If you are looking for a point of sale (POS) or retail management software for your furniture store, you have come to the right place.
Assuming this is your first time buying such a product, you might have noticed there seem to be a lot of different furniture store software to choose from, including: furniture retail systems; furniture retail management software; or even a furniture store point of sale; but the good news is, they are basically just different names for the same thing.
In the past, a furniture store POS focused primarily on the checkout process including: how much something costs, whether it was in stock, whether it was on discount, and of course accepting payments. That meant a retail management system was also needed to do other tasks like: flooring planning, factoring, delivery scheduling, and more.
The good news is that POS systems in the furniture industry have come a long way in the past 10 years or so, and most can now handle everything you need to do from checkout, to inventory, and store management. In other words, if you choose the right furniture store point of sale software, you will only need one system to manage your store.
In this article, we will give you all the information you need to make sure you choose the right software for your furniture store.
Furniture store management software and POS systems are the hardware, software, and devices needed to run a furniture store in the most efficient way possible. Think of the POS system as the computer (like a laptop or desktop), the POS software as the operating system (like Windows), and peripherals like barcode scanners as your accessories (like speakers).
With these systems you have everything you need to run your store, from ordering inventory, to ringing up customers, to tracking warranties, scheduling delivery, and much much more.
Having a floor plan is important for almost any retail store, but when it comes to a furniture store it is so much more crucial. Your customers would never put their kitchen fridge between their living room sofa and television, so why would your store? Not having a strong floor plan (we recommend using an interior designer) can make your furniture store seem messy, disorganized, and cost you sales. That is why your furniture store software needs to be able to support floor planning functionality.
A proper floor plan shows your customers how various pieces of furniture can tie the room together, and can encourage them to buy more (like a coffee table and rug with the sofa). Good furniture store management software keeps track of not just the floor plan, but also what has and has not been sold, and can even help you identify where to put your top selling items.
Simply put, if your furniture store software lets you plan your floor layout, you should plan for more sales.
Pieces of furniture are not small portable items, they are not something that many customers can carry home with them in their car, nor is it something that can be easily shipped to a residential address. That is why the ability to offer delivery to customers is one of the common requests when furniture store owners are looking for furniture software.
Sure, you may not necessarily need software to schedule delivery, but your customers and your delivery drivers will both thank you once they see how much easier delivery scheduling can make their lives.
A good delivery scheduling feature allows you to know when your driver is available and when the customer is available so you can get the delivery to the customer as fast as with as much convenience as possible.
When it comes to furniture stores, each and every store seems to have their own payment model that they offer customers. Whether you want to offer your customers no interest on their first year of payments, or offer to cover the taxes on purchases over $2000, or layaways, monthly payments, no payments for 6 months, etc. You need a POS that can support the way you want to pay.
Fortunately, more advanced POS systems allow you to have payment flexibility from down payments, layaways, cash back, and even credit sales. Since this can mean the difference between landing a customer and them going with a vendor with better payment options, you will want to make sure your furniture store POS is as flexible as your customers.
One of the most requested features for furniture store management software is timed-promotions. What this means is that if you have a Black Friday sale that is only available until midnight on Friday, you can set your promotion to start Friday morning, and end Friday evening, directly in your management system, and any purchases before or after that time do not get the deal applied.
Not only does this set it and forget it approach make managing your furniture store easier, it also allows you to create a sense of urgency on the side of the buyer so your sales team can ring them up today and not tomorrow.
A lot of furniture can be sold either individually or in groupings referred to as suites. The most common suites are tables and chairs, whereby the customer can buy 4 or 6 chairs with the table, the table with no chairs, or even just a single chair alone. Sometimes these suites can be a sofa and a loveseat which provides discounts with the purchase of multiple items.
Regardless of what is contained in the suite, you need to be able to calculate pricing of individual items, sets, as well as the inventory you have available for each. If someone buys 10 chairs without the table, the next customer who wants a table and four chairs, might find themselves sitting on the floor while they wait for your stock to replenish.
Other retail stores do not typically have this type of sales requirement and when they do it is known as fractional quantities, which not all POS systems support. So make sure your potential furniture POS has this feature if you need it.
The easiest way to visualize line sales management is to think about the plates in your kitchen. You start off with 4 plates (white with a blue trim), then because you like them you buy 4 more (now a set of 8), then before you know it are looking for matching cups, bowls, glasses, saucers, and serving trays (all white with blue trim) from the same kitchenware company.
Likewise furniture manufacturers often produce matching items that are part of a line and can be sold separately to customers. It is often impossible for a store to carry every item in a line, but that does not mean they will not want to give the option to buy more to their customers. Put simply, if a customer buys a bed frame and two matching nightstands, you may want to check for them if a wardrobe, dresser, vanity, bookshelf, or anything else is available as part of the line.
Proper line management can provide more options to your customers, and drive more sales at a current or future date. That is why you want a good POS that can quickly find other items to offer your customers.
Invoice factoring is when a company (in this case a furniture store) sells their invoices to another company (known as a factoring company) in exchange for a lump sum cash payment. The amount the company receives is the amount of the invoice less a fee charged by the factoring company.
Invoice factoring is very common in the furniture industry, as stores offer flexible terms, eg: no payments for one year, or 36 month equalized payments, or 2 years no interest, they need money to replenish their stock without waiting for the customer to pay in full.
If you plan to do invoice factoring, or if you already do it, you will want a POS system that integrates with or at the very least helps track this type of accounting.
Line management will only take your business as far as knowing whether or not the manufacturer produces other items in the line. Being able to know whether the manufacturer has the product in stock, how much it costs (so you can add your markup), how long it will take for delivery, and supplier cataloging, all require your system to connect with the purchase order system of your suppliers.
This feature might sound more complicated than it is, simply as your potential provider if the have purchase order, or supplier catalogs built in, and they can walk you through how this process works. If they do not have either of these functions, it may be worth shopping around for a more robust system.
If you have a small sales team, you might have difficulty serving customers without some sort of appointment setting capability at your store. Not all stores require the ability to set appointments with a sales representative directly, but for those who do, it is not a common feature so you should ask your vendor.
Also, in the post pandemic world, appointment setting has gone from a must have feature to a nice to have, so it may be included with your plan.
Does that sofa come in navy blue fabric? Can that sectional sofa be left facing not right facing? Would you be able to reupholster this in leather? If your store offers any type of furniture customization or color customization, you probably need work order functionality as part of your furniture store point of sale.
To be clear, this is only if you are doing the work yourself. If another color is available in inventory, in the warehouse, or from the manufacturer, a work order is not needed. But if you make the custom furniture changes yourself, this feature is a must.
Whether it is using line management to recommend a nightstand that perfectly matches the bedroom set a customer is buying, or using your POS as a retail CRM to email customers about new arrivals, having the right POS system in place will help your furniture store get more customers back buying more.
Trying to manage your furniture store business with multiple systems can be time consuming and mean that you potentially miss out on actions that could help you drive customers back to your store. So finding the right system means less time with getting store data and more time getting store customers.
Should you put the bed frame and dresser on your sales floor? Or how about the sofa and loveseat and chaise lounge? Not only can your POS help with floor planning, but it can also give the customer access to a variety of items not on the sales floor, by offering line management and direct orders from suppliers.
What this means is that if you have the bed frame and dresser on display, your customers will also know they have the option of buying the nightstands, wardrobe, or a ton of other matching pieces from that line.
In other words, with the right system in place, you will not have to worry about whether an item is on hand, because you can get your hands on it no problem.
Furniture stores have very hard to track inventory, some pieces may be sold but not yet picked up by, or delivered to, the customer. Some inventory might be available in the back room, other pieces at the warehouse, and some pieces may still be in transit from the manufacturer.
The proper furniture store management POS allows you to keep track of all your inventory, no matter where it is located, from one unified system.
Around $300 per month.
Even without all the bells and whistles of some more robust POS systems you can expect to pay around $200 per month for a pretty basic POS system. As you start to add on features like floor plans, line management, and floor planning the cost usually lands in the $300 to $400 per month range.
