POS Software

There are various reasons retailers around the world are now migrating to advanced POS systems. For the first time in history, relatively cheap, high bandwidth connections are available to virtually any store location. There also are simply more POS options — more advanced, and affordable hardware, easy-to-use software — that give retailers new capacity to track, speed up and advance store promotions and sales. So instead of antique DOS or mainframe relay systems running across slow dial-up or satellite connections, high-speed connections are allowing retailers to quickly ring up sales and keep customers moving through. Additionally, those high-speed pipes allow information to quickly travel between the POS systems at retail locations and company headquarters. This gives corporations nearly instantaneous feedback and insight into sales trends, and the ability to quickly react to changes in the retail environment.

Some of these advances stem from lessons learned through e-commerce operations. Developed over the past five to 10 years, e-commerce admittedly makes up a small proportion of retail sales, at just 5.5 percent. But for many mainstream retailers, the sheer mass of those sales can in fact equal that of up to 30 individual locations. Retailers realize that the efficiency gains and customer service operations gleaned through e-commerce improvements can have a massive and positive influence on how changes are made at retail locations. POS is at the heart of these changes.

Before purchasing point of sale software, it is very important to look whether there are any additional modules needed.

Some POS software comes as a application with the basic functionality, and a set of add-on packages to implement features such as loyalty programs, inventory control, credit card payments, etc. Other software comes as an all-in-one package, without ever having to worry about purchasing additional modules. What software is better?

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Today a new point of sale application for the Mac has been announced. Checkout, currently in public beta, brings the beauty of the Apple Macintosh platform to the point of sale.

Aesthetics are very important nowadays, and in some branches the design of the POS systems is just as important as the design of the rest of the store. Though Apple hardware is more expensive than other terminals, it offers design, robustness and ease of use that cannot easily be met by Windows based terminals.

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A feature many people forget when shopping for point of sale software is the loans function. This function is mostly used for more expensive items, which the customer is allowed to take home for some days to try out. Or in fashion, when your customers are shopping for their busy husbands, and want to try these trousers at home.

The loans function allows you to register each loan and have a up-to date inventory of each item that a customer has at home. When the customer returns the item, you can either invoice it when the customer liked the item or put it back in stock when it was not what they were looking for.

A very simple feature, which might make your life a lot easier.

Certain items such as machines, weapons, cars, televisions, etc. bear a unique identifier, the so-called serial number —or nominal number of the numbering is not serial. Serial numbers allow for detailed item tracing throughout the lifespan of the item. Typical Point Of Sale software will show you the purchase history, transfers from one storage location to another, sales history and service history. Often, serial numbers are linked to a batch or lot number that can be use to check warranty dates and related units of the same product.

Some types of items require various serial numbers. Mobile phones are an example of such an item: just as any other electronic device they come with a regular serial number supplied by the manufacturer. Furthermore they have an IMEI or ESN number which is used to identify the device on the telephone network. Check carefully whether your EPOS software supports multiple serial numbers if you are dealing with such items.

A good POS system will request the S/N for each item when totalizing a sale and some even present a list with serial numbers on stock to choose from. From that moment on, that serial number is linked to the customer record and maintained in your system for future reference.

Sales tax is money collected on behalf of the government. It could be Federal, State, County and even City tax. It could become very simple or tedious to manage it. Depending on the service or good sold what taxes have to be collected. Telephone service pays taxes at all levels, federal, state and local (county and/or city), whereas for example groceries will just pay state and/or local.

Based on the complexity of the taxes collected attention must be given to the software selected. Most Point of Sale (POS) software cannot handle multiple sales taxes. All the percentage must be added up and then defined one Sales tax that will cover all. Some will allow discriminating if the POS software is integrated with an Accounting package, in the case of QuickBooks POS.

Source: 1-StepTechnology

Sometimes you want to sell some items packaged together instead of separately. Such a package is usually called a kit in your Point of Sale software, or a Bill Of Materials if the package is the result of a manufacturing process.

Normally, kits appear in your software just as any other item, and can have a price independently of the sales price of the individual component. Of course the software calculates the costs of the kit based on the sum of the costs of the components. In the properties of the kit, you can specify which items are part of the kit, and how many units of each item are included. Sometimes you can even include kits as a component of another kit. The latter comes in handy in food processing, where for example you pre-prepare the pizza foundation using flour, yeast, milk,… and after that use the foundation as one of the components of the final pizza. You might also see such layered kits in the computer shop, that bundles a printer with the corresponding printer cable, and might want to offer a complete set containing a PC, monitor and printer (including the cable) for a special price.

A handy trick is to add the time needed to physically create the kit as one of the components of the kit, so the costs of the kit reflect the real costs. The software usually allows for modifications in the bill of materials when finishing the work order to reflect breakage and variations. If you fill in the actual time needed to create the kit, the POS system will calculate very precise margins on each sale!

Loyalty Lab releases Loyalty 2.0, a new product to help grocery stores and specialty retailers replace their outdated first-generation loyalty programs. Loyalty 2.0 is designed to help marketers leveraging their reams of unused transactional data to launch new initiatives such as targeted e-mail, sweepstakes, sub-clubs and personalized Web-based communications.

By Jerry Wilson

The History of Hand Held Terminals in Restaurants

The desire for restaurant hand held terminals and wireless restaurant software has been around since the invention of the electronic cash registers in the 1980’s. When restaurateurs saw the power of the electronic cash register how it stored and recalled orders, how it dispersed orders to various kitchen and preparation printers and how it helped control the flow of the restaurant the desire to have this power in the palm of your hand has been there. It is only recently that technology caught up to the demand.

In the 1990’s a couple of companies introduced hand held terminals to restaurants with limited success. Displays were small and therefore limited menu items. Battery life was short and limited use. But the demand was still there because the tremendous benefits to the restaurant owner.

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