The School Place® has teamed up with System Solutions, a Microsoft® Certified Partner, to offer ER Connect^TM —a state-of-the-art point of sale system for teacher supply stores. Based on the popular Microsoft Dynamics^TM Retail Management System, ER Connect provides all the capabilities you need to operate your School Place store.

Highlighted Features

• Point-of-Sale and complete retail management system (RMS)
• Credit card / debit card / gift card processing
• Inventory management / cycle counting / reporting
• Item picture catalog
• Item pricing tool / auto label printing when prices change
• Customer management / AR management
• History-based forecasting / purchase order management
• Electronic ordering / real-time supplier inventory levels

Key Benefits

• Costs less than comparable systems / School Place receive a group discount
• Runs on standard PC's running Microsoft Windows
• Connects directly with Educators Resource®
• Integrates with popular accounting packages including Quickbooks
• Provides support and stability for your business

ER Connect^TM and The School Place® are all about maximizing inventory productivity through min/max reordering and just-in-time delivery.  We help you establish the appropriate min/max reorder points for each item.  When an item reaches its min value, the system automatically reorders up to the max value on the next weekly or semi-weekly purchase order.

Benefits of Min/Max Just-In-Time Purchasing

• Frequent ordering means you don't have to bring in large quantities of each item.
• Lower quantities on hand allow you to broaden your selection for a given inventory investment.
• Lower quantities minimize excess inventory as you move from season to season.

• Addressing out-of-stocks quickly helps to maximize sales.
• Consolidating through a single supplier means free shipping always.
• Letting the system do all the purchasing work for you saves time and reduces labor costs.

The management of product data poses a significant challenge for independent retailers in the teacher supply business due to the vast array of available items and the constantly growing demand for product data. ER Connect^TM and The School Place® keep all your product data up to date for you. The School Place employs three full-time people who are dedicated solely to maintaining product data. All of the work that they accomplish throughout the year is reflected in your ER Connect system.

Getting Started

ER Connect makes it easy to get started in the industry because it comes preloaded with over 20,000 items from over 300 manufacturers and publishers. While you might stock only 20-40% of these items depending on the size of your store, it is important to be able to offer the remaining items to your customers on a special order basis if truly want to be a one-stop-shop for the teachers in your community.


New Products

Our product mix is constantly changing. In a typical year approximately 4,000-6,000 new products will be introduced and a similar number discontinued. Your ER Connect system receives a nightly data feed from The School Place. This feed updates your system with all new products and product discontinuations.


Pricing Updates

Typically, manufacturers and publishers will update their pricing annually. Many of the updates occur January 1. However, there are thousands of price updates that take place throughout the year. The sooner you update a manufacturer price increase in your system, the better for your bottom line.  ER Connect even has the capacity to automatically print pricing labels for your shelf any time there is a price change (add-on module required).


Sample of Product Data Fields

• Part numbers, including aliases, UPC and ISBN
• MSRP
• Units of measure
• Case quantity
• Weights and dimensions
• Large and thumbnail images
• Catalog description
• Categories: web category and sub-category; retail department, class, sub-class
• Manufacturer name, brand name
• Replacement item number
• Introduction date, discontinuation date