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What Is a Point of Sale (POS) System?
A variety of administrative, management, and marketing abilities are required to run a retail store. These abilities are required for your store to run successfully, from ensuring that there is enough inventory to compiling monthly sales statistics.
Having a well-functioning point of sale (POS) system can go a long way toward ensuring that all of your operations run smoothly, and retailers who invest the time and resources to set one up before they need it will reap the rewards. In this article, we talk to two industry professionals about what you need in a POS and how to pick the right one for your retail store or restaurant.
What’s the Point of a Point of Sale (POS) System?
Your customer makes a payment for products or services at your store using a point of sale system, or POS. Simply explained, a customer completes a point of sale transaction every time they make a purchase.
Beyond credit card processing, the latest point of sale software allows businesses and restaurants to add mobile POS features, contactless payment alternatives, ecommerce integration capabilities, and more.
Hardware components of a POS system
These are the most typical physical components needed to set up your POS.
- Monitor/tablet: Displays the product database and allows for other operations like staff clock-in and sales report viewing. Tablets, particularly iPads, are frequently used to replace larger monitors.
- Barcode scanner: The checkout process is automated with the use of a barcode scanner. Scanning barcodes retrieves product information and adds it to the total at checkout. Inventory management systems can use barcode scanners to automatically alter stock levels.
- Credit card reader: Secure and EMV-compliant credit card readers have been a must-have since the EMV payment standard went live in 2015. Non-compliant retailers risk incurring significant damages as a result of fraud liability.
- Receipt printer: While email and text receipts are becoming more popular, paper receipts are still necessary for giving customers a rapid overview of their purchases or returns.
- Cash Drawer: Cash may fade away in the future, but it is still king. You'll need a secure place to store cash for transactions until then. Another advantage using cash is that there are no fees associated with using a credit card.
What to look for when purchasing a point-of-sale system?
Many tasks in a retail establishment can be excruciatingly time-consuming and resource-intensive. Retailers can simplify critical everyday business activities with better proficiency if they use the correct POS system.
When choosing a POS system, retailers and restaurants should check for the following features:
1. Sales Reporting: Most POS systems allow you to look at your sales on the surface. The difference is in the presentation of those figures, the simplicity with which data can be accessed, and the level of detail provided.
- Ideally, your point-of-sale system should be able to: Generate detailed sales reports (based on product, hour, employee, total cost of items sold, total retail amount, net profit, profit percentage, gross margin)
- Get rapid reports and graphs on your store's sales success.
2. Inventory Management: Inventory management is one of the most significant components of a POS system since it keeps track of all products so you know when to order/not order specific products.
Your POS system should enable you to:
- Scan and count products digitally
- Manage your stock by creating product variations (size, color)
- Identify pieces of inventory with a unique serial number
- Track inventory levels across multiple locations
- Enable seamless ordering such as automatically setting custom reorders of best-sellers
- Consolidate purchases and orders in one order
3. Customer Relationship Management: Developing excellent customer relationships will lead to repeat business. To track all customer data, a POS should have customer relationship management (CRM).
Your POS system should give you the ability to:
- Attach a sale/transaction to a customer
- Keep track of your customers’ purchase history
- Capture customer information such as name, age, birthday, phone number and email address
- Use email marketing to keep in touch with customers
- Create a built-in loyalty program (more advanced systems will have this)
4. Employee Reporting and Management: Your staff' performance can make or break your store's business. Having the capacity to create sales goals, as well as knowing who your top performers are and who requires additional coaching, will aid in sales growth.
Your POS system should give you the ability to:
- Add employees to your system
- Create and modify schedules for employees based on forecasted activity.
- Email schedules to employees
- Track employees’ weekly and over-time hours
- Analyze your top performers
We're ready to assist you in your quest for POS software:-
We hope that the information in this post has prepared you to make your POS system as efficient and up-to-date as possible, whether you're a little merchant or run a chain of restaurants. But don't worry, we're not abandoning you to your fate. Here's a list of other resources to help you in your search:
1. Research the most widely used retail point-of-sale systems. For Retail Management, we've produced a list of the best retail POS solutions. These are the POS systems that fellow business owners most frequently recommend due to their ease of use.
2. Fill out a question on retail software. The POS market might be difficult to navigate for first-time purchasers. This simple survey can help you limit down your options for what your company requires.