Retail Realm Essentials by Microsoft Dynamics

Retail Realm Essentials is a global company specializing in creating and managing a broad portfolio of business software solutions marketed by a community of resellers. Powered by Microsoft Dynamics, Retail Realm Essentials™ or Retail Realm MAX Essentials is a retail management system designed for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that manage both head office and store functionalities. 

Retail Realm Essentials™ is based on the Microsoft Dynamics 365|AX platform, which supports multiple businesses and geographies. Business owners can scale this software solution to become full Microsoft Dynamics 365|AX as their organizational requirements become more sophisticated. This guide highlights the essential features of Retail Realm MAX Essentials and its application in small and mid-sized retail businesses.

Retail Realm Essentials’ Market Segments

Retail Realm Essentials is a solution that is highly configurable and customizable and is well suited for a variety of retail segments, including:

  • Convenience Stores
  • Craft Stores
  • Appliances
  • Book Stores
  • Fashion
  • Furniture Stores
  • Cycle Stores
  • DIY Stores
  • Hard Goods
  • Jewelry Stores
  • Electronics
  • Garden Centers
  • Music Stores
  • Pet Stores
  • Gift Stores
  • Liquor Stores
  • Sporting Goods
  • Supermarkets
  • Pharmacy
  • Tasting Rooms
Retail Realm Essentials
Retail Realm Essentials

Retail Realm Essentials Extensions

Retail Realm has embedded numerous extensions and is adding many new features to this offering, such as a mobile application for inventory management, supermarket features, store-based availability, store reports, rich label design, printing, etc. Retail Realm partners with many developers who refine the Retail Realm Essentials solutions through innovative developments. They include:

  • Mercury Payment (USA)
  • Credit Card Processing
  • VeriFone (UK)
  • Shift4 (USA/Canada)
  • eCommerce
  • PC EFTPOS (Australia/NZ)
  • Unitec (USA)
  • Links to Financials
  • Sana Systems (Worldwide)
  • Quickbooks
  • O365 Financials
  • Dynamics GP (Datamill)

Retail Ream Essentials Training and Courses

Retail Realm offers training programs in various languages, and you will gain the certifications you need to become a Certified Reseller for all Microsoft Dynamics products. By adding training in sales, you will be fully equipped to close, install, and support Retail Realm Essentials for customers.

Retail Realm strongly encourages developers to create and integrate solutions that augment the functionality of the out-of-the-box Microsoft Dynamics offering and/or fill existing gaps. For developers, the group regularly organizes training to train developers in the following areas:

Customer Management

  • Customer grouping– Accurately organize customers into separate groups, e.g., Wholesale customers, Retail customers, employees, etc.
  • Customer segmentation– Logically segment customers based on geographical distribution using the robust address-book functionality.

Employee Management

  • Workers- Setup and maintain employees centrally
  • Store allocation- Manage workers based on the roles they perform in various stores
  • Permissions- Control permissions with templates pre-setup, overriding if needed
  • Time and attendance- Using the POS to track each employee’s clock-in and clock-out time and calculate hours worked.
Retail Realm Essentials POS
Retail Realm Essentials POS

Financial Management

  • Retail sales 360 view- Seamlessly view retail sales and transactions across several stores.
  • View/Create POS statements- Generate and manage Z reports and tolerances, among other parameters.
  • Gift cards- Manage, allocate, and account for Gift cards. You can also assign gift card liability to a holding company or legal entity.
  • Credit memos- Generate a Credit Memo when performing returns instead of giving a refund.
  • Accounts receivable- Sell or return on the account and manage various accounts receivables from the HQ.
  • Accounts export- Easily export account information, map out using XSLT (Transformation file) while matching recipient format and automate exporting periodically on a preset schedule.

Inventory Management

  • Purchasing ordering- Create purchase orders centrally for use at a warehouse or store
  • Purchase trade agreements- Establish and manage trade agreements with vendors
  • Generate PO- Create a PO from a sales order
  • Concept of “cases”- Generate cases to bundle frequently ordered items from vendors
  • Fulfillment- Conduct Cross-docking or “Buyers push” and create replenishment rules.
  • Transfers- Manage and explore transfer orders
  • Print labels for item receipts
  • View Inventory- Get a snap view of on-hand inventory across all stores
  • Stock Take- Manage stock counting from the head office and take stock at the store using the POS.

Loyalty and Gift Cards

  • Establish different loyalty schemes to apply to various schemes.
  • Manage pricing and discounts based on loyalty, such as using loyalty schemes to inform special pricing
  • Manage various loyalty schemes
  • Apply powerful redemption rules to control how points are redeemed, such as controlling the products or categories allowed to be redeemed.
  • Managing Global Gift Cards across all stores out of the box
  • Loyalty cards as a separate concept to customers- You can use customer records to optionally allow loyalty cards to be issued and used immediately and attached to a customer record later on when ready.

Merchandising and Product Maintenance

  • Category defaults for new items added to the category, which saves valuable time when setting up products.
  • Category Hierarchy- You can define unlimited categories to your preferred depth, such as categories, sub-categories, sub-sub-categories, and more.
  • Supplementary Categories- You can set various items to belong to any number of supplementary categories. This is ideal for tracking brand, clearance, seasonal products, and other means of grouping products.
  • Kit items- Easily group products into packaged kits and build, de-construct, and account for your inventory. You can then customize pricing and break down kits if needed.
  • Serialized Items- Seamlessly track serial items and other things such as batch numbers, which is ideal for the electronics industry.
  • Released products- You can set up items in advance and launch them when ready for use.
  • Powerful descriptions- Easily track product names, long descriptions, search names, etc.
  • Product attributes for tracking additional product data
  • Info Codes at the POS- You can use interactive reason codes to trigger different events based on user input.
  • Item cost- Easily apply item cost based on different methods, such as last cost, weighted average, and FIFO. Besides, RE allows different products to use different cost models.
  • Assortments to group products logically to determine what is sold where and when.

Multi-Store Centralized Management

  • Warehouse, Site, and Store Management
  • Define retail stores and their parameters
  • Pricing determination
  • Organization Hierarchy
  • Ability to define and layout organizational structure
  • Setup trade agreements for different customers or groups
  • Sale and discount pricing 
  • Price adjustments and price groups
  • Quantity discounts
  • Standard pricing table based on different quantity breaks
  • Promotional pricing such as buy 1 Get 1 for Free.

Try Retail Realm MAX Essentials Today!

Although very few users have left reviews for Retail Realm MAX Essentials, you can be the first to drop a review. Do you use Retail Realm Essentials for your retail business? If so, what do you think about its performance? But if you’re considering using Retail Realm MAX Essentials, our team can take you through the software evaluation process. Feel free to contribute to the discussions on this page or write a review of Retail Realm MAX Essentials. This will help other business owners make smarter, more informed software selection decisions!

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