MerchantOS Acquired by LightSpeed

I have multiple bike related retail stores as clients (they mainly use Microsoft RMS Store Operations and NCR CounterPoint but a few use cash registers), I thought that this announcement from LightSpeed and MerchantOS would be of interest to those of you with bike shops/retail stores or even sporting goods related retail stores:

MONTREAL, Quebec (BRAIN) — MerchantOS, a popular retail POS software brand among bike shops, has been acquired by LightSpeed, a Montreal-based software company.

MerchantOS said its product line and team will continue with a new name: LightSpeed Cloud.

"Your product and price will stay the same," MerchantOS said on its website. "If you decide to change your plan you’ll be switched to our new pricing. Over the next few months we’ll transition all customers to our new user interface. Not to worry — we’ll give you the opportunity to review the new interface before you switch over. We’re sure you’ll like what you’ll see."

LightSpeed said the acquisition of MerchantOS expands its customer base by over 2,400 locations and adds a new "platform-agnostic" HTML-5-based POS system to its product offerings. LightSpeed's previous POS systems run only on Apple's Mac OS platform.

I personally prefer Microsoft RMS Store Operations for bike shops since it has a work order function for repairs and service work.  For larger bike shop retail stores, NCR CounterPoint has an add-on called ServicePoint that allows NCR CounterPoint to track repairs and service work (and scheduling as well for services like annual tune-ups).

Both Microsoft RMS Store Operations and NCR CounterPoint have kiting (kitting?) functions so you can bundle products together as part of a promotion or even a normal sale (ie. a starter bundle that includes a mountain bike, pads, water bottle, and helmet).


Are you in the US and in need of no cost retail point of sale advice? I'm happy to help and can be reached on my cell at 208-340-5632 (mountain time) or via email at kevinantosh@gmail.com.

Minor Hardware Delays at NCR

For those of you who may be thinking about NCR Silver or NCR CounterPoint:

A note from NCR related to some hardware shipping delays due to inventory and switching computer systems:

Friday, July 26th thru Wednesday, July 31st – Closed for NCR Systems cutover.

As part of a new system integration, it is necessary to take some key systems offline for a period of time. We apologize for this inconvenience and will work diligently when systems resume on August 1st to process all orders. Orders placed after noon on Thursday, July 25th, will not ship until August 1st. We will process orders in the order received. 

Tuesday Tip: Updating Your Business Address in Microsoft RMS Store Operations and NCR CounterPoint

On occasion you may have the need to update your business address in your point of sale software (ie. you moved your store to a new location).  You should update your Microsoft or NCR dealer/partner so they can register the change with Microsoft or NCR.  Thankfully, changing your address in the software itself is very easy.

NCR CounterPoint users can go to “Setup”, then “System”, then “Quick Setup”. Here is what the tab for “Company” looks like:

 

Simply make the changes as needed. This is just one way to make business address changes in CounterPoint – you can also select “Company” from “Setup” and then “System”.

Microsoft RMS Store Operations users will also find it easy to change your business address information.

Within RMS Store Operations Manager, go to “File”, then “Config”, then select the “Store” tab.  You will see a screen that looks similar to this:

 

That is pretty much it – very straight forward.

Keep in mind that you must update the company the provided your point of sale system with any address changes or you could find yourself having some major support issues down the road.

Are you in the US and in need of no cost retail point of sale advice? I'm happy to help and can be reached on my cell at 208-340-5632 (mountain time) or via email at kevinantosh@gmail.com.