More newsagents embracing cloud-based school booklist service

Last year, my software company launched Booklist, a cloud based school booklist management solution designed to help newsagents compete with big businesses chasing school book list business. The goal was to provide newsagents a facility through which they can be seen by customers as more up to date and through which they can cut the time it takes to manage booklist orders.

Newsagents have had direct input into the 2018 school year release, which is now live.

Using the site, newsagents can:

1. Setup a school.
2. Setup classes in a school and load all the booklist requirements for each class.
3. You can easily copy booklists, to make setup easy.
4. The booklist items could be loaded by a CSV file. You record item description, price, supplier and supplier stock cost.
5. You setup order close dates.
6. You note when an order is ready for collection, this advises the customer.
7. The site allows you not having stock, thereby adjusting the amount to be collected.
8. You share a link for parents to sign up and add their kid(s) to a class and to either take the whole booklist or select what they want.
9. The site allocates logins to parents so they would have access to their order.
10. Receive payment from the parents, direct into your account, online. Alternatively, customers pay on pickup.
11. Export a file of all items required to fulfil booklists, by supplier and by school. CSV you could load into Excel.
12. Report on total revenue by school and class. This helps if you have a rebate in place.
13. The site is accessible by desktop, tablet and phone.

In addition to the per year fee there is a small card processing fee, on a cost recovery basis, for payments made online.

Here are the enhancements guided by newsagents:

1. Store can publish and unpublished a booklist, aiding setup and management.
2. Store be able to copy a booklist from one year to the other year within the same school
3. Store be able to personalised the booklist name for each year
4. Store be able to add multiple booklists to a year level
5. Store be able to define a year level themselves, for example “Year 2/3”
6. Store be able to generate a sales report for selected schools within a selected date range
7. Store be able to generate a product report for selected schools within a selected date range
8. Store will be able to add comment to order when they update order status, the comment will be sent to the customer in email
9. Store will be able to filter order status in the store backend for example view “completed” orders only
10. Added “Booklist Review” step, before store confirm to create the school booklist.
11. Fixed the website URL from frontend.booklist.com.au to www.booklist.com.au

From this project it is clear there is no one approach to managing school book list sales. The developers sought to address the most common and commercially viable needs to provide a cost effective solution for newsagents.

To access the preview please follow these instructions.

Demo Store URL https://demo.booklist.com.au

Demo Schools https://demo.booklist.com.au/available-schools

Demo Store Backend Login

Any questions, email help@booklist.com.au

If my first job in a newsagency decades ago I packed school book orders. I remember the manual accounting process well. My hope is this cloud based facility encourages more newsagents back into this area newsagents once owned.