Product Details
Basil provides features for offline/online booksellers including POS, inventory control, marketing, customer requests and special orders, loyalty discounts, barcoding, purchasing and more.
| Platform | SaaS (Cloud Web App) iOS App |
| Customers Supported | United States |
Pricing & Trial
| Price Range |
| $250 one-time set-up fee, then from $225 per month. |
Integrations & Compatibility
| Details | Integrations |
|---|---|
| Amazon Sites | Amazon.com |
| Alternative Marketplaces | Abebooks.com Alibris Barnes and Noble Biblio.com |
| Carts, Payment & POS | Chrislands.com |
User rating
Features
Support
Ease of Use
LTens
Great Bookstore POS
What where the positives?
Easy setup, easy to navigate, great customer service, and great pricing.
Any negatives?
Everything needs a number- if one of your products is a pen that doesn't have a barcode you will have to make a code for it. If you have coffee etc you would need a code like csmall as an example. But there is workaround- make a cheatsheet with your own codes for things like this or create your own tags etc.
Summary
Basil Pos is definitely a great pos system for bookstores especially those stores that might have used a non-traditional bookstore pos first. I appreciate that almost ALL of our products (books, sidelines, gifts, toys and even balloons) come up in Basil verses needing to manually enter items or upload spreadsheets like you would do with non-traditional pos systems which is a time saver for us because all we have to do from there is just put the quantity and vendor discount that's it! Customer service has been great to me but I did send a bookstore owner to Basil for services and they didn't have the same experience. I'm not sure if sometimes they have office changes etc but when you really need them they are available to answer or return calls. Since Basil isn't a bulky system I am able to train employees pretty fast probably just in a couple hours. If you are looking for a bookstore system but you don't want something that looks a little old give Basil a try. I chose Basil pos because the other systems are highly expensive, the one that would've been the next contender is using a DOS screen and I really wanted something a little more user friendly. Does Basil have everything you need? Maybe or maybe not but what it lacks you can probably work around. I'm only leaving this review (which I never do) but I really want other bookstores to know Basil is a great option.
User rating
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Ease of Use
MacUser
Horrible Customer Service
What where the positives?
N/A
Any negatives?
N/A
Summary
I had to wait a week for them to be able to schedule an online demonstration for me. The scheduled time wasn't convenient for me, but I did not wish to wait yet another week to even be able to evaluate if this service was something I was interested in or not, so I rearranged my day in order to accommodate their desired time. Our emails back and forth assured me they would call me. The time they were supposed to call came and went. I tried calling them after 15 minutes, no answer. I left a voicemail. When they were 25 minutes late I emailed. When they were 35 minutes late I called again. This time someone answered, but was unable to direct me to the only sales person apparently, and just said 'I don't know where he is' after placing me on hold for several minutes. He asked if I wanted to reschedule. What?? If this is how you treat someone you are trying to get money from, heaven knows how they'd treat customers once they have their money in hand. I received a follow-up email stating "Very sorry our demonstration didn't work out today and you don't have time in the week ahead to reschedule." A non-apology if I ever seen one. Ridiculous.
User rating
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Support
Ease of Use
mbellah
A good move for multi-location bookstore
What where the positives?
The flexibility of the Basil inventory system is far superior than the POS we were using previously. They have a multi-store reorder system and warehouse replenishment system that is a piece of art that is working for us very well. We do have several areas that need development but I do see movement in the right direction. We are able to openly discuss issues and make plans.
Any negatives?
Of course.
Summary
The support is better now than in the past and I see more positive changes happening.
User rating
Features
Support
Ease of Use
BasilPSA
Giant mistake
What where the positives?
N/A
Any negatives?
N/A
Summary
My place of work, a small local chain of about 8 stores started using Basil 2 years ago. On paper, it looked very promising, with some very cool features sure to make our jobs easier, and the people in charge of Basil did a very good job of upselling it. The reality? Basil was a giant mistake. Even 2 years after the fact, it remains a broken and bug riddled system. It's almost like a beta of a full product, and at it's worst, it feels more like an early alpha. Everyone who works at the store level, hates the system. Those who work on the office level, don't feel much better. Now, Basil is a fairly new company, and all new companies have a learning curve, but good customer service can save that. Sadly, in Basil's case, the customer service ranges from abysmal to downright non existent. Some of the time, when you try to report a bug, or any other problem for that matter, you receive an email reply that just informs you that your problem has been passed along to Basil support. That is the last you will ever hear on the matter, and your problem will likely never be solved. What happens the rest of the time? They just outright ignore you. One of our managers emailed them, just trying to get an update about a problem that was reported. He asked them over 10 times. His email was ignored every single time without even a single exception. Now, I don't know how your store runs, but I find it safe to say that in most jobs, a person would likely be fired for that level of neglect towards a client. Basil also designed it's system to be the very opposite of idiot proof. Everybody makes mistakes, and when you have more than 100 employees, law of average says mistakes will happen fairly often, even on a well run ship. Does basil show any interest in adjusting things to be more forgiving? Nope. One such bad mechanic that our company has repeatedly asked for them to implement, they have outright told us will never happen because they do not see the value in it. Now, the specific issue I speak of (one of many) is that they do not believe in negative numbers in their inventory. Here's an example of how this is a big problem. Let's say, one of your employees accidentally double rings an item, and does not notice til after the sale. Unfortunate, but it happens. It's an easy fix of course. You just void it out or refund that second copy, easy peasy and you're done. Now, if you have 2 or more copies of said book, it won't be that easy. Let's say you only had one copy of this book that rings up twice. Now with most inventory systems, that second copy would bring the inventory count to a total of -1, but not Basil. You sell 1 copy, it takes your total to 0. You sell 2 copies, it still takes your total to 0. And when you try to refund the customer for that extra non existent copy? It increases your inventory to 1. Now, you may be thinking "Well that's easy, you just adjust the inventory count right after." But the issue is, it can be busy in retail. You might forget to do that. You might not even realize that refund created an inventory discrepancy to begin with. Not until much later when you're scouring the store looking for that single copy that's supposed to be there. You'll realize the mistake then. Too late. You've already let your customer down. And besides, even if you could remember to fix the inventory count 100% of the time, that's still way less intuitive than a system that just keeps an accurate inventory count to begin with. I could honestly go on and on about dozens of other problems with Basil, but sadly, I only have 4000 characters. To be fair, the system is not -all- bad. There are some great features. But they are outweighed by the problems, and if that weren't enough, the general non existence of customer support pretty much hammers in the last nail. In closing, if you are considering Basil, don't. There are better options out there.