What florist order software does

Florist order software is a program that records who is sending flowers, who will receive them, where and when they go, and what the card says. A plain sale at the till is over in a minute, but a flower order is for a later date.

The three kinds of order

One maker, Hana POS, uses these order types in its help pages. Other programs may label them differently.

A delivery order is the core record. The maker says it covers phone, online and in-store orders.¹ It's saved as New or Pending Delivery. Then it shows up under pending deliveries for the chosen date.¹

A cash and carry order is the walk-in sale. The customer walks in, orders, and takes the product away at once.² Nothing's left to deliver, so it behaves much like an ordinary till sale.

A wire order is passed between two florists. A wire service is a company that helps shops exchange and fill orders.³ The page on orders passed between florists covers how those are recorded.

What a delivery order holds

The same help page lists the parts of a delivery order. They show what this software tracks that a simple sales screen may not.

• A customer and a separate recipient. The customer pays. The recipient gets the flowers, and is often a different person.¹³
• A delivery date and a time choice, such as before, after or around a set time.
• An occasion, such as a birthday or a funeral.
• A card message, typed into its own field.¹
• Driver instructions, kept apart from the notes the designer reads.¹
• Private notes that only the shop sees.

Each of these has a page here. See gift messages and recipient details and delivery dates, time windows and zones.

How it differs from a general point of sale

A point of sale, or POS, is the till system a shop uses to ring up sales and take payment. General POS products are built for goods that change hands at once. Flowers sold for a later delivery add steps: a second person, a date, a driver, a card.

The line isn't sharp, though. One general retail maker says its POS can also create local delivery orders.⁴ The shop can have its own staff deliver, or use a third-party delivery service.⁴

So the useful question isn't whether a product is called a florist system. It's whether it records a recipient, a card message and driver instructions on each order, and lists deliveries by date. Check the maker's own documentation for the product you're looking at.

Exceptions and limits

Some tasks sit outside order entry in most programs. Stock counts, bouquet costing and accounting links are separate topics, and many shops use other tools for them.

Features change. Treat these descriptions as a guide. A help page describes one product's screens, not every florist program.¹