A POS system is an effective way to help manage your business. Most retailers or restaurant establishments will have a point-of-sale system in place to help manage business operations. It’s great for small businesses and those that are scaling up from humble beginnings.
There are a variety of tasks that a POS system can assist your employees with, and is a great tool for providing a seamless experience for your customers.
With current POS system technology, they’re incredibly easy to use and user-friendly for all those who’ll come into contact with one. In this article, we’ll look at how POS systems can benefit your organization if you’ve yet to incorporate them into your business. We’ll explore how they can be applied to your own business to help run everything efficiently and with much success.
What are POS systems?
Point-of-sale or POS for short are systems that provide a point of purchase for your customers. Whether they’re looking to pick out an item from your store to checking out items at the checkout counter, this is where they’ll meet the point of sale.
These POS systems are made up of hardware and software that you’ll purchase as a collective and will typically vary from one business to another. They’re a system that can fit around your company’s needs, whether you’re an independent boutique clothes store to a local coffee shop.
As an industry, the POS software market is forecast to grow, reaching a whopping 42.5 billion in US dollars by 2027. It’s a system that is used by many businesses nowadays and therefore is a must-have for any that don’t yet have it in place.
Typical features of a POS system
There are some key features that are common amongst most POS systems on the market. Here are some of those features that you should be looking out for when it comes to shopping for a point-of-sale system.
- Invoicing – This includes transactions of products sold, and any orders that may have been taken in-store. Other features can include supplier purchases and repairs for customers who need this service.
- Order management – Products can be put aside sometimes for customers to purchase when they arrive. These systems help with order management both for your customers and to the suppliers that deliver your products.
- Inventory management – Supply and demand is something that needs to be maintained in order to satisfy your customers. POS systems help effectively manage your inventory levels so that you never run out of what you need.
- Reporting and data collection – Having access to sales data and generating reports can be a great way of assessing business performance. A POS system helpfully collects this information and many of them integrate with various software that creates detailed reports.
- Multi-store management – With businesses that own multiple stores in different locations, the POS system can help manage all of them from one centralized place. No need to go back and forth to the physical locations when you can access it all from the POS system itself.
How to use POS systems to manage your business
Using a POS system to manage your business is a game-changer. It can help in a variety of ways whether that’s assisting with your finances to managing stock levels effectively and reducing dead stock. Here are some ways that you can use POS systems to manage your business this year.
1. Clean up and organize your inventory with Lightspeed
Lightspeed is an effective POS system that can help whip your inventory database into shape and provide management solutions that deliver the data needed. With that data, you can make better-informed decisions on how much stock you require and what you need to avoid restocking in the future.
One of the great things about a POS system is its ability to clean up and organize your inventory. With good inventory management in place, you’ll be able to understand exactly what products are needed and gain insight into how some products may be selling well and some that you may want to reconsider stocking in the future.
To run a business successfully, you want to deliver quality sales that satisfy your customers and don’t leave you with a significant amount of dead stock. That dead stock is not only wasteful but it’s money down the drain in most cases.
2. Refine your finances with software integrations
Most small businesses will face some degree of financial challenge when it comes to their business. In fact, 66% of small businesses say they face financial challenges and 43% claim the most prominent challenge is paying operating expenses.
From managing your employee’s payroll to pricing stock and recording sales, it’s important to have a structure or system in place that helps you juggle all your financial plates effectively.
A POS system will likely have some financial tools that can help you with your finance but they’re also great for account software integrations too. Most of these are compatible with some of the biggest accounting software brands like Quickbooks and Xero for example.
Implementing a POS system can automatically sync up the system that processes the purchases and links it with your accounting software. With sales and inventory combined, it makes creating financial reports and tracking your finances, a lot easier.
This can also be a major help for businesses that may be struggling to manage their taxes properly and need a reporting system that can easily churn out an end-of-year or quarterly tax report. Refining your finances has never been easier with a POS system.
3. Providing clarity over payroll and staff costs
Whilst a point-of-sale system is primarily used to take sales and track inventory, it can also be extremely useful for providing clarity over payroll and handling staff costs.
It can help make managing the payroll a lot easier, especially if your business is expanding and there are more people to pay. It can provide useful insights into what budget is required to help pay your suppliers and various other costs.
Many businesses will utilize their POS systems by combining them with their HR system. This can be useful for ensuring all employees are being paid and treated fairly within the workplace. There’s no denying that employee happiness is integral to the business. In fact, only 42% of employees are happy with the rewards and recognition they receive from their employer.
As the face of your business in-store, it’s important to have staff members who want to be there, and having workplace satisfaction will directly influence your customers.
4. Tracking employee activity and performance
Employees are the cogs that keep the business turning day in, day out. It’s essential that you’re tracking your employee activity and the individual performance of each staff member. You may be missing out on certain individuals who aren’t pulling their weight in sales and others that are going above and beyond for the business.
POS systems offer extra features where you can track employee activity, managing who is doing what in the day and how often they’re coming in to work. For managers or supervisors, it’s a great way of having your eyes on all staff members at once. These systems can also help with clocking in and clocking out, ensuring all employees are turning up and leaving on time.
It’s not just about employee performance but that of senior staff and the business itself. If staff members are overworked and underpaid, they’re going to leave. Monitoring staff performance can help make positive changes and provide recognition as and when it’s needed.
5. Create discounts and rewards to improve customer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is a key focus for your business, particularly when you’re trying to create a regular shopper who comes back time and time again.
A great benefit to POS systems is that you can easily create discounts and rewards that help deliver great value for money to your customer. From loyalty cards where the customer works their way up to a freebie or discount to regular in-store promotions. The more value and benefits you can offer, the better experience your customers are likely to have.
By rewarding your customers, they gain their trust in the brand. As a result, they’re likely to come back and spend again because they saved so much last time. Nurturing existing customers into regular shoppers is more important than just securing a one-off transaction.
Implement the services of a POS system for your small business in 2022
POS systems are a modern technology that are delivering the support small to medium-sized businesses require to excel and succeed in the market. Implementing these services is a worthwhile investment that not only helps the business but your staff and customers too.
There are plenty of POS systems out there, so be sure to compare and assess the benefits of each one before making a decision. There’s a point-of-sale system that’s perfect regardless of your budget or the size of your organization.
Author Bio:
Natalie Redman is a freelance writer for many clients across multiple industries. Natalie has two years of copywriting experience. Natalie has a wide range of experience copywriting for web pages for businesses across many industries. She’s also an owner of two blog websites and a Youtube content creator.
