Victoria's Basement is a well-known retailer of quality home-ware products. Their business, a simple point of sale operation, is not the sort of company that you would expect to embrace the leading edge of Thin Client and Multi-Tier Internet technology.

With four stores in Sydney, Victoria's Basement's philosophy is to provide the highest quality home-ware and giftware products at the most competitive price. To achieve this philosophy they required an efficient centralised management of their entire operation - enter Espresso Financials Point-Of-Sale and its Multi Tier Technology.

Multi-Tier Technology is computer speak for "Inter-Branch connectivity via the Internet". Multi-Tier gets its name from the fact that the software is split into multiple layers (Workstation, Application Server and Database Server).

For Victoria's Basement it means that each store has its own Branch File Server that transmits all sales transactions to the Head Office Server via the Internet. Sales transactions at the head office are consolidated into a single set of accounts. In return the Head Office Server updates stock codes and pricing back to the Branch Offices.

Using this technology they can get a live view of their entire operation from a central location. Also using the Thin Client Workstation Interface management can login to any of the Branch Offices or the Head Office from anywhere in the world. The Thin Client Interface is particularly useful for external accountants, who can provide a more responsive accounting service without having to go on-site.

"The Thin Client Interface has been a real time saver. I can perform any accounting task at any of the stores or head office without leaving my desk," said David Henderson, accountant for Victoria's Basement.

Anyone who uses the Internet reasonably often will know that sometimes it just doesn't work. This is where the Espresso Financials Multi Tier Technology really shines because all stores can continue to function when the Internet isn't working. When the Internet connection resumes then data is automatically re-synchronised.

Apart from this amazing technology, Espresso Financials also offers a first class Point-Of-Sale solution. "We used to use MYOB Retail Manager, but it just didn't handle the volume of sales. As time went on the data files increased and the processing of sales slowed down significantly. On a regular basis we had to erase the entire data file. By contrast Espresso Financials has easily managed the volume," said Daniel Kalanderian General Manager of Victoria's Basement.