Software for retail businesses: the stock, the suppliers and the people behind the counter
A shop is two businesses. At the counter it sells; behind the counter it buys, stores, counts, pays suppliers and pays staff. Most retail software is built for the counter and treats everything behind it as a report. This page is about the part behind the counter, which is where the margin is actually decided — and it is plain about which Ofiverse tool handles the counter itself.
What the business behind the counter has to run
- 01Purchase orders to suppliers, with a short delivery recorded as short
- 02Stock received, issued and transferred
- 03A valuation of stock on hand that does not wait for a count
- 04Suppliers with a history rather than a name retyped on each order
- 05Staff, attendance, leave and payroll
- 06Invoices, expenses and, when the business wants them, double-entry books
What actually changes on the Monday after
- Stock is bought on a phone call and counted once a quarter
- Suppliers, deliveries and what actually arrived live in three notebooks
- Nobody knows what the stock is worth until the year-end count
- Staff, leave and wages are rebuilt by hand every month
- Purchase orders to suppliers, received against the order
- Stock in, stock out and transfers on one record
- A valuation of what is on hand, whenever it is asked for
- HR and payroll in the same workspace as the stock
Stock is where retail actually makes or loses money
Revenue is easy to see and mostly out of your control. Stock is the opposite: unglamorous, entirely in your control, and where the margin quietly goes. Buying against an order, receiving what actually arrived and knowing what is on the shelf turns shrinkage from an annual surprise into a number with a cause still attached to it.
How a retail business sets up Ofivio
Retailers run Ofivio Business, the product for every business outside architecture, engineering and construction. It asks what you do and tailors the workspace to the answer, and modules bought inside Ofivio from OfiMart add what a shop needs.
- Inventory Management brings Procurement and Warehouse: purchase orders, suppliers, stock in, stock out, transfers, the store room and valuation
- HR and Finance come with the product: employees, attendance and leave; invoices, expenses and budgets
- Accountant turns Finance into double entry, with the chart of accounts and vouchers
- Business Development brings Sales and Marketing, for a business that also sells to accounts and runs campaigns
The counter itself is OfiPOS
Ringing up a sale at the till is a point-of-sale job, and Ofiverse makes a separate app for it: OfiPOS, one of the Ofiverse Products. It is not part of Ofivio and is not included in an Ofivio plan. Ofivio Business runs the business behind the counter; it is not a till.
The three numbers behind the counter
- What you hold. Stock on hand and what it is worth, without waiting for a count.
- What you owe. Deliveries received against orders, and the suppliers still to be paid.
- What is about to run out. The one number of the three that changes tomorrow rather than explaining yesterday.
Where a shop outgrows a notebook
One counter, one owner, a handful of suppliers: a notebook and a cash book are honest and enough. They stop working when somebody else does the buying, stock comes from many suppliers, or the shop is one of two. Those are the thresholds — not a revenue figure — and crossing any of them is when the buying and counting have to move into a system.
Who this is not for
If you are on this list, Ofivio is the wrong purchase and we would rather you know now than in month three.
- Shops that only need a till — OfiPOS is the Ofiverse app for the counter
- Restaurants and food service needing table management and kitchen display
- E-commerce as the primary channel — Ofivio is not a storefront
- Businesses needing manufacturing, assembly or a bill of materials
The products behind this
Questions people actually ask
Is Ofivio a point-of-sale system?
Does it handle transfers between stores?
Is retail stock the same as a construction store?
Keep reading
Open a workspace and try it on your own work
A free trial with your own projects in it tells you more in an afternoon than any comparison table. Nothing is charged during the trial.