Billing software for a small shop: buy it, or have it made?

My cousin runs an optical shop in a mall in Oman. When he looked for software to run it, he found two kinds. Cheap apps that did billing and nothing else, and big systems built for chains with dozens of branches, priced like it. Neither fit one busy shop with a counter, a stockroom and an eye test room.

So I designed and built one for him: Al Barkah Opticals. It's now installed at the shop. This post is what I learned about what a small shop actually needs, and how to decide between buying software and having it made.

What a small shop really needs from billing software

Strip away the feature lists, and almost every small retail shop, from a corner deli to a pharmacy, needs the same core:

1. A fast counter. Find the product, add it to the cart, take payment, print the receipt. If this takes longer than a paper bill book, staff will go back to the bill book.
2. Stock that stays true. Every sale takes from stock. Every delivery adds to it. A warning when something runs low.
3. Customers you can find again. Their phone number, what they bought, what they still owe.
4. Receipts that are correct for where you are. The right currency, the right sales tax lines, and the language your customers expect.
5. The whole day on one screen. At closing time: today's sales, cash in the drawer, what's still pending.

Then there's whatever makes your shop different. For an optical shop it's prescriptions and lens orders. For a pharmacy it's batches and expiry dates. For a tailor, measurements. This is usually where off-the-shelf software starts to hurt.

When off-the-shelf software is enough

If you sell ordinary things in an ordinary way, buy something. A good retail point-of-sale app costs much less than having one made, it's ready today, and someone else fixes the bugs. Many charge somewhere around $20 to $100 a month, depending on what you need.

It's probably enough if:

• Your products are simple items with a price and a stock count.
• Your receipts don't need anything unusual.
• Your internet is reliable during opening hours.
• You're happy to change a few habits to fit the software.

When a custom app is worth it

For my cousin's shop, the answer was different, for reasons that come up in a lot of small businesses:

• The records are specific to the trade. A prescription has a right eye and a left eye, written in that order, with short names optometrists already use, and an expiry date. Generic software either can't store that, or buries it in a notes field.
• The shop can't stop when the internet does. The app runs on a laptop in the shop. Staff open it from any phone or computer on the shop's Wi-Fi. If the internet drops, sales don't.
• Two languages, in the right places. Customers expect receipts in Arabic. The staff work in English. So receipts print in both, and the app itself stays in English.
• Big systems are full of things a small shop never uses. In a custom app, each person sees only their own job. The rest simply isn't there, instead of sitting around greyed out and confusing new staff.

Three things I'd insist on, whichever you choose

1. Nothing is ever really deleted

Every sale, edit and stock change should be saved with who did it and when. When the numbers don't match at the end of the month, this is how you find out why. It also keeps honest staff safe from suspicion.

2. Backups that happen by themselves

A shop's records are years of work. Al Barkah backs itself up every night, without anyone remembering to. Ask any software you're buying: where is my data, and how do I get a copy of it?

3. Your data stays yours

If you stop paying for a subscription, can you still export your customers and sales? If the answer is unclear, that's an answer.

Questions to ask before you decide

1. What do we write on paper today that the software has to hold?
2. What happens at the counter when the internet goes down?
3. Do receipts need a second language, or special sales tax details?
4. Who uses it: just the owner, or staff with different jobs?
5. How long does a normal sale take, start to finish? Time it.
6. Can we get all our data out, any time?

If most answers are “nothing special”, buy. If several of them are specific to how your shop works, a small custom app, designed around your counter, can be worth more than it costs.

How I'd go about having one made

Start by having the designer spend a day in the shop. Most of the Al Barkah design came from watching one customer go from the eye test to the counter. Then build the counter first, put it in front of staff, and add the rest one piece at a time. I go through that process in more detail in how to design an app from scratch.

Running a small business and wondering if something like this would fit yours? Tell me about it. I'm happy to say if you'd be better off buying something.