A bike shop needs an industry-specific point of sale system (POS) that helps enhance customer loyalty, attract more customers, and can grow with the business.

Additionally, the right solution should be able to handle the complex inventory you have in the shop. Also, allow you access to both in-store and your online retail operation.

In order to get a solution that addresses such bike shop challenges, there are a few things you need to consider. For instance, the system should feature a multi-dimensional inventory, back orders, work orders, and layaways. Finally, the system should produce custom quotes for special orders.

Reviewed below are the top four POS systems for a bike shop.

Comparing the Best Bike Shop POS Systems

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1. The Best Choice Overall for Bike Shop POS Systems: Lightspeed Retail

Based on statistical findings, one in every two bike shops that have a POS system use Lightspeed Retail POS.

In addition to delivering unique customer experience, the system is packed with a horde of bike shop-specific capabilities. Some of the Lightspeed capabilities you will find useful in your bike shop include:

Purchase Orders

Get the convenience of running your business from a single place with Lightspeed Purchase orders. The system features a pre-loaded catalog. From this catalog, you will be able to access multiple vendors.

As a matter of fact, this feature allows you to choose from a pool of more than 200 vendors, including Giant & Hawley and QBP. As you can imagine, the feature will make it easier and more convenient for you to order products as well as create special orders.

Serialized Inventory Manager

Most bike stores in the country have complex inventories. In such a case, you will need a POS system that can handle such a diverse inventory. The Lightspeed POS system features a bike shop-specific inventory manager that supports serial numbers as well.

In addition to giving you complete control over the store, the manager is capable of tracking other products as well, in addition to bikes. In most cases, bikes are supplied as parts.

This inventory manager is specifically designed to track of such parts through serial numbers. The system is also capable of tracking warranties and sales of the bikes as well as accessories and parts in your shop.

Service and Repair Tracking

More bike shops today are racking in more recurring income by offering bike maintenance and repair services to their customers. In such a case, you will need a system that can automatically track repair and maintenance services for you and your customers.

With Lightspeed POS for bike shops, you will have complete visibility over the status of each repair and maintenance service. With this capability in your store, you will be able to create work orders as well as keep track of the progress of each service.

In addition to keeping your customers well informed, this feature will streamline operations and generate more revenue for your shop.

Reporting and Analytics

This system is designed to give you the right data and insights to help you grow the business. For instance, reporting and analytics will help you know the lifetime value of each customer as well as identify the top customers in your business.

The system makes it easier for you to learn each customer’s preferences and habits. This way, you will be in a better position to serve them the way the like.

Again, the system will give you an overview of what products sell the most and the trends that tend to develop overtime from the inventory.
Such information will help you make the right business decisions for your bike shop.

Lightspeed Retail Downsides

The system requires employees to enter their PINs several times in between transactions. This can be tedious and inconveniencing on a busy day.

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2. The Best Cloud-Based POS System: Vend

Vend point of sale system for bike shops is essentially meant to give you control over the inventory and help you grow the business.

In this regard, the system will keep tabs on your metrics as well as scales. Here are some of the features that make Vend a preferred choice among bike shop owners:

Multi-store Support

If you own multiple bike shops, this POS would be a great choice. The system is essentially designed to work on a web browser. Alternatively, the system may also be accessed through the Bend iPad app.

With this feature, you will be able to scale down, up or even sideways in accordance with your business requirements. The system makes it easier and more convenient for you to add new registers and locations.

Since it is cloud-based, you can easily manage each of the locations remotely through the app. The software features on offline mode, hence, may be used even when the Internet is down.

Inventory Manager

With Vend bike shop POS system, you will be able to manage the inventory more efficiently and even import it. The inventory manager on this software makes it easier and more convenient for you to edit, add or remove products.

The built-in management capability of this system allows you to track inventory levels across all your locations. Similarly, you will find it easier to order for new supplies through the system.

The system may also be integrated with the best e-commerce platforms. With this seamless integration, you will find it easier to manage and keep track of both in-store and online sales across all your business locations.

Vend POS System Downsides

With this provider, you may be required to pay additional costs for priority customer support services.

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3. The Most Affordable Bike Shop POS System: Shopify

Not only is Shopify one of the most affordable bike shop POS systems; it has a range of features to boost efficiency, profitability and help your business grow.

As you will come to learn, the system offers a seamless checkout experience for your employees and customers alike. In this regard, you only need to choose a product and have the customer swipe his or her card.

You may then print out a receipt for the transaction whilst keeping your in-store and online inventories in sync.

Affordable

Shopify is an all-in-one website builder, online store manager and platform that allows businesses of any size to transform a vision or idea into real commerce experience. The platform provides merchants with a wide array of features that include inventory tracking, customer management and payment processing as well as the ability to customize branding and a variety of professionally designed themes for their websites. Merchants can use their sites to sell a vast variety of products including physical goods like electronics, furniture or jewelry, and even digital goods like ebooks and music tracks.

A genuinely user-friendly platform, merchants can set up their online stores within a matter of minutes without the need for technical skills. They also don’t have to worry about maintaining their platforms or implementing highly technical security protocols as the platform handles these duties on their behalf.

This is a huge benefit for business owners that are primarily focused on running their operations and attracting customers rather than spending time on the web design process. Additionally, the platform has a range of features that will help to grow their business including social media integrations, ecommerce marketing tools and point-of-sale processing for brick and mortar retailers.

The platform also offers a comprehensive App Store that can be used to enable additional functionality for their online store. This is perfect for those that are looking to expand their product offerings or add features that will appeal to a specific audience. Furthermore, Shopify’s community forums and resources articles offer helpful insights for users that are experiencing challenges with their site.

Other capabilities you will come to like about the Shopify POS system for bike store include:

Support for Your Current Payment Provider

Most of the features and capabilities of this system are designed for enhanced ease of use. As far as payments are concerned, Shopify will work with your existing card reader seamlessly. This way, you will be able to accept MasterCard, Visa, and Amex Card payments in your store.

Similarly, this solution makes it easier for you to set up custom payment options. Some of the custom options you will be able to create with Shopify include split tenders, and debit payments. The system also gives you the ability to process partial payments.

Simple Dashboard Operation

Shopify makes it possible for you to conveniently manage both your online and retail stores from a single dashboard. With such a system, you can monitor an array of things across your retail and online stores at the same time.

For instance, you will be able to track sales as well as customers on the retail location and online store. Additionally, the system offers in-depth reporting and analytics capabilities.

As such, it will always furnish you with the right information and insights to help grow the business. The rich business data offered by the system will also allow for easier and accurate decision making in your store.

Better Customer Interaction

Change the way you interact with your customers, right from the moment they step in the store. Shopify is equipped with the right tools to make this possible.

For instance, you will only need to select the items a customer wishes to purchase on the iPad and then hand it to the customer to swipe his or her credit card.

Shopify POS System Downsides

The offline mode of the system is comparatively weak.

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4. The Best Industry-specific Bike Store POS System: Hike

Get yourself a POS system that is specifically designed to address bike shop requirements. For instance, the inventory manager on the Hike POS is diverse enough to handle the complex inventory in your store.

To begin with, the inventory manager is capable of managing a large number of items. The Hike inventory manager will also allow you to sort inventory items by size, brand or color.

As you will come to learn, this solution has a set of features to streamline the selling experience in your shop as well.

Industry specific, ideal for bike stores and boasting of tons of features you will find useful, Hike POS is one of the most feature-rich retail POS systems around. It comes with a 14-day free trial and prices start at $49 per till which makes it more expensive than some of its competitors but this is the price you pay for a robust all-in-one POS system.

Managing large complex inventories is easy with Hike POS with support for multiple products, categories, locations, pricing rules and a rich reporting structure. Easily import existing customer lists and run powerful loyalty programs to encourage repeat business.

With Hike POS you can track all sales, payments and refunds across all of your outlets from one central location. It keeps track of daily totals shift reports for cash, cards and on account sales along with full order histories. Hike POS also works offline and all transactions are synced back to the cloud once you come online again.

Hike POS integrates with renowned card chip readers such as PayPal Here, Tyro and iZettle for faster and more secure in-store payments. It can also be used with existing standalone card terminals too. Hike POS also allows you to park orders for later fulfilment such as food takeout or lay-by sales and record partial and periodic payments.

Hike POS is a great option for retailers of all types and sizes from independent stores to large chains and can be customised to your store layout, logo, till hardware, cash registers and sales tax. It’s super simple to set up and comes with a complete step-by-step knowledge base docs and live chat support.

Here are more Hike POS features you will find useful in your bike store:

Hike e-commerce

Like many other successful bike stores, you need to introduce an online presence for your business. In this regard, Hike POS system offers you the right tools and features to start selling your bikes, parts, accessories and repair services online.

The e-commerce platform offered by this provider serves as an online store that you can easily manage through the POS system. Through this free built-in website, your customers can order for all the items in your store.

This solution is also capable of integrating with some of the best e-commerce platforms, such as BigCommerce, Shopify and WooCommeece.

Online/Offline Connectivity

As opposed to many other POS systems, Hike can work both online and offline. As such, you will not have to miss a sale simply because the internet is down.

In such a case, all the transactions processed while the system is offline will automatically sync to the cloud once the internet is restored.

 Hike POS System Downsides

All plans by this provider are billed annually, which may be too expensive for small and startup bike shops.

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Things You Need to Know Before Choosing a Bike Shop POS System

Years ago, point of sale systems were only used in larger bike shops. Back then, such systems only had a limited number of features and capabilities. The rekindled interest in bikes has resulted in increased competition among bike shops.

As such, even the small and startup retailers are implementing a POS system in their business. In order to stand out from the crowd, you need to follow suit. While this is the case, a few bike shop owners are still confused about which system to invest in.

If you are looking for the right POS solution for your bike shop, these are some of the aspects you should consider:

Multi-Dimensional Inventory

Basically, a bike shop deals in various bike brands, types, and sizes as well as bike accessories and spare parts. As you can see, this is a rather complex inventory—especially for the medium-sized and large businesses. As such, it is advisable to choose a system that features a multi-dimensional inventory manager.

Such a system will allow you to manage multiple bicycles in a single inventory record. For instance, you will be able to track multiple bikes that are owned by one person or members of one family in one record.

In addition to this, a multi-dimensional inventory will also make it easier for you to have a separate service record for every bike.

Back/Special Orders and Layaways

Back Orders/special orders is a feature that makes it possible for you to track special items from your customers’ orders.

With such a feature, you can easily monitor such orders right from the time they are ordered to the time they are received, through your POS system.

Layaways, on the other hand, is a feature that makes it possible for you to collect deposits on items, whilst holding the items out of the bike shop inventory.

Service and Part Management and Tracking

Tracking parts and service can be a daunting task without the right technology, especially in a large bike shop. With the service and part tracking feature, you can efficiently manage the service department and well as parts by bike brand and type.

With service management, you will be able to bill for parts as well for service. The system should allow you to bill for services by the hour or per job. As far as the parts are concerned, the system should allow you to track the bikes in stock as either assembled or unassembled.

Invoices, Work Orders and Quotes

The right POS system for a bike shop should also have an invoice and work order in progress functionality. With such features it will be possible for you to quote a customer and even print the quote through the POS.

When the client arrives at the store to collect or buy, it will be easier and more convenient for you to recall the invoice you put on hold. You may then use this invoice to process the sale. In addition to work orders and invoices, your preferred bike shop POS system should also support serial numbers

Suggested Items and Upsell

You still need to promote your merchandise to your customers. Upselling and product suggestions are some of the most effective POS functionalities, in this regard. For instance, such a feature will prompt a customer buying a new bike on a sale you are having on bike locks or accessory lights.

A system with such features will effectively help you sale more related items in your bike shop.

Serial Number Tracking

In most bike stores, a unique number is assigned to the products to distinguish them. A POS system that is capable of tracking these serial numbers will come in handy.

This capability enables you to keep track of the bikes as well as the related transactions and customers.

Maintenance Reminder Alerts

As you are aware, bikes need to be maintained and repaired regularly. As a matter of fact, this is one of the main income streams in many bike shops today. If you offer maintainable and repair services in your bike shop, it is advisable to get a system that features automatic maintenance reminders.

This POS feature is designed to notify your customers when maintenance service on their bikes is due. For instance, you can use this feature to remind a customer that it has been six months since his/bike was serviced. Over the years, this capability has been proven to net in more recurring service revenue for bike shops.

Our Final Verdict

The right POS system for a bike store should help you control the inventory more effectively, market the business, improve customer experience and boost profitability. In this regard, LightSpeed, Vend, Shopify and Hike are some of the best POS solutions.

However, each of these systems is unique in its offering and pricing. While this is the case, each of these solutions offers a free trial period. This will help you determine whether the system is ideal for you before buying.

Regardless of your POS requirements, this guide will help you choose the best Bike shop POS system.