Keeping track of your sales and the cash flowing in is one of the most important features of your point of sale software system. However it is only half of the story, a good point of sale system doubles as an inventory management system. Tracking an item from the moment you order it to the moment it is sold makes point of sale software the single most important tool for retail business today.

Integrating inventory into your point of sale system can be a huge time consuming task. Many companies have thousands of potential inventory items; larger companies can have hundreds of thousands. The most important aspect is keeping track of the product from it's creation to beyond the sale. Knowing who manufactured an item and their specifications for its use allows you to provide a service aspect to your customers. If today's point of sale systems for larger companies didn't track this then recalls would be almost impossible to issue and manage.

Employee theft is one of the biggest hits companies can take. Hundreds of thousands of dollars could escape large retailers through the sticky fingers of dishonest associates. New technologies being incorporated into the sales aspect are slowing moving over to inventory management and theft prevention. RFID tags imbedded in the products packing from the manufacturer can allow an entire truckload of incoming products to be counted and added to the inventory at record time. Sensors placed strategically can prevent products from walking out the wrong door unpaid and pay for the cost of system quickly with the savings from fewer thefts.

Any technology has its issues and inventory management can run into lots of bumps. In many cases inventory items can be purchased from multiple vendors and supply chains can change. Your point of sale software system needs to take these changes into account. Prices can also change sometimes on a daily basis. You not only have to keep track of the cost of the item and the price it was sold at, but you have to do this every time the item is brought into inventory. For large companies this can create huge amounts of data and the more data your system holds the slower it can become. So we tread this fine line between capturing the information and keeping ourselves from retaining too much data. Experienced data base programmers have tricks and methods to keep the actual amount of data retained to a minimum while still supplying the functions required in a point of sale system.

To any company that sells retail products inventory management is just as important as sales management. When shopping for a new point of sale software system I suggest you pay particular attention to the inventory and product management features. Having a system that performs a quick sale and manages the cash to the penny is great, but if it can't help you track your inventory in a method that makes you feel secure then I suggest you keep looking. Finding the right software for your business can be a time consuming process but believe me when I tell you it is the single most important decision you can make.