Hardware Store POS Inventory Software

Contractor Options

If dealing with Contractors is common for your business, check out these unique Features.

Many times a lighting showroom will give a builder a quote to light a home. While the house is being built it may be sold to new owners who want to make changes to the floor plan or upgrade the lights. They will typically collect the difference between what the contractor is responsible for and what the customer has to upgrade to. We allow simple collection from the customer and continue to keep the entire lighting package on the same invoice for the builder showing what they are responsible for. The Contractor tab provides special functionality unique to your contractor sales. It provides the ability to assign contractor allowances, track job costing, specify delivery dates and view the part and labor breakdown of the invoice.

Allowance Amount

If your contractors set allowances for their clients for their project, Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Hardware Store POS software can track this for you. For example, a contractor may allow $1000 for the lighting in a specific house they are building for a client. Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Hardware Store POS software will record the allowance, so that when the customer comes into the store to pick out their lighting fixtures, the system will tally up the total value of the items they choose and inform the sales clerk of how much they owe after the allowance has been used up. At any point during the sale, you can set the delivery date for your customer. Once you set the delivery date, an appointment is created in the delivery scheduler. Each delivery that is scheduled can be assigned to a specific employee, and will remind them of the delivery date and time.

Job Costing

Help your contractors by creating "jobs" for them in the system. When they purchase from you, each invoice can be attached to a specific job (or project). At the end of the job, you can run reports on the job, such as income and expense reports, allowing your customer to examine the profitability of each of the jobs.

Special Orders

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii makes your special ordering process simple!

If you are like many lumber and hardware stores, you probably order in special items for your customers. A special set of doors or certain type of hardwood floors that you don't regularly keep in stock, but that one specific customer wants to buy from you. In Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Hardware Store POS software, when you attempt to sell these non- stocking items at the point of sale, a special order pop-up window will appear automatically, asking if you would like to special order the item. You will be able to specify the different options, so that every detail of the order is stored in the system. In most retail stores, the person taking the order is not necessarily the same person who orders the items from the supplier, receives stock when it arrives or delivers the goods to the customer. Avoid mistakes by having Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Hardware Store POS software track your special order through the entire process, storing the choices your customer has made and any special notes, so they never have to be re-entered. The system will remind the right person that the item needs to be ordered, set aside for the customer upon arrival and schedule the delivery. Special labels can be printed upon receipt and attached to the item, ensuring that it doesn’t end up in regular stock. Tracking orders in this way will help ensure the right product gets ordered and delivered to the right customer.

Labor Tracking Software to Manage Technician Time Effectively

Labor Tracking Software provides for a Simplified process for Managing the Service aspects of your Business

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii includes a strong service module that allows your service coordinator to schedule work, enter work orders and assign priorities to that work. For example, a job can be flagged as Urgent, Important, Service Shop, Waiting for Parts, and Completed and Ready for Invoicing. You can create up to 16 priorities based on your business and needs. As a work order (service ticket) progresses, you can change the status from one type to another. The service coordinator can then keep careful track of all open work orders and schedule the technicians based on priority, etc. Of course, we can also schedule work such as monthly or annual service work and have pop up reminders. The system can also track copy counts, mileage or hours used of each piece of equipment so that you know when service work was done and when more maintenance should be scheduled. You can create Sub Categories that are defined as being labor items. You can create one or many items in these sub categories for different types of labour such as shop labour, warranty labour, installation labour, etc. Each could have a different hourly rate. (Or unit rate if you bill by 6 min increments) Or you could have different flat rates for different types of work. Optionally, when you sell a labour item, the system will ask you who is doing the work. This will let you enter the technician or mechanic, how much time they spent and how much time to bill for. Note that this will then let your print productivity reports showing time spent versus billed for different types of jobs and/or different technicians. The system will then ask you for the description of what you did. The comment can be typed in on the fly or you can call up and re-use a canned comment in the system. If you perform a lot of repetitive jobs, you can reuse the same comment instead of typing it in over and over. Generally speaking, the more you charge for the labour, the more you want to justify your work to the customer. Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii POS software makes this easy by prompting you.

As a service company, time is your most valuable asset. Tracking how long services actually take your crews, and comparing those hours with what you estimated, is essential to ensure you maximize your profits. Easily track which materials were used on which services for which customer. Since material costs are separate from labor costs you'll be able to determine profitability on a per line item basis.

Powerful, Efficient, Effective, and Easy to use Labour Service Monitoring

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii's labour tracking software provides powerful, configurable data collection of labour, that provides help in managing technicians time on projects. This is a proven system that is trusted by thousands of clients to help them manage and run their business. Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii labour tracking gives management the ability to track labour efficiencies, while having the functionality to pull reporting on service labor work conducted, thus improving your businesses ability to plan and track. The feature is so efficient it will ROI quickly and will provide continued savings for your business year after year.

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii POS software will help you to save time and money while becoming more efficient in your servicing processes. Regain control of your business and your service hours to help to increase your billable hours charged. Don't waste time with several different software solutions, Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii POS software is fully integrated and can provide immediate real-time data to cover your businesses entire needs.

Unit Number Tracking

Tracking Unit Numbers has never been easier with Windward Software

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii's unit number tracking can track an entire piece of working equipment instead of just the parts. When you purchase a new unit, it will go into inventory as being owned by you and you capitalize the cost. If you add value to the item before selling it to the customer. When you sell a unit to a customer, the ownership record changes, but the purchase and service history stays with the unit. As service work is done over the years, each service ticket is entered against both the customer that is paying the bill and the unit being serviced. This allows you to track each piece of equipment a company may own. Service is important. By tracking all the service calls, you can quickly identify repeat problems, and if so, know that you are treating the symptoms instead of the root cause. On the other hand, customers may complain that you performed the same service several times, but you can quickly track if those service calls were to the same or different units.

On the unit record, you can also store information critical to the unit such as other consumables that the customer may order on a regular basis. This can ensure you deliver the right goods and improve the quality of your customer service.

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii's unit number tracking feature will help your business to perform more efficiently, reduce operating costs through increased productivity and thus boost profitability.

Unit Number Tracking

The unit feature allows you to tag work orders and invoices not just to the customer, but also to the unit that the work is being done to. This will allow you to print a full service history for a given unit over time. The benefit here is if the customer claims the work was already done, you can review your records to see if the same work was actually done twice to the same unit or if it was to two different but similar units. As well, if the same repair is done to the same unit, it could indicate a different problem causing the failure to begin with.

• Units or whole goods can be owned by your company as inventory and then sold to the customer, and even transferred from customer to customer.
• Units can also be items that are owned by customers that your company services and can track.
• Ability to edit the particular unit if information needs to be changed.
• You can use Units on Invoices.
• You may want to force Unit information to be entered on Work Orders.
• You have the ability to specify the unit type (i.e. normal, vehicle, heavy equipment, appliance, office equipment, power tools, hearth, etc.).
• Reporting - you can filter the Unit List report by Main Categories and Sub categories.
• Customize the unit list reporting columns. Numerous options such as: year, make, model, serial #, added date, km's, litres, inventory part, status, free form comments and much more.
• Capitalization - Units that are considered as part of your inventory can have other existing inventory attached or included with them.
• Ability to sell units with trade-ins.
• Service and track information based on customer units.

Alternate Suppliers

Using Alternate Suppliers can Speed up your Sales Process and help Improve Cash Flow

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii offers a strong alternate supplier management solution which helps purchasing departments to streamline the supplier lifecycle and make better ordering decisions. When it comes to dealing with suppliers, there can often be risks at play, leaving gaps for potential problems such as bankruptcy, delivery failures, lack of inventory, poor performance or product defects.

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii helps to provide a sufficient method to manage those issues effectively. It is an important and cost effective step to monitor and manage the performance of suppliers periodically. Thus, being able to list, monitor and have the freedom to choose which supplier to use for a specific order can be greatly beneficial to your businesses success.

Alternate Suppliers

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii's alternate supplier feature is a very benefical aspect to your business. Simply put, it can help your business to potentially avoid costly and impending supply disruptions. Clearly any supplier disruption isn't good for your business or for your clients requirements.

This feature can allow you to reduce your overall risk factors in terms of other adverse scenarios like defects, or safety issues with a particular supplier, a bankruptcy with a sole supplier and other potential supplier issues. By using alternate suppliers you will give yourself an opportunity to implement corrective actions before the arise and ultimately affect your profitability.

If you've experienced a supplier set back before, surely you can quantify being proactive and preparing for those issues if they were to arise again. If you've experienced 100 supply disuptions a year, and each distrubtion costs you "X" then you know how that affects your business directly and through a ripple affect through lossed sales. So start working smarter with Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii, and let our integrated business management software ease your supplier issues.

• If you're preferred supplier is out of stock of an item, use an alternate supplier to ensure you get your clients the products they need as soon as possible.
• Using Alternate suppliers often cost more, but you can then charge more while still satisfying customers timeline requirements.
• Alternate Suppliers may cost more but ship faster, give your customers the option to shorten their lead times.
• Control your level of supplier service and monitor suppliers accordingly.
• Eliminate inefficient administrative effort of managing suppliers.
• Reduce supplier risk and improve supplier relationships.
• Improve intelligence on suppliers.
• Upload alternate suppliers part numbers and pricing for quick comparable look-ups.
• Unlimited number of alternate suppliers can be upload.
• When creating a purchase order, the system will automatically select your preferred supplier..

Serial Number Tracking

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii can help you with your Serial Number Tracking

For some businesses, inventory control needs to be more detailed and thorough when reviewing stock levels. Some businesses require serialized inventory for tracking their own items, managing product warranties, tracking repairs (see part number tracking), reducing fraud and much more. If you develop your own products and need to tag and track them, or you're reselling a product that requires serialized management control, Windward Software can help you.

Using Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii POS software, you can track serial numbers on the receiving stock side and the selling side of your business. You can flag items in the system to use serial number tracking with. When you do this, you must enter the serial numbers of the items as you receive the stock, and also when you sell the items. The system will be able to tell you for each serialized item when you purchased it, who you got it from, the purchase order number it came in on, who you sold it to, the invoice number, the date of sale, how much you paid for it, and how much you sold it for. This kind of history is invaluable if you must return the item on warranty.

Also of note is that you can sell the item on the invoice without the serial number, and then go back and add the serial number later, once the item has been picked from the warehouse and delivered to the customer. No more crawling over boxes, trying to match a particular serial number to an invoice!

Price Schedules, Exceptions and Contract Pricing

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Hardware Store POS software allows you to set a list price, and up to 99 separate price schedules (price levels.) You can assign a price schedule to each customer, and this will control what level of pricing they will receive on each purchase.

Not all of your customers are the same, and it makes sense to charge them accordingly.You may have retail and walk-in traffic that pay list price, regular customers may get a small discount, and high volume customers such as contractors may get a better discount, while relatives and staff may get a different discount.

For each inventory item, you can decide what type of discount you want to give for each price schedule. To make things easier, you can choose to set a price default for a category of items, but then you can optionally change the schedule for individual items on the inventory record.

You can also create price schedule exceptions, where a customer can be on one price level for all purchases, except for one item or category of items, where they may be at a better price level. This can be handy if you have a contractor that specifically purchases a large quantity of a certain type of item, such as paint, and you want to give them a better deal just on those products.

For larger orders, you may negotiate a special price with a contractor. This can be a labour intensive process if you try to track it manually. With Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Hardware Store POS software, setting up a special contract price means they will automatically get the correct price each time they order the item. The special price can be set to expire automatically at the negotiated date.

Instant Access to Customer Information

Customer name and address information can readily be accepted and entered at POS or in the back office. Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Hardware Store POS software maintains a customer buying history which can be viewed at POS with details of every transaction and a dollar total of purchases to date. When a customer returns to a store, verifying customer satisfaction on former purchases or intelligently suggesting new purchases has great impact. A detailed purchase history is also invaluable for controlling merchandise returns or monitoring discounts.

Customer Statements and Signature Capture

Printing customer statements in Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Hardware Store POS software is a simple process. You can choose to email all the customers you have addresses for, fax customers that prefer to receive statements this way, and have the remaining statements print to paper. When you print a statement run, copies of each invoice for that period can be printed along with it.

Many times, it is the employee of your contractor that is charging on their account. If this is the case, how many invoices do you suppose end up on the dashboard of the employee’s truck and never make it into the contractor's hands? The result when this happens can be phone calls to you asking for copies of the original invoice with the signature so they can sort out which employee purchased and which job the purchase was for. If you run a busy store using a paper filing system, this can mean a lot of time spent searching through files of invoices for the original copy.

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Hardware Store POS software supports signature capture devices, allowing you to digitally store a signature along with each invoice. This way, if a contractor or an employee of a contractor misplaces their copy of the invoice, you have proof of which person signed for the order. If you are currently printing each invoice in triplicate and storing the signed copy, imagine the time saved from not needing to do this!

Statements can be designed using Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii's Form Designer. Specify where you want specific fields printed and add your logo and branding.

Estimate Templates for Fast Invoicing

If you frequently sell a group of items together that combine to make a specific project, such as a one bedroom condo or a shed, that takes the same parts every time you sell it, you can create estimate templates.

An estimate template is a pre-created invoice that holds many different parts. You can duplicate the template, easily moving the items to a new invoice to save you from re-entering all of the data each time you sell that specific project. Once you have created the new invoice, you can make any necessary modifications if your customer wants to upgrade stock items or add additional supplies. It's so easy!

Units of Measure / Case Breakdown

In many hardware stores, items such as screws, bolts or sandpaper are sold either by the box or as single items. With HardwarePOS, you can sell the same inventory item either way and know that your inventory records will show the correct amount left in stock.

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Hardware Store POS software keeps track of how many individual items you have as well as how many boxes are left. When a new box is opened, the system can automatically track this and adjust your inventory records accordingly.

Inventory Locations and Warehouse Management

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Hardware Store POS software can keep track of specific inventory locations within your store. On the inventory record for each item, simply enter the bin location where the item is stored. This will allow your sales people to locate the item quickly and easily for the customer.

For your warehouse or out in your lumber yard, the software can print the Pick Slip with items listed by location. This way, when the order is being filled, your employee can follow the item order on the pick slip for the best route to pick the items, minimizing back and forth time.

If you store items in multiple locations, the optional Advanced Inventory Control (AIC) module will track multiple stock locations, giving you optimal control over inventory movements within your store, warehouse or yard. Know where stock is at all times by tracking through the picking and receiving process.

If you own multiple stores or warehouses, the optional department module will allow you to keep track of inventory location between all warehouse or store locations. If your store location is out of a stock item, performing an automated stock check and requesting inventory transfers will help you prevent lost sales.

Product Labels and Tags

Using the Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Label Designer, you can easily design professional custom labels and tags for your inventory. Any information you store in the inventory record can be added to your labels including barcode, picture, and pricing. This will make it easier for your staff to label the right item, and for your customer to see which item the sign relates to.

Adding barcodes to your tags and labels will help you to keep better track of your inventory and increase the accuracy of your records. Barcodes decrease time spent receiving inventory, as well as stock counts.

Selling by Measure or Partial Quantity

Normally, you sell items by quantities that are whole numbers such as 1, 2, 3 and so on. For example, you would normally sell a door instead of half a door. However, there are many exceptions to this. For example, rope, certain types of wood and chain are sold by the lineal foot or meter. Tile, hardwood floors and carpet are sold by thesquare foot, yard or meter.

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Hardware Store POS software handles all types of units of measure – allowing you to sell items by weight, by the linear foot, the square foot – and also by the decimal, or partial quantity. So if your customer orders 6.88 feet of an item, you can charge them for exactly what they purchased - and the system will track the partial quantity that is left in stock.

If you are selling by weight, you can use anelectronic scale that is hooked into your point of sale system, and have the weight automatically entered into the quantity field on your invoice.

Delivery Scheduler

Delivery can be scheduled at any time during a sale or work order and that can transfer directly onto a delivery scheduler that can be printed out to display all deliveries at one time. Directly from the delivery scheduler you can set who is going to deliver the items and check their availability on the delivery date. Notes can be added into the scheduler, such as call cell phone before arrival to give just the service that your customer requires. Within the delivery scheduler, you can click on the View Map or Driving Instructions, where as long as you are connected to the internet, will lead you directly to the Google Maps or MapQuest site for driving directions. If you have multiple deliveries set for one day this can help you plan the best delivery route to maximize efficiency.

Payments

When payments are received, you can specify how much was paid against each invoice. This allows for better control of the system and easier reconciliation with your customers. Of course, Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii offers several shortcut keys to simply pay all the invoices in one fell swoop or to pay invoices up to a given amount.

Work in any month or year

You can enter invoices into any month in the current year or previous year, and reprint most reports for any given period. This allows you to continue invoicing first thing in the morning of a new month, even if the back office is not finished charging interest, adjusting accounts and printing statements. Many other systems require that you completely finish a month before being able to start a new month or year.

Customer Credit Control

On the customer account, you can specify the credit limit for the customer, in addition to the price schedule to use, charge type, and comments. If you try to create an invoice that will put the customer over their credit limit, the system will warn you. If you do not have the security clearance to override, the invoice can not be completed until the account is paid.

Collections

Collections on outstanding debts are never fun, but Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii can make them easier. You can print an aged A/R report, complete with customer name, phone number and a list of all the outstanding invoices. Optionally, this report can be configured to only include customers with balances older than a certain number of days, such as over 60 days or 90 days so that you don't have to manually skip over the current customers.

As you call each customer, you can enter your comments into the appointment scheduler and set a date to review their file and ensure they have paid, and if not, to call them back. By keeping track of all you customer contacts, it's easier to control when to call and remind them of their past promises.

Writing Checks

If you are entering information from a previously handwritten check, you can do that without having to print them. Incredibly, many other systems force you to print the checks, regardless. After creating a check, you can choose to post-and-pay it, or simply batch for later payment. This lets you spend some time setting up the checks. Once you are ready, you can load the checks into the printer and then print and post the batch at one time.

Time Payments

In some cases, you may get a large shipment of goods from a supplier and be allowed to pay in thirds, one month at a time. Windward System Five will allow you to enter·a time payment plan, with distributed payments. This information is used with the cash requirement report to determine which bills have to be paid.

Buying Group Support

If you deal with buying groups, then you'll buy the inventory and goods from a supplier but pay the buying group. This is because to get great discounts, the buying groups often pay the bills very quickly or at least guarantee payment. When you use buying groups, you'll be able to report on all the purchases from a given supplier, even if you don't owe them any money, and be able to look at the buying group from a financial point of view to see what you owe. You can even use this technology if you purchase goods with your credit card. There, you buy from a supplier but pay Visa, Mastercard or American Express.