Shop and Enjoy

Berry's is a duo of stores selling music CDs, cassettes, records, videos, body piercings, tobacco accessories, clothing and more. They have two locations, on the east side and south sides of Indianapolis. In addition to selling merchandise, Berry's occasionally hosts concerts of various music groups. Both the live shows and new, on the edge merchandise have turned Berry's into a shopping experience, not just a store.

Two Stores

As any store-owner knows, keeping track of records for one store is a tedious, time consuming process. According to owner Alan Berry, "Twice the number of stores sometimes seems to be more then twice the amount of work. Even though my two stores are within driving distance, I can't constantly be traveling back and forth." CRE has dozens of report that can each be run with a variety of criteria -- by station, by store, by cashier and many more. "The reporting helps me determine what's going on in my stores. Seeing the reports for each store side by side keeps me informed, and that's crucial in order for me to run my stores well."

Two Inventories

Each of the Berry's locations carries a wide variety of merchandise. CDs from thousands of artists, DVDs with hundreds of actors and actresses, piercings and even adult gifts all need to be properly rung up, re-ordered and accounted for in each of the stores. According to Alan, "It really helps to have a computerized system for your inventory. If a customer wants to know if we have something in the store, we can look it up right from the computer, we don't have to walk around and try to find it." Taking inventory isn't a multi-day process for Berry's. Using Pocket Inventory, which links directly with CRE, "I can walk around, scan each item, mark how many I have in stock and pass it back to the main system. Next I run a simple discrepancy report that will tell me if anything is missing, helping me cut down on theft. I can even make price changes while walking around the store!"

Special Needs

Just as Berry's needs to know their own top sellers, they want to make sure they know the best sellers of the industry. They help the Nielson ratings collect these figures by sending their CD, record and cassette sales in via an electronic system called SoundScan. "Sending in our records manually was a time consuming process, " comments Alan. "We had to input our sales into spreadsheets, format it properly and upload it to the SoundScan system. Cash Register Express had many features, but an automatic upload wasn't one of them. I told PC America what I needed, and they added the interface into CRE." Most users find all the features they need within Cash Register Express; however, for those with special needs, PC America can develop a suitable solution.