Since 1981

Item management systems for grocery retailers

Grocers Support Systems has designed, programmed and installed the software that keeps a grocery chain's item data, prices and costs in step with its registers, warehouses, wholesalers and vendors. For some chains, that work extends to main office general ledger and financial statements, accounts payable, and accounts receivable.

This page is a record of that work and of the grocery chains for which it has been done.

The work Clients, past and present

The work

One central item database, with every system in the store and the back office kept in agreement with it.

HOST

Centralized item management

Design and programming of the central item database: items, UPCs, costs, retails, vendors, deals and effective dates, and the rules that keep it consistent across every store. Gross profit and sales analysis summarized by department, category or item, for a single store or across many.

POS

Point-of-sale interfaces

Two-way interfaces between the host and the front end: price and item changes down to the registers; sales, movement and transaction logs back up. Systems include ISS45, Datachecker, TEC, NCR 2126, NCR 2127, NCR 1255, IBM 3660, IBM 4680, IBM ACE and others.

WHS

Wholesaler and warehouse interfaces

Receiving invoices, cost changes and statements; sending retails, movement and others, matched to the central item database.

STORE

Store-level applications

Design and programming of applications that run directly against the central item database: back door receiving, ordering, inventory counting, shelf label requests and others. Alternatively, interfaces to third-party systems that perform the same functions outside the central database.

TLOG

Transaction log processing and analysis

Parsing raw POS transaction logs into usable data: item movement, customer purchases, cashier activity, order cancellations, returns and other transaction types.

EDI

EDI

Electronic data interchange with wholesalers and vendors: receiving invoices, retrieving cost changes and sending movement and sales.

LABEL

Shelf labels

Interfaces to shelf labeling programs, with format selection driven by store, ad and TPR pricing, new items, bonus buys, savings, shopper discounts showing the alternate member price, and other criteria.

GL/AP/AR

Supermarket accounting applications

Design, programming and installation of basic accounting applications for some customers, including accounts receivable, accounts payable, general ledger and financial statements.

IMPL

Implementation and conversion

Converting existing item data, installing on site, training the people who run it, and supporting it afterward.

60+
grocery chains
1,100+
stores
20+
states, from Alaska to Guam
1981
first installation

Clients

Independent chains, regional supermarkets and national names, from Safeway and Jewel Osco to Cardenas, Bashas, Cub Foods and Homeland. The full list, with the systems installed at each one and the people involved, is on its own page.

See all clients →

Contact

Questions about this work or an installation that is still running.