QuickBooks Point of Sale Basic 8.0

QuickBooks Point of Sale Basic lets a PC in a retail store perform the functions of a cash register while keeping track of inventory, customer information, and purchasing history. Linking Point of Sale with QuickBooks financial software allows inventory and sales data to be transferred between the two.

The inventory features allow retailers to improve their cash flow by purchasing the right merchandise in the right quantities at the right time. Tracking customers' email and shipping addresses makes it possible to let them know about upcoming sales or new arrivals from their preferred manufacturers.

Point of Sale offers reports on customers, sales, items, purchasing, payments, and employees. Predesigned report templates can be customized and saved: for example, sales could be checked by day, item, employee, and payment type. Reports can be shown on the Point of Sale Dashboard, along with other key business metrics.

Point of Sale can handle credit and debit card transactions if an organization has a merchant account. Merchant accounts that integrate fully with Point of Sale are available from the Intuit website.

Hardware is not included, but if it is desired, items such as card readers, PIN pads, bar code scanners, and receipt printers are available from the Intuit website and are guaranteed to work with Point of Sale.

This single-user box includes one user license. Point of Sale allows a maximum of 10 workstations to work with the same data, but each one must have a separately licensed installation of the same edition and version of QuickBooks Point of Sale.

Point of Sale includes free telephone support for certain types of issues. Other issues require a one-time fee or purchase of a support plan. See Intuit's Customer Care Policy. All support, including online access, will be discontinued approximately three years from the product's original release date.

Here are some notable features of this product:

• A complete practice data file enables employees to be trained without changing the organization's actual data. Built-in video tutorials guide users through common tasks.
• Data can be integrated with QuickBooks financial software and Microsoft Excel, Word, and Outlook.
• Clicking summary numbers in reports goes down one level of detail and continues until the level of individual transactions is reached.
• Report data can be presented in the form of graphs.
• Access to administrative features and critical data can be protected by password.

Products

The following Intuit retail management products are available through TechSoup Stock.

• QuickBooks Point of Sale Basic lets a PC in a retail store perform the functions of a cash register while keeping track of inventory, customer information, and purchasing history.
• QuickBooks Cash Register Plus has many of the features of QuickBooks Point of Sale but does not have inventory capabilities or advanced synchronization with QuickBooks financial software.

• Hardware:
• 1.6-GHz (or higher) processor; 2-GHz recommended
• 256 MB RAM for Windows XP (512 MB recommended); 512 MB for Windows Vista (1 GB recommended)
• 1 GB available hard-disk space (additional space required as data files grow)
• 1024x768-pixel display
• 4x CD drive
• Software:
• Windows XP; Windows Vista; Windows Server 2003/2008 (32-bit versions)
• For QuickBooks integration — Pro 2006/2007/2008/2009; Premier Editions 2006/2007/2008/2009; Enterprise Solutions 6.0 – 9.0
• For exporting and importing data to and from Excel  — Excel 2000/2002/2003/2007
• For multi-user configuration — Windows Server 2003/2008 client-server networks and Windows XP/Vista peer-to-peer networks

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