Stock-Master is ABS POS Systems' established Point of Sale and Stock Control system.

Features and Benefits

Stock-Master provides many important controls, major time-savings, and comprehensive management information, including "exceptions" reports to identify areas for special attention. These all result in significant direct savings in costs, and provide many opportunities for improving cash flow and profits. Listed Below are some of the more important features and benefits of Stock-Master:

Stock-Master is specifically designed for Point-of-Sale and maximum ease-of-use. No specialised computer knowledge is needed. New staff can sell efficiently with only minutes of training. Processes are quick and streamlined, eg. automatic suggested orders can be based on recent sales, while account sales and payments produce automatic itemised debtor statements.

Stock-Master’s underlying design and program efficiency allows it to run at the very fastest operating speeds, at point-of-sale and overall, whether there are 1 or 25 very busy workstations and whether databases are small or extremely large.

Stock-Master operates with the highest levels of password securities, allowing strict control over discounts and limiting access to options and features. It also stores audit trails and activity logs for detailed checking of operator activity (no time limit).

Stock-Master allows full integration with POS equipment such as barcode scanners, cash drawers, POS keyboards, scales (normal or with priced-barcode printer), EFT units and customer displays. It also integrates with portable data entry units (PDE’s) for stock-takes, orders, incoming stock, shelf price verify, auto-order stock level setting, and stock location mapping.

All relevant accounts are automatically updated with each action, eliminating any need for double entry, eg. between sales, stock, cost of goods sold, purchases, debtors, creditors, payments, expenses, frequent shopper points, vouchers, customer orders and related supplier orders. POS also automatically calculates sales tax credits and debits, and maintains a detailed tax audit file with summary.

Stock-Master accumulates detailed, long-term data on all aspects of its operation (no time limit). This is used to provide a full range of management, control and performance reports with flexible criteria for sales, margins, discounts, operators, promotions, trial balances, inventory, orders, trading accounts, and stock-turn/GMROI reports. Stock-Master also includes a very easy to use Report-Writer with exceptional flexibility in output, content, calculations and sequence, and with a powerful write-back feature for dynamic adjustments of settings, eg. stock reorder levels based on current sales, or customer account status based on customer type and how overdue payment is.

Stock-Master has high levels of flexibility built into every module and feature. Describing these takes up large parts of the Reference Manual and on-line Help, so the following can only be a very limited selection of examples: POS types can be easily converted as you go, eg. between being sales tax included or excluded, between a cash sale, invoice, layby, customer order, quote, repair, COD, special listing, and between a wholesale or retail sale or credit. Transactions can also be parked and recalled as needed (no time limit). Stock-Master supports networking and multi-tasking, eg. part way through a sale an operator can add or modify a debtor, check a stock item, modify it’s price, return to the same sale and then convert it to a layby. This can also be done from many POS or admin. workstations at the same time, even if the same stock or debtor records are being sold. Printed document layouts can be user-defined to suit existing stationery, for changing needs, or to improve an existing design. This includes invoices, statements, labels, orders, laybys, and quotes. Labels can include barcodes for speed and accuracy, eg. for POS and stock takes. Data can be easily exported to other programs, such as a word processor for mail merged letters, a spreadsheet or other database programs for further processing, or to a General Ledger program such as MYOB. Stock-Master allows many stock item types, eg. normal stock, miscellaneous, active, inactive, purge, order-only, priced-barcode, quantity-calculated, component, assembly, trade-in, voucher, free-text, weighed, prompted, scale, measured/timber and serial numbered.

Stock-Master provides comprehensive management control with password access levels and customisable reports to quickly and easily check factors such as stock levels and rates of sales, sales volumes, margins and discounts, results of promotions, operator activity and performance, debtor activity and profits, item sales to a customer, sales and stock item performance by item, department or other groupings, summaries or detail of stock purchases and expenses, current stock, debtor and creditor balances, and much more. Initial checks can be quick summaries to see if more detail is needed. Stock-Master then provides several types and levels of expanded reports, of all or just "exceptions" data, for viewing, searching and/or printing, to check highs, lows or unusual results.

If a network problem occurs, Stock-Master can be set up to immediately run in Emergency Stand-alone mode using last night’s back-up data. When the network is available again, stand-alone data is automatically merged back to the central live database for full integration. Stock-Master also supports mirrored drives and/or servers to minimise times the network is not operating.

Data is exceptionally well protected at all times, eg. before Stock-Master alters a database, a "before" image is stored so if the current transaction fails to complete, the database is automatically restored to its original working state. This minimises down-time from database problems. Data can also be lost or damaged from power drop-outs or failures. If this happens half way through a sale, when the PC is restarted Stock-Master automatically returns to the exact point at which power failed, saving re-entry of sold items.

Many suppliers provide price book updates by disk or modem. Stock-Master can be set up to automatically add new stock lines, update existing lines (including prices) and set dates and prices for catalogue sales. It can also send purchase orders and receive the supplier’s delivery advice, to highlight variances from the original order.

Stock-Master has very flexible configuration settings for hundreds of options on how it will operate, eg. for stock and debtor look-ups, printing, sales tax, mark-ups and multiple descriptions. Keyboard keys and special barcodes can be set to carry out any Stock-Master function, using the keystroke recorder and player (macros), eg. Alt-F1 could run an end-of-day report, or prompt for required data to add a new stock line or account customer. Macros can also be used to provide a variety of custom Menus within Stock-Master for maximum efficiency and ease of use.

Stock-Master has an exceptionally advanced Promotions function for setting prices, times and dates for supplier, group and in-store sales. One-off promotional orders can be raised and special shelf talkers and labels can be printed. Sales details are held indefinitely to allow flexible after-sale comparison and effectiveness reports.

This is a powerful and proven marketing tool to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business. Reward points are accumulated with each sale according to user-defined rates, and vouchers can be automatically printed with a customised covering letter. A password protected activity log is kept for audits and adjustments, and vouchers can be validated at POS when being redeemed. Once set up, the process is highly automated and secure.

Stock-Master supports multi-store operations using various methods of inter-store communications. An economical option is for each store to run independently, with head office using a dial-up modem to regularly collect data from all stores and to update them with head office changes plus relevant data from other stores. Other options include live inter-store networking via dial-up, leased or ISDN lines, or via an Intranet running on the Internet. Data exchange can then be via a Wide Area Network (eg. Novell or Windows NT) or via a WinFrame connection. Both systems use a powerful server PC at head office to process everything centrally, but WinFrame is faster because it only transmits keystroke and screen update data, rather than database requests. The correct choice of system depends on costs, the need for live inter-store data versus overnight or twice daily updates, numbers of PCs and sites, and the volume of inter-store data traffic.

Return on Investment

The following is a selection of some of the ways Stock-Master can save time, improve profits and easily justify its investment cost.

Stock-Master speeds up and automates many routine functions, such as preparing purchase orders, debtor statements, catalogue sales, sales reports, debtor and creditor trial balances, sales tax payments and claims, and stock file maintenance from supplier updates. This improves accuracy and saves substantial time and effort.

With barcode scanning Point-of-Sale is very fast and accurate, pricing is automatic and password securities strictly control discounting, for all types of sale.

With more efficient sales, point-of-sale staffing can be reassessed, eg. trimming half an hour off start and end times for an extra salesperson for peak or weekend times can save substantial wages on an on-going basis. Time saved for skilled or expert staff can be redirected to improving customer service or to new initiatives.

Account sales at POS immediately update debtors and monthly ageing automatically prepares debtor statements, so accounts can be sent out very quickly. Statements can be set to include itemised purchases to save collating and sending invoice copies, and can show settlement discount incentives. Late payment fees can also be automatically added and bad payers can be immediately put on stop credit. This saves time, improves cash flow with earlier payments, earns interest on late payments, and reduces valuable stock being tied up with slow payers.

Processing live orders and sales in Stock-Master is very quick and efficient, and immediately allows live stock control. Regular small stock reconciliations can then be done section by section, to quickly identify customer and staff shrinkage for remedial action. This alone has the real potential to save as much as the total Stock-Master system cost in each trading year, based on reducing shrinkage from the typical 4-5% of turnover to a very achievable 2-3%.

Stock-Master gathers important marketing data for targeted mail-outs. The advanced Frequent Shopper feature encourages repeat business. Easy to use debtor discount and contract rate tables allow accurate, reliable VIP and trade business arrangements to operate efficiently and profitably without large admin. costs. In-store, supplier and group catalogue sales are quick and simple to run, again with minimal admin. overhead, creating on-going customer interest and improving your store’s retail presence. Stock-Master provides the ideal tools to significantly improve market share.

Accumulating live sales data provides vital control reports for fast/slow movers, high/low profits and stock turn, to help fine tune stock levels and stock mix for better results. The same data also allows accurate, relevant and highly automated purchase orders, repeatedly saving significant administration time.

Processing cheque account transactions in Cash Books allows Financial Reports to provide immediate indicators of P&L items such as sales, cost of sales, gross profit, expenses by dissection and net profit, and Balance Sheet items such as stock, debtors, cash, overdraft and creditors. This allows earlier responses to any emerging trends. All this management and control information flows automatically from simple, routine Stock-Master operations, allowing many levels of timely, informed decisions to improve business performance and net profits. In addition, time savings can be converted to reducing wages, improving existing promotions and services, developing new promotions and initiatives, and/or gaining some valuable time out to "charge the batteries" or to review the bigger picture.

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