THEIR info is kept up to date well, however, there will always be lots of items that aren't on the P&H list of 10k items even though that is very good for all their stuff. So there will always be a bit of manual stuff to do depending on how you source you items. Also, there is a really useful stocktaking function that can be used as a rolling stocktrake so you can do as little or as much as you like and always have a current stock value. It took over 30 man hours to count our £19k's worth before (really annoying at the end of each quarter)
We have had lots of teething problems with the equipment but that just might be our bad luck. You'll never see the salesman again after you've bought it!!!!! I think they are the best of a bad lot though!
Chris
Blockley
Thank you Chris, Bryan and others for the useful information. The experiences you outline will certainly help us in the process of going electronic. The Salesman assures us that we will see a 3% increase in profit as a result of the system.
RVS Treasurer
We have had a quote from YP electronics, Yorkshire Post, for £5000 for a complete system. Just looking now for grant funding and not finding that very easy.
If anyone reading this forum can suggest where to go for Grant Funding for capital equipment purchase, please post the info. I am sure there are a lot more community shops out there who would like to know.
Awards for All provide funding for capital items - worth a try. I believe they have changed their name this year but it should still pop up on the web.
Regards
Bryan Casbourne
http://www.wedge.coop/is4c/ is an open source system that was built by a US based community owned grocery business. An interesting article about the system is here: http://www.cooperativegrocer.coop/articles/index.php?id=442
Perhaps, rather than each shop trying to raise the funds to buy in a proprietary system, we could collectively seek to establish a funded project to take IS4C, customise it to suit the UK community owned sector's needs, and roll it out across the 220+ shops?
Thanks for your helpful responses.
I agree that it is an invaluable tool, and like the suggestion of a collective purchase of a system. I suppose every shop would benefit from installing it?
How do we go about organizing the purchase?
Kind regards
Peter
We have been through all this.It works if one or two persons only have access to it and it is their business.It did not work for us -with up to 40 volunteers- as;1) the system(Samstock)failed if stock items were incorrectly entered.2)It became hopeless when more than one person tried to enter details,as others were not sufficiently trained and 3) we could not keep up with the price changes and similar products coming from different wholesalers.Also about 30% of what we sell is fresh and doesn't have a bar-code.So,we abandoned the scanner,each item is price labelled as it comes in,stock levels are kept up visually,.We still use the system for reference and emergency instead of keeping prices in a book.So one person updates all changes weekly and it is kept more or less up to date.We also use it for all our daily till totals and financial analysis.
Certainly agree about using the system for stock control - it is not worth the effort unless you are large and can afford off line facilities. However for those majority of items that have bar codes (we create our own on till cards for products that do not carry codes) we find the info produced invaluable particularly margins and top sellers plus of course all the info needed for monthly accounts.
If it helps anyone we used a do-it-yourself approach to this area with a little help from a local resident who had some experience with such systems. The costs involved were as follows:
Dell pc £300
ELO touch screen £354
Scanner, cash drawer, customer display, receipt printer, software £759
PC anywhere (allows remote access) £138
On top of this was a back office function as follows:
Dell pc with software and anti virus £690
Wireless router £119
Laser printer £169
In addition we had a four camera CCTV linked to the system:
4 cameras, recorder, monitor, mounts £849
In addition you can get a remote hand held scanner (expensive though) for £1400
Overall our total bill was under £5000 for the upfront costs. We took on the task of loading the data base with products which took the best part of 9 months. We entered products out of hours to avoid disrupting the system. We now have over 90% on the data base and it requires about 1 hr per week to keep it uptodate.
The system can be used without having all bar codes in place - it simply means everything comes up as a cash sale.
Lets hope that may help!!
Thanks for the information - It is extremely useful to have this exchange of information. I have applied for grant funding via the Lottery and will advise further in six weeks time whether I was successful.
Treasurer Radley Village Shop
We at Ascott Village Shop have recently installed a YP system which has been up and running for 3 months now. We took our lead from Tackley Village Store who done likewise some months previously and were replacing an old YP system. Initially we were discouraged from using YP because of their dreadful reputation for support. However, with some further investigation and a lot of frank discussions before purchase as well as aggressive control on our part we have been relatively pleased with our purchase.
I would strongly recommend visiting any store which is using your 'potential' system to see it in operation and do not rely simply on the sales blurb.
Being a small shop, we do not use stock control at present but ensure that we purchase only barcoded items where at all possible for simplicity, accuracy and confidence at the till which can be operated by up to 25 volunteers. Our main supplier is Bookers and we are using the Electronic Delivery Note system which has cut our 'delivery receipt' procedures from 4-5hours every other week to just 1 at the most. The computer updating is now handled within 10 minutes whereas it took all afternoon before. ( A similar electronic link is also available to P&H) However, I must point out that the system isn't 'doing exactly what it says on the tin' but is very close and the issues are under investigation by YP with a promised solution in the near future.
For Radley, if you would like to talk further, or even visit, please feel free to give us a call
Alan Chubb (01993 830280)
Thanks Alan from Ascott Village Shop - This is very useful information which I will pass on to our IT Team.
Lynda
Treasurer -Radley Village Shop
We inherited an 8 year old YP sprint system when we took over our shop 2 years ago. This was old technology (DOS product) and a bit flaky. We were persuaded to buy a new EPOS system package, with backoffice PC, for about £5,500 on the strength of claims about time-saving, greater profitability, online ordering etc etc etc. I'd better not say whose system it was, but it was dire. Mainly it couldn't produce believable management information; it regularly fouled up customer accounts to the point where we stopped using it to maintain debtor information as our customers were irate at the wrong billing; the stock management information was hopeless; the newspaper module just couldn't get it right; the till would crash at least once a day; the package often failed with the dreaded Microsoft error about "encountered an error and must close" and lost all the data you were working on. The system even lost transactions regularly between the till and backoffice. I could go on and on! Also the time commitment spent 'feeding the beast' with product information was immense. Some of the faults may have been curable in time, but the support service (for which we were paying nearly £70 a month) was absolutely awful. Response times were frequently measured in days, and often we had to ring time and time again to get any assistance. When we did, it frequently didn't solve the problem.
After nearly 18 months, and a serious threat to take legal action for supplying a system that was not fit for purpose, we got our money back. We now lease a simple till for £4 a week, and put price labels on everything. Yes the till scanner was quicker, but in reality it often could not find the price from the barcode and that took ages to sort out. There are downsides, like the loss of sales management information, and having to do quarterly stocktakes, but we wouldn't have the old system back for anything.
Tips? Don't invest your hard-earned funds in an EPOS unless you really know you need it and know how you will use it. Research the market and visit a couple of reference sites before you buy. Don't believe the salesman! Don't load a new EPOS with old data, take the time to put clean, current data in it. Don't try and use it for stock management unless you're prepared to spend hours and hours putting data in after every delivery. In short, EPOS systems are very high maintenance and very sensitive beasts that will take you over. They should carry a sanity warning. Beware!
Ken Searle
Twyford Village Stores
Ken Searle's observations are indeed something to think about. Does one presume that the provider of the inherited system was the same provider of the new system which failed to work?
Any computer system is only as good as the data fed into it, assuming the database software is up to the task. I suspect the option of uploading millions of bits off data with out of date price information is something to be avoided.
Our shop has nearly 1000 items, some of them will not have a barcode but we are thinking of ways round this.
Would be interested to hear other evidence if people an spare the time with their comments/recommendations
Many thanks
Lynda - Treasurer Radley Village Shop
Lynda, give me a call on 01993 830280. Alan Chubb, Ascott Village Shop
I f you take a look at Independent Retail News there is a buisness advertising an EPoS system for £1,995, their website is www.shepleydirect.co.uk or telephone 0121 447 8508
Another supplier is Tilmax who have a system starting form £2,195 www.tilmax.co.uk
or another is www.eaziscan.com
hope this helps
Thank you for the advice. Will look into this.
Lynda
We have had an EPOS system for 4 yrs now.As I have said,after a while it was a disaster.Remember,there is the cost of training to use the system,the annual maintenance charge,which may only cover advice by e-mail.There is then the continual charge of sorting it out if the system is corrupted by people putting in comma's etc.It is fine if its use is restricted to one person using it and inputting all the info.To keep it all up to date is a nightmare if you use different wholesalers.We have abandoned the use of the scanner as we cannot keep it up to date.It is however excellent for daily reports.
Hello All
The attached pdf may be of interest to you. It is an article on EPoS systems and provides a little food for thought.
Harriet
The article posted by Harriet was very interesting and I agree with all of it by and large. Certainly the analysis of sales information and the knowledge it provides can only be a big benefit both to the business and to your customers - as can all the add-ons such as automated ordering and stock management.
My earlier post was about our EPOS experience which, although absolutely awful, was hopefully not typical of the systems on the market. We were suckered into buying a product that was not fit for purpose in almost every way and on top of that we paid a lot of money for a dreadful support "service".
However, we did find out that even if an EPOS is a quality product, the work involved in feeding it with information is substantial. It goes with the territory, if you want to get good,useful information out you have invest in the time to input data on an ongoing basis. Don't underestimate this demand on your time. All the other tips I offered in the earlier post in this strand still apply in my view.
BTW: we're still pretty happy with our till, that costs us £4 a week to rent.
We have a comprehensive EPOS system at Ropley but as so much of what we sell is fresh produce/bread/milk - products that aren't easily entered, we do not use much of it. We input data of regular grocery items - although this takes a long time, but if we entered everything it would need full time staff just to do this.
Does anyone have a good way to manage this?
In addition the system we have can produce data but then it has to be put into a report and currently we have to transfer this to Excel - again an additional process that takes time.
It is good for margins/analysis of regular grocery items.