After years of worrying about making the move and upgrading our POS system, we finally decided to do it with Celerant Technology. So far, 2 moths in, we have had a much smoother transition than we could have imagined. We not only upgraded our POS for 6 stores, but we added a new, 7th store at the same time. [sensitive content hidden] was incredibly patient with our questions, and very thorough in his training. If he didn't have the answer, he would go and find it. Though there were glitches along the way, overall the task that was ahead of us was handled wonderfully be Celerant and the team that we worked with.

For us, we really appreciate the ability to be live in multiple locations all at once -- being able to see the sales and inventory movement all instantly is huge. We also like the fact that it can essentially be accessed from anywhere, on the appropriate machines, as long as you have an internet connection.

I think the thing we struggled with the most was having to build out reports that would fit our needs, but this is probably more on us as a company than the software itself.

We’ve been a customer for about 6 years with Celerant, we converted in 2010….I would definitely recommend it. The POS has made training employees a lot easier with it being touchscreen. It’s a very intuitive system. So I definitely recommend it to any retailer. When Celerant bought SportzPak and redesigned the entire platform, it was a welcome change. We were getting to the point where many of our younger employees had never seen a text-based operating system before, so upgrading to Windows and especially an interface with touchscreen controls made it much easier to train new staff members. We set up several remote stores per year. Sometimes that can be as simple as going out to the parking lot for one of our tent sales or running all over town to events where sports enthusiasts are likely to be hanging out. Being where our customers are is a big part of our business, and mobile POS lets us swipe credit cards and manage inventory in real-time, the same way we would process inside a physical store.” We implemented EMV in our stores, so it was good to get a clear, face-to-face understanding of payment security overall. For such a complex and crucial part of business, it’s good to have a partner like Celerant who can help simplify the process to get our operation as secure as possible.” The amount of time we have saved using best store fulfillment is immeasurable. We used to have to manually process each incoming order, figure out the optimal store to fulfill that order, and then email that store.

- Touchscreen interface for POS - EMV capabilities - Android Pay, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay capabilities - Best Store Fulfillment - Remote sales capabilities - Continued innovation

- Dealing with new techs on issues can sometimes be challenging - Typical issues, as with any software system, when dealing with upgrades/updates

I have learned what our company actually needs in a program to successfully provide usable information.

Although, I don't feel that this was the best option available, this particular program was sufficient for what we need. The one thing that I like most about this software is that each update keeps the basics of the program similar. There are no drastic changes between versions, which can be sometimes hard to find.

This software was very hard to first understand even with sufficient training. Once we learned it's "quirks" and how it functioned, we were able to make it work for what we need. For the money though, I feel that it was very outdated and had a very "low-budget" feel to it. It did not allow the consumer to customize the program to the extent that I would have liked. For example, in order to create price ticket templates, we had to have someone there create and install the template for us. Also for the add-on app, we had to send our iPods to them so that the app could be installed. With that said, there were a lot of things that we had to work around to make it produce the results that we wanted. It also doesn't produce as accurate of reports as we needed. In order to successfully run a business, you need to be able to rely on the program's report functions to provide accurate information. This program required extra formatting and calculations in order to produce the reports in a manner that provided the information that we needed. Lastly, I don't feel that the tech support had the appropriate knowledge of the product. There were many times that they had to spend weeks and even months working on issues for us.

We also use the tools in the marketing automation module to segment customers based on their shopping behaviors, and develop emails that are mobile friendly. This is vital since 70 percent of the emails that we send are opened on mobile devices. By sending email communications that are tailored to known customer preferences, we boosted our email open rate from 8 percent to over 25 percent.

We're able to operate our brick and mortar, e-commerce and marketplace stores all with this software. We operate two different retail locations that are only a few miles apart but carry inventory that varies from one another. We actually see many differences in which styles are more popular in either store. This gives us scalability as we continue to grow locations and understand the needs of our customers. We're also managing a fast growing E-Commerce segment, so having full visibility into what items are selling gives our buyers the information they need to know regarding what to order and where it should best be carried. This integration also updates our Amazon store with both stores inventory availability so it knows that we are able to fulfill any order it processes. Again, this allows for scalability at the channel level.

There is a bit of a learning curve because it offers a wide menu of capabilities and reporting. I'd start learning only the things that are most vital, and worry about the rest later.

Stratus Retail has helped us manage our POS, Firearms Records (A&D), and all 23 lanes we have at SafeSide Tactical in a single software. At first we thought the size of our range and our planned growth might be a challenge for our technology provider. When we met Celerant we could see that Stratus is scalable and the team at Celerant can work with us every step of the way. We use Stratus for all aspects of our range and store operations from range reservations to Gift Cards to POS with EMV. One of our favorite features is our vendor integration with our distributor, AcuSport, and the fact that we can leverage auto-ordering based on Min/Max quantities that fit our multiple locations. With this feature, we’ve been able to eliminate 5-10 hours of manual counting/ordering each week and can keep the products on hand that our customers are shopping for. We are very happy with the software and our relationship with Celerant- and would recommend the system to any dealer."

Celerant's retail software is very intricate and at times it can be confusing, however Celerant's customer service is there anytime we get overwhelmed or are unsure how to do something.

They have an amazing marketing team! They're great at promoting and selling hopes and dreams!

We launched Celerant 10 months ago, in February of 2023, and our experience has been nothing short of a nightmare. Despite the hefty setup cost and ongoing monthly expense, the system's promised efficiency remains elusive. One glaring issue lies in the abysmal data management within the system. Metrics suffer from an identity crisis, with different labels scattered across the system, causing confusion between barcode variations, product styles, and inventory classification. The inability to import our own sales data is a glaring deficiency. Our online store remains isolated from Celerant, necessitating their intervention for weekly imports. Contacting support has become a weary routine, required even for simple tasks like verifying imports. Their re-order tools are a comedy of errors! They pull incorrect items, fail to align with vendor specifications, and order incorrect amounts despite a clear directive to order to the maximum threshold. Celerant's blackout periods are a mystery, with no notifications or means to check their site for system outages. The most egregious offense, however, lies in the indifferent and lackadaisical attitude of the support team. Critical issues, such as sales syncing failures resulting in massive financial losses, were met with apathy. Customers faced double charges with an appalling "clear cookies daily" solution, while our staff grappled with continuous system logouts, dismissed as a non-issue for half a year. In conclusion, Celerant Point of Sale fails to justify its exorbitant costs and systematically sabotages the efficiency and profitability of retail operations. It's an expensive lesson in how a promising system can implode into an unmitigated disaster, leaving a trail of financial losses, operational chaos, and customer dissatisfaction.

We have experienced a significant amount of growth since we first started using Celerant in our store back in 2004. Since then, we've expanded to multiple locations. Celerant's staff has been there every step of the way to provide an exceptional level of service, creating a very strong partnership that has lasted for over ten years. Celerant's software has made it easy for us to manage our daily operational procedures, including the ability to produce granular reports for a range of attributes that can be received across our multiple locations. We look to the future of our partnership with Celerant to embark on new endeavors, including the development of an integrated E-Commerce site to further expand our business into a cross channel operation.

Reporting Flexibility Multi Channel Strong partner to work and grow with, who looks forward and provides options to help you do so.

We export to a seperate GL - So I can't speak to that portion of their integrated offering. It is a newer addition to the software package.

By converting to Celerant in 2010, we have successfully revamped the way we operate our 44 store locations, from streamlining our point of sale process to automated fulfillment in our stores – we are able to provide a more personalized experience to our shoppers. Our enterprise-wide visibility of data is amazingly helpful. We can instantly see results from any store, any time. Possibly the biggest testament to the effectiveness of the custom platform Celerant created for us is that since installing it, we have added 5 locations and haven’t had to add any additional staff to out accounting department.

Provides us with company wide information very quickly, and customers are available across the platform to all of our stores. Security and lockout features are very solid.

Some features are bundled with others and we continue to use a few workarounds. Credit Card processing inside the system can be tricky.

Command Retail is an innovative all in one system. Besides the point that it works as intended it is a relief to no longer have to work with API's to your ecommerce or Open To Buy or Accounting package. It is all in one place, using on DB. I'm lucky to have used the product AND have worked for the vendor ( Customer Satisfaction ), the vendor is responsive and understanding, they know they do not have all the features that others may have, but they know the ones they have work.

With the flexibility of customizing the software for different verticals, it may take some time to get a stable release due to the fact that so many of their customers have taken the package and made it theirs. This is a blessing and a curse, but a good one either way since you can choose what you want this package to do without re-inventing the wheel.

Customer service is a nightmare. They don't have enough support people that really know what's up. Features that you think come with the deal are added on and billed a la cart. Make sure you really get it in writing before you pay. The best people at Celerant used to be at CAM commerce solutions. That said the product is really good very complete software and works. Hopefully, someday Microsoft will buy them and the service issues will go away. They treat customers like adversaries.

Software is great

The service and post install add-ons that you thought were part of the original deal are really frustrating. Not so much in cost as install delays.

We had the system for almost 3 years from 2014-2017. As a small 3-6 employee store I would not recommend this at all. Even for larger stores I think there has to be better options. I thought going in that it would make my life easy but I was proven wrong. We had open support tickets day one and I don't know if I can honestly say we went a day without having at least one open ticket until the day I moved away from the system and just took the loss as the largest learning experience I have had in 5 years of being in business. At the time it appeared to be the only real option for my needs. The only reason I was able to even afford it was due to them allowing me to make payments. I wish they wouldn't have offered me that option. With them still owing me a module for the website and another for a mod I had to prepay for to get the pricing I did, I walked away and took the loss. When fighting with them for it I just gave up, made the move to a much smaller system that didn't have all the "features" and I have not been happier. If you can't afford for their support look elsewhere. Don't bother trying to contact higher management to try to get things resolved. It won't happen! I couldn't even get the CEO to return an email with a very detailed info. Their contract is very one sided so a lawsuit for non performance wasn't even possible. The list could just go on and on.

Great Sales Team, Lots of features for a VERY large company. Streamlines operations between the website, the POS system and inventory. Inter-store transfers, Integrated A&D Book

Everything is an add-on, Lots of bugs, tech support reps as a whole are very inexperienced with actually fixing the issues presented. Complex issues could take months. It is a very overpriced system. Extreme expensive support that is basically mandatory due to all the problems you will have. Adding stuff to their website is very time consuming with lots of steps.

It was terrible from day one. It took tremendous investment of man hours on our end to load system and fix their errors.

It appeared to be easy to use. Promised to meet all our web page and pos needs in a “one stop shop”. In person salesmen seemed creative and responsive.

It has created tremendous loss of income for my new company by randomly dropping customers from the member list, failing to bill them, creating unknown errors and failing to report problems accurately on reports.

Wish I never did this . I have spent so much I’m married to them. Customer support is expensive amd doesn’t get the issues resolved. Mostly band aids assuming it gets fixed.

When I first saw the system I loved how I could access it remotely. It was supposed to work even when our internet went down but that has rarely been the case. The flow is nice assuming it worked the way it should.

I have open tickets all the time. Customer support is a joke. I have had a ticket open that one store cannot access ANY REPORTS FOR 4 weeks now. They will get it fixed amd then 4 days later it goes down again. I have serial numbers that have magically disappeared and have to call them to put back in the A&D book.

There are not many combined POS and web platforms that can truly do both well. Celerant does exactly that. We searched high and low before finding Celerant, so I know most of the other options out there, and they did not fit our needs. We wanted POS registers that were able to run locally in the event of internet outage, but otherwise were essentially real time. We needed a great web platform, a mail order web interface, and a very robust amazon integration. We have that and our business has flourished over the past 7 years because we've been able to focus on our core business rather than technical issues.

Any time that you have a large POS platform that handles all aspects of your business (we use QB for accounting, though) plus integrates with a custom web platform, you are going to have complexities that can take awhile to figure out. So I would say that you need to allow enough time and testing to get things working perfectly. But then again, if it weren't complex in this way, it wouldn't cover all of our needs. So it is the flipside of having a system that handles all of our channels and the enormous growth that we've had over the past 7 years that we've been using Celerant.

Celerant is a great all-in-one POS and web system. Our end-users range from inventory managers, processors, and sales clerks to content writers, buyers, and demo racket specialists. Celerant provides amazing multi-channel capabilities for less than other companies with similar software. The integration with Amazon and Channel Advisor set Celerant above the rest for us. The real time inventory updates from both our in store and web purchases is a giant positive as large volumes of sales are processed throughout the day. A great feature Celerant provides is our Local POS Servers so that our store cash registers never go down. Celerant has provided us robust features customized to fit our particular needs to increase our business and meet consumer demands and wishes. We experience fast page loads which is important when we are trying to get items up in a timely manner.

We would prefer to have more than one person in Tech support to assist our company. Our company uses most aspects of the software so it would be more helpful to have a few people in tech support that really knew our business. This would help in solving issues in a more timely manner.

We are solving no problems with Celerant. Our business is in worse shape now than before the switch.

The features, if they worked, sound great. The actual service support people really try hard to help. But the platform is fundamentally flawed. It's as though every "fix" is a beta test.

After 15 months, we still cannot get the system to work and the developers / support don't speak with each other so we get stuck in the middle. It is costing us thousands each month but as long as Celerant gets paid, management doesn't really care.

We are a fairly new client with Celerant and with every new integration there are going to be bumps and bruises, but Celerant’s team has been there every step of the way. If ever we have an issue, concern or question Celerant is there to help us through it. Stratus is a retail software for both smaller mom and pop retailers and larger retailers as it combines power and ease of use. Training our employees was very easy, while we will soon have the ability to perform essential range functions from mobile devices and tablets. Stratus Retail has streamlined our organization allowing us to become more efficient, accurate, and cost-effective.

Since, we are a fairly new client with Celerant there have been some growing pains, but nothing you wouldn't expect from implementing a new system. Celerant's staff has been extremely helpful working through those issues.

To anyone thinking of purchasing this, it is a amazing piece of software. It is complex, but it needs to be in order to handle the load a multi store operation with a fully integrated web site places on it. It really has changed how we do business for the better. By branching out online with both stores on the same website we experience more consistent sales volume each day. It is fun coming in to the store in the morning and opening up my email to see how many sales we have made while I slept.

My favorite feature is inter-store transfers. It is so simple to move products from one location to the other. What used to consume several hours per week for us now only takes up 30 minutes.

I do wish there were a few less steps in placing a item on the website and making sure it is properly mapped for drop shipping.

Reporting and accessibility of information. Almost every search screen/list can be customized and exported to a variety of formats. There are plenty of pre-designed reports that cover most needs and you can create your own reports using Report Designer, Datamining or Data Warehousing. Plenty of features for all - Operations, POS, Buying, CRM....Etc. I've worked with this product for 12 years and there are still options and features I haven't even tried yet.

Because there are so many pieces, it can take a little while to learn how everything works together. However that full knowledge set isn't necessary for most end users, they only need to know the portion that is pertinent to their job functions.

the customization of the pos screen is great. super easy to navigate and change if need be.

we're still trying to evolve to 100% stratus including ecommerce.

Celerant is a very good POS system that provided a quick and easy way to track sales and inventory when used correctly. Once I was used to it, I certainly enjoyed the ease of use of the system and the ability to network in our stores from around the country. I felt very comfortable with the system after about a week or so, which I felt was a good amount of time to get the hang of it.

It is slightly counter-intuitive when learning how to use the system. At times, it can be confusing why certain actions weren't as easy to un-do or go back. If certain items, such as one product being given two names in the system, aren't entered correctly, it can cause a good amount of confusion to figure out why you have extra shirts after ringing them in. To be fair, this issue probably only arose due to the items being entered wrong on our end.

Celerant continues to innovate their solutions to meet the needs of their clients. Being able to drive our brick-and-mortar and on-line channels using the same platform is a huge advantage!

I wish the Open to Buy module was completed. The structure is there, and we're able to pull accurate data from the database, but the front-end still needs refining. It will be an excellent product when it's completed!

We have a long history with Celerant Technology. It goes back over 10 years, in working with Ian and the team. It's a great product that has matured over time, and has helped shape the way we operate across all our brands and stores. I like working with the people at Celerant because they are truly interested in their client's success, and have put together a training program to help new customers get started quickly and show results. After a successful launch of Celerant in 2006, Food Pantry saw immediate and impactful results. Today, Celerant's point of sale is utilized across 51 stores processing thousands of transactions daily. The system allows us to track and manage inventory, fulfill orders and automate procurement of new merchandise for every store in a single portal. Having Celerant as our retail platform provides the tools our staff needs to continue to enhance the customer experience.

We’ve been on the Celerant Command Retail system for about 18 months. It is very robust and we continue to find new ways to use its features to benefit our business. I have found everyone from Sales to Implementation to Training to Support to be professional, courteous and very helpful. New employees pick up the system with ease which enables them to become productive quickly. The integration is great as many of our customers shop all of our stores so having access to accurate customer data allows us to better serve our customers.

The Celerant product is feature rich and they continue to grow the product and offer more options to their customers.

While the system has many, many reports and many ways to get at the information in the system; to have a user friendly, custom report writer available would be great.

We have four store and a website and we have been using Celerant for over 10 years now. I am on a build from 2013 that works just great for us and is very stably. Unlike another reviewers here, I find the core system and the web to be particularly integrated.

Of late, what I like least about this product has more to do with having to become "EMV compliant" than anything to do with Celerant.