Comparison
QuiltCounter vs Lightspeed Retail
Lightspeed Retail suits an owner who wants one deep retail system across a large and varied catalog, while QuiltCounter suits an owner whose hardest daily question is how many yards are left on that bolt.
Comparison
QuiltCounter vs Square: cut yardage and class seats
Square suits a shop whose sales are mostly countable goods and who wants one familiar commerce platform, while QuiltCounter suits a shop whose money walks out in fractions of a yard.
The short answer
If notions, precuts, patterns and books carry your sales floor and cut yardage is a smaller share, Square is a sensible home for the whole shop and you will spend less time in setup. If your registers ring more half yards and three quarter yards than anything else, and you run classes with kits every week, the arithmetic changes. QuiltCounter starts from a bolt with a yardage balance, so a 1 and 3 eighths yard cut lands on the right record without you inventing a workaround. That is the whole difference, and it is worth money at inventory time.
QuiltCounter and Square side by side
| What you are deciding | QuiltCounter | Square |
|---|---|---|
| Base unit of stock | A bolt carrying a yards remaining balance that drops by the exact cut, down to eighths. | A general retail item model where a countable unit is the natural default and fractional stock is something you decide how to represent. |
| Cutting counter flow | Ring the cut, the yardage comes off that bolt, and the shelf end shows on the same screen. | A general checkout flow designed to serve many kinds of retailers, so the cutting counter routine is one you build around it. |
| Class registration | Seats, rosters, waiting positions and drops sit on the same customer record as her fabric purchases. | A broad commerce platform where scheduling is a separate area of the product rather than part of the fabric counter. |
| Kit assembly | A kit has a yardage bill of materials, so building ten kits pulls the yards off ten bolts at once. | Kits sit in the catalog as ordinary items, and the yardage consumed to make them is tracked by whatever method you set up. |
| Reorder signals | Alerts fire on yards remaining and on weeks of cover per bolt, ahead of your next rep appointment. | Reorder logic shaped around unit stock levels across a wide range of merchandise types. |
| Second location | Two Shops at $189 a month covers both stores with yardage visible across them. | Multi location is part of a broad platform serving many industries, with the breadth that implies. |
| Setup work you own | Bolt records, class sessions and kit recipes, all in vocabulary you already use. | More initial modeling decisions, because the system has to be told what a bolt is in your shop. |
| Scope | One trade. Quilt shops that sell yardage and teach. | Broad commerce for many retail categories, with the wide ecosystem that comes with it. |
The right hand column says what kind of product Square is and who it is built around, not what it charges or ships this quarter. What a product covers moves over time, so verify where it stands today. QuiltCounter is published by MLJ, SASU and this page is written by Jimenez Julien.
Choose QuiltCounter when
- If cut yardage is more than half your fabric revenue, the bolt balance has to be native.
- If your physical count comes out short by yards every year, start where the yards are recorded.
- If you cut class kits in batches, the bill of materials should pull the yardage for you.
- If you juggle open seats and a waiting list weekly, keep the roster next to the customer record.
Choose Square when
- If precuts, notions and patterns carry the floor, a general retail model fits your stock fine.
- If you want one familiar platform for the shop, the web store and payments together, that breadth is real value.
- If you already run Square happily and your yardage tracking is honest, changing systems buys you little.
What a bolt record has to do that a unit count does not
A bolt is one physical object with a shrinking measurement, and that is a different data problem from a shelf of pattern books. Over the life of a bolt you might ring forty cuts against it, most of them not whole numbers, plus a class sample, plus the twenty two inch end that will never sell at full price. A system built on units can be taught to carry a decimal quantity, but you are the one who has to decide the rules, and the rules are where drift comes from.
QuiltCounter treats the bolt as the record and the cut as the transaction. When she asks for two and a quarter yards, that is what leaves the balance, and the remaining yardage on that bolt is what shows when your staff wonders whether to pull it for the sale table. It also means the reorder alert can speak in the unit your rep speaks in, which is bolts of a given collection, not abstract stock counts.
Where a broad retail platform earns its keep in a fabric store
Be fair about this. A large share of what a quilt shop sells is not cut at all. Thread, rulers, rotary blades, batting packages, patterns, books, precut bundles and fat quarters are countable goods, and a general retail system handles that side of your floor without any trouble at all. If that side of the store is the bigger side, you may be solving a problem you do not have.
There is also the practical matter of the ecosystem around a broad platform. Payment hardware, card handling, gift cards and the web store are all part of the same familiar world, and your bookkeeper probably already knows it. Trading that away for a narrower tool only makes sense when the yardage and classroom side of the business is where your money and your mistakes actually live.
How to decide without tearing out your counter
Run one honest test before you switch anything. Pick twenty bolts from your busiest collection wall, write down the measured yardage on each, and compare it to what your current records say four weeks later. If the gap is under a yard across twenty bolts, your process is working and the system is not your problem. If the gap is five or ten yards, that is real inventory value walking off, and it is worth fixing at the record level.
Then count your class side. Add up the sessions you ran last quarter, the seats you filled, and the seats that sat empty because nobody could see the roster on a Tuesday afternoon. Shops that run more than about six sessions a month usually find the classroom side alone justifies the Shop and Classes tier at $99 a month, before the yardage question even enters the argument.
Questions people ask before they choose
Do I have to stop taking payments the way I do now?
No. QuiltCounter records the cut, the seat and the kit, and you keep taking the card on the terminal your shop already uses. At close you reconcile the day totals between the two. Plenty of shops run this way on purpose so nothing about payment handling changes.
How does QuiltCounter handle fat quarters and precut bundles?
As units, because that is what they are. Bolts carry a yardage balance, precuts and notions carry a piece count, and both live in the same stock list. If you cut fat quarters yourself from a bolt, that pull comes off the bolt yardage like any other cut.
Can I move my existing class roster over mid session?
Yes. Sessions already in progress can be entered with the seats already sold, so you do not have to wait for a clean term boundary. Most shops load the current session first, then the next one, and let the older history stay where it is.
Other comparisons on quiltcounter.com
Comparison
QuiltCounter vs Rain Retail
Rain Retail suits an owner who wants the shop, the web store and the class side living in one vendor's platform, while QuiltCounter suits an owner who wants one instrument that is exactly right about yardage.
See the cut land on the bolt
A head to head reads well on paper and settles nothing about a Saturday afternoon at the cutting table. Bring one collection and this quarter's class roster to a demo and watch a two and five eighths yard cut come off the balance while you are looking at it. Half an hour is usually enough to tell whether the narrow instrument or the broad platform belongs in your shop.