How the Retail pack and the till share the work

What the Retail pack does and what stays with the till: customer orders, returns, refunds and credit notes, and how till sales reach a customer's timeline.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Retail businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.

A shop that adds a customer system to its till often ends up with two places doing the same job. Sales are rung up at the counter and then typed into the customer system. Returns are logged in one, refunded in the other, and nobody is sure which record is right. Staff stop using whichever screen feels like extra work, and within a few months the customer records are out of date.

Achekam's Retail & e-commerce pack, part of the Industry CRM, avoids that by drawing a firm line between what the pack does and what the till does. This article sets out that line, how the two connect, and who on the shop floor uses which.

The pack never rings up a sale

The first rule is the simplest. The Retail pack never rings up a sale. Till sales stay with the till.

That is deliberate. The till already does everything a sale needs: it takes payment, takes stock off the shelf at the till's location, and posts a balanced journal to your ledger in the same step, with each payment method to its own account, revenue, output VAT and cost of sales against inventory. A second place to ring up sales would mean a second set of rules for VAT, stock and cash, and a second place for mistakes.

So when a customer buys something over the counter, the cashier uses the till, as before. The pack does not get in the way of a sale.

Customer orders and returns live in the pack

What the pack handles is the work around the sale that the till was never designed for. It keeps customer special orders and returns. Its records are called Customer orders, and its quotes Quotations.

A customer order follows a clear path: Requested, Quoted, Ordered from supplier, Ready for the customer and Handed over, or Cancelled with a reason. That is the kind of work that lasts days or weeks, involves a supplier, and needs follow-up calls, which a till cannot track.

The order's workflow carries the steps a sales assistant would otherwise keep in a notebook. It checks price and availability with the supplier, sends the quotation, can take a deposit together with signed special-order terms, places the order, checks the item when it arrives, tells the customer and records the hand-over. At each step the pack knows what has happened and what is waiting, so a colleague on the next shift can pick up a customer's order without phoning the person who started it.

Those special-order terms are starter wording, like every agreement in the industry packs, and need your own review before the first customer signs them.

Returns follow the same idea. The pack records the return, the customer's account of what went wrong and what was decided; the money side happens elsewhere. In South Africa that includes checking against the Consumer Protection Act, covered in returns, warranties and the CPA.

Refunds and exchanges at the till or by credit note

Because the pack does not handle money directly, a refund or exchange is done at the till or by credit note.

At the till. A supervisor or manager refunds all or part of a till sale, with a reason. The refund is its own document, linked to the original sale, and the goods go back into stock.

By credit note. Where the original sale was invoiced, a credit note is issued from the invoice it corrects, in full or for chosen lines. It is posted to the ledger, can be downloaded as a PDF or e-mailed, and leftover credit is held for the customer.

The pack's return record says what was agreed; the till or the credit note carries it out. More on the till side is in refunds, voids and store credit.

Till sales on the customer's timeline

The connection between the two runs from the till into the pack. Till sales are linked to a customer's timeline in the Industry CRM, so a staff member opening a customer's record sees what that customer has bought at the counter alongside their orders, quotations and returns.

For a shop, that changes the conversation at the counter. A customer bringing back a faulty blender can be found, along with the sale it came from. A loyal customer asking about a special order can be recognised by what they have bought before. Investopedia's guide to customer relationship management describes the sales and service processes a CRM brings together, and a shop's version is exactly this: one view of a customer across counter, orders and returns. Using till spend to set loyalty tiers is covered in loyalty tiers from till spend.

Low stock as a reorder task

The same wave of the add-on turns low stock into a reorder task, and brings dashboards read from the ledger. Instead of waiting for a buyer to notice an empty shelf, a low stock level becomes a reorder task for someone to act on, and that person decides whether and how much to reorder.

That keeps the decision with a person. The task prompts; the buyer orders.

Who does what on the shop floor

Print that table for the back office, and walk each staff member through the screens they will use, and the ones they will not, before the pack goes live in your shop.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.