Cosmetics & Perfume POS: Shades, Sizes and Dates That Matter
Cosmetics is the one retail category that needs both of the awkward features at once. A single lipstick exists in a dozen shades, and a foundation has a date on it that customers increasingly check. Handle only variants and you cannot track the dates; handle only dates and your catalogue becomes a thousand near-identical rows.
The Cosmetics & perfume preset turns both on.
What the cosmetics preset switches on
- Sizes & colours — shades and sizes as variants under one parent product.
- Batch & expiry — dates recorded at delivery, oldest stock sold first, warnings before it turns.
The till is set to browse, a category-first layout — right for a shop where the customer points at a brand or a shelf rather than naming a product code.
Shades without a catalogue explosion
You create the product once — the brand, the line, the price — and add variants for each shade or size beneath it. Each variant carries its own stock, its own barcode and, where relevant, its own price. Tapping the product at the till asks which shade, and the sale records the exact one.
The profit report shows each variant separately by default, because that is how you buy: you need to know that two shades sell and nine do not. A roll-up switch groups them under the parent when you want the line's total instead — off by default, so figures you have already quoted do not change under you.
Dates, on the products that have them
Cosmetics regulation and customer expectation have both moved. With batch tracking on, deliveries record a lot number and expiry date, sales draw from the oldest stock first, and an expired lot is never sold — even if it is picked by hand.
Not everything in the shop has a date, though. Brushes, mirrors, bags and accessories do not, and being asked for a lot number on a hairbrush is how staff learn to type rubbish into the field. Batch tracking can be switched off per product, so you are asked only where it means something.
Testers, samples and shrinkage
Cosmetics stock walks. Stock adjustments record write-offs with a reason, and the movement ledger keeps the history; adjustments beyond a threshold need permission and an explicit reason, and are written to the audit log. That turns "we are short again" into a number with names and dates attached.
Returns, which are common here
Wrong shade is the most common return in the category. A return records what came back and settles as a refund, store credit or an exchange. The return takes its price and its cost from the original sale line, not today's price list, so your margin history does not shift.
Store credit pays down the customer's own outstanding balance on that bill first, and only the remainder becomes a spendable note — otherwise you would be owed money and owe a credit note for the same transaction.
Labels that scan back
Imported cosmetics often arrive with barcodes that do not scan, or none at all. You can print your own labels in the small sizes the category needs. GOF POS will not invent a barcode to fit a symbology: a code that is not valid EAN-13 prints as Code 128, which encodes it exactly and therefore resolves to the right variant when scanned. A pretty label that resolves to nothing is discovered weeks later, at a counter, with a customer waiting.
Getting started
Setup takes about ten minutes. When you sign up you pick Cosmetics & perfume as your business type, and GOF POS switches on the features above for you — no configuration screens to hunt through, no consultant. If something in the preset does not suit you, every switch is yours to change afterwards in Settings → Business type.
The app runs on Windows, macOS and Linux for the counter, and on Android and iOS for stock checks and quick sales on the move. The desktop till keeps working when the internet does not, and syncs when it comes back.
See pricing or download GOF POS and try it on a real day's trading.
