Industry — Retail & Multi-Store

    Software for Australian retailers running multiple stores, online channels, and a back-office that can’t keep up

    If you’ve got two or more retail locations, an online store, and stock spread across all of them — you already know the pain. Your POS doesn’t talk to your accounting properly. Stock per store is wrong by Friday. Customer data sits in three different systems. We implement Cin7 Core as a central inventory and operational backbone behind your POS and online store, so what your stores sell, what your warehouse holds, and what your accountant sees is finally one consistent number.

    What we hear from retail operators

    The transition from one store to multiple is where the wheels come off — and where most retailers stay stuck longer than they should.

    Stock per store is unreliablePOS says one number. Stockroom says another. Online sells what isn’t physically there. Click-and-collect failures embarrass you weekly.
    POS and accounting don’t connect properlyEnd-of-day exports, manual journal entries, and reconciliations that take longer than they should. Sales data lags reality by 1–3 days.
    Reordering is reactiveYou order more of what just sold out, instead of what’s about to. Min/max levels are static and stale.
    Customer data is siloedPOS knows what they bought in-store. Shopify knows what they bought online. Neither knows it’s the same person. Loyalty programs leak.
    Margin per store is invisibleYou can pull total revenue per store. You can’t pull true margin per store after shrinkage, returns, and freight allocation.
    Inter-store transfers are paperStock moves between stores via emails, paper notes, and trust. Inventory accuracy drops a little every transfer.

    What we recommend you put in place

    For Australian multi-store retailers, the right operational pattern is: Cin7 Core as the central stock and order brain, plugged into your existing POS and online channels. You don’t replace the POS your staff are already trained on — you put a central system behind it.

    Central operations
    Cin7 Core: one stock master across all locations, central purchasing, inter-store transfers, B2B and online channels, and a clean accounting feed.
    POS
    Keep your existing POS — Shopify POS, Lightspeed Retail, Square, or Vend — and connect it to Cin7 for live stock, transfers, and customer data. Where the native connector doesn’t cut it, we build the gap with Make.com.
    Online store
    Shopify or WooCommerce connected to the central stock, with location-aware fulfilment for click-and-collect and same-day local delivery.
    Accounting
    Xero for the books. Daily sales, fees, refunds, and freight reconcile cleanly. Cost of goods drops to the right account, automatically.
    Customer & loyalty
    Customer data unified across in-store and online so you can run real loyalty and marketing — not two parallel programs that don’t see each other.
    Reporting
    Real margin per store, per category, per SKU, per channel. Comparison reporting across locations. Stock turn and aged inventory flags. The reports that actually inform what you buy next.

    How we deliver this

    Multi-store retail implementations succeed when the cutover happens with as little disruption as possible to staff already busy serving customers. We plan around that constraint from day one.

    Audit your stack & data (1–2 weeks)

    Map every location, every channel, every SKU, every customer dataset. We tell you what consolidates cleanly and what needs cleanup before configuration.

    Configure & pilot one store (4–6 weeks)

    Cin7 Core configured around your retail flow. POS connector live. Pilot with one store first — stock counts, daily sales, transfers, returns — before going wide.

    Roll out remaining stores (2–4 weeks)

    Cut over remaining stores one at a time, with stocktake and parallel run for the first week of each. Train store managers in the new central tools.

    Optimise (ongoing)

    Once you have unified data, the real work begins: smart reorder rules, inter-store rebalancing automation, loyalty integration, and the reports your buying decisions actually need.

    Why Australian retailers work with Software4Business: We’re a Brisbane-based Cin7 Core implementation specialist with 25+ years of operational software experience. We’ve been the people called in when the previous implementer left a mess, when the POS and the back-office stopped talking, and when the multi-store rollout stalled at store 2. You deal directly with the consultant doing the work — no offshore handoffs, no junior consultants learning on your project.

    Common questions from retailers

    Do we have to replace our POS?

    Almost never. Cin7 Core integrates with Shopify POS, Lightspeed Retail, Square, and others. We connect to your existing POS so staff don’t need retraining on the till — the change is back-office, not front-counter.

    How does click-and-collect actually work with this stack?

    Online order comes in with a chosen pickup store. Cin7 routes the order to that store’s pick list, decrements stock from that location, and notifies staff. The customer gets the “ready to collect” email automatically. No manual location-juggling.

    Can we keep Xero?

    Yes. Cin7 Core connects to both. End-of-day sales summaries, fees, refunds, and COGS post automatically to the right accounts. Most clients see month-end close drop from days to hours.

    What about Lightspeed’s native multi-store features?

    Lightspeed handles multi-store POS-side well. Where it falls short is integrated B2B, deep purchasing automation, online-channel sync beyond the basics, and rigorous accounting integration. Cin7 Core sits behind Lightspeed and fills those gaps. We’ll tell you honestly whether you need Cin7 yet, or whether Lightspeed alone will do.

    How long does a Cin7 Core retail implementation take?

    For 2–3 stores plus an online store, 8–12 weeks. For 5+ stores or complex POS integration, 14–20 weeks. We pilot with one store first — that adds time but kills risk.

    What does it cost?

    Cin7 Core licensing $400–$1,500/month depending on users and modules. Implementation $25K–$55K depending on store count and POS complexity. Fixed-fee proposal after the audit.

    Talk to a multi-store retail specialist

    15 minutes on Zoom. We’ll listen to where the wheels are coming off, tell you whether Cin7 Core is the right fit, and what the implementation would look like for your store count and POS.

    Book a Quick Call Request a 30-min Demo