POS System for laser engraving

[Natalya Murphy]

Is there a POS system out there for writing up laser engraving orders, keeping track of jobs, etc?

If this has been covered in the past, could you please point me to the thread? I tried searching on "pos" and "laser", but "pos" is too short of a word so the search engine ignored it.

The only one I know about is ShopWorks, but that one is waaaay out of my budget range.

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Natalya Murphy
Creekside Framing & Gallery
Papillion, NE

[Mike Null]

Natalya

I use Quickbooks for all my acctg. needs but I do not use a pos system. It is inexpensive and sounds like it will do what you want but it is not a pos system.

Do a Google search for pos software and you'll turn up dozens. I have heard good things about Mind Your Own Business software which is Australian but I have not used it.

[pete hagan]

I would suggest Quickbooks Pro for a couple of reasons. I have used Quickbooks for 12 years now and have run several companies through the system including one with a reasonably large sales volume (1.5M+) with no real issues. If you are thinking about POS then look for their POS solution or (in my opinion) use quikbooks pro with a barcode scanner and run it on a PC as a register. I had a business office in a hotel enviornment with 200+ items we sold daily along with over 1000 inventory rental items and once we barcoded everything it was a piece of cake to use. You may select to add the customer data as you check them out if you want to send emails / flyers / etc.. OR use a simple "CASH" customer ID that allows for rapid checkout. Scan the barcodes with a hand held scanner that you can buy on ebay for less than 100 bucks and even have it print a receipt on a small receipt printer you buy on ebay for less than 100 bucks. We racked up about 50K in sales yearly under this "CASH" customer ID and it was really just as fast as most standard POS systems.

Secondly I converted over to Quicken's in-house credit card processing company for a better deal than I was getting from my local bank. I have a small mag strip reader ($50) fastened to the side of my POS monitor and I swipe the cards much faster than with the stand along terminal AND it records into quickbooks so no double duty in entering payments.

Third you can have your FedEx and UPS accounts setup inside Quickbooks to facilitate shipping which is really the best part for me. Currently my main business is all shipments to customers and to be able to do all of this inside one package is very helpful and much quicker to tally at months end for my accountant. My accountant has the Accountants package of Quickbooks so it is as easy as mailing a flash drive to her at years end to get my taxes done.

I don't own any Quicken stock but I have been very happy with all the improvements from year to year. Typically I update every other year unless something is really useful that they added. If you have payroll you must update yearly to include the tax tables but QB Pro does a great job at that as well. I hope this helps in your decision.

Pete

[Carrol Fleming]

I use Mind Your Own Business, in my opinion the easiest Small Business Accounting package available. I know of a number of larger business using it including a school, a farm and a large poultry breeding company. I have also used MYOB as the treasurer of various societies and associations, simple to set up and maintain. The biggest positive in my case is that it has provision for multi currencies, an absolute must living in the wilds of Central Africa and dealing with the outside world.

Carrol

[Joe Pelonio]

I have been using MyInvoices & Estimates Deluxe for several years, I think it's under $50 and works well for me. You can add in common items if you sell a lot of the same item at the same price, but I really don't have any inventory, everything is on a custom basis. It's not specific to laser or any industry.