Hi, I am a relative novice when compared to most people here. My business has a specific need that so far no other point of sale software covers. I have been trying to develop my own solution for this, but I do not think I am experienced enough to do this on my own, but I would very much like to be part of the core development for this solution, which I think could be resold to other retailers like me.

I work for a furniture retailer, we also have a "country store" and an apparel shop. Currently we use all macintosh computers for our registers and our back office work, and we would like to stay all mac. I don't know if anyone is familiar with our current point of sale system named POSIM. For the most part POSIM works great for our apparel shop and for our country store, but it was just not designed to sell custom furniture. Before I started my job here, I didn't realize all the options you could get on your sofa or chair.. Nor did I realize we offers thousands if not tens of thousands of different fabrics and leathers. Anyway I am looking for a solution or to develop a solution that can do the following and take the place of our point of sale and inventory management system.

Here is a "brief" overview,

point of sale, inventory management, purchasing, receiving, invoices/special orders, customer service, customer deliveries, vendor returns and damages, employee time sheets, commissions, productivity reports, and many other reports, and containers for documents, and vendor catalogs.

I would be more than happy to go more in depth as needed... The biggest hurdle I have using prepackaged point of sale software is that it is very hard to get custom furniture to work without handwriting the order and purchase order, I really want to get away from handwriting our orders. My plans are to implement this solution on ipads for the furniture sales staff, so they can just follow a customer around and do the order. Now there are some software packages for windows that does most of what I am looking for but I think having a cross platform solution or a mac solution would be much better. Also from the few other software solutions out there they don't seem to sell the small stuff (point of sale part) very well. Now I realize there will be a ton of data entry and unfortunately very few furniture vendors seem to have there pricing information in any importable electronic means.......

I have started to develop a solution for this but it seems like it may be over my head. I was wondering if anyone either knows of a comparable solution already available, or if anyone knows how much something like this might cost to develop... I would also like to have a hand in the development, so I can further my filemaker skills.

Hey, was & still am in same position as you. Custom development of this type can start in the $$thousands, 5 - 20 & upwards.

If you learn filemaker, you can do it, but it will take time and if you want it to go quicker, may i suggest opening an account @ mighty data.com for mentorship support or thesupportgtroup.com.

They offer mentoring at a cost, but may be cheaper to have someone build the solution for you.

Good luck as i am still trying to do mine, There is a lot to work on if you have a customized area .

later,

-i

"I have started to develop a solution for this but it seems like it may be over my head. I was wondering if anyone either knows of a comparable solution already available, or if anyone knows how much something like this might cost to develop... I would also like to have a hand in the development, so I can further my filemaker skills. "

With 25 years of Retailing and and about 5 years of developing FMP solutions, I like most developers started out just like you are doing. My advice to you is to find a developer who like myself has a history with retail and get the system built professionally since this is the heart of the business.

Like most of the people here on FMForums we enjoying helping each other grow their skills. Most of us would have a similar module which could save time and expense yet would need customization to meet your requirements.

With your wanting have your "hand in the development" may cause a caution flag for a professional and could increase the project cost should you cripple a script of other feature. A small change could adversely affect the business. (I had a client make a change once which caused over $7,000 of payment processing be credits and not charges)

Have you checked out LightSpeed? http://www.lightspeedretail.com/

They have Developer API that may help you with your customization.

I would also like to have a hand in the development, so I can further my filemaker skills.

Decide whether you want to focus on running your business, or learning how to become a developer. :D