Retail chains and supershops
Software for supershops and multi-branch retail chains
Every outlet on one stock ledger, a till on any phone, transfers that track stock in transit, pricing rules that cover a region without being copied per store, and a drawer that closes honestly. Plus the registration question nobody else answers.
Reviewed
The short answer
For a multi-outlet retailer in Bangladesh this puts every branch on one stock ledger with documented transfers and stock in transit, turns any staff phone into a till with camera scanning and no hardware to buy, prices centrally with rules that can be pinned to a region or an outlet, and closes each till's shift against a counted drawer with a real cashier role behind it.
The constraint to check first: a workspace carries one company and one BIN. Outlets registered branch-wise under separate BINs need a deployment each.
One stock ledger, or five spreadsheets
The moment a second outlet opens, a retail business acquires a problem it did not have the week before: two people now believe two different things about the same stock. Most chains in this country solve it with a spreadsheet per branch and a phone call on Thursday. That works until the fourth branch, and then it stops working all at once.
Every outlet here is a location in one warehouse hierarchy on one ledger. Branch stock and head-office stock are the same numbers, because they are literally the same numbers. The stock view answers both questions from that one source: this outlet, or every outlet added up.
Transfers between outlets are documents with a dispatched quantity and a received quantity, stock in transit tracked separately, and partial receipts that do not force the document to stay open. That is the boring answer and it is the one that finds shrinkage.
Every staff phone is a till
The till is a web application installed to the home screen from the browser. A staff phone or a cheap Android tablet is a working till, the camera is the barcode scanner, and there is no terminal to buy and no per-till hardware licence. On a queue that has grown past the counter, a second till is a phone somebody already owns.
That removes a real line from the capital cost of opening a branch: POS terminal hardware in this market runs into the tens of thousands of taka per till before any software is bought.
Central pricing, per-branch rules
Pricing rules are written once, centrally, and can be pinned to a warehouse. A rule pinned to a location also covers every location beneath it in the hierarchy, so a promotion for the Dhaka region reaches its stores without being copied per store and without being forgotten at the newest one.
Separately, each outlet's till profile can point at its own price list, which is the mechanism for a genuinely different shelf price at one branch. Between the two, most of what a chain wants from pricing is expressible without maintaining a catalogue per outlet.
A drawer per till, per shift, that closes honestly
Cash variance is a people problem that software can either surface or hide. Each till runs its own shift with a counted opening float and a counted close, tender by tender, with denomination counts. The variance belongs to a person and a device rather than to the shop.
- The expected cash figure nets off change given and refunds paid out of the drawer, so a shift that took a return does not close false short and nobody learns to ignore the number.
- Closing outside the variance tolerance needs a manager's approval, and that approval is single-use rather than a manager's name typed into a box.
- X reports during the shift and a daily Z report at the end come from the same figures the reconciliation used.
- Cashier is a real role with its own permissions. It opens and closes its own shift, rings sales, takes counter returns, and holds no approval key. Nobody has to trade on an administrator login.
One thing this does not do: there is no cash-drawer kick. The drawer in this product is an accounting concept, not a wired device.
What ships for a chain, with the limits attached
Every outlet on one stock ledgerShips today
Each outlet is a warehouse under the same ledger, so branch stock and head-office stock are the same numbers rather than five spreadsheets reconciled monthly.
Transfers between outletsShips today
Stock moves between outlets as a document with a sender and a receiver, so the stock in transit is somewhere.
Central pricing with per-branch overridesShips today
Pricing rules are written centrally and can be pinned to a warehouse, which also covers every location beneath it in the hierarchy, so a rule for a region reaches its stores without being copied per store. Separately, each outlet's till profile can point at its own price list.
A drawer per till per shiftShips today
Each till runs its own shift with its own float and its own close, so a variance belongs to a person and a device rather than to the shop.
Branch and consolidated stockShips in part
The stock view answers both questions from the same ledger: this outlet, or every outlet added up.
Where it stops. Not every financial report carries a branch selector. If a specific report has to break down by outlet, ask to see that report in the demo rather than assuming it.
More than one BINDoes not ship
A workspace carries one company and therefore one Business Identification Number. If your outlets are registered branch-wise under separate BINs, or you run more than one legal entity, that needs a separate deployment per entity. Raise it before you buy, not after.
The BIN question nobody else answers
Every supershop page in this market talks about multi-branch and none of them mentions this, so here it is first rather than last.
If your outlets trade under one central registration, this is a non-issue and you can stop reading here. If they are registered branch-wise under separate Business Identification Numbers, or you run more than one legal entity, then each entity needs its own deployment and that changes the shape and the cost of the project. It is a five-minute conversation before you buy and a very expensive discovery afterwards.
Ask every other vendor on your shortlist the same question, in those words. The answers are informative.
What it costs to add a branch
| Line | What it costs here |
|---|---|
| POS terminal hardware | Nothing, if you use a phone or a tablet you already have. Thermal printing needs a printer and a small helper installed on the machine it is attached to. |
| Per-till software licence | Nothing per till. Concurrent tills are a plan ceiling instead: the entry plan runs one at a time, and the ceilings rise with the plan. |
| Per-user licence | Nothing per user. Plans carry a user ceiling rather than a per-seat charge. |
| Setup for the outlet | A warehouse, a till profile and a price list. Configuration rather than a project. |
| Barcodes on the catalogue | The real work, and it is one-time. Without it, scanning and offline selling do not function. |
The honest caveat on that table: a growing chain moves up plan tiers as it adds tills and users, so adding a branch is not free. It is just not charged per till and per seat, which is the model that makes opening the fifth outlet feel like a punishment.
Questions people ask
- Can I run all my outlets on one stock ledger?
- Yes. Each outlet is a location in one warehouse hierarchy on one ledger, so branch stock and head-office stock are the same numbers. The stock view either drills into one outlet or aggregates every one of them, from the same data.
- Can each branch have a different price?
- Yes, two ways. Pricing rules can be pinned to a warehouse and automatically cover every location beneath it, so a regional promotion reaches its stores without being copied. Separately, each outlet's till profile can point at its own price list for a genuinely different shelf price.
- Do I need POS hardware for each till?
- No. The till runs in the browser and installs to the home screen, so a staff phone or a cheap tablet is a working till and the camera is the scanner. Thermal receipt printing needs a printer and a small helper installed on the machine it is attached to. There is no cash-drawer kick.
- Does the till keep working if the internet drops?
- It keeps ringing sales into a queue on the device and drains them on reconnect without double-charging. The important limit is that offline selling is barcode-only and the device can only sell items it has already scanned online at least once, because that is when it caches the price. If your products have no barcodes recorded, offline mode has nothing to sell.
- Can I have a separate BIN for each outlet?
- No. A workspace carries one company and therefore one Business Identification Number. If your outlets are registered branch-wise under separate BINs, or you run more than one legal entity, each entity needs its own deployment. Raise it before you buy rather than after.
- How many tills can I run at once?
- Concurrent tills are capped by plan rather than charged per till. The entry plan runs one at a time and the ceiling rises with the plan, up to unlimited on the top tier. The limit is enforced correctly even when two tills try to open at the same moment.
- How much does supershop software cost in Bangladesh?
- Most local vendors quote per outlet on request. Ours is published in full and starts at BDT 1,990 a month, though a chain running several tills at once will sit above the entry tier. The pricing guide sets out what the rest of the market charges and where each of those figures came from.
Read next
- POS softwareThe till in full: offline behaviour, split tender, shifts and what the hardware line really costs.
- Inventory and stock managementTyped warehouses, transfers with stock in transit, batch and expiry, stock that posts to the ledger.
- Accounting for BangladeshJuly to June fiscal year, period locks and the Mushak registers.
- Mushak 6.3: the tax invoiceThe counter receipt as a statutory document, field by field.
- Wholesale and distributionThe other side of the counter: dealers, credit limits and depots.
- Restaurants and F and BKitchen tickets, recipes that deplete stock, and plate cost.