Cougar Mountain — CMS Professional 2010 POS

From the September 2009 Review of Point-of-Sale Systems

Sold as a stand-alone product or as part of a front/back office suite, CMS Professional 2010 POS is ideally suited to smaller retailers that do not process high-volume transactions. Although fully functional as a stand-alone, the front/back office integration provides CMS users with a higher level of functionality.

EASE OF USE:
Cougar Mountain Software continues to be one of the easiest products to navigate, with a clean user interface found throughout the product modules. At the top of the main screen is a drop-down menu that provides access to standard system functions such as File, Sales, Reports, etc. Directly below is a series of icons representing all installed modules. New users will need to sign into the sales entry screen, where they can choose an existing customer or add a new one. Customers and items have a lookup function to search for the correct information. CMS Professional Point of Sale features two product entry methods: utilizing the computer interface for manual entry or scanning items for quicker sales processing. The sales entry screen is easily customizable to suit individual needs.

A series of shortcut keys found directly on the POS entry screen allow quick access to customer information, tender type, on-account information and all drawer functions. Customers and items can be added on the fly, and the program now allows users to select specific registers and post transactions processed, all from a single window. Additionally, CMS Professional 2010 includes a new lookup filter, the “contains” option, which makes search-ing for data quicker and easier than ever.

MODULES/SCALABILITY:
CMS Professional 2010 Point of Sale includes both Inventory and Data Exchange modules. For a more complete front/back office solution, CMS Professional 2010 Point of Sale with Back Office includes the regular POS modules along with GL, AP and AR modules. Cougar Mountain also offers a long list of add-on modules that can be purchased individually, including Job Cost, Multi-Location Inventory, Purchase Order, Bank Reconciliation, Payroll, GL Report Generator, BarTender Label Generator, Specialty Shop, and numerous Merchant Transaction Services items.

FEATURES/FUNCTIONALITY:
CMS Professional 2010 POS also pro-vides several valuable software updates and enhancements, such as exporting the following reports to CSV files: sales history, sales by salesperson, price variance and profit margin.

CMS Professional 2010 POS also offers users the ability to view important data such as credit card logs (for CISP compliance) and customer balances, and new charges can easily be blocked on past due customers. CMS Professional 2010 POS offers users excellent customization capabilities. Unnecessary items can be eliminated from the entry screen to speed item processing and sales. A host of system wizards simplify setting up data, and restricted items can trigger a warning flash on the screen, prompting cashiers to request the necessary documentation to complete the sale.

Special orders and discounts can be processed at the same time as the initial sale, and erroneous sales can be voided as needed. The CMS Professional 2010 POS software Inventory module offers a good amount of product flexibility, allowing for special and one-time pricing as well as assigning multiple pricing levels.

INTEGRATION:
CMS Professional 2010 POS comes with integrated Inventory and data ex-change modules. The back office edition also provides GL, AR and AP modules. The POS product also integrates with all available CMS modules, allowing for better front/back office management. It also integrates with the CMS Total eCom module, an add-on module that manages a web store and keeps inventory up to date. As well, the program supports numerous hardware peripheral devices including credit card readers, cash drawers, credit card readers, pole displays and barcode scanners.