Stationery store software that survives August.

A stationery store is a seasonal business disguised as a steady one. From autumn to spring it sells gently and predictably; then it concentrates an enormous share of the year into three weeks, with a line at the counter and customers holding a full school supply list.

What fails in those three weeks isn't service, it's information. If you don't know how many of a particular notebook you have left, you either sell what you don't have or stop offering what you do. And if stock updates at close of day, during the season the number is useless by eleven in the morning.

Siimplo deducts at the moment of sale from the barcode, so stock is usable during the season rather than only after it. The reorder alert shows what to order while there's still time for it to arrive.

In stationery the same item sells loose and by the pack: the pen singly or the box of twelve, card stock by the sheet or by the ream. And the customer with a supply list buys both ways on one ticket.

In Siimplo the unit and the pack are presentations of one item, each with its own price and its own stock deduction. Nothing is divided by hand, and you don't end up with two separate products that can't be counted together.

For supply lists that means you can build the whole sale and have the ticket reflect exactly what left the store, in whatever combination of presentations the customer asked for.

Beyond the counter, most stationery stores sell to the school down the street, an office, or a firm that orders materials and settles at month end. That customer isn't a sale, it's an account, and kept in a notebook the collecting depends on memory.

Siimplo holds a balance per customer: taken, paid and outstanding, visible before the next order goes out. Credit, when someone overpays, comes off the next purchase by itself.

And per-item reports show what turns and what doesn't, which in a stationery store is the difference between a shelf that works and a shelf that has been holding capital since last season.