Checkout - A Fully Featured Point of Sale System

If you are a retailer or if you have thought at some point in your life of starting your own business, then you should know that besides a business plan and the money to start with, you also need a good management software solution. Usually, in this type of activity you need at least two or three software applications to help you keep track of your business activity: inventory software, a finance manager and also a customer manager. Checkout, developed by Werck BV, is the complete business management program so you won't need any other app to manage your store.

No matter the business, Checkout is fully customizable and provides all the features that you might need in managing a retail store. Whether you sell clothes or high technology products, the financial process is the same, which is why Checkout is suitable for all business types.

The Looks

Checkout's main interface is very well organized, although to the regular user it may seem complicated to figure out. The main window is divided in two panels: the left panel, which displays either the orders or the created invoices and the right panel, where you can see a list of the available products or the registered customers. Checkout has many other windows that can be accessed from the main window's toolbar.

The Works

As I mentioned before, Checkout is not just a financial tool, it also includes the functionality of at least five business related programs in a single package: you have the stock room, barcode scanner, customer manager, invoice creator, financial reporting and more, all in one place. The major advantage in this regard is the fact that you don't need to transfer your company's data between different software applications.

To help you better understand all the functions of Checkout, the application comes with a sample store, where you can see examples of invoices, orders, reports and inventory. The Welcome screen of Checkout allows you to open the example store, view some tutorials, backup or restore your store data or simply login and start using the program's advanced features.

From the main window, you have access to the program's most used functions: you can create an order and invoice it and you can easily grab the requested products from the list and drag them into the order. You also have the customer list close at hand, so that you can quickly attach an order to its appropriate owner.

Checkout's features are too many and too advanced to explore in detail, but I will try to make a brief presentation of them.

The first configuration of the store is a little more difficult, because you have to enter all the products available in the store, add your current stock, configure the appropriate tax levels and also set up your invoice and report templates. All of these tasks are quite intuitive for someone who is familiar to the business environment. The Manager window, which you open from the main toolbar, gives you access to the program's most important features.

The Report Gallery offers a large amount of ready-made report templates that you can view and customize or print directly. For example, the 'End of Day' report shows the store totals, the taxes and payments for the current day and also the totals per till. The next window is the Ledger, which keeps track of all the financial operations you perform in the application: invoices, payments, till counts, stock corrections and more.

The Products window shows a list of the available products and allows you to add new ones by filling in the required fields: the product name, a unique code to identify it, the price and the actual value of the product. The extended Product form enables you to add even more information about the selected product, including its brand, barcode and a short description. Filling in information about the company's suppliers is a similar process.

The Manager window is also the place where you can configure the program's behavior and some settings. You can choose to show prices including taxes in the product list, allow the employees to adjust the product names or prices on orders or to automatically capitalize customer names.

In the Employees window you can manage the employee list, specify a username and password for each employee, choose the appropriate access rights and fill in some personal information.

The Template window gives you the possibility to customize your reports and configure several advanced options. The last button shown in the Manager window, Taxes, allows you to set the sales tax system that applies to your type of business.

The Good
Checkout's professional appearance and organization helps you keep all your financial documents in order. It provides all the features that a retail store owner needs to correctly manage a business. You will surely get all the financial reports you need from this advanced business manager.

The Bad
The only thing that may seem restrictive to some users is the price of a Checkout license. If you own a small retail store and need to install Checkout on a single workstation, you will have to pay around $399.

The Truth
Checkout is not aimed at the average user who is just looking for a finance manager. It is a professional tool that takes care of all the aspects involved in managing a retail store: stock room, barcode scanning, printing receipts and generating reports.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: