Cigarette Sales and Inventory Management System      

The CigSAFE™ system is a complete Inventory and Sales Management solution for cigarette retailers.  Up-front stock is securely stored in the locked Automatic Dispensing Machine (ADM).  A PC/Touchscreen presents the clerk with a visual of all brands.  Touching the color image of the desired product pops up a numeric keypad for the clerk to select a quantity to sell.  The clerk touches the Dispense button on the screen and the requested products are dispensed.  The CigTRAX™ software keeps track of every transaction on every shift, insuring that inventory slippage is non-existent.  Cigsafe™ is a unique tobacco dispensing system for use by tobacco retailers.

Tobacco retailers face many challenges with the sale of tobacco products.  A typical retailer such as a convenience store, drug store or supermarket must prevent theft by employees and customers.  Retailers must prevent access to tobacco by minors and prevent improper sales.  Tobacco inventory is unique for retailers because it represents a relatively large and valuable inventory with many different SKUs, and is therefore difficult to manage. CigSAFE™ provides the solution to these problems.

Cigsafe™ is an electronically controlled dispensing cabinet which is locked and accessible only to designated personnel.  The personnel will stock the cabinet by adding product to individual chambers.  Each item will then free fall from its chamber when dispensed by an operator, such as a store clerk.  Product released from the cabinet will be tracked electronically, providing a record to accompany the corresponding sales transaction. 

CigSAFE™ is a revolutionary system of tobacco product control.  Never before have retailers been able to manage tobacco by having inventory physically locked, yet available for sale. Moreover, retailers will track the actual products released from the cabinet, tracking inventory from vendor to customer with CigTRAX™ real-time control software.

CigTRAX™ also tracks "backroom" inventory and the software can be configured to receive SKUs to the backroom and then transfer them as needed to an ADM or ADMs.  The Backroom is capable of tracking 200 distinct SKUs.  The ADMs are capable of tracking 72 distinct SKUs per machine.  Each ADM is custom configurable.  You may wish to assign a fast-selling SKU to multiple columns (bins).  You can even assign the same SKU to multiple bins across multiple ADMs for a high volume outlet.  The CigTRAX™ software keeps an accurate perpetual inventory at retail by bin and by SKU.  Inventory reports are available on-demand and the Sales screen gives you a real-time stock status of each SKU as it is selected for sale, alerting a sales clerk if the inventory is getting low.  Another on-demand report prints a suggested restocking report based on the current inventory and a minimum stock level set by management.

In addition to tracking sales/inventory, the software records every event that has occurred on the machine.  Events are management control data such as price changes, unlock/lock of the ADM's doors, changes to SKUs, user permission changes, shift changes, system shutdowns, etc.  All transactions are tagged with the date/time of the transaction, the current user, and other information pertaining to the event.  Click on the REPORTS tab at the left of this screen for a complete description of many of the reports available.

Sell-Trax understands that c-store employees are very busy attending to customers so we have designed the software to be as easy, flexible, and efficient as possible.  Restocking or even reconfiguring an ADM to accommodate more bins for the storage of fast selling SKUs can be accomplished in just a few minutes, with very little disruption.  We have even provided for a "variation" transaction in case a customer buys a pack of cigarettes directly from the ADM while a clerk is restocking.  The end of shift inventory report is as simple as touching the screen and removing the report from the printer.

The CigTRAX™ software also helps to maintain fully-rotated stock by employing an ejection algorithm that selects a pack from the bin containing the most inventory, and in the case of multiple packs it will eject on a round-robin basis, selecting a pack from each bin containing the selected SKU (even spanning ADMs) until the requested quantity is fulfilled.

The CigTRAX™ database contains over 600 US and Canadian brands/flavors along with full color images of the products.  The retailer need only select the brand/flavor sold, assign it to a bin or bins, set the retail price, receive the product and start selling.