Bike Shop POS Software: A Review

Thursday, 01 December 2011 00:00

Written by Honey Silvas

Bike shops have experienced some resurgence in popularity with the increased demand for bicycles. Bikes are a healthier, greener and more cost-effective alternative to cars. There are actually more bicycles in the world than automobiles. In fact, especially during this economic downturn, more bikes are being purchased than cars and trucks combined. Even Google Maps has biking directions now. More and more people in cities or towns are using bikes to get to work, school or stores, either as a primary mode of transportation, or in addition to other forms of commuting such as bus or train. There are many kinds of bicycles for a variety of uses--mountain bikes, triathlon, track, cyclo-cross and others. For a bike shop to offer the many different types of bicycles, it is important for bike shop point of sale (POS) software to not only handle sales transactions but to adequately manage inventory as well.

Bike shops also sell bike parts, accessories, clothing and shoes. Sherrie Holiday of Retail Star, a bike shop POS software by CAM Commerce Solutions, said, “When dealing with the various vendors you purchase from, their data relationship to style, color, size and width may be quite inconsistent.” Integration of the bike shop's POS software with different bike vendors is a big time saver since it eliminates the process of entering data such as price, descriptions and product details. Retail Star uses ETL STAR as a data exchange tool so that the bike shop POS can use bike industry databases and vendor catalogs like Giant, Trek, Specialized and many more.

MerchantOS, another bike shop POS software, also tightly integrates with various bike vendors such as Hawley, J&B Importers, QBP, Seattle Bike Supply, Bicycle Technologies International, Downeast, Giant, Hans Johnsen, Specialized and more. It has over 120+ bike industry catalogs with over 600,000 products. These bike catalogs are constantly updated and they are always looking for more catalogs that they can add. In addition to having the catalogs at your fingertips, the integrated vendors make it simple to create purchase orders for your bike shop and view stock availability. You can also print purchase orders for non-integrated vendors.

The most important thing about bike shop POS software is useability. Justin Laing of MerchantOS said, “I keep emphasizing ease of use. But it is so important and so often overlooked by our industry. When looking for a POS system you should look for software that balances simplicity with having the features necessary to get the job done.”

MerchantOS is web-based POS software so it is platform-independent and accessible from anywhere. Some additional features of MerchantOS bike shop POS software include work orders, service department and customer relations management (CRM), which allows merchants to keep track of customers, purchase history, credit accounts, gift cards, special orders, layaways and more. Retail Star bike shop POS software has inventory control, frequent buyer program, gift card processing, purchasing, receiving, size and width matrixes, custom reporting, bar code printing, scanning, credit card processing, work order manager, gift registry, multi-store communications, integrated eCommerce and customer relationship management.

As you can see, having a POS software specific to the needs of a bike shop can save you time and headaches, helping you to focus on your customers and how to meet their needs.

Watch this quick video to see MerchantOS bike shop POS software in action.