Retail POS with inventory: the small-shop setup that counts itself
Most small shops know their takings to the dollar and their stock to the nearest guess. The fix isn't discipline — it's a till that treats inventory as the same system as sales, so every scan sells AND counts. Here's the full setup: barcodes, stock takes, reorder points, and supplier POs that draft themselves.
Wemu Team
Product
Retail margins die in the gap between the till and the stockroom. The till knows what sold; the stockroom is a memory exercise. In that gap live the classics: the bestseller that sat out of stock for nine days, the slow line reordered out of habit, the shrinkage nobody can date, and the annual stock take that eats a Sunday and produces a number nobody trusts. Closing the gap is one decision: sales and stock have to be the same system.
Setup tutorial
Step 1 — Products, with the barcodes you already have
Add products with cost and sell price — and scan the manufacturer barcode straight into the barcode field with the device camera, no scanner hardware needed. From then on, scanning at the till both sells the item and decrements stock. Variants (sizes, colours) each carry their own count.
Step 2 — Thresholds and suppliers
Give each product a low-stock threshold and a supplier. When stock dips under the line, a draft purchase order to that supplier appears — a nightly check sweeps the whole catalogue. You review, adjust, send; the supplier confirms prices and availability on a link, and receiving the delivery books the stock back in. Reordering stops being a job and becomes a review.
Step 3 — Stock takes that don't eat a Sunday
Run rolling stock takes by section instead of a yearly everything-count: scan the shelf, the system diffs against expected, and the variance report tells you exactly what's drifting — and since every movement is dated, when it drifted.
Step 4 — Refund and discount controls
Every staff member signs into the till with a personal PIN. Refunds, voids, and big discounts can require a manager: the screen shows which managers are in, the chosen manager enters their PIN, and the audit log records who approved what. Shrinkage through the till is a solved problem.
Step 5 — Sell the same stock online
Flip on the online shop and your products — same stock counts — are purchasable from your own page with pickup or delivery. An item selling out in store closes online too, automatically. No syncing, because there's nothing to sync.
Why Wemu fits small retail
| Typical small-shop stack | Wemu |
|---|---|
| POS + inventory app + online store, synced badly | One system — a sale anywhere moves the same stock count |
| Barcode scanner hardware | The device camera scans; existing barcodes just work |
| Reordering from a walk-around with a notepad | Thresholds draft supplier POs overnight; you review and send |
| Annual stock take | Rolling section counts with dated variance |
| Shared till login | Personal PINs + named manager approvals for refunds and discounts |
The honest limit: a multi-warehouse operation with pick-pack-ship teams wants a dedicated WMS. For the boutique, the bottle shop, the homewares store, and the corner grocer — the loop above is the whole game: scan to sell, threshold to reorder, count to trust your numbers.
Make the till count the stockroom
Barcode POS, live stock, auto-drafted supplier POs, stock takes, and refund controls — one flat plan. 7-day free trial.
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