You’ve probably heard about “POS Systems” before, but maybe you’re not sure exactly what they do or the impact they can have on small and large businesses alike. The modern POS system has swept the global markets, making the checkout process for thousands of merchants globally more efficient and streamlining other important areas of the business itself. POS systems come with many great tools to help you get the most out of the service. Here is a beginner’s guide on how to use POS systems.
More Than Just a Cash Register
The days of the stationary cash register are on their way out thanks to the modern POS system. Besides offering a place to exchange money and swipe credit cards, POS systems have many tools to help run your business, including (but not limited to):
- Employee tracking and time card tools
- Inventory management tools
- Customer profile tools
- Marketing tools
Can your old cash register do all of that and process currency? Probably not! That’s why POS systems are in such high demand, both for small business owners and large corporations. POS systems help streamline expenses and make the checkout process more efficient (and eliminate those long lines).
Real-Time Inventory Tracking
If you’ve ever had to perform a manual inventory count, you were probably ready to pull your hair out by the end of it. The process is tedious, boring, and can be frustrating when you miss an item or someone else messes up the count the next day.
An error in inventory can mean all kinds of issues for your business; from missing products to inability to address loss prevention. Keeping track of your inventory is vital to keeping costs down and ensuring that your products are accounted for. What happens if you have to issue a recall, but your inventory counts were wrong? Now you’re actually putting the entire business at risk!
With modern POS systems, inventory tracking is performed easily and efficiently. Your POS system will track inventory in real-time, automatically updating counts and tracking all of your products. While you’ll certainly have to manually input new numbers when you receive shipments, other than that, everything is completed within the software itself.
Having products on hand means happy customers as well. With accurate inventory counts, you can be sure that best-selling items and favorites are always in stock to keep your customers satisfied. Most POS systems will even send notifications when stock is low, and you can link certain software with your ordering system for automatic re-orders!
Customer Profiles
What’s one of the most important factors of improving sales and growing your business? Knowing your customers, of course! What better way to get to know your customer than by creating a profile for them right inside your POS system?
POS systems come with tools that allow you to collect personal information such as name, email, addresses, phone numbers, etc, on your customers. This allows for more customized marketing efforts, better communication with your customer base, and an overall improvement in customer-vendor interactions.
When you know your customers, you can better plan sales, promotions, and marketing efforts. Even getting to know a customer on a first-name-basis can be incredibly beneficial when attempting to market to them. Even a simple “good morning, Jane” can go a long way in making your customers feel more welcomed and appreciated.
Customer profiles also help you track spending habits, so you’ll know exactly what customers are purchasing. Using this great tool, you’ll be able to better stock best-selling products, and perhaps even eliminate products that don’t sell very well.
You customer’s profile will also act as a purchase log, so when receipts are misplaced, you can go directly into the customer profile and see what they purchased and when. This is a far cry from the days of requiring printed receipts and searching by credit card number or date for transactions.
Keeping Employees Performing at Their Best
Tracking employees is probably the last thing any business owner wants to do on a daily basis, but sadly this is an important part of keeping your business running efficiently. Employees can be a huge asset or major liability, depending on how reliable and effective they are at their jobs.
Modern POS systems often come with tools that can help you track employee time cards, performance, and break times. If you’re noticing certain employees showing up late all the time, you can easily check their time swipes from your POS software, and make an informed decision on appropriate action.
Likewise, certain POS systems have tracking tools to monitor employee sales goals. If your employees aren’t meeting quotas, it’s important to know why and to encourage them to do better. This is a much simpler task when there’s real data behind your suspicion.
Making your employees more effective workers will help create a better environment for customers, as well as streamline one of your business’s largest costs: labor. Labor costs can be incredibly high, and if you’re managing employees that aren’t meeting goals and expectations, the overall cost can be even higher. Keep employees performing at their best by using POS software.
Conclusion
POS systems have come a long way in the past two decades; from stationary cash registers to portable, high-powered all-in-one business-enhancing machines. With all of these great tools and extras, it’s easy to see why many businesses are switching to modern POS systems.
