For small and mid-size retailers, Microsoft Business Solutions Retail Management System is an easy-to-use, affordable way to automate your stores. It can help you manage your operations more efficiently, so you can save time and money.

How can Microsoft Retail Management System help you?
This powerful retail software package runs on personal computers and helps you manage a wide range of store operations and customer marketing tasks, including:
 

• Point-of-sale operations

• Inventory control and tracking

• Pricing, sales, and promotions

• Customer management and marketing

• Employee management

• Customized reports

• Information security

Click on any of these Features for a quick link to it's description and how it can help your business:
 

Manage Inventory More Efficiently Top of Page

• Automate inventory management. Track inventory automatically across one store or multiple locations using any stock or sales method. Get insight into your inventory by finding out which items are the best and worst sellers. Use these classifications to assign new sales or price levels quickly for specific segments of your stock.

• Reduce inventory costs and out-of-stocks. Maintain tighter control over inventory with automatically generated purchase order suggestions and stock levels, and the ability to transfer inventory across stores. Track storage of offline inventory including non-sellable or broken items.

• Maintain multiple suppliers per item. Make sure you get the most for your money. Visibility into supplier histories makes it easy to select vendors who offer the best service and the lowest prices.

Streamline Point of Sale Top of Page

• Get easy-to-understand point-of-sale screens. Gain quick access to complete product and customer information.

• Process transactions quickly. Point-of-sale screens allow your employees to process complex transactions efficiently. Cashiers can also reprint receipts or recall previous transactions from any point-of-sale register.

• Offer better customer service. With access to complete customer histories, it's easy to target preferences. Suggest cross-sells and up-sells, advertise other products at the point of sale, and use information to market other products more effectively.

Simplify Card Processes Top of Page

• Save money.You can eliminate the need for separate credit card terminals and associated phone lines with an easy-to-use credit and debit card processing program. Get details.

• Reduce data entry. By integrating card transaction processing into business operations, you can reduce data entry and experience easier reporting and reconciliation of transactions.

• Provide fast service. You'll provide fast, efficient service to customers; speed up check-out lines; and facilitate reporting and reconciliation of transactions.

Provide Superior Customer Service Top of Page

• Personalize service and accommodate your customers. Quick access to product and customer information helps your cashiers offer better service. Track entire transaction histories, providing information on customers' previous purchases, payments, and accounts. Call up digital copies of receipts from past purchases and take partial payments with ease.

• Sell impulse items. With the multimedia NetDisplay, you can showcase products on a second monitor at your point of sale. NetDisplay is programmable and interactive—entering the customer's name can trigger personal greetings and reminders about items they buy on a regular basis.

• Keep your sales team message consistent. Help ensure your customers receive the same consistent product information and messaging from your sales staff.

Improve Marketing Top of Page

• Create sophisticated sales and marketing campaigns easily. Test-market pricing concepts, sales promotions, and new products. Put up a better fight against competitors, including the bigger retailers who aren't as customer-focused as you.

• Target mailings to your customers' special interests. Grant automatic discounts and differential pricing to special customers.

• Customize your receipts. Add information about promotions for new products and specials.

Integrate Your Technology with Microsoft Office Top of Page

• Take advantage of the Microsoft Office applications you use daily. Microsoft Business Solutions Retail Management System integrates with familiar Microsoft Office System applications, so you can make full use of existing software investments without adding training costs.

• Use Microsoft Office Word and Excel. Use customer information and sales histories from Microsoft Retail Management System to create mail merges and targeted communications to help you attract and retain customers. Make it easy to export data and reports from across your retail operation. For example, export customer purchasing histories, supplier histories, and sales reports into Excel for analysis or to share with others.

• Speed up everyday business communications. You can set up a purchase order for a vendor in Microsoft Retail Management System and send it directly to the supplier as an attachment in a Microsoft Office Outlook e-mail message.

Thorough store and chain automation now offered by Microsoft Business Solutions Top of Page
New marketing opportunities flash by every day. Customers want more SKUs, personalized service and connected convenience. Retail must streamline every inventory management, purchasing and pricing chore to perform its new tasks. Accounting and finance must be unimpeachable, yet time-economical. Data exchange with customers, suppliers and external systems must work first time, every time, anytime.

Microsoft Business Solutions? Retail Management System is a comprehensive suite of retail solutions. From single stores to national chains, retailers use this proven product line to complete retail tasks in every corner of the store-from registers through stock levels to shipping and receiving.

Integrating store and customer data from Microsoft Retail Management System (MRMS) into Microsoft Small Business Manager, Dynamics or eEnterprise enables balance sheets, payroll taxes and a full range of financials. Powerful separately, invincible together-and thoroughly connectable to other Windows®-based applications-these best-in-class retail and financial solutions deliver everything retailers need to survive and expand.

Finally, big-business tools are available to retailers of all sizes.

MRMS delivers full-spectrum management for every retailer Top of Page
Stores and chains get cost-effective, collaborative solutions in affordable, connectable applications with easy customer tracking, efficient inventory management and comprehensive reporting tools:

• Store Operations is a Web-enabled, scalable, POS solution for stores and chains that helps brick-and-mortar retailers maximize in-store capabilities.

• HeadQuarters lets multi-store retailers see and control their entire enterprise from corporate. It pulls, integrates and reports POS and back-office data from satellite Store Operations installations. Then it disseminates management's changes to defined stores.

Solutions that work together boost sales and efficiency Top of Page
Store-level MRMS applications efficiently handle transactions, customer histories, inventory management and purchasing. Retailers have instant visibility and tighter control over customers, merchandise and suppliers. Store Operations supports Web sales, shipping and lightning-fast Web-based credit processing.

Microsoft Business Solutions? financial applications empower automating financials, distribution, project accounting, electronic commerce, human resources, payroll, manufacturing, supply chain management, business analytics, sales and marketing management, and customer service/support. Easy data interchange between retail and financial systems eliminates tedious double entry and slashes overtime hours.

Isolated data becomes shared intelligence Top of Page
See, manage, price and control inventories across multiple locations. Make informed decisions with real-time data. Close the loop on customers to build more dynamic, lasting relationships.

• Connect solutions so information flows to customers, business partners and employees

• Streamline operations to make your enterprise more nimble, responsive and productive

• Maintain a unified view of each customer-whatever the sales channel or location

Translate opportunity into profitability Top of Page
Perceptive retailers know that efficient automation makes them more profitable. Microsoft Business Solutions makes it easier for stores and chains to exploit the same tools and technologies that big box and anchor stores use. You can keep your customers and get more of them-no matter who moves into the mall.

Any Inventory. Any Store. Any Chain Top of Page
Store Operations tames any stock, inventory and sales method-including your services, layaways, subscriptions, work orders and back orders.

• Hard goods, soft goods, services, grocery and convenience items

• Matrix and lot matrix

• Serialized items and multiple serial numbers

• Assemblies, kits and items you produce

• Weighed, measured and by bin

• Gift cards and vouchers

• Unlimited number of inventory items and transactions

Power, Speed and Flexibility at the Point-of-Sale Top of Page
In one or a hundred checkout lanes, Store Operations' easy-to-grasp screens deliver faster, smoother sales. The customizable POS screen looks like a receipt-with every item, price and quantity in plain sight. Cashiers make fewer mistakes. Lines go fast. Tricky transactions-layaways, returns, partial payments, mixed tender-all become easy.

• Serve others while keeping a stalled transaction "on hold"

• Sell and track any product, service, warranty or subscription

• Process payments, layaways and work orders

• Accept multi-tenders, credit cards, coupons, gift vouchers, foreign currencies and government stamps

• Keep selling even when your network is down

• Instantly check stock-even locate it in the store!

• Put items on back orders for future deliveries from the POS

• Build rapport-and up-sells-using customers' buying histories

Enhance Customers' Shopping Experience Top of Page
Serve customers as individuals, using the same tools retail giants do. Store Operations can make every customer feel like a valued friend by keeping customer records as complete as you like them. Happy customers are repeat customers. Besides building a loyal customer base, Store Operations features speed lines and ensure accurate accounting.

• Capture, show/hide customer contact and demographics on POS screen

• Instantly access complete history of purchases, payments and account information at the POS

• Accommodate partial payments and account payments

• Suggest relevant upsells, sale items and volume discounts

• Target your mailings directly to customers' special interests

• Grant automatic discounts and differential pricing to special customers

• Reprint e-receipts to resolve disputes, speed rebates and verify purchase dates and amounts

Save Your Time and Money Top of Page
Every function is easy to learn and flexes to your changing needs. Intuitive screens speed learning so staff can spend extra time serving customers or researching new products. Store Operations installs and sets up easily. Teach POS functions in 15 minutes!

• Lock out-or empower-any employee's access to sensitive data.

• Automate inventory management. Reduce shrinkage and slow moving items!

• Finish long tasks in minutes. Use wizards to bulk-update prices and inventory data.

• Know which associates sell best. Predict what days and hours to staff up-or cut back.

• Know when to order. Leverage multiple suppliers to get lowest prices.

Assembly, Matrix and Lot Matrix Items Top of Page
Store Operations neatly organizes all of your assembly, matrix and lot matrix item information into an easy-to-use grid. You see all your items and their related attributes at once. You can edit item attributes directly on the grid. You can assign/barcode each item with a separate lookup code. To quickly add matrix items to your database, let the New Item Wizard define matrix components all at once. Store Operations adds the matrix item and its components to the database. You can sort matrix items by dimensions. You can view selected (or all) individual components (item lookup codes) of the particular item matrix, in addition to their description, quantity, size and color.

Advanced Security Features Top of Page
Store Operations incorporates tight security controls and restricts employee access to sensitive information. It includes a built-in security system with 31 security levels (security definitions or profiles). These protect Web access features, programmable POS keys, screens and fields, report writing-every sensitive corner of your system and confidential data.

System administrators define each security level to grant tightly specified access privileges. You can assign the behavior for every screen feature, defining if that field or control can be viewed-and/or edited-by that level of employee. After you define the security level, assign it to the appropriate employee(s). You dictate precisely what data fields each employee can view and/or change.

Informative Graphs Top of Page
Store Operations can display your revenues, sales and inventory data in a variety of ways. Drop-down list boxes let you generate a variety of graphs that you can further customize. Select different time periods. It's another powerful Store Operations tool to give you the visibility you need to manage.  View by Departments, Categories, Cashiers, Vendors, Register, Sales Rep or Time of Day, Select and day or summary by week, month or day.

Retail Rounding Top of Page
Store Operations introduces new global pricing features that enable you to perform retail rounding. When you use the Store Operations Assistant to change item prices, Store Operations includes an option that allows you to round all updated prices to customary retail values based on rounding rules that you specify.

Label Designer & Wizard Top of Page
You need to print labels in different sizes and shapes to accommodate different products and printers. Store Operations' new features speed up the way you process and print labels. Label Designer lets you easily design your own WYSIWYG label templates. You can add and position graphics and text. Save time when you print labels. Use Label Wizard to select one of your customized templates, then specify filter criteria. Print only as many labels as needed. No need to manually create and adjust labels every time you want to print a label.

• Over 1-dozen Avery Labels included for use with your desktop printer

• Integrate with Barcode Label Printers

• Design and layout your own labels

• Include graphics, boxes or any field of a item

Enhanced Journal Viewer Top of Page
Store Operations enhanced journal capabilities enable staff you have empowered with the correct security designations to view and print any journal from any register in your preferred format. This can be done at the point of sale or in the back office.

• View any Business day

• Lookup by date, transaction number or batch number

• View signatures or credit card authorizations

• Integrated back to customer history for drill down detail

Customizable Management Tools Top of Page
Store Operations incorporates all-new tools to manage every aspect of your store with amazing ease, complete security and absolute control. At the POS or in the back office, Store Operations' flexibility gives faster task completion, complete visibility and accuracy.

• Every function is easy to learn and flexes to your changing needs.

• Intuitive screens speed learning so staff can spend extra time serving customers or researching new products.

• Easily reconfigure POS screens to display what your clerks need.

• Customize receipts and price labels with graphics, logos, etc.

• Exploit many flexible pricing structures for markups and discounts.

• Set up new sales and promotions fast-in several ways.

• Streamline buying with ordering levels, best-price suppliers, and automatic POs.

• Make Store Operations' wizards do your work: Take just minutes for new item input, inventory management and everyday chores.

Orders, Quotes and Layaways Top of Page
The POS program introduces new features to improve creating and processing work orders, sales quotes and layaways. You can view and edit detailed information directly on the transaction screen, assign a reference number and accept payment(s) towards a work order or layaway.

Depending on whether you create an order, quote or layaway, on-screen information can include comments, on-deposit amount, deposit payment, order balance, due date, reference number and expiration date. Trusted associates with the necessary security level can edit these fields on the transaction screen.

Store Operations allows unlimited flexibility when dealing with orders, quotes and layaways. Rather than requiring customers to pay for all items on an order, Store Operations lets them pay for any combination of items and allows you to add/cancel items at any time.

Quick, Comprehensive, Flexible Reports Top of Page
Make smarter decisions using accurate and timely data. Exploit thousands of standard report possibilities or design your own. Store Operations' report engine runs the longest reports with blazing speed. Better reporting power gives you tighter management and higher profits.

• Know exactly what sold best in every department, category and season

• Decide what to buy or mark down

• Track ROI from your ads, mailings, promotions, sales and discounts

• Preview, print, or export data in multiple formats

• Filter, hide, sort and group data as you like it

• Add logos and graphics for formal reports

• Even drill down to modify the database directly from reports

Editable Time-Clock Entries Top of Page
Store Operations has incorporated employee time-clock capabilities. You can edit time-clock entries in the Manager program. As Administrator, you can view a particular employee's clock-in and clock-out times. The Time-Clock window displays all cashier names with time in, time out and time elapsed. Store Operations includes handy tools to allow authorized users to edit time-clock information, including clock-in date and time and clock-out date and time. Editing is useful when cashiers log in under the wrong name or forget to clock in or out. And of course you can restrict employees' access to time-clock edits.

Net Display Channels Top of Page
Call Net Display your subtle "up-seller." It enables you to showcase advertisements and Websites on a second monitor for customers at your point of sale. You might put these monitors around the store or display them to customers awaiting checkout. This replaces the pole display and can show Web sites and Web pages you pre-select or ads from your local CD-ROM or DVD.

Net Display supports multimedia, so you can include sound and action clips. It's entirely programmable and interactive, so entering the customer's name can trigger personal greetings, reminders about customary items and other persuaders. Purchases in one category can trigger notice of specials or mix 'n match offers for similar items.

Easy Integration Top of Page
Easy integration with the Internet and other software packages avoids double work and broadens management visibility. Store Operations amiably integrates with legacy systems, accounting/financial software, EDC, credit card services and the Web. Make in-store traffic, catalog sales, phone orders and Web traffic feed each other! Store Operations helps you maximize cash-in from every "touch" and transaction.

• Manage account receivables in Store Operations, then trade data with popular accounting software. Eliminate double entry.

• Define how much detail goes to accounting/financial software.

• Use EDC and integrate with leading credit card services to reduce fraud and keyboard errors.

• Smoothly integrate Web sales from multiple sites with in-store sales.

• Use Store Operations' POS as a data collector for back-end ERP/CRM applications.

• Enable PDA, mobile/wireless stations for "line-busting" associates.

• Ship and track online through FedEx or UPS sites.

• Web-connect to B2B purchasing and e-fulfillment services.

Receipts with Logos and Graphics Top of Page
You can completely customize point-of-sale receipts to display your company logo, address, phone numbers, even graphics. Whether you want to promote your company name or highlight a holiday sale, you can program the software to custom-build the receipts that best relay your message(s). Store Operations Commerce can print graphics directly on the receipts, including barcodes, logos and pictures. It can include text in your preferred font and format. You can size and position your graphics and text.

Gift Certificates, Gift Cards and Vouchers Top of Page
Store Operations has always handled gift certificates and vouchers. Now "gift cards" offer gift-givers a "dynamic gift certificate" that's tied to your store. The gift-card holder can spend any amount up to the card's limit, then the giver can renew the card repeatedly. Clear receipts, both printed and retrievable at any time and document every purchase. Store Operations can tally cardholder purchases against a pre-purchased amount, then recharge the gift card against a credit card, a store account or other tender.

• Sell & Redeem Gift Cards

• Check Balance

• Recharge Gif Card

• Move balance from a lost card to a new card.

More Cash-In Per Customer Top of Page
Make in-store traffic, catalog sales, phone orders and Web traffic feed each other! Store Operations helps you maximize cash-in from every "touch" and transaction. In myriad ways, Store Operations helps you serve customers better to increase revenue and bind loyalty.

• Know customers' buying histories. Easily market what they want.

• Remind customers who forget their "usual items."

• Handle layaways, vouchers, back orders and quotes.

• Display up-sells on the POS screen so associates mention them.

• Use multimedia NetDisplay to sell impulse items to customers in line.

• Sell goods and services from partnered businesses and Web sites.

• Customize receipts with promo for new products and specials.

Accounts Receivable Feature Top of Page
Accounts Receivable offers many flexible new search and payment options. Rather than requiring a customer to pay an entire account, you can process and track customer payments by individual invoices and statements. The Aged Receivables option lets you select the specific invoice a customer wishes to pay. In addition to setting up revolving accounts, you can also bill payments for net terms.

System Requirements Top of Page What is required to run Microsoft Retail Management System software?  These are minimum requirements.  It is always recommended to be running on the latest platform of hardware and peripherals to ensure optimal performance and reliability.  POS Retail Solutions will be happy to provide a inspection of any existing hardware and provide you an analysis of it's compatibility.

System Requirements 2000 Professional Edition, or Windows XP (all versions), Windows Vista Business or greater Pentium 1 GHz or faster processor 30 GB of free hard disk space (Hard disk usage will vary, depending on Point of Sale’s configuration and the location of database files.) 512 MB or more of RAM. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Desktop Engine (included) CD-ROM drive VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution monitor with 16-bit color for the Point of Sale POS program; VGA (1024 x 768) or higher resolution for the Point of Sale Manager program Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device Integration with Other Software and Hardware The system works with other products such as Microsoft Office System applications, Microsoft Business Solutions applications, QuickBooks, Peachtree, Blackbaud, and MYOB. It also works with a wide range of point-of-sale peripherals, including printers, magnetic stripe readers, and bar code readers. Security Microsoft Retail Management System has built-in security systems with 31 security levels. You can control which employees can view specific information, set cashier floor and return limits, grant or deny cashier permissions to change a price at the point of sale, enter opening and closing amounts, allow no sales, and set many other controls.