New small retail business - best software?

[RichieRich]

Asking for a friend (for real):

Looking for advice on best value (ie cheap, but effective) small business software packages. Small business doing point-of-sale/retail type stuff selling direct to customer. Items being sold are provided by multiple local suppliers who receive some commission.

Intention is that supplier provides goods to business. Business sells to customer and provides receipt with transaction and goods details. Business compensates supplier. Business pays overhead.

Is this a quickbooks type thing? are there other/better simple to use programs? What other considerations?

Yes this could be done through Excel, but looking for that nice product. Asking the CP braintrust since many of ya'll clearly have started and/or maintained and/or closed businesses.

Thx

[calgarywinning]

Xero looks awesome to me. I've dealt with some business using this. good accounting and straight forward.

[Texas]

Calgary company:
https://www.helcim.com/

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by RichieRich

Asking for a friend (for real):

Looking for advice on best value (ie cheap, but effective) small business software packages. Small business doing point-of-sale/retail type stuff selling direct to customer. Items being sold are provided by multiple local suppliers who receive some commission.

Intention is that supplier provides goods to business. Business sells to customer and provides receipt with transaction and goods details. Business compensates supplier. Business pays overhead.

Is this a quickbooks type thing? are there other/better simple to use programs? What other considerations?

Yes this could be done through Excel, but looking for that nice product. Asking the CP braintrust since many of ya'll clearly have started and/or maintained and/or closed businesses.

Thx

I'm kinda confused what you're describing here. Is your friend the business selling to the customer or is your friend the supplier?

Is your friend the business obtaining the goods from local suppliers? Your friend then sells from their location essentially on consignment? (pay supplier only when goods are sold)

Are you solely asking for accounting record keeping software, preparing invoices? Or more than that? (ie: basic automation, payment receiving services etc.)

For a business like this, I'd recommend cloud accounting software. Don't go with the desktop only ones anymore. Those are still good for professional or high volume transaction/complex companies, but small to mid sized are better served with simple modular cloud accounting software.

I've used Xero, I've used Quickbooks online (QBO) and I'd say either are decent for a small business. You can scale up or down reasonably easily features wise depending on the needs of the business. There's differences between these two, but not enough that I believe one is truly better or worse than the other. Just personal preference. There's add ons you can pay extra for for extra features like mileage tracking, payment requests through the QBO or Xero app, digitizing receipts, automatic journal entries prep from bank or credit card statement etc.

I think Xero and QBO's price point/value and offerings are relatively close. I personally prefer QBO over Xero purely due to me disliking their marketing and sales tactics, but honestly speaking choosing Xero vs QBO is like choosing Rogers or Telus. There might be some slight user differences between the two and some people might really have a strong opinion about one over the other, but the end service that is provided is nearly completely identical for the vast majority of people.

[para transit fellow]

Sounds like you are describing a "drop shipping" setup.

I understand there are dozens of software already on the market
https://www.shopify.com/ca/blog/dropshipping-software

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by calgarywinning

Xero looks awesome to me. I've dealt with some business using this. good accounting and straight forward.

Anecdotal, but I had nothing but headaches with Xero. It would always have issues reconciling our credit cards, and so we had to do things manually way more than we thought. We switched to Quickbooks last year, and to me it's been much more intuitive and issue free so far.

[RichieRich]

All replies and advice much appreciated. Sorry haven’t had a chance to reply to key questions (DoubleF for example). Hopefully Wednesday eve.

I realize I’ve been intentionally vague… too much evidently. Friend has started a small niche retail business in a trendy Calgary area. Sells product on behalf of the suppliers, so there’s a commission amount as it’s essentially on consignment. Also wants to enter the drop-ship business.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by RichieRich

All replies and advice much appreciated. Sorry haven’t had a chance to reply to key questions (DoubleF for example). Hopefully Wednesday eve.

I realize I’ve been intentionally vague… too much evidently. Friend has started a small niche retail business in a trendy Calgary area. Sells product on behalf of the suppliers, so there’s a commission amount as it’s essentially on consignment. Also wants to enter the drop-ship business.

I'd probably recommend QBO with add ons and perhaps Shopify for storefront, if the business will be relatively straight forward to self manage. (ie: T2125 on a personal tax return or a corporation with a T2 filing and/or compilation year end engagement).

If friend has already started an active business without any accounting and record keeping stuff set up and utilized, get an accountant involved ASAP to help with making sure the record keeping stuff is done right. It only gets harder and worse if this step is delayed. Proper record keeping is a foundational cornerstone. Hiring a professional accountant/bookkeeper to do the first year record keeping and then emulating it yourself isn't a bad idea.

If your friend will be borrowing a bunch of money for the business and the lender will likely require an assurance engagement (review or audit) as a requirement to agree to the lending, consider getting professional accountants and bookkeepers involved to get the record keeping set up properly right from the very beginning. Don't mess around with this stuff.

Spending a few grand to do things right from the get go potentially helps to prevent hundreds if not thousands of dollars of issues later on.