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You’re in the middle of cutting 10 yards of batik for a quilter when another customer asks about class enrollment. Your phone buzzes with a text from your bookkeeper asking about this week’s sales numbers. And somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re wondering if you ordered enough flannel for the holiday rush.
Welcome to Tuesday at a fabric store.
Running a fabric store means juggling a hundred details at once. You need answers fast — while you’re helping customers, teaching classes, or making inventory decisions. But most point of sale (POS) systems bury the information you need under layers of reports and screens.
In this blog, we’ll look at five ways real-time POS dashboards solve everyday information problems for fabric store owners. You’ll see how having key data at your fingertips changes how you run your store.
Let’s jump in.
How Your Dashboard Supports Smarter Store Decisions
Instead of clicking through reports or guessing, your dashboard shows you what’s happening in your store right now — all in one place.
1. You See Sales Performance in Real Time
You need yesterday’s sales numbers to project this week’s cash flow. You log into your POS, navigate to reports, select the date range, run the report, and hope it shows what you need. 15 minutes later, you finally have an answer. Meanwhile, three customers have been waiting for assistance.
Sales performance at a glance:
- Daily sales versus your target goals
- Week-to-date performance
- How today compares to the same day last week or last year
- Whether you’re on track to cover upcoming bills and inventory orders
With a POS dashboard: Your sales automatically update as transactions happen. Look at your phone at 2 p.m., and you know exactly where you stand. If you’re behind your daily goal, you have time to push specific products or adjust your approach before the day ends. No logging in, no running reports, no waiting — just the number you need when you need it.
2. You Answer Customer Questions on the Spot
It’s Saturday afternoon, and you’re alone on the sales floor. A customer asks if you have more of a specific batik print in the back. You can’t leave her standing there while you dig through inventory or log into a system to check. You make your best guess and hope you’re right. If you’re wrong, you either lose the sale or disappoint someone who came in specifically for that fabric.
Inventory status at a glance:
- Real-time inventory counts for specific fabrics
- What’s on order and when it’s arriving
- Which prints are running low and need reordering
- Seasonal inventory performance — what’s moving and what’s not
With dashboard access: Pull out your phone while your customer browses. Glance at the screen and see that you have two yards left in stock and six more arriving Tuesday. Give her accurate information and either make the sale now or schedule her to come back. Mobile access means you never have to leave the floor or make customers wait while you hunt for answers. All pertinent information should be visible at a glance or with minimal clicks.
Related Read: 10 Trending Fabrics To Stock in Your Sewing Store
3. You Know Which Classes To Promote — and Which To Cancel
Your beginner quilting class starts in three weeks. You think you have eight people signed up, but you’re not sure. You need 10 to make it profitable. Should you promote it harder? Cancel it? You’d have to log into your class management system to find out, and honestly, you keep forgetting to check until it’s too late to do anything about it.
Class metrics at a glance:
- Current enrollment for each upcoming class
- Minimum enrollment needed to run profitably
- Which classes fill quickly and which ones struggle
- Class revenue compared with other income streams
With a POS dashboard: Your class enrollment status sits right on your screen or just a few clicks away. You see immediately that you’re at eight out of 10 students needed. That’s actionable information. You can send a promotional email, post on social media, or mention it to customers who fit the profile. When enrollment hits 11, you know to close registration. No more guessing, no more last-minute scrambles.
4. You Place Confident Supplier Orders Based on Data
You’re placing an order with your fabric supplier and trying to remember which prints sold well last season. You know those teal florals moved fast, but did you sell six bolts or 16? Without solid data, you’re guessing. Order too little, and you miss sales when customers ask for them. Order too much, and cash gets tied up in inventory that sits on your shelves for months.
Ordering data at a glance:
- Top-selling fabrics by category, vendor, or collection
- Sales trends over time (for example, are flannel sales up this year?)
- Which prints consistently perform versus which ones were one-hit wonders
- Seasonal patterns to help you anticipate demand
From your POS dashboard: Check your screen before you order. See that flannel sales are up 40% from this time last year and which specific prints drove that trend. Adjust your order to stock more of what’s actually selling. Your decisions are grounded in facts, not memory — which means better cash flow and happier customers.
Related Read: How To Stock Your Quilt Store: 10 Best Fabric Wholesale Manufacturers
5. You Generate Monthly Reports in Minutes
Your accountant needs numbers. Your business loan requires monthly reporting. Or you just want to understand how you’re doing. You pull reports from your POS, export spreadsheets, and try to reconcile different data sources. Three hours later, you’re still not sure you have everything right. And you definitely don’t have time to actually analyze what the numbers mean.
Monthly reporting at a glance:
- Total sales for the month
- Sales by category (fabric versus classes versus notions)
- Top performers and underperformers
- How this month compares with last month and last year
- Customer traffic patterns
With a POS dashboard: Open your monthly view and everything’s already organized — sales trends, top performers, class revenue, all in one place. Send the summary to your bookkeeper and move on with your day. Instead of spending hours compiling data, you spend five minutes reviewing it. That gives you valuable time to think about what the numbers mean and what you want to do differently next month.
Make Your Dashboard Work for Your Store With Like Sew
Not every fabric store cares about the same metrics. Your dashboard should reflect your priorities.
If you run a lot of classes, you want enrollment and class revenue front and center. If you focus on online sales alongside your physical store, you need both channels visible in a single view. If you work heavily with guilds and groups, tracking those special orders separately makes sense.
Like Sew is a POS system built specifically for fabric stores. It gives you a customizable dashboard based on how you actually run your business. The default view shows you the big picture instantly, and you can dig deeper when needed.
Many fabric store owners run their businesses on instinct, and that experience is valuable. But instinct combined with good data is even better. A dashboard confirms what you suspect, reveals what you might be missing, and supports your judgment with information you can act on.
The goal isn’t to turn you into a data analyst. The goal is to help you make decisions quickly and get back to helping customers. Ready to see how Like Sew works for your store? Build and Price your system today.
