Cleaning up product file for a new EPOS system

The installation of a new EPOS software solution is great opportunity to clean up your product file. A clean product stock file is critical to the success of a retail solution installation. If you put a load of rubbish into your new EPOS system, don't be surprised if you get a lot of nonsense out of it.

Over several years of use, your old EPOS system will have collected a lot of clutter in the product file. You will have lots of duplicate products created by mistake. You will have products with no cost or selling price. Items with blank or meaningless descriptions. Before you import your product file into your new EPOS system you have to invest considerable time cleaning up this file whilst it is still in the spreadsheet.

If you've been using your old EPOS software for some time, you will have a lot of products on file which you'll never sell again. They might be special order items purchased for just one customer, or they might be old defunct items that you can't get from your suppliers any more. There is no point importing these items.

Items with no cost price are particular irksome. If you sell an item which has a zero purchasing price, the EPOS system doesn't really know what do display for margin. The margin is effectively infinite! Having a few zero cost items in the product file will screw up your monthly reporting by overstating the profit - and the effect is quite subtle and hard to notice.

Duplicate and nonsense descriptions just mess up the search functions of the new EPOS system. There is no point having search results that you'll never sell!

I cannot stress how important it is to carefully edit your entire stock file to remove duplicates and other problems. A poor product file is one of the top reasons for the failure of a new EPOS system installation, and your EPOS system provider can't do much to help: Only you know your stock file. It is quite daunting task if you have thousands of items in your product file, but make it a priority and you'll have EPOS success!