About Microsoft RMS

Microsoft RMS provides helpful tools and support for business owners.

Microsoft's Retail Management System, RMS, is a flexible, efficient and automated software package for small and midsize business owners, capable of implementation throughout a store chain or simply at headquarters. Designed to streamline and centralize business operations, RMS integrates with Microsoft's Office Suite, Dynamics GP and other applications to perform tasks, such as tracking inventory, shipments and sales, reporting on sales trends, store performance or customer histories and processing discounts, partial payments and product returns.

Point-Of-Sale Transactions

RMS's key function is streamlining point-of-sale operations for retail personnel. The software automatically calculates tax and shipping charges, identifies the price, order history and eligible discounts for all products, authorizes credit cards and tracks customer information, such as store visit and purchase history. Personnel also use RMS to define sales commission structure, ensuring the correct representative is credited with applicable purchases. RMS performs basic transactions as well, accepting multi-tender sales, such as credit/debit cards, cash and check, redeeming and selling vouchers and gift certificates, as well as processing voids, returns, layaways and back orders. Other features include giving change in local currency, compiling daily sales graphs and providing an offline mode that performs point-of-sale duties during power outages or system crashes.

Inventory Management

Businesses use RMS to track and manage an unlimited amount of items in a wide variety of inventories, including those based upon lots, serial numbers and bar codes, kits or attributes such as size, weight and color. RMS also tracks offline inventory, including damaged products or those not for sale. Personnel can attach notes or reminders to an item, attach item pictures, write descriptions, create and export purchase orders, track supplier information and add multiple suppliers for an item. RMS calculates product levels, alerting you to restock. Managers can designate item substitutes for products not reordered in time for sale.

Reporting

RMS is equipped to analyze current and past data, to generate a multitude of reports and to export these reports directly into Quickbooks, Microsoft Office programs or email applications. These reports allow business owners to identify sales trends by department or by product category, to track individual, regional or chain-wide store performance, to manage employee sales and time records and to record summaries of daily transactions, compiling them into journals and graphs.

Useful Features

Besides its business management functions, RMS includes an assortment of helpful tools. These include a calendar with automatic reminders, an integrated time clock to track employee hours, interactive guides for step-by-step training and software to print bar code and graphical product labels, invoices and receipts. RMS also provides comprehensive technical support for all computers and peripherals involved in point-of-sale operations. Personnel can customize menus, data fields and keyboard shortcuts, export reports and purchase orders to Microsoft Word or Excel, as well as assign security permissions to specific transactions or employees.

References

• Microsoft: Microsoft Dynamics RMS
• Microsoft Corporation: Fact Sheet: Microsoft Dynamics RMS Features