Stationery and bookshop software built around the school term

The term is fifteen days long

Most of a stationery shop's year happens in the fortnight before each term opens, three times over. Parents come in with a list, buy everything at once, and then the door goes quiet for two months while the rent carries on at the same rate.

That shape forces one hard decision, made three times a year and usually from memory: how much to buy before the rush. Buy short and the queue goes to the shop that had stock, and they do not come back in week four. Buy long and the money sits as exercise books until the same week next year — or, if an edition changes, never.

What settles it is what actually left the shelf last term, line by line. Every sale takes stock down against the product it came from, so the record builds itself while you serve.

How the year runs on it

1. Buy against last term's figures, not last term's feelingThree cartons of a pen felt like a good idea in February. The report says you sold forty and still hold four hundred and sixty.
2. Record each delivery at the price you paid that dayPaper and textbook prices move between terms. Stock-in holds the supplier and the cost per unit for that load, so margin is against what you actually paid.
3. Put school orders on accountA school takes two hundred exercise books and pays when fees come in. Enter what it actually paid; the balance is held against the school's name with the date.
4. Write off what the syllabus killedAdjust the quantity down and give a reason. It is logged with the date and your name, so a year later you can see what dead titles cost.

Setting up the shelves

Pick "Stationery & bookshop" at sign-up and this list is already there — and add titles as suppliers deliver. Group them so a report can tell paper apart from textbooks.

Photocopying, printing and binding are set up as services — nothing to count, and they are what keeps the counter earning in the quiet weeks.

One whole term, not one good week

The opening three weeks made roughly 2,000,000. The ten quiet weeks handed about 1,400,000 of it back, because they still carry some 2,300,000 of rent and wages against 3,100,000 of thin sales. The term is won in fifteen days and defended for ten weeks.

What PesaScope will not do for you

It will not plan your term. There is no forecast, no seasonal projection, and nothing in it knows when schools open. It will not tell you to buy four hundred exercise books.

There is no book database either. A textbook is a product you type in like any other — no ISBN lookup, no title catalogue, no publisher list. For two hundred titles that is one afternoon, once. Nor do you need a barcode scanner: items are picked by name.

What it does hold is the record you would otherwise be reconstructing from memory in January. What sold and at what margin, what a school still owes and for how long, and which titles have sat unmoved since the term before last.

Where a bookshop's money leaks

1. The school account that ages past the termThe ageing report groups debts by age, so the ones tipping past ninety days become a list rather than a worry.
2. The quiet months at full rentSet rent as a recurring expense and it appears in the dead weeks too, which is where it actually hurts.
3. The titles the curriculum retiredOld editions do not announce themselves. Written off with a reason, they become a cost you can price into the next order.
4. The wrong mix, bought confidentlyLong on one line and short on another nets out to a normal-looking total. Only per-product movement separates them.

The detail, if you want it

Questions bookshop owners ask