Overview: Retail Pro 9 is notoriously slow, especially for retailers with large databases. Here is Retail IQ’s approach to getting Retail Pro 9 to run as quickly as possible.
1. Server maintenance – this is already handled on a nightly basis on every server – the database is tuned/reindexed, etc., although planned reboots should occur more (as of September 2025).
2. Run local clients on POS and Back Office PCs – we’ve seen this setup, as opposed to using mapped drives or UNC paths to run Retail Pro’s RPRO9.exe right from the server, is a more stable and faster setup (even though it requires more setup up front)
3. Remove unused Plugins from every \RetailPro9\Plugins folder – No Retail IQ clients use any OPOS drivers, and when you couple that with lots of other unused files, the loading time for Retail Pro can speed up. Here are the files typically left in the Plugins folder for any particular Retail IQ client running Retail Pro 9 (although clients with custom programs will have additional fields in here so be careful what you delete!):
4. Probably THE MOST effective way to speed up navigation in Retail Pro is for users to change their Default Date to be a smaller date range in various Retail Pro areas:
a. Receipts (45 days ago or less - including today)
b. Slips (45 days ago or less - including today)
c. Vouchers (45 days ago or less - including today)
d. POs, TOs and SOs(depends on client, but not undefined if there are a lot of active documents in that area)
Steps to follow: On EACH COMPUTER, EACH ASSOCIATE must log into Retail Pro 9 and manually change the date range FOR EACH AREA within Retail Pro. Although this is a pain to follow, once it is set it becomes the default until they change it again. So the users must remember that if they have to change the date range, they should change it back once they are done.
What results is less data being loaded as results when you go into those areas. Furthermore, users can see a drastic speed increase when updating a receipt in RP9!
5. Ensure PCs are running on LAN and not Wifi whenever possible and LAN connections should all be gigabit connections.