Retail

Running a shop: what is on the shelf, what it cost, and what selling it earned.

For shopkeepers, cashiers, storekeepers and anyone who has to explain a stock figure.

Printable: Retail user guide (PDF) — the same guide laid out for a desk, a counter or a stockroom wall.

What this module does

Trackapt normally tracks stock through documents: somebody fills in a form, somebody else approves it, and the stock figure moves. That is exactly right for a controlled store, where the approval is the point.

A shop is different. A customer at the checkout will not wait for an approval. So the retail module gives you a second way of working, sitting alongside the first:

• Products get a barcode and a sell price, so they can be scanned.
• Stock arrives by booking in a delivery, which also records what it cost you.
• Stock leaves by being sold at a till, which needs no approval from anybody.
• What is actually on the shelf is established by counting it.
• Anything else — damage, theft, expiry, stock found, stock moved between rooms — is recorded as it happens, with a reason.

Switching the module on changes nothing about your existing stock, forms or reports. It only adds.

Nothing here can be edited or deleted

Not a sale, not a delivery, not a write-off. If you get something wrong you correct it by recording a second, opposite movement. A stock ledger you can quietly rewrite is a stock ledger nobody can trust.

Before you start

You need four things.

1. A Trackapt account you can sign in to. See Signing in.

2. The retail module switched on for your account. See Turning modules on. If it is not on, you will not see the Retail menu at all.

3. Your products already in Trackapt. The retail module does not create products. It takes products that already exist — each one a Tracked Item in a Tracker Group — and gives them a price, and a barcode or a SKU where they have one. The retail screens call the Tracker Group a category and each Tracked Item in it a product. If your products are not in Trackapt yet, create the Tracker Group and its Tracked Items first, under Tracked Groups.

4. A barcode scanner, ideally. Every screen that asks you to scan will also accept the code typed in by hand and Enter pressed, so you can work without one. There is also a camera button beside every scan box, which reads barcodes off the device's own camera — see Scanning with the camera.

The eleven screens

Menu entry	What it is for
Till	Serving customers — scan, total, and record the sale with Take payment. The money itself is taken however your shop takes it.
Receiving	Booking in a delivery from a supplier.
Stock count	Counting what is actually on the shelf, one product at a time.
Count sheet	Counting a whole aisle from a list.
Adjust stock	Recording damage, theft, expiry, or stock found.
Move stock	Sending stock from one location to another.
Catalogue	The list of everything you sell, and its prices.
Price changes	A history of every price you have changed.
Stock reports	Stock value, margin, expiring stock, losses, the price audit and the tax summary.
Voids & refunds	Every refund, voided basket and line taken off a basket, and every refused supervisor PIN.
Setup	Your currencies, tax codes, refunds (supervisor PINs and the no-receipt limit), selling locations, checkout lanes and quick keys.

One screen is named differently in the menu and on the page

Receiving opens a page headed Book in a delivery. It is the same screen.

The order to set things up

Do these in order. Each step needs the one before it — jump ahead and the screen you land on will simply have nothing to offer you, which looks like a fault but is not.

1.  Switch the retail module on            Modules (or ask your supplier)
2.  Create your locations                  Retail → Setup
3.  Give every product a price            Retail → Catalogue
    (barcode and SKU optional)
4.  (Optional) Issue a checkout lane       Retail → Setup
5.  Book your opening stock in             Retail → Receiving   ← before any count
6.  Count everything once                  Retail → Stock count
7.  Start selling                          Retail → Till

Steps 2 to 4 are covered in Setting up the shop, steps 5 and 6 in Stock in and stock out, and step 7 in Selling — the till.

Scanning with the camera

Every screen that scans has a camera button immediately to the right of its scan box. It reads barcodes off the device's own camera, so a phone or a tablet is a scanner without buying one.

1. Click the button. A window opens showing what the camera can see, with a frame in the middle to line the barcode up in.
2. Point it at a barcode. It is read and acted on straight away, and the window says what happened to it — newest at the top, so you can see a run of five landed without counting the list behind.
3. Listen rather than look: a high beep means it landed, a lower one means the line needs reading.
4. Click Done when you have finished. The camera switches off and the caret goes back to the scan box.

Two useful controls, where the device has them: a light for a dark stockroom, and a camera selector if the device has more than one — pick the rear one, which is the one pointing at the shelf.

It stays open on some screens and closes on others

• The till and receiving build a list, so the camera stays up and you scan item after item.
• Stock count, adjust stock and move stock take one item and then need a number typed in — so those close the camera as soon as they have read one, because the box you have to type into is behind it.
• If a code lands on nothing, they stay open: there is nothing to type, and the next thing to do is scan again.

To count two of the same item on a screen that stays open, hold it in view a moment longer. The same barcode is only read once every second and a half, so one tin held still does not become thirty.

If the camera button is not there

Either the device has no camera, or the page is not being served securely (an http:// address rather than https://). Browsers will not open a camera on an insecure page at all, so the button is hidden rather than offered and broken.

It asks for permission the first time. Say yes. If you say no by accident, the window tells you so and offers Try the camera again once you have allowed it in the browser.

TIP

A camera is slower and fussier than a handheld scanner, especially in poor light or on a creased label. For a lane serving a queue all day, a real scanner is still worth the money.

Who is allowed to do what

Your clearance is set by whoever manages your team. Levels are cumulative.

What you want to do	Clearance you need
Look at the catalogue, stock figures, counts, transfers, expiring stock, price history, quick keys, currencies, rates and tax codes	Level 1 — anyone signed in
Serve customers at the till, void a basket or take a line off	Level 1 — not restricted, so a queue never waits on a permission
Ask for a refund at the till	Level 1 — below level 3 a supervisor approves it with their PIN
Book in a delivery	Level 2
Add or close a location	Level 3
Make a product sellable, change a price, import the catalogue from a spreadsheet	Level 3
Lay out the quick keys	Level 3
Write stock off, record stock found	Level 3
Record a stock count, or a count sheet	Level 3
Move stock between locations	Level 3
Give a refund against a sale without a supervisor's PIN; hold a supervisor PIN and approve other people's refunds; release a refund stuck part-way	Level 3
Add currencies, record rates, switch Sell in any currency on or off	Level 6
Add, change or remove tax codes	Level 6
Set the limit for refunds without a receipt	Level 6
See, issue, rotate or switch off checkout lanes	Level 6
See Stock value, Margin, Shrink, Price audit and Tax summary	Level 6
See Voids & refunds	Level 6

A supervisor who approves refunds with a PIN is a team member of this app at level 3 or above who has set a PIN, or the account holder once they have set one — see Refunds.

Below level 6, Setup still opens; in place of the lanes it says Checkout lanes are issued and managed at level 6. Locations, quick keys and your own supervisor PIN are open from level 3.

Three things sit on top of clearance.

Your Tracker Group whitelist. If you have been given access to only some Tracker Groups, the retail screens honour that. You will see only the products in those groups — the categories you have been given — and the reports will total only those products. It is not a fault if your colleague's stock value is higher than yours — you are looking at different slices of the shop.

Checkout lanes have no person attached. A lane is limited by what it can do instead: look up a product by its barcode or SKU, read its own quick keys, the currencies the shop takes and whether it may convert into them, and record a sale at its own location — nothing else.

A shared counter login needs somebody checked in. Where several people share one login, nothing in Retail works for it until a person checks in with their own PIN, and they then work at their own level, up to the shared login's. See Shared stations.

Refunds are the only approvals in retail

No sale, write-off, count or transfer waits for a second person to sign it off. A sale is true the moment the customer leaves, and a mistake is corrected by a new entry that points at the one it undoes — never by editing the original. A refund is the exception: below level 3 a supervisor approves it with their PIN.

A daily routine that works

When	Do this
Opening	Move stock from the stockroom to the shop floor
When a delivery arrives	Receiving — scan it in against the invoice, with costs
Through the day	Till
As it happens	Adjust stock for anything broken, expired or taken
Closing	Check the till banner is clear — no unsent sales
Weekly	Count one section · check Expiring · check Still on the road
Monthly	Stock reports — Stock value, Margin, Shrink. Export and file them.