Select a Point of Sale (POS) System to Fit Your Business
Selecting the right point-of-sale (POS) system can have a dramatic effect on your retail or hospitality business, will giving you a new level of control over your operations by increasing efficiency, boosting profits, and helping you fine-tune your business model. In addition to being more efficient than cash registers, POS systems can create detailed reports that can help you make more informed business decisions.
Consider your needs and find out what we have to offer when you are ready switching from a traditional cash register to a computerized POS system. We assure you that the return on investment and benefits to your business will be so beneficial, and you'll be glad that you made such a time, effort and investment.
The POS system market has two primary types of customers:
Retail operations: such as Grocery stores, Coffee shops, Gift shops, Dry cleaners, Convenience stores, Beauty salons, Bakeries and many more.
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Grocery Store |
Gift Shop |
- Retail POS system customers: Retailers have simpler POS system needs than hospitality businesses because they complete transactions at once and often have little product variation. Some POS system features retailers may want include the ability to support kits (for example, three for $2 deals), returns and exchanges, and support for digital scales. Your retail POS system will need to support matrix's if you sell items that come in a variety of styles, such as clothing or shoes. Matrix's let you create one inventory and price entry for a particular item, such as a sweater, but still track sales according to size and color.
Hospitality operations: such as restaurants, bars, Clubs and hotels.
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Restaurant |
Bars |
- Restaurant POS system customers:
Restaurants and other hospitality businesses have different POS system requirements. Casual restaurants focus on efficiency. Retailers restaurants such as sub shops use restaurant POS systems to relay orders, cutting down on time-per-transaction and reducing errors that can occur when passing hastily-scrawled orders back to the kitchen. In quick-service restaurants, employees take orders on terminals in the front, which automatically display on monitors in the food preparation area so that food can be quickly assembled and delivered to the customer. For table-service restaurants and fine dining, POS systems need to create and store open checks, as parties order more over time, as well as track which server is responsible for which table.
A computerized POS system for restaurant can provide significant returns if your retail or hospitality business has annual revenues of $500,000 and up.
For example, if a restaurant with 20 tables and an average check of $45 can increase turnover by one party per table, it'll make an extra $900 on a busy night.
Below the $500,000 level, an electronic cash register can probably meet your needs, unless you want the great features of a POS system, or maybe consider it as an investment that can boost efficiency starting on opening day.
- Save money with a POS system:
A computerized point of sale system can cut down on shrinkage (the inventory that disappears from your store or restaurant) due to theft, waste, and misuse. It can also ensure that every item in your store or on your menu sells for the correct price and generate detailed sales reports that can help you focus on higher-margin items.
- Get more information with a POS system:
Know where you stand at any point of the day. A POS system can instantly tell you how many of a particular product have 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. Detailed sales reports make it much easier for you to keep the right stock on hand. Track inventory, spot sales trends, and use historical data to better forecast your needs. Often, POS software can alert you to reorder when stock runs low. Plus, it allows you to collect the names and addresses of your best customers as part of standard transactions, which you can then use for targeted advertising and incentive programs.
- Increase productivity with a POS system:
POS systems can dramatically reduce the time you have to spend doing inventory, sales figures, calculating profit margin, printing price tag, creating purchase order and other repetitive but important paperwork. The savings here are Time and peace of mind.
In retail settings, barcode scanners and other POS features make checkout faster. Restaurants will find their order process greatly streamlined as orders are relayed automatically to the kitchen from the dining room. In both cases, your customers get faster, more accurate service and you will have a greater Bottom Line.
