The General Store Reviewer's Comments
|
You may also be interested in these review sites...
|
The General Store, by Crichlow Data Sciences, Inc., is a sleek, all–in–one point of sale system that’s perfect for any small retail and is the “TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award” winning product.
The package comes with all of the software and hardware you need to operate a successful store. Ring up customers, track inventory, create reports and labels and more. The General Store is an excellent POS; however, it costs a little more than the Dell and the PC may not be adequate for other business related tasks, like accounting and storing large amounts of information.
The General Store Screenshots. Click to Enlarge
POS Hardware:
This compact POS solution won’t occupy a lot of your counter space. The General Store can customize your POS package to fit your needs, just select the peripherals you require. The system we priced comes with a 15–inch LCD touch–screen monitor, which may be a valuable tool depending on your type of business. It also comes with a barcode scanner, a thermal receipt printer, a card reader, a standard keyboard and mouse. We added a label printer for an additional $510. They have a variety of other peripherals you can choose from, including pole displays, omnidirectional scanners and more.
The computer has a 20 GB hard drive and 256 MB of RAM. If you use this system strictly as a POS, it should be adequate. Conversely, if you’re only going to have one computer to run your retail, this one won’t store a lot of information and programs. However, when we spoke with General Store they said they would honor their full warranty regardless of what computer you used.
POS Software:
The General Store comes with exceptional POS software that will support up to 99 stations in an LAN environment and you can customize each of the stations. This gives you plenty of room to expand.
The software allows you to modify the transaction process to fit your needs. Simply select or delete the features you would like to incorporate or exclude in your POS interface. Some of these features include print receipt only on demand, track salesperson, activate mailing list capture and trap zip codes. You can also set your own return policies.
This software includes a number of security features like allowing you to adjust the password settings. You can set up your system so that it requires a manager key entry for tasks like canceling transactions, discounts or making a sale tax exempt. Other security features include third–party check guarantee and real–time credit or debit card authorization through third–party software like IDVerify or Go Software.
The Profit Picture is a practical tool that gives you a quick snapshot of your sales, cost of sales and profit for any range of days. This allows you to make quick adjustments to ensure your business is profitable.
Reports formulated with this software can be loaded into Excel for export into other programs.
Functionality/Ease of Use:
The General Store will customize your system with exactly what you need and then give you a price quote. The sales representatives are helpful and take all aspects of your store into consideration when helping you choose a system.
The software is easy to navigate using tabs and you can exclude any of the features that you don’t need to keep it simple.
Price/Value:
The package we reviewed is just under $3500 and includes all of the hardware and software to run a small retail shop. The General Store will customize your package to fit your budget and needs.
Training/Support:
This POS system comes with FREE training tapes and a FREE 90–day support contract. Within the software, an integrated help system is always just a click away. If you need further assistance, you can reach customer support by phone or email. Crichlow Data Sciences also provides an online user guide and other helpful information.
We would like to see a longer warranty. The 60–day warranty doesn’t seem adequate for a purchase of this magnitude.
Summary:
The General Store is an attractive, all–in–one point of sale solution that will streamline the way you do business. You can request a free information packet and even a demo disk to see if this is the right system for your store.
©2008 TopTenREVIEWS, Inc.
