PayPal
Find the best Bookstore Software
What is bookstore software?
There are thousands of retail point of sale (POS) software vendors on the market to help book and music retailers with the most critical aspects of their business, such as inventory and pricing. Book inventory software and POS are the key modules for book stores and music shop software. Many shops also have customer service and loyalty ... read moreShowing 1 - 20 of 113 products
Compare Products
Showing 1 - 20 of 113 products
Sort by
Recommendations: Sorts listings by the number of recommendations our advisors have made over the past 30 days. Our advisors assess buyers’ needs for free and only recommend products that meet buyers’ needs. Vendors pay Software Advice for these referrals.
Reviews: Sorts listings by the number of user reviews we have published, greatest to least.
Sponsored: Sorts listings by software vendors running active bidding campaigns, from the highest to lowest bid. Vendors who have paid for placement have a ‘Visit Website’ button, whereas unpaid vendors have a ‘Learn More’ button.
Avg Rating: Sorts listings by overall star rating based on user reviews, highest to lowest.
A to Z: Sorts listings by product name from A to Z.
Reviews: Sorts listings by the number of user reviews we have published, greatest to least.
Sponsored: Sorts listings by software vendors running active bidding campaigns, from the highest to lowest bid. Vendors who have paid for placement have a ‘Visit Website’ button, whereas unpaid vendors have a ‘Learn More’ button.
Avg Rating: Sorts listings by overall star rating based on user reviews, highest to lowest.
A to Z: Sorts listings by product name from A to Z.
Stratus Enterprise
Stratus Enterprise
Stratus Retail by Celerant Technology provides tools for point of sale (POS), inventory and order management, enterprise resource management (ERP), e-commerce, business intelligence, marketplace integrations (Amazon, eBay, Walmart...Read more about Stratus Enterprise
NCR Counterpoint
NCR Counterpoint
The NCR Counterpoint solution includes an e-mail marketing tool, integrated e-commerce, mobile alerting, built-in gift card and customer loyalty programs and hardware specifically designed for the retail environment. The NCR ...Read more about NCR Counterpoint
S2K Enterprise for Retail
S2K Enterprise for Retail
VAI’s is an independent software developer and the author of S2K Enterprise, an award winning cloud-based ERP solution utilized by customers operating across the distribution, manufacturing, specialty retail, and service sectors, ...Read more about S2K Enterprise for Retail
RetailEdge
RetailEdge
RetailEdge is an on-premise, retail POS solution designed for small and midsize businesses. It offers mobile POS, multi-location support, website integration, credit card processing and gift card management functionalities within ...Read more about RetailEdge
Aptos Retail Merchandising
Aptos Retail Merchandising
Over 40 years’ experience delivering retail management systems to the retail industry with thousands of successful retail implementations around the world. Cloud-based omnichannel merchandising, inventory customer, POS, sales audi...Read more about Aptos Retail Merchandising
RB Control Systems
RB Control Systems
RB Pool and Spa Software completely manages retail and service with PCs, tablets, smartphones and laptops. With the consolidation of retail and service into a single system, regardless of your business size, you'll see an immediat...Read more about RB Control Systems
AmberPOS
AmberPOS
Pacific Amber’s AmberPOS offers a point of sale software solutions to a variety of retail specialties, ranging from small to midsized, in the United States and Canada. In addition to point of sale functionality, AmberPOS incl...Read more about AmberPOS
MMS Retail Management Software
MMS Retail Management Software
Maplewave is a provider of retail management software solution and professional services for telecommunications, pharmacy and retail industry. Key features include video chat, queue management, appointment manager, digital marketi...Read more about MMS Retail Management Software
NetSuite
NetSuite
With an integrated system that includes ERP, financials, commerce, inventory management, HR, PSA, supply chain management, CRM and more – NetSuite enables fast-growing businesses across all industries to work more effectively by a...Read more about NetSuite
Körber K.Motion WMS
Körber K.Motion WMS
Körber's K.Motion Warehouse Management System is an adaptable, process based WMS designed to be tailored to companies' unique business practices. Due to its modular design, users can pick and choose from a suite of applications to...Read more about Körber K.Motion WMS
iVend Retail
iVend Retail
iVend Retail is a cloud-based, omnichannel retail management solution that helps businesses manage various aspects of a brick and mortar retail shop and e-commerce store. It covers from point-of-sale (POS) to back office to head o...Read more about iVend Retail
POS-J
POS-J
POS-J is a Point of Sale solution designed for retail industries, including apparel and accessories, gift shops, electronics and appliances, general merchandise retailers and more. It provides a unified view of the orders across d...Read more about POS-J
Lightspeed Retail
Lightspeed Retail
Lightspeed Retail is a cloud-based POS solution that is suitable for retailers in industries such as apparel, footwear, bike, jewelry, pet, sporting goods and home decor. The solution offers retailers tools including inventory man...Read more about Lightspeed Retail
NCR Silver
NCR Silver
NCR Silver has been designed to meet the needs of small, independent retailers seeking a mobile point of sale (POS) solution.NCR Silver allows retailers to track customers and sell their products not only from standard POS touchsc...Read more about NCR Silver
Brightpearl
Brightpearl
Brightpearl is a complete Retail Operating System for brands, retailers and wholesalers, that’s designed to scale with fast-growing e-commerce brands. Our platform offers flexibility to respond to rapid changes in demand with Plug...Read more about Brightpearl
AIM
AIM
AIM is a secure end-to-end point of sale (POS) business solution that can be used in any retail environment. This retail management solution features customizable menus and screens, inventory management, complete POS activity and ...Read more about AIM
CORESense
CORESense
CORESense is a cloud-based point of sale and retail management solution that is designed for merchants. The solution helps retailers to keep track of their in-house inventories and manage orders received from customers. The r...Read more about CORESense
ReadySTORE POS
ReadySTORE POS
ReadyStore by UTC RETAIL is a cloud-based retail point-of-sale (POS) solution that offers a suite of applications to manage store operations. The solution caters to various industries such as pharmaceutical, manufacturing and food...Read more about ReadySTORE POS
Aralco
Aralco
Aralco is a provider of cloud-based POS and inventory management solutions with integrated eCommerce, CRM and payment processing capabilities. Designed primarily to cater the needs of small and midsize retailers across apparel, au...Read more about Aralco
Unified Commerce Platform
Unified Commerce Platform
enVista offers cloud-based retail management solutions that help users manage the daily operations of a single store or multiple locations in real-time. enVista's unified commerce software solutions are delivered as an integrated ...Read more about Unified Commerce Platform
Popular Bookstore POS & Inventory Software Comparisons
Buyers Guide
Last Updated: November 21, 2022No specialty retailers have been affected more by the emergence of online superstores than book and music shops. In addition, book and music store owners face the challenge of having to compete against the e-book and downloadable music market. Many are forced to rethink their business strategy to meet growing consumer needs for books and music files that can be accessed from a laptop or mobile device.
To differentiate themselves from Internet retailers, book businesses are becoming shopping destinations instead of just stores. For example, many have started to offer an expanded selection of non-core items, such as coffee and food.
Here's what we'll cover:
What Is Bookstore Software?
Common Features of Bookstore POS and Inventory Software
Benefits of Bookstore POS and Inventory Software
Deployment Options
What Is Bookstore Software?
There are thousands of retail point of sale (POS) software vendors on the market to help book and music retailers with the most critical aspects of their business, such as inventory and pricing. Systems exist for large organizations with several locations, small “mom and pop” stores, and everything in between. The goal of this buyer’s guide is to help book and music retailers find the right POS software to meet their needs in this evolving market.
Book inventory software and POS are the key modules for book stores and music shop software. Book and music store inventories typically contain just a few duplicates of a large number of items, and special orders are common. Books and magazines are usually identified with a number in the form of a bar code, called the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) respectively. CDs (and albums, cassettes and 45s produced after the 1970s) have Universal Product Codes (UPCs).
Many shops also have customer service and loyalty programs built into their business strategy, so customer relationship management (CRM) is another important aspect of software solutions as music and book stores are embracing social media to attract and maintain customers.
Ideally, systems should support both traditional stores and online sales, “bricks and clicks” operations. And, if stores buy product from customers to resell, the POS and accounts payable features need to integrate for the payments to be processed properly.
Common Features of Bookstore POS and Inventory Software
Book and music retailers should consider the following functions to meet their unique requirements:
| Online inventory | A book or music store should have access to an online inventory system for the latest books and special orders. |
| ISBN and ISSN lookup | The system should be able to look up the ISBN or ISSN for any book or magazine. The information, such as title, publisher and publication date, can be imported into the bookstore inventory software. |
| Non-book/non-music items | The system should support the sale of non-book/non-music items such as beverages, snacks and toys. |
| UPC lookup | Access to a UPC library for CDs and other inventory is critical. The system should be able to populate the inventory system with stock numbers and descriptions from the UPC library. |
| Online store | The system should support online sales of items through a Web storefront. If there are both an online store and a physical store, there should be an option to share the inventory between them or to keep the inventories separate. |
| Promotional pricing | The system should allow sale and promotional pricing. The pricing should change in the POS and inventory automatically at a specified time and date, if desired. |
| Customer loyalty program | As part of CRM and to further solidify customer relations, many music and book stores have customer loyalty programs. The store system should track sales history and monitor loyalty program points awarded and redeemed. |
| Spoilage reporting | If the store sell perishable goods; the “sell by” dates must be tracked, expired inventory must be collected and disposed of and the process properly documented. |
| Gift set packaging | One of the key promotions for book and music stores are gift sets. The POS system must support gift set sales for a single price but correctly decrease inventory levels for the individual items when a gift set is sold. |
| Book/music buying | If the store buys used books or music for resale, the system should have access to an online database to help determine the price. The POS should support the buying process and handle the transaction correctly through accounts payable and general ledger. |
| Online music and e-book sales | If there is an online store, it should be able to sell music downloads and e-books in popular formats. Online bookstore software should handle the digital rights management (DRM) and royalties. |
| Online storefront integration | Many bookstore owners will sell through other online mediums, such as Amazon, Biblio, AbeBooks and others. The system should be able to integrate with these online storefronts. |
| Query-based lists | Users should be able to create lists and sublists of inventory based on keywords. A very helpful feature for both store owners and customers. |
| Customizable fields | The system should allow users to create new fields, customize the length of these fields and vary the type of information included. |
Benefits of Bookstore POS and Inventory Software
One should be able to see the operational and experiential benefits provided by the adoption of bookstore POS software. The three top benefits of the software include:
- Accurate, automated inventory control. Any retailer would like to excel at managing inventory levels, but it’s especially the case for bookstores. Inventory features enable users to determine and never to run out of popular titles on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis.
- More efficient shopping experiences. The organizational benefits of bookstore inventory management enables any and all employees to quickly find items for customers, rather than having to sort through the section they’re “pretty sure it should be in.” This will lead to a greater overall customer experience and hopefully encourage repeat business.
Deployment Options
Most book stores use on-premise systems. In fact, paper-based systems are still used by some. However, software as a service (SaaS) systems are available and provide an attractive alternative for book stores and music shops that are upgrading or replacing current systems.
Most SaaS, or Web-based, applications are hosted on the vendor’s servers and paid for by monthly subscription. This deployment option is ideal for buyers who prefer lower monthly payments over a costly upfront investment.
A final benefit of SaaS software is increased accessibility. Users can access these systems from any device with an Internet connection and from Mac or PC operating systems.