Gary Evans
From ordering inventory to delivering it to customers’ doors

HIGH POINT — The market here in April was not just for selling and buying furniture. It also was for showing off new software and hardware systems to help manage the business.

As usual, the 12th floor Retail Resource Center in the International Home Furnishings Center’s Main wing was full of suppliers of software and hardware that help merchants do everything from ordering inventory to delivering it to their customers’ doors.

Among the exhibitors were CDS Solutions Group, Custom Design Software, EasyChair Software, FurnServe, Furniture Wizard, GERS Retail Systems, Genesis, MicroD, Myriad, ProfitSystems, Routeview Technologies and Storis Management Systems.

Several of the companies featured product introductions or enhancements. Among the highlights:

Custom Design Software
Custom Design Software, which provides Windows-based software systems for furniture stores, said that its program now has the capability of interfacing directly with QuickBooks.

“Now, furniture dealers who want to upgrade to a sophisticated inventory management, point-of-sale and management reporting software package, but are comfortable with QuickBooks, can use their existing QuickBooks software for accounting purposes,” said Jerry Katz, president.

He added that users can still utilize the built-in accounting features, consisting of payroll, accounts payable, banking and general ledger, even if QuickBooks is not used.

CDS Solutions Group
CDS Solutions Group recently added an all-in-one, order-building kiosk to its Retail 6 management system.
The company said the all-in-one CPU and touch-screen unit eliminates the bulky hard drive and cumbersome mouse traditionally used in retail management systems. The flat LCD monitor helps save valuable space and, because the unit is wireless, it can be installed or placed anywhere in the retail environment — on a wall, pillar or piece of furniture.

“It’s a very streamlined unit,” said CDS President Ren Baker. “It’s sleek, compact and unobtrusive, and that’s what we wanted to achieve. Our customers don’t want some bulky computer equipment right in the middle of a showroom amid all of the beautiful furnishings. These units are functional, yet low profile.”

When designing the Retail 6 system, Baker said, a primary design goal was to use touch-screen technology to promote ease of use, increase speed of transactions and minimize errors. He added that the touch-screen, order-builder kiosks complement the technology of CDS’ Retail 6 system, which includes wireless bar coding for processing inventory in fewer steps, encrypted SmartCards for secure system access and customized, on-demand reporting delivered in real time via e-mail, PDA or PDF.

FurnishNet
FurnishNet’s Label Express is a Web-based label generator that links to the company’s Advance Ship Notice program. With a few simple mouse clicks, FurnishNet said vendors can generate pre-formatted, retailer-specific labels with exact carton shipment quantities through any Windows-compliant printer. This system simplifies label production for vendors, and it also facilitates retail handling of products at the point of receiving by eliminating the need for additional shipping-receiving label generation.

Furniture Wizard
The star of the April market for Furniture Wizard was its improved Bluetooth hand-held scanner. The wireless scanner, with its proprietary software, has a range of 800 feet, and additional range can be obtained by adding more access points. The company said the easy-to-use tool can assist in every store activity, including point-of sale, inventory control, invoicing and purchase orders, plus receiving and tagging sales floor items.

The company said one unique capability of the advanced scanner is the ability to read dual bar codes, those created by the Furniture Wizard system and the equivalent UPC code from the supplier. The scanner can be taught to tie the two bar codes, one to the other, so that either code can be used for processing inventory.
The scanner instantly processes information when it reads data but doesn’t store it. The device talks directly to the store’s computer, where the data is processed into any of the tasks performed by Furniture Wizard. The scanner has the ability to show the list of items scanned in a list view, displaying several records at the same time.

In addition, the scanner keeps a running total of all items purchased on the sales floor. It has the ability to display the real-time stock status, a benefit for salespeople seeking to determine if an item is available without leaving the customer’s side. When purchases are complete, the scanner tells the system to prepare the invoice, which is instantly available.

Genesis Software Systems
Genesis said its new Advantage Version 5.0 software features a number of enhancements in the form of expanded item numbers, item descriptions and customer name fields. It also adds details like an extra field for recording the customer’s cell phone number, and an automatic system-wide update of a customer’s name, address and phone number from a single screen.

In addition, Version 5.0 allows the expansion of purchase orders to 300 lines per order and the user-defined fields on Item Masters for color, cover and finish, and it provides the option to let Genesis automatically select a sales tax rate at point-of-sale based on the customer’s ZIP code.

GERS
GERS said its Enterprise 1 for Big Ticket Version 11.1.2 answers the payment card industry’s need for credit card security within the application. Credit card security increases the retailers’ comfort in using the product and also the customers’ comfort in knowing their credit card data is protected.