How to Set Up a Shop in 20 Minutes

Odoo’s POS system caters to various business needs: retailers enjoy quick setup, offline functionality, and smooth hardware integration; manufacturers benefit from robust inventory management and customizable categories; and service businesses gain effective loyalty programs, subscription handling, and multi-session support. These features boost efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Important Strategies for Robust Inventory Control Across Different Industries

Novobi Resources

Dig deeper into Novobi’s frequently asked questions for more helpful insights into Odoo solutions provided by Novobi to help you solve your problems.

Transcript

Hi, how is everyone doing? If you’re running a shop or a restaurant, you know how important it is to have a reliable system that you can count on and that your employees like. So, what do you think—how much time does it take to set up a point of sale system in your company? Is it three weeks? Is it today?

My name is Wojtek, and I will show you how to set up a shop in as little as 20 minutes.

Before we begin with the presentation, let’s talk a little bit more about the features of Auto POS. It is very easy to set up. We wanted to make sure that the POS is available almost out of the box. So, when you set up your products, when you set up your product variants, and when your accounting data is already in, you’re almost ready to go.

It is also compatible with any hardware. So, if you have any receipt printer, electronic scale, or any other device that might be integrated, you can connect it either through the IoT box or even directly. I’ll talk more about this a little bit later in the presentation.

One of the most important points we wanted to touch on is that Auto does not require an online connection to keep going with your session. So, if you live in an area with low internet connection and bad coverage, you can still keep going with your session until you regain your connection. You don’t have to stop your business midday.

New Features

As for the new features, we wanted to focus mostly on improved performance. Auto POS is now twice as fast, which will surely come in handy while managing your daily business. We also decided to streamline our settings and put some of the previously hidden features more in the front so you can reach them easily.

Auto POS is now integrated with the Stripe terminals, which means that you have more ways of selling. I will talk more about terminals real soon.

Setup

So, are you ready? Your brand-new shop is almost ready to open. Everything is ready except for the POS system, so let’s set it up and cut the ribbon.

With that said, let’s see the system in action. I have a database prepared here, and we will take a look at how the POS system works in a real-life situation.

Dashboard

As you can see, this is the main dashboard of Odoo. Aside from the point of sale, I have a few other useful apps installed. One of them is Inventory, so you can manage your products better. Also, if you need any additional apps, you can simply go to the apps directory.

Let’s click on the point of sale and talk a little bit more about what we see here. This is the main dashboard, and as you can see, my shop is ready. If I click on the new session, I will begin it right away. But before we do that, let’s talk about some of the options that we have available.

In the Orders section, you can view your previous orders from previous sessions as well as the sessions themselves. You can preview the payment methods and what kinds of customers you have saved. In the Products section, you have easy access to all of your products, all of the product variants, and price lists. This is also available, for example, through the Inventory app.

In Reporting, you can view reports for a specific session, and you can see the reports of your different branches if you run multiple branches, which is very important for managers of those stores.

In Configuration, you have all sorts of configuration options for product categories as well as the general settings, where we can now talk more about what we can set up to improve our process.

By the way, if you run more than one shop, you can easily add it from here. And if you use tablets or any other mobile device, you might want to take advantage of the large scroll bars.

If you run a bar or a restaurant, you can toggle this option to get access to the floor plan as well as the list of the open bills per table. But we will talk about this a little bit later as well.

You have access to your accounting data directly from the settings, but you can also just go to the Accounting application and set it globally from there.

For pricing, you have the option to set flexible price lists or fixed price lists, and also apply global discounts and activate promotions, coupons, gift cards, and loyalty programs so your customers keep coming back. Let’s toggle this.

For the bills and receipts, if you want to personalize them, you can also add a custom header and footer, and even use a QR code on the tickets so the customer can request an invoice.

For payment methods, you can specify what kinds of payment methods you accept. For example, for me, it’s cash and a bank transfer, but you can add whatever payment method you want. You can specify cash rounding and what kinds of coins and bills are available in your cashier.

The aforementioned Stripe terminal can also be toggled here. All you have to do is click this button and set it up. But if you use any other payment terminals such as Adyen or SIX, you can also do it here.

Previously, I mentioned that you can also connect a receipt printer and a scale as well as many other devices. You can set them up directly from this setting. If you use IoT Box, you can connect them through the IoT Box, or in some cases, you might even be able to connect them directly to Odoo if they are on the list of available printers. This list is visible in our documentation, so you can go there and check what kind of printer is supported to work out of the box with Odoo POS.

With that said, let’s save the settings for now. Just wait a few seconds, and we will be ready to start selling.

Opening the Shop

Okay, everything is set. Let’s now go back to the dashboard.

This is our shop. The day has just begun. Let’s open a new session. Again, in just a few seconds, you will be able to start selling. This is due to some changes we’ve made to the code that make the system so much faster. Let’s open the cash with 50 and open the session.

Okay, so we’re now ready to start selling. Let’s say that our first customer is interested in this chair and also this one. You can also use the omni-search to find different products. You can add a customer note or add a code for a gift card or a discount if you have it specified. You can also issue a refund or reward a customer. To do this, let’s select the customer.

As you can see here, we have displayed the loyalty points that they have earned from previous purchases. Let’s reward them with a free product—a simple pen that normally costs 1 euro and 45 cents, but for them, it costs five loyalty points.

When we are ready to finish, let’s just click on Payment, select the payment method, and validate. Voila! We have a receipt here. We can easily print it by clicking “Print Receipt.” If you have an IoT device connected, it will directly issue the command to print this receipt. You can also send an email to the customer. For example, here I have it already predefined because my customer had the email address filled in their customer profile. I can send it, and the email is now sent.

With that said, we can simply move to the next order.

By the way, all of the orders are available here, so if you have any ongoing orders, you can preview them directly from this menu. If you need to put cash in the cashier during the day or take it out, you can also use this menu, specify the type of action, and fill in the reason.

Okay, so now we are almost ready. Let’s close the session, count the cash in the cashier, and that’s it—the day of sales is done. We have our balance displayed here.

Reporting

If we go to Orders, we will be able to display the order right here. We can also see what kinds of sessions were opened in the past, so everything is transparent.

If you want to make changes to the products, we can simply click on Products, select the product, and we have a whole plethora of options to make sure the product is set correctly. We also have additional information about the stock because we have Inventory installed on the system.

For price lists, you can specify them from Products > Price Lists, and you can create a new price list at any time.

For discounts, loyalty, gift cards, and e-wallets, you have an option here to specify what kinds of incentive programs you’re currently running. For example, here, you have a program that gives 15% off the next order and one coupon. You can also see how many people took advantage of this program and create a new one, specifying what the condition is for getting that advantage and what the reward is.

If you have multiple points of sale, you can specify that a specific discount or loyalty program is only available in a specific shop and not the other.

For the reporting part, if you click on Orders, you have the sales reports that you can view here in different kinds of charts. You can also preview the sales details for every shop and simply print them in the form of a report, so you can have a very clear view of how your shops are performing.

Bar and Restaurant Mode

So, we saw how to use the system if you’re running a shop, but what if you’re running a restaurant or a bar? Let’s go back to the Point of Sale, click on Settings, and toggle “Is a bar/restaurant” right here.

Now, let’s give the system a few seconds to apply the new settings, and we will receive a new category to manage our bar or restaurant. As you see here, the second category now allows us to set up the floors and tables map, as well as features such as bill splitting among our customers.

Currently, I have two floors: the main floor and the patio. But I can quickly set up another one by clicking on Floors. For example, I can create a second floor with a table T1 for four people. This is done. Let’s save, go back to the settings, and add the second floor to the floor list.

Now, when we save this and open a new session in our restaurant, we’ll be able to manage three different floors. Let’s go back to the dashboard and see it in action. Let’s open a new session in the newly created bar point of sale.

As always, let’s specify the opening cash and move to the main floor first. As you see, this is the floor plan. You can change it at any time by clicking on this pencil button, and you can grab any table you like, move it around, resize it to reflect the realistic layout of your restaurant, and also specify things like how many seats a specific table has.

For example, let’s change this one to five seats. This table, let’s make it round, and this one, let’s make it circular. As you can see, it’s very easy. You can also change the color of each table, making it easier to understand by the color code.

Whenever you’re ready to start selling, you can simply click on the table selected by the customer, and it will open a session for you. For example, let’s add this juice and Coca-Cola, then add a customer note saying, “Thank you for choosing us.” You can also add an internal note visible only to your employees and manage a bunch of different options.

Some of these options are the same as in the shop POS system, but some are new. For example, one of the new features is the ability to split the bill. You can click “Split,” select specific products for the payment, process it partially, and complete the whole bill through multiple payments.

Let’s say this is it, and they are ready to pay. I’m going to validate these payments with cash, and here is our bill. It’s that easy.

Let’s move to the new order and create another order at this table. Go back to the floor, and as you can see, you can easily discern which tables have open bills because a number appears here. You’ll also be notified when you try to close the session if you have an open bill so you can finish it before closing for the day.

Let’s again process this payment, move to the new order, and as you see, it took just a few seconds, and we have served yet another client. If we want to move to the patio, we can use this category here. Just like with the main floor, we can change the layout to anything we like. We can add a table on the fly, and for the second floor we just created, we can do the same.

Let’s select this, resize it, and add some more tables. Let’s rename this table to T2. As you can see, whenever anything changes in your dynamic business, you can easily apply those changes to the POS system. No deep settings are required; you can just click a button here and make changes on the fly in a visual way.

Closing the Day

So, I guess we’re ready. All the sales are done for the day, so let’s just close it, count the cash, and that’s it. We just finished another day of sales in our new bar.

Outro

I hope you liked this presentation. I hope you like what you see, and I hope you will take a look and give it a spin yourself. Test the new POS system in Odoo 16. If you have any questions, you can always reach out to us. I wish you good luck, and thank you for watching.

Q&A Session

We have a few questions here. The first one is about what happens when you lose your internet connection while your session is open. Actually, nothing happens. You can keep going until you’re finished with the day. Only then do you need an internet connection to update all the information because your system is on the cloud. But while your operation is happening and while you’re selling, you don’t have to worry; you don’t have to stall your customers.

Another question is about the subscription module. Would it be possible to sell a subscription product from the point of sales application? That’s a very interesting question. I think it might be related to the subscription app as well. So, I don’t think we have a direct integration. If you want to check, please talk to the people outside in the new client’s booth. But I think you could work with a slight customization, and you could always add a subscription as a product, maybe for the first term, and then move over to some kind of automated system to create that subscription in the subscription app.

There’s another question about where people can find all the devices that work with our Point of Sales application. All of the devices are listed in the documentation on Odoo.com. Just head over to the documentation, write POS, and you’ll see the list of currently supported devices. You can connect them either through the IoT subscription or, in some cases, through IP. You’ll need an HTTPS secure connection and a self-signed certificate. All of the instructions are in the documentation, so even if you’re not technically advanced, it’s very easy to do.

Someone asked if it’s possible to generate an invoice after forgetting to do so and closing the session. Yes, absolutely. You can do it for any sale. As with everything in Odoo, you can just go to the Invoicing app and create the invoice there.

Regarding restaurants and bars, there’s a question about whether it’s possible for customers to scan a QR code and order directly from their phones. Absolutely. The QR code technology itself is open, so all you need is to link the menu, which is directly linked to the POS system, and you can do it.

Can you only split the payment for a table with different people in a restaurant? Yes, absolutely. When you run a restaurant or a bar, you have a button for splitting the bill. You can select specific products and process every payment separately through your terminal or with cash.

There were several questions about the shape and design of the tables. You showed us square and circle tables. Is it possible to change those shapes? We have these two predefined shapes. I think for the rest, you will have to use your imagination. Unless you mean tables like triangle tables, squares, and circles should still be fine.

Is it possible to have a multi-session in Point of Sales for different employees? Does each employee need their own user access? Employees are added as a resource in Odoo. You can allow multiple employees per session in the settings. When enabled, you can switch between employees using a badge or PIN code. Once logged in, this employee will be on the same POS session that was started by another employee.

Lastly, is it possible to enter customer data in the system and then get a signature for consent data that we could use later for marketing purposes? That’s a very interesting question. I suppose to get their signature or some form of consent; you would need communication. It could be possible with other Odoo apps, but I’m not quite sure. Getting your data into the point-of-sale application is possible, though. For privacy concerns, the e-sign module could help you get the signature for consent.

Thank you very much for your questions.