Ecommerce and Retail
7 Surefire Ways a POS System Will Help Grow Your Retail Business
24 Jan 2018 • 5 min read
It’s a new financial year and business is booming as shoppers scurry to take advantage of sales. Shop managers are busy trying to calculate the right discounts, manage their inventory, and keep in touch with their customers. Who’s got the time to upgrade their cash register to a fully integrated point of sale (POS) system?
The real question is: who doesn’t?
Your current offline cash register might seem like the simplest choice for your POS. After all, what could be easier than tapping in a price and pressing total? But chances are, it’s creating a whole lot of extra administrative work. And that’s taking up time you could better spend helping your current customers or finding new opportunities.
Here’s a list of 7 ways a fully integrated POS system, such as Neto POS, can simplify your sales process and save you time:
With a computer- or tablet-based POS system like Neto POS, you don’t need to worry about typing the wrong price into your register. Depending on what hardware you’ve chosen, all you need to do is scan a stock item or select its thumbnail from your screen, and the correct price from your database will be charged. And you won’t have to figure out discounts on your trusty pocket calculator either, because all good POS systems will let you easily create storewide or single item promotional discounts.
Some customers prefer to pay cash. Others never carry cash around, and always use an EFTPOS or debit card instead. Some prefer to pay by credit card, to take advantage of points offers or interest-free periods. Some like to split their payments across these different methods. A full-featured POS system like Neto POS will give your customers this flexibility to pay by card, cash, or a combination of both.
And don’t forget lay-bys. They’ve fallen out of fashion because of the manual bookkeeping required to set one up and track it. But your POS system will take the hassle out of lay-bys, so it’s easy for customers to sign up, pay their deposit, and make regular payments, while giving you full visibility of their progress.
If you’re using a basic cash register, it’s not helping you manage your inventory. Each time you make a sale, there’s a record of how much the customer spent, but not what they spent it on. So you need to conduct regular stocktakes and manually keep on top of your orders. By upgrading to a POS system with an inventory database, each sale you make will update your current stock levels accordingly, so you know when you need to place your next order.
A full-featured POS system will take it one step further, giving you the analytical tools you need to order stock based on trends. Intuitive ordering and automatic stock updates on Neto POS make overstocking and understocking a thing of the past.
If you’ve got multiple stores or you’re thinking of branching out, you’ve got a lot to gain from switching to a POS system. With an omni-channel POS system, you can run all your physical and online outlets (including web marketplaces, like eBay) from one central location and a single database.
If you’re still growing, a full-featured POS system will help you open an online store to accompany your bricks-and-mortar outlet. Or you can use it to take your online store to markets and roadshows.
Planning to go on a holiday as soon as the new year’s rush is over? A cash register will make it difficult to monitor your business remotely. But with a secure, cloud-based POS system, you can manage your products, customers, staff, suppliers, sales and reporting from anywhere in the world. Well, anywhere with internet access.
Imagine it: you’re lying on the beach, chatting to a new friend about one of the great products you’ve just received in-store. “I’d love to see it,” she says, so you grab your iPad and show her your Neto POS store. And she orders the product immediately and gets it shipped home, because an iPad POS system means everywhere can be your point of sale.
A smart POS system is fully integrated with your accounting package and also handles your orders from suppliers. That means you won’t need to manually enter transactions in your accounting software (or hire a bookkeeper to do it), so you can get it done sooner without worrying about copy-and-paste errors. Who wouldn’t want to get their business activity statement (BAS) in sooner, with a minimum of fuss?
How much do you know about your customers? Which products do they buy online? Which products are most popular in store? How do purchases vary from season to season? Your POS system should take the guesswork out of this, with advanced analytics and reporting to help you make smart business decisions.
You can also use your POS system to collect customer details (with their permission, of course), so you can email them receipts for their purchases or updates about specials offers or birthday promotions.
We've covered off the different ways to branch out into 'real life' retail stores, but have you considered channels like online marketplaces like eBay and Amazon or Mobile Apps? Find out How to Sell Everywhere with our ultimate guide to omni-channel sales and expand your retail empire.
It’s not hard to see how a full-featured omni-channel POS system can help your retail business grow by taking care of the details and freeing up time to focus on your customers. With Neto POS, you can sell to anyone, anywhere, with everything you need to run your business on a single platform. It’s Australia’s first truly integrated omni-channel point of sale solution. Why not start your free trial today?
