Microsoft Point of Sale review: Microsoft Point of Sale

Microsoft Point of Sale (POS) is a retail-management program for single-store business proprietors who want to digitize their cash register. It consists of two software components: one is a point-of-sale screen, similar to a register, where cashiers ring up customer transactions; the other is a store-management program for logging inventory, tracking employee hours, and creating purchase orders. The $799 Point of Sale isn't a steal, but it's priced comparably to the similar Intuit QuickBooks Point of Sale Pro 4 Basic. The Microsoft program has the superior interface, with large onscreen buttons designed for touch-screen monitors--an important consideration for retailers who need to quickly train cashiers. But we'd like to see a few improvements: for instance, Microsoft POS can exchange data with QuickBooks but not with other small-business accounting programs, such as Peachtree Complete Accounting or MYOB Business Essentials Pro. We find Microsoft POS simpler to learn than its QuickBooks competitor, although the latter makes it easier to find hardware that works best with its system.

Installing Microsoft Point of Sale takes a long time. After loading the software onto a Windows XP SP2 PC (which took us 10 minutes), you must enter your company's customer, employee, and inventory data--which could eat up the better part of a mom-and-pop retailer's weekend.

After installation, the real work begins. Launch the Point of Sale Manager and run the Store Setup wizard, which prompts you to enter basic information about your business, such as employee data, your sales-tax rate, and an employee ID and password for the store owner. The wizard is a snap to follow, and you can use separate wizards to import company accounting data, such as personnel and inventory details, from either Excel or QuickBooks. In our tests, however, Point of Sale failed to transfer some information from our QuickBooks Premier 2004 company file, so we had to manually enter customer balances and estimate totals.

The Microsoft Point of Sale interface features large, clearly labeled buttons--ideal for cashiers who use touch screens or keyboards.

Still, Microsoft POS has an excellent interface for retail transactions. Unlike the QuickBooks Point of Sale interface, which resembles those of Intuit's accounting apps, Microsoft's better fits a retail environment with touch-screen monitors or one where there's a keyboard but no mouse. Large, well-labeled buttons provide access to common tasks, such as accessing customer or inventory lists, while keyboard commands simplify data entry.

The Microsoft POS Manager, a separate program for managing inventory, customers, and employees, looks similar to Microsoft Outlook. Office devotees will recognize the left-column navigation pane and the standard menus-and-icons presentation. The Manager software is easier to learn than QuickBooks POS. For instance, you can easily access Microsoft's Purchase Order wizard via the My Store column in the Purchase Orders module. But creating a purchase order in QuickBooks POS involves clicking the less obvious New PO button on the Purchase Order List.

Before really getting down to business, you'll need to buy hardware, such as a receipt printer and a cash drawer. We also recommend a wireless scanner that allows you to input UPCs while walking freely around the store. Hardware compatibility is a real issue; you want the receipt printer to work and the cash drawer to automatically pop open when a sale is complete, don't you? Microsoft's Business Solutions Web site recommends specific combinations of hardware known to work with its POS software. This takes more research and time than with Intuit QuickBooks POS, for which you can buy a receipt printer, a cash drawer, a credit card scanner, and a bar code reader bundled as a package.

Microsoft Point of Sale is a 21st-century alternative to the cash register and pen-and-paper accounting habits of single-store retailers. Cashiers can use Point of Sale to conduct customer sales and returns and to run inventory searches; shop managers can use the POS Manager to create reports, receive inventory, track employee hours, and so on.

Microsoft POS has plenty of management tools, but we'd like to see a few additions in future versions, such as the ability to design custom sales reports and track work orders, layaways, and cashier tasks--all features included in the higher-end Microsoft Retail Management System.

The Purchase Order wizard is one of many easy-to-learn tools in Microsoft Point of Sale Manager.

Security is essential in a point-of-sale application, particularly in small shops where the owner and the employees share the same register. Luckily, Microsoft POS provides seven employee roles, each with defined access rights. For instance, the owner and the manager can delete customer records, while employees at the highest of four Associate levels can process a return transaction, create or modify customer records, and so on. By comparison, QuickBooks Point of Sale Basic has only four predefined employee roles, though it allows you to create custom roles.

You can also install Microsoft POS on each computer in your store for $799 per checkout lane. This straightforward process involves first installing the software on the main computer that holds your store database, then installing it on additional PCs.

Microsoft provides retailers free help with installation and usage questions, as well as assistance with bugs, security fixes, and access to POS newsgroups. But you'll pay plenty for complete Microsoft Point of Sale support. An annual maintenance plan, which includes software upgrades and service packs, costs 18 percent of the $799 Point of Sale price (or $143.82) multiplied by the number of checkout lanes. If you have two lanes, for instance, you'd pay $287.64. However, technical support costs extra: $300 for five support incidents if you're enrolled in the annual maintenance plan, and $450 if you're not. Another option is per-incident support, at $65 for plan members and $95 for nonmembers. By comparison, QuickBooks POS users get 30 days of free tech support, but they pay a lot more for an annual plan: $49 per month ($588 annually) for single-store support. Intuit's single-store support plan doesn't have a per-lane fee.