Few purchases can have as dramatic an effect on your retail or hospitality business as a point of sale (POS) system. Let our Point Of Sale experts teach you how you can increase your profits and get control of your business.
Take Control of Your Business
Using the right POS system will provide a new level of control over your operations, increasing efficiency, boosting profits, and helping you fine-tune your business model. The wrong choice of system, however, is like wasting valuable time and money for your business, it can even be the cause of frustration.
In other terms, a POS system is a glorified cash register. The most basic POS system that consists of a computer, a cash drawer, receipt printer, and an input device such as a keyboard or scanner. In addition to being more efficient than cash registers, POS systems creates detailed reports which gives you all the information you will need to learn your weaknesses and make future plans for your business’ success.
A POS system can save you a great amount of money, increase your profits, and lesses the amount of time you spend on each business plans you have in mind.
Saving more money, gain more control over your business, and be more productive; sounds like a pretty neat combination, right? Well here are some of the best ways a modern point of sale (POS) system can help you out.
Reducing shrinkage
A computerized point of sale system can drastically cut down on shrinkage, due to theft, waste and misuse of your employees. And since your employees will know that inventory is being tracked, internal shrinkage will diminish.
Accuracy
Using a POS system, you are assured of selling the correct price on any item in your store or on your menu. Your staff will no longer have to guess the price of an item, and you can change prices with just one tweak in the computer.
Get better margins
With a detailed sales report, you can focus more on the higher-margin items. By moving items within a retail location, or promoting poor-performing foods in a restaurant, you can help boost sales of well performing items.
Knowing your stats
At any point of the day, a POS system can instantly tell you how many of a particular product have you sold today (or last week, or last month), how much money you have in your cash drawer, and how much of that money is profit.
Manage inventory better
Detailed sales reports make it much easier for you to keep the right stock on hand. Track your remaining inventory, spot sales trends, and use historical data to better forecast your needs. Your POS software can be set to alert you when when stocks run low so you can reorder for them. Many store owners who think they know exactly what trends affect them find a couple of surprises once they have this data.
Building a customer list
Gather names and address of your regular customers, you might never know when they’ll come in handy! You can use it for targeted advertising or incentive programs.
Reduce paperwork
The time you spend on doing inventory, sales figures, and other repetitive but important paperworks can be lessen by using a POS system. It can provide you both time and peace of mind.
More efficient transactions
In retail settings, barcode scanners and other POS features make checkout much, much faster. And since POS systems greatly streamline ordering process, orders from the dining room is quick and accurately relayed to the kitchen. In both cases, you’ll be making your customers happier with a faster and more accurate service.
Keep in mind that realizing these benefits requires a commitment to utilizing the POS system capabilities to their fullest. Without proper training and analysis, even the most sophisticated POS system will be nothing more than a regular cash register.
Retail needs vs. Hospitality needs
You have to remember that the POS market is divided into two segments which requires different needs: restaurants, bars, and hotels and other retail operations and hospitality businesses.
Retail
Of the two above, retails are the ones who uses simpler POS. They process transaction all at once and use less variation in the items they sell. Because there are some POS features retailers that specifically want to include the ability to support kits (e.g. 3 for deals), returns and exchanges, and support for digital scales. But if your business sells items in a variety of styles like clothes, then you might need a POS system that supports matrixes. As an example, matrixes ables yout to create one inventory and price entry for a particular sweater, but can still track sales according to size and color of the sweater.
Hospitality
Depending on the type of establishment, restaurants and other hospitality businesses have different requirements from POS systems.
Efficiency is the key focus for casual restaurants. For sub shops and other retail-style restaurants, a POS system can greatly increase accuracy and cut down on time-per-transaction unlike with hastily-scrawled order tabs sent to the kitchen. For quick-service restaurants, POS systems are practically a requirement for living up to their name: a customers’ order is entered on the terminal at the front which sends the order and displays them on a monitor at the kitchen where the order is assembled and delivered to the appropriate customer.
For fine dining restaurants, point of sale requires a bit different. They need to know which waiter is handling which table, and being able to create and store open checks. With better management, comes better gains from improved efficiency. If a restaurant with 20 tables and an average check of can increase turnover by one party per table, that would be an extra 0 on one busy night.
Return of Investment (ROI)
Switching from your old system to a computerized POS system can be difficult. There are several factors that needs to be considered and pitfalls to avoid. However the return on investment and benefits to your business can really make it worth your time and effort.
Need more information or an online resource?
Go to POS-For-Restaurants.com
The author of this article is the Vice-President of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants with over 20 years of experience serving restaurants of all types throughout the U.S.