Merret Retail Assist and NewStore POS
Integration Agency & Consultants
Cogent2 provides AI-powered integration delivery with operators who understand the pressures of retail finance. We focus on connecting NewStore POS sales data correctly into Merret Retail Assist, which we see as the primary point of failure. This harmonisation ensures you have accurate inventory truth and a much cleaner month-end close.
Auditing the Merret and NewStore gap
We connect your Merret Retail Assist and NewStore POS with expert ERP and POS integration, ensuring your systems work together efficiently. Our consulting services are invaluable, especially our system audit, which uncovers inefficiencies and integration gaps between Merret Retail Assist, NewStore POS, ERP, and POS platforms. This enables our consultants and your team to take decisive action, helping your technology ecosystem run smoothly and efficiently, so you can deliver a great experience to your customers.
Solution Design
Our team puts you in control of your Merret Retail Assist and NewStore POS integration journey. We work closely with you to design a blueprint that connects Merret Retail Assist, NewStore POS, ERP, and POS systems, ensuring your tech stack is future-ready. Well-planned integrations save your business time and energy, laying the groundwork for sustainable growth and a robust ecosystem that supports your ambitions.
Mapping transaction flow to ledger accounts
The integration prioritises financial reconciliation and inventory truth. Sales transactions from NewStore POS flow into Merret Retail Assist, where Merret acts as the final source of truth for inventory valuation and the general ledger. We commonly configure the flow to ensure that store orders and returns are sequenced correctly so that stock levels are adjusted in Merret before the next trading cycle begins. Data integrity is maintained by mapping NewStore transaction types to specific Merret account codes. We embed monitoring at the transaction level to detect orphaned orders or tax mapping errors before they reach the financial reporting stage.
Orchestrating secure flows through accredited architecture
Leveraging IPaaS with ISO 27001 and SOC 2 and above security accreditations, Merret Retail Assist and NewStore POS integrations with ERP and POS systems are delivered efficiently and securely. IPaaS enables Merret Retail Assist and NewStore POS to connect ERP and POS platforms, ensuring robust data flow and compliance. The benefits include simplified integration, reduced risk, and strong data protection, with SO 27001 and SOC 2 and above compliance as the minimum requirement.
Surfacing transaction failures before daily close
Standard dashboards often miss the granular failures that occur between POS and ERP. Hidden issues, such as mismatched SKU codes or tax lines between systems, tend to compound over time if they are not caught immediately. We provide visibility into the health of the sync, surfacing exact transaction failures so they can be addressed before the daily close. This allows operations and finance teams to see where data has stalled, ensuring that discrepancies in store revenue or stock movements are resolved in hours rather than weeks during the month-end audit.
Handover for finance and store operations
Our training equips your team to confidently manage your tech stack, supporting your brand’s growth ambitions with Merret Retail Assist and NewStore POS. We focus on practical skills for ERP and POS systems, ensuring your team can optimise Merret Retail Assist and NewStore POS integration. This approach enables effective ERP and POS management, helping you maximise the benefits of both Merret Retail Assist and NewStore POS for your business.
Managing data integrity after go live
Merret Retail Assist delivers production ERP and POS support, ensuring business continuity and peace of mind. With on-hand technical knowledge, Merret Retail Assist supports NewStore POS and ERP, providing rapid issue resolution and ongoing system monitoring. NewStore POS and ERP expertise mean your operations remain reliable, while dedicated support keeps your business running smoothly. Trust in our team for comprehensive POS and ERP support, so you can focus on growth.
Common failures
Inventory latency and overselling
Operational impact: Merret's reliance on batch processing can create a delay between a sale occurring in NewStore POS and the stock level being updated. At scale, this leads to overselling popular SKUs, as stock data is not current across all channels. This results in cancelled orders, a poor customer experience, and increased workload for fulfilment and CX teams who must manage the fallout.
Prevention / Action: The integration must be designed to accommodate Merret's batch processing schedule. Sales transactions from NewStore should be captured and queued immediately for reliable transfer. Operationally, merchandising teams must define and maintain stock buffers within Merret to mitigate overselling risk during the latency period between batch updates.
Inaccurate financial reconciliation
Operational impact: If sales and payment data from NewStore POS are not mapped with precision, the corresponding sales orders and journal entries in Merret will fail to balance. This forces the finance team into manual, time-consuming reconciliations to match takings to payouts, delaying the month-end close. This undermines the accuracy of turnover reporting and cash flow analysis.
Prevention / Action: The integration's data mapping must be granular. Every NewStore transaction, including its specific payment method, must create a corresponding and auditable entry in Merret. Schedule data transfers to align with store end-of-day processes, ensuring complete daily records are posted. An exception handling report is essential for flagging and isolating failed transactions for immediate review by the finance or operations team.
Failed returns and incorrect stock adjustments
Operational impact: A return processed in NewStore POS fails to create the correct credit note or inventory adjustment in Merret. The finance team cannot reconcile refunds, and the operations team is unaware that the item is physically back in stock. This leads to inaccurate inventory levels in Merret, preventing the item's resale and causing discrepancies between system stock and physical counts.
Prevention / Action: The integration logic must include a discrete process for return events. When a return is triggered in NewStore, the flow should confirm the creation of both a financial credit note and a separate inventory adjustment in Merret. The logic must account for the item's condition, ensuring that only saleable items are returned to available stock levels.
Product master data mismatch
Operational impact: Updates to product information like pricing or barcodes in Merret do not synchronise correctly to NewStore POS terminals. This leads to scanning errors, incorrect pricing being presented to customers, and an inability for staff to sell certain SKUs. This requires manual overrides by store staff, erodes customer trust, and complicates the reconciliation of sales orders against Merret's item records.
Prevention / Action: Establish Merret as the single source of truth for all product master data. The integration architecture must include a robust, scheduled process to synchronise all SKU data and price changes from Merret to NewStore. This process should ideally run overnight, with validation reports that flag any records that failed to update so merchandising teams can correct the source data in Merret.
Frequently asked questions
How do we prevent overselling in NewStore POS if Merret's inventory updates are not instantaneous?
This is a common operational risk, as Merret Retail Assist often processes inventory updates in scheduled batches, while NewStore POS requires real-time accuracy. To prevent overselling, the integration must account for this timing difference, often by creating a buffer or ensuring sync frequency is high enough. Without this, a sale in NewStore could be for a SKU that has already sold out via another channel, leading to stock discrepancies.
Our month-end close is delayed by reconciling POS data. How does this integration help?
The integration directly addresses this by ensuring every sales transaction from NewStore POS is automatically posted to Merret Retail Assist. This creates a trusted, one-to-one link between a sale and its corresponding financial record in Merret. It removes the need for the finance team to manually match daily takings, which is a common source of errors and delays during the month-end close process.
How do you ensure Merret remains the source of truth for financials when sales originate in NewStore?
The operating model designates Merret Retail Assist as the financial source of truth. NewStore POS acts as the system of capture, but each sales transaction is immediately translated into the format Merret requires for financial reconciliation. Any failure in this process, like a missing sales order, is flagged as an exception, preserving the integrity of Merret's financial and stock data.
How are returns handled between NewStore POS and Merret Retail Assist?
Returns processed in a NewStore POS terminal must be synced back to Merret Retail Assist to generate the correct credit note and trigger a 'restock' event for the returned SKU. If this link fails, your inventory levels in Merret will become inaccurate, and the customer's refund won't be correctly reconciled in the financial system. Depending on the setup, this ensures the order-to-cash cycle is correctly reversed.