Looking for a point of sale system is a critical challenge. A Cash Register will allow you to ring through sales but today your POS needs to do much more than that. What are the key features that you need to run your business? If you’re new to the POS world here are Point of Sale Must Haves.
Inventory Control
Your POS must easily allow you to:
– See the inventory you have whether you run one store or many stores. With multiple stores this is even more important in helping you balance inventory
– Create purchase orders to track what is coming and when
– Receive stock and tag it. Tags make inventory control easy
– Categorize your products by departments or classifications, and by suppliers. This allows you to analyse these group’s product performance
Reports
Without easy to use reports your point of sale is a real “POS”. You could just use a cash register.
– You can analyze sales by vendors/suppliers, by category, by brand and by item
– You can analyze inventory by supplier, by category
– You can see sales, receiving, ordering and OH with quantity, cost and retail values
– You can create financial reports for paying taxes
Customer Database
To help you engage with your customers more effectively a POS should:
– Track customer sales
– Gather email and phone number information
– Gather actionable information: favorite brand, husband/wife’s name, birthday etc.
– Export data or directly connect your customer information with email software to make engaging your customer base easy
Other considerations
Growth: If you are 1 store today and plan on growing to 50 by next year you need a point of sale that can handle your needs.
Loyalty: loyalty programs can be an important part of engaging with your customers. Understand what you want to accomplish in your loyalty program when looking at what a POS has to offer
Ecommerce: to do it right can be the same cost as opening a bricks and mortar store. If you plan on selling items online your POS should have a connection to popular ecommerce sites.
Easy: if the point of sale is difficult to use then it will not be useful. Processing sales, inventory control and customer engagement should all be straightforward because there are only so many minutes in a day. Retailers wear 99 hats and so time is precious.
POS Company: Does your POS provider have experience in matching their great software with a Retail environment? Can they train you? Does your POS provider have great customer relationships? Does your POS provider have the infrastructure/ability to support you?
Contact our team today – we’re here for you!
Team CRS
