Recently, I wrote a post about the need for a quality Point-of-Sale system for any company that expects walk-in traffic. I then posted about the effort required to install the Fishbowl Point-of-Sale system (SalesPoint) and showed that, at least for me, it wasn’t too hard to do. I had it up and running in about two hours with minimal hassles. So what, you say? Well, I write these posts for a purpose, and the purpose with these two posts was to get people to try SalesPoint. And, along with that effort, we are announcing that throughout the second quarter (April-June, 2012) we will be giving away a copy of SalesPoint with every purchase of Fishbowl Inventory (a $1,095 savings).
Remember that SalesPoint is a module that is installed once, and is activated like a light-switch. You turn it on and it’s ready to go. And the number of users on SalesPoint is based solely on the number of users in your copy of Fishbowl Inventory. If you have a 10-user copy of Fishbowl Inventory then you can have up to 10 people using SalesPoint at any given time. It’s that easy.
But for those of you who already own a copy of Fishbowl Inventory, you may rightly point out that Fishbowl already has a Sales Order module. So when do you need the Fishbowl Sales Order module and when do you need SalesPoint? Think of the Fishbowl Sales Order module as a sales tracking module for those who need to collect detailed information about the buyer, add changes to the product information on the Sales Order, include custom or service type 
transactions, etc. This is what our internal Fishbowl sales team uses to track its sales because custom changes are often required, notes need to be included, details on services need to be provided and often payments will be spread out over months so that information needs to be included. In other words, selling Fishbowl software and services typically is NOT a simple, standard transaction. It often requires a substantial amount of individual data entry by the sales person and many other industries tend to be the same way: Car or equipment sales, custom sales, big ticket items, most service sales, or any sale where it is critical for the seller to collect detailed information on the buyer.
Point-of-Sale, on the other hand is designed specifically to simplify and automate the sales process as much as possible. In other words, with Point-of-Sale, you don’t necessarily care 
who the customer is, just so long as they can efficiently pay for whatever is purchased, while you, the seller, can still properly track the outflow of product from inventory and the inflow of revenues. Part numbers are barcoded in, there is little or no custom interaction from the sales person, and payment is usually made on the spot, i.e. cash, credit card, check, etc. Think of a typical retail outlet where speed and efficiency are key. If that is the scenario you find yourself in then a Point-of-Sale is what you need and you’ll never get a better deal than free, so give us a call now at 1-800-774-7085 x2. Your Fishbowl salesperson will be happy to help.
Till next time.
