Review: Quick Sale for iPad

If you’re having difficulty understanding the readiness for mobile platforms, like the iPad, to bring value-added solutions to business, you need look no further than Quick Sale for iPad.

This app, available on both iPhone and iPad platforms and a free download from the Apple iTunes App Store, should serve as a wakeup call for business technology providers who haven’t yet grasped the full speed of IT’s transition to mobile platforms.

Produced by a company called IntelliXense, Quick Sale for iPad can serve as both a Point of Sale (POS) solution, an inventory solution and/or a CRM solution – all for the cost and time expense of a free download.

While investments made by a business or enterprise in other, commercial solutions won’t be displaced by Quick Sale for iPad, this piece of software serves as a powerful demonstration of how far iOS apps have come in even less than a year.

Here are five features that demonstrate why Quick Sale for iPad is an example of business-ready features on a mobile platform that didn’t exist a year ago:

• Including download and installation time, custom invoices and inventory lists can be created in less than 10 minutes;

• Quick Sale allows for quick emailing of invoices to customers right from the app, with just a few taps to configure email information;

• The app comes with a “demo” account, to provide a quick tutorial in the functions, features and capabilities of Quick Sale for iPad;

• The menu bar at the top of the app allows for one-button viewing of Invoice history (both paid and unpaid), available inventory on a product-by-product basis; and current invoices currently in the works.

• Support for Inner Fence credit card terminals – POS add-ons for iPhones, iPads and Macs – that extend a device’s capability to card-swiping.

Yet for all of these features, the free version of Quick Sale for iPad comes without support for printing (which could be a deal-killer), the ability to PDF invoice and inventory information, or the ability to restore data if a device is lost or broken.

However, if the free app whets the appetite, IntelliXense sells two different types of upgrades for the app: a $14.99 Quick Sale Pro version, which includes the ability to create custom PDF invoices with logos, backup and restore from iTunes, add additional data fields, and printing support; a $29.99 upgrade to Quick Sale Premium also includes the ability to support multiple companies (the other versions only support one company’s data), inventory data export/import, and more custom data fields including Shipping Address, PO, terms, shipping choices, and more.

From a security standpoint, there may be concerns by large organizations of data loss once a device is lost. It’s worth noting, though, that Apple has built in device geo-location into both iPads and iPhones via its MobileMe application, and data can also be wiped remotely if a device is lost.

Quick Sale for iPad may not be the answer for most business’ invoicing and inventory needs, but it can certainly fit nicely into a small business or on-the-fly needs. And it certainly should get the attention of solution providers who have, until now, not been paying all that much attention to facets of IT that until now have been the province of the server-PC world.