I have written before about the CRM I wrote for a pizzeria and I am happy to see that even FSFE started looking into Free Software for SME. I also noted the needs for teams to develop healthy projects. Today I want to give an example of why I think these things are not as easy as most people expect them to be, and how many different moving parts exist that are required to align to make Free Software for SME.
As I’m no longer self-employed, and I have no intention of going back to be a MSP in my lifetime, what I’m writing here is more of a set of “homework pointers” if a community of SME-targeted Free Software projects would be formed.
I decided to focus in my thoughts on the need of a brink and mortar store (or high street store if you prefer), mostly because it has a subset of the requirements that I could think of, compared to a restaurant like the pizza place I actually worked with.
These notes are also probably a lot more scattered and incomplete than I would like, because I have only worked retail for a short while, between high school and the two miserable week of university, nearly fifteen years ago, in a bookstore to be precise.
For most of the people who have not worked retail, it might seem like the most important piece of software/hardware for a store is the till, because that is what they interact with most of the time. While the till systems (also called POS) are fairly important, as those are in direct contact with the customer, they are only the tip of the iceberg.
But let’s start with the POS: whether you plan on integrating them directly with a credit card terminal or not, right now there are a number of integrated hardware/software solution for these, that include a touchscreen to input the receipt components and a (usually thermal) printer for the receipts to be printed on, while sometimes allowing the client to be emailed the receipt instead. As far as I know, there’s no Free Software system for this. I do see an increasing number of Clover tills in Europe, and Square in the United States (but these are not the only ones).
The till software is more complicated than one would think, because in addition to the effects that the customers can see (select line items, print receipt, eventually take payment), it has to be able to keep track of the cash flow, whether it is in form of actual cash, or in the form of card payments. Knowing the cash flow is a requisite for any business, as without that information you cannot plan your budgets.
In bigger operations, this would feed into a dedicated ERP system, which would often include an inventory management software — because you need to know how much stock you have and how fast it is moving, to know when to order new stock.
There is also the need to handle invoices, which usually don’t get printed by the till (you don’t want an invoice printed on thermal paper, particularly in countries like Italy, where you’re meant to keep the original of an invoice for over ten years).
And then there is the filing of payable invoices and, well, their payment. This is part of the accounting procedures, and I know of very few systems that allow integration with a bank to the point of automating this part. PSD2 is meant to require financial institutions to provide APIs to make this possible, at least in Europe, but that has been barely received yet, and we’ll have to see what the solution will be.
Different industries have different expected standards, too. When I worked in the bookstore, there was a standard piece of software that was used to consult the online stock of books from various depots, which was required to handle orders of books for people looking for something that was not in the store. While Amazon and other online services have for the most part removed the need for many to custom order books in a store, I know still a few people who do so, simply to make sure the bookstore stays up. And I assume that very similar, yet different, software and systems exist for most other fields of endeavour, such as computer components, watches, and shoes.
Depending on the size of the store, and the amount of employees, and in general the hours of operation, there may also be need for a roster management software, so that the different workers have fair (and legal) shifts, while still being able to manage days off. I don’t know how well solutions like Workday work for small realities, but in general I feel this is likely going to be one area in which Free Software won’t make an easy dent: following all the possible legal frameworks to actually be compliant with the law is the kind of work that requires a full-time staff of people, and unless something changes drastically, I don’t expect any FLOSS project to keep up with that.
You can say that this post is not giving any answer and is just adding more questions. And that’s the case, actually. I don’t have the time or energy of working on this myself, and my job does not involve working with retailers, or even developing user-focused software. I wanted to write this as a starting point of a project if someone is interested in doing so.
In particular, I think that this would be prime territory for a multi-disciplinary university project, starting from asking questions to store owners of their need, and understanding the whole user journey. Which seems to be something that FSFE is now looking into fostering, which I’m very happy about.
Please, help the answer to the question “Can you run a brink and mortar store on Free Software?” be Yes!
