Qvian for Retail & Shops

How Qvian works for a shop: POS and registers, inventory and reordering, purchasing, customers and credit, the consumer storefront, and the daily close — with what to set up first.

For a shop, Qvian is a till, a stock system and a set of books that agree with each other. Stock only moves through recorded events, cost is held as a weighted average updated on every delivery, and closing the day posts it to the accounts. The part worth the setup is knowing your real margin — which needs costs captured at goods receipt, not guessed.

Last updated 24 August 2026

Three things that decide whether the numbers are worth anything

Receive what arrives. Creating a purchase order does not move stock or book a cost — receiving does. A delivery never received is stock you are selling with no cost against it, which shows as impossibly good margin.
Get the units right. A case price recorded against a single unit does not just misprice one delivery; it distorts the weighted average for everything you hold.
Close every day. The daily reconciliation is what creates output tax records for counter sales. A day never reconciled is missing from your tax return.

Days of cover beats quantity on hand

Two hundred units of something you sell twice a month is not urgent. Twenty of something you get through daily is. Replenish sorts by cover, which reorders the list by what will actually run out first.

Setting up, in order

How to Set Up a Shop in Qvian (retail setup, shop setup, getting started retail)

Catalogue and tax first, then the till, then purchasing.

Required permission: Organization administrator or owner for the first steps

Create the business unit and enable POS, Retail, Inventory and Accounting. See Business Units
Set up roles and people — cashiers, storekeepers, managers. See Roles & Permissions
Bring in your products, with packaging set correctly — how many units in a case, and the unit you sell in. See Data Migrations
Set tax on every product before you trade
Set opening stock and its cost, so margin is right from the first sale
Create the registers for your tills. See Registers & Reconciliation
Add your suppliers and their product catalogues with prices and pack sizes. See Suppliers
Optionally enable the consumer app storefront if you want online orders. See Consumer app

Result: The shop can sell, stock is tracked with real costs, purchasing is informed by demand, and the day closes into your accounts.

Note: Packaging is the step that quietly ruins everything downstream if it is wrong. A product bought in cases and sold in singles needs both units and the conversion between them.

How a Retail Day Runs (daily routine shop, opening and closing retail)

The rhythm once you are live.

Open the registers with their cash floats
Sell through the day — attaching customers where they are members or buying on credit
Receive any deliveries, checking quantities and units, and update selling prices where costs moved
Process returns and exchanges against the original sale where possible
Each cashier closes their register with a count, explaining any variance
A manager runs the Daily Reconciliation to close the day
Record any cash banked to the safe or the bank

Result: Takings are counted and explained, stock reflects the day, and the books are posted.

What a shop uses

Point of Sale	Ring up sales, split payments, sell on account, returns and exchanges.
Registers & Reconciliation	Open and close tills, count cash, close the trading day.
Inventory	Stock levels, movements, weighted average cost, adjustments.
Replenish	What to reorder, from whom, at what price — by days of cover.
Purchase Orders	Order, receive, and update selling prices as costs move.
Document Intake	Photograph a supplier invoice and let AI read it into a purchase.
Stock Recounts	Physical counts with variance review before posting.
Customers	Customer records, purchase history, tax IDs for business buyers.
Collect Payment	Credit limits and a working list of who owes you what.
Returns & Exchanges	Linked and blind returns, exchanges, store credit.
Consumer app	A storefront where customers find you, shop and track orders.
Business Intelligence	Which lines carry the business and which tie up cash.

If you trade without a counter

Market traders, carts and stalls have a dedicated business unit type with a phone-only register — sell, stock, wastage and reports, no till and no back office. See Street Vendor POS.

Guides by role

Common questions

Why does my margin look far better than it should?

Cause: Cost of goods sold is not being captured.

Fix: Check that deliveries are being received against purchases and that products carry costs. Selling stock that was never received at a cost produces revenue with no matching cost. See Inventory.

Average cost jumped after one delivery

Cause: Almost always a unit mismatch.

Fix: Open the product’s stock movement history, find the receipt, and check its unit. A case price recorded against a single unit distorts the average for all your stock.

Can I sell to business customers on credit?

Cause: Credit needs a customer record and a limit.

Fix: Yes. Attach the customer to the sale — it cannot be a walk-in — and set a credit limit so exposure is capped. Chase what is owed from Collect Payment.

A customer wants to return goods with no receipt

Cause: A blind return has nothing to verify against.

Fix: It is possible, but nothing confirms what was paid or when. Most shops restrict this to managers and refund to store credit. See Returns & Exchanges.

Do I need to count stock regularly?

Cause: Recorded stock drifts from reality over time.

Fix: Yes, but check the movement history first — a discrepancy often has an obvious cause, like a transfer never received. Counting away a known loss discards information you wanted. See Stock Recounts.