Candidly, 'Liberty Lite' ($695) was designed to aggravate its users into upgrading to Liberty 2002 ($995). Basic conveniences routinely found in most reputable consignment software programs have been purposely disabled and we dare say that users will discover just how annoying the program is when the needs for the 'disabled features' arise.
From Liberty's website: "...we’ve disabled some of the features many new store owners and smaller stores don’t really require." (image)
The following are some of the features omitted in Lite.
- In addition to selling your customers' items, you'd like to sell items belonging to you, but you can't use Lite because 'retail items' has been disabled.
- Someone wants to purchase items at the point of sale which haven't been entered into Lite, or the items belong to a consignor who hasn't been entered. Can't add the item at the point of sale because 'add item/consignor at point of sale' has been disabled.
- No store credit at the point of sale, so consignors wishing to apply their sales proceeds to their purchases can't be obliged. Disabled.
- You're in the middle of entering a sale. Something comes up. You can't exit the sale because 'Suspending a sale in point of sale' has been disabled.
- It's time to settle up at month-end. You'll have to do pay outs one at a time because 'group pay outs' are disabled.
- You want to network computers but you don't want every employee to have access to sensitive data. Not possible because there's 'no security or user administration'.
- Want to know what customers have purchased in the past? There's 'no customer purchase history'.
- Purchases other than cash as a tender can't be recorded.
- You want to keep a list (a 'wish list') of items in which buyers are interested so that you may contact them when the items arrive in your store. Can't - There's no Wish List feature.
Perhaps new or small shops don't want or need costly conveniences like bar coding and scan guns, receipt printers and cash drawers. It's logical to offer lower-priced programs without these features, but removing 'basic essential features' and attempting to pass the absence of such features off as "not required" is subjective at best.
Liberty goes on to say, "Lite users can always upgrade at a later time by simply entering a different serial number." More deception. There's the little matter of the cost of upgrading ($300), the extra costs of a manual ($29), the QuickBooks Module ($200), additional licenses at $300 each, charges for annual support $120/$240 per year.
It's doubtful that any store, new, small or otherwise, would be pleased to use a consignment software program that has been purposely 'disabled'.
