Parts Catalog Integration for Your POS | System Five

Picture this: A customer asks for a part you don't stock. So you turn to the second screen or open the supplier's website in a browser tab. Once you find the part, you scribble down the number, turn back to your point of sale, key it in by hand, guess at a price and hope you got everything right. All it takes is one typo during any of these steps, and you've ordered the wrong part for a customer who needed it ASAP.

Windward System Five solves this by making the catalog and the counter work as one, so your customers get the part they need when they need it.

Catalog lookup in System Five

Catalog lookup in System Five works on the sales screen. There is no second login or extra window. Users can...

• Search while the customer is talking. Look up the part from the invoice you already have open.
  
  
• Pick the part. The part number, description and price land on the invoice as a line item. Nobody retypes anything.

• Sell it without building a record first. A catalog part you are ordering once comes across as a non-stock item, so you sell it and invoice it without creating an inventory record for something you may never sell again.

• Order it in the same motion. A catalog part sold today becomes a special order item tied to a purchase order, so the part the customer paid for is the part that gets ordered. This workflow is covered in "Mastering Special Orders."
  
  
• Stock it when it earns a place. If a part keeps selling, moving it into stocked inventory is just as easy. It's a deliberate decision rather than a stray item that sneaked in.

When the manufacturer supersedes that part number next year, System Five handles that too, as covered in "Stay Ahead of Superseding and Equivalent Parts."

The catalog your business runs on

Every trade buys from different suppliers, and every supplier publishes its catalog differently. That's why System Five doesn't force one catalog on everyone. It connects to the catalogs your business already relies on, so a lighting showroom, a hardware store and an equipment dealer each work from the source that matters to them.

Outdoor power equipment and powersports dealers get PartSmart diagrams and part listings tied to labor tracking, and System Five is a certified Polaris dealer management system. 

Lighting showrooms get some of the deepest connections. The Lights America and XO Logic subscription databases let your staff search fixtures by dimension, color or wattage instead of guessing at part numbers. The Lights America integration also syncs catalogs, inventory and customer data with your website and imports a customer's online wish list into System Five as an estimate.

Hardware, home goods and appliance retailers can connect the supplier and buying-group platforms they already work with, including Orgill and AVB LINQ, so supplier data reaches System Five without a second round of entry.

These integrations are optional and trade-specific. To see which System Five features fit your business, check out the fit finder.

Auto parts counters: the catalog inside the sales screen

For automotive operations, the optional NAPA ProLink catalog lookup puts the NAPA catalog inside the sales screen. Look the part up while the customer is talking, and the part number, description and price land on the invoice. No browser tab, scribbled numbers or transposed digits.

Equipment dealers: quote from the manufacturer's diagrams

Catalogs look different for agricultural equipment dealers. They're built on detailed parts diagrams, model-year variations and work orders with 40 lines on them. The PartsManager Pro interface connects that world to your counter. System Five lets you quote from the manufacturer's parts diagrams and turn the diagram picks into purchase orders.

Two mechanisms make this possible in System Five:

• A pick list pushes straight onto an open work order. The technician rebuilding a baler can pick the seals, bearings and belts for the job from the equipment diagram, and the parts land on the job costed.
• Real-time stock and price show up in the catalog. The person browsing the diagram sees your on-hand quantity and price beside every part, so they know what is on the shelf and what is a three-day order away.

Why counter-integrated catalogs beat a second screen

It's tempting to treat catalog access as solved because the supplier gave you a website login. However, the second screen carries hidden costs that show up everywhere except a report. Costs like transcription errors that become wrong-part orders, quotes that stall while someone rekeys 12 lines, and pricing guessed at the counter because the catalog price and your margins live in different places.

A day in the life, with and without System Five

Here is your average day with and without System Five.

Without it, you're doing nine catalog lookups, nine trips to the second screen and maybe 40 part numbers hand-keyed. One wrong digit is discovered days later when the incorrect seal kit arrives and you're making an awkward phone call. Nobody logs any of this as a cost, because each incident is small and everyone is used to it.

With System Five, the same nine lookups happen inside the sales screen, prices are accurate, the wrong-part risk drops and the day's catalog sales sit in your reports, visible, attributable and reorderable. Your staff didn't change. The gap between the catalog and the invoice just disappeared.

Whichever trade you're in, the value isn't the lookup, because the supplier's website already gave you that. It's the eliminated retyping and all the hidden costs that came with it. See more of how System Five supports timely and accurate purchasing.

Book a demo today

If your parts counter still does the two-screen shuffle, book a demo and bring your most awkward catalog part. Watching it land on an invoice with just a couple of clicks is the fastest way to understand what seamless integration is worth.