Garments & Shoes POS: Sizes and Colours Without Six Separate Products

A garment shop's inventory problem is a counting problem. One shirt design in four sizes and three colours is twelve separate things to count, reorder and value — but it is one thing to display, one thing to price, and one thing the customer asks for.

Software that makes you create twelve products turns your catalogue into a wall of near-identical rows. Software that makes you create one loses track of how many mediums are left. The Garments & shoes preset turns on variants, which is the answer to both.

What the garments preset switches on

• Sizes & colours — one product with a variant matrix underneath it.

The till is set to browse mode, which is a category-first layout rather than a search box — right for a shop where the customer points at a rack rather than naming a SKU. Credit sales are off by default, on the assumption that a garment shop is a cash-and-card counter; switch it on in settings if you run accounts.

How variants actually work

You create the parent product once — the design, the brand, the price — and then add variants under it for each size and colour combination. Each variant carries its own stock count, its own barcode and, if you want, its own price.

At the till, tapping the product asks which variant, and the cart line records the exact one. Stock comes off that variant, not off a shared pool, so "how many size 40 blacks are left" is a real number.

Reporting: per size, or rolled up

The profit report shows each variant on its own line by default, because that is the level at which you make buying decisions — you want to know that the mediums sell and the XLs sit.

There is also a roll-up switch that groups variants under their parent, for when you want the design's total rather than the size breakdown. It is off by default on purpose: every CSV you have exported and every figure you have quoted is per-size, and flipping the default would change what the same screen says overnight with nothing to explain it. It is a view of the same numbers, so it is a switch, and the period totals do not move when you use it.

Exchanges and returns

Garment retail runs on exchanges — wrong size, mostly. A return in GOF POS records which items came back and settles in one of three ways: refund, store credit, or exchange for other goods. The return takes its price and its cost from the original sale line, not from today's price list, so a returned item does not quietly change your margin history.

Store credit is handled carefully: if the customer still owes money on that bill, the credit knocks the amount off what they owe first, and only the remainder becomes a spendable note. Handing over a fresh note while their own unpaid bill still stands would inflate what you are owed and what you owe at the same time.

You can set a return window in days. Zero means no window — returns are not banned — so nothing changes until you choose a limit.

Labels that scan back

Every variant can carry its own barcode and you can print labels in the sizes a garment shop actually uses. GOF POS will not invent a barcode to fit a symbology: if your code is not valid EAN-13 digits, it prints as Code 128, which encodes the code exactly and therefore scans back to the right variant. A label that looks right and resolves to nothing is discovered weeks later at a counter.

Getting started

Setup takes about ten minutes. When you sign up you pick Garments & shoes 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.