When it comes to increasing your business profitability, computerizing your accounting functions may not have a significant impact. However, managing your inventory is crucial to your business success as it's your number one asset. To achieve good inventory control, you need to balance the expectations of your customers and your bankers, which means avoiding being either under or over stocked. Although some systems offer both inventory control and accounting modules, most successful retailers use separate systems for each one. This is because software that tries to do both usually ends up doing some of it poorly, and the few that don’t are extremely expensive. Therefore, it's recommended that you computerize your inventory control first as it will provide a much better return on your systems investment. With timely information about sales, inventory, invoicing, margins, orders, and customers, you'll be able to earn more money than what a new accounting system can save.

Planning the setup phase of a new system is crucial to avoid headaches in the future. Rushing through the process can lead to problems. It's never a good idea to decide on a weekend that the new system needs to be fully integrated into the business by Monday. It is important to allow plenty of time for you and your staff to get used to a new routine. Ideally, you could run the new system in parallel with the old one for a week or more, but this is often not possible. The POS system is expected to provide useful information about inventory control and customers after a month of full-time use.