Point of sale systems support

Later in the survey we asked a general question about what booksellers were proud of over the last year. Many booksellers mentioned how proud they were of their staff’s resilience and strength.

“I'm proud of my amazing staff for thriving during such a challenging time.”

“Our staff continue to be our strength and the reason we're still in this fight. Proud of them.”

“[We’re] very proud of our staff who have worked through this entire period — even though it has been stressful.”

Point of sale systems support What systems do bookstores use for their point of sale (POS) system, ecommerce platform, accounting system, and book catalogue system? Most of the respondents use Bookmanager for them all: their book catalogue system (77%), point of sale (POS) system in their physical bookstore (76%), ecommerce platform (69%), and its accounting module (30%).

Other catalogue systems were paper catalogues (47%), BNC CataList (27%), and Edelweiss (19%).

In terms of POS systems, there wasn’t much adoption of alternatives to Bookmanager; Shopify and WordStock were each used by 6% of bookstores.

Accounting systems bookstores use vary. Apart from the 30% of respondents who use Bookmanager’s accounting module, 30% use QuickBooks (19% use QuickBooks Online and 11% use QuickBooks Desktop), 17% use Sage/Simply Accounting, and 11% use custom systems.