No matter what type of company you own or what type of product you sell, if you have paying customers, you need a POS system. If you do not have a POS system, you could be missing out on cost savings and opportunities to streamline your business, improve your customer service and expand your operations.
If you doubt the value of a POS system, just consider these top 6 advantages.
#1. Accurate Sales Tracking Without a POS system, you are at the mercy of paper records -- or worse, the memory of your sales clerks -- to determine what was sold and how much is left in your inventory. Installing a POS system means all sales, be they consignment items, custom orders, charge accounts, layaways or standard transactions, are recorded accurately and stored for future analysis.
#2. Easily Handling of Discounts and Markdowns Customers love a bargain, and there is nothing like a good sale to draw them through your doors. If you mark an item on the floor at 30%, it better ring up that way. Without a POS system, it is easy to miss a markdown, and that could leave your customers disgruntled.
With a POS system, all you need to do is enter the SKU and the discount. Everything else is taken care of, and when your employees ring up the order your customers get the discount they deserve. You can even program your POS system to offer special discounts for a set period of time. That allows you to run frequent sales and specials, drawing in more customers and encouraging on-time customers to become loyal shoppers.
#3. Better Tracking of Promotions Running ads and placing coupons in the local newspapers is still an excellent way for retailers to build interest and bring in new customers. Without a POS system, your sales staff will need to manually enter every coupon and keep track of all applicable discounts. That is time-consuming, and the manual data entry is error-prone as well.
A POS system automates the entire process and eliminates the potential for keying errors. With a POS system in place, the clerk can simply scan the coupon. Customers get their discount and walk away happy, and you can see how many products your promotion helped sell. POS systems are also valuable tools for one-time promotions like sidewalk sales, customer appreciation days and other special events.
#4. Valuable Reporting No matter what products you sell, you need to keep track of what is moving and what is sitting on the shelf. Without a POS system, you will need to conduct a painstaking inventory of products and carefully compare that list to your orders. A simple inventory could take a day or more to complete, and that could mean closing the store and losing out on potential sales.
With a POS system in place, accurate information on product sales and inventory levels is only a click away. With a click of a mouse or the press of a printer key, you can access detailed reports on every product you sell, including daily, weekly and monthly sales volumes, current inventory levels, order status and profit margins.
#5. Extra Features Most modern POS systems include plenty of extras designed to make your life even easier and your business even more profitable. If you buy a POS system, you can enjoy features like e-receipts, full e-commerce integration and even scales for weighing loose items like chocolates and fudge. If you sell food items, a POS system is a must for accurate inventory tracking and customer billing. You can even use your POS system to capture customer email addresses for use in future marketing campaigns.
#6. Better Inventory Control Keeping track of inventory is one of the hardest jobs in any retail environment. A manual inventory can take hours or even days and interrupt your business in the process. Computerized inventory systems are good, but they have their limitations as well.
A POS system can completely eliminate the need for manual counts and standard inventory counts. By integrating all aspects of the sale, the POS system automatically updates your inventory every time a product is sold. That makes everything from order and profit tracking to ordering a lot easier. You can run a report at the end of each day, identify items that need to be ordered, and place the order before you leave for the day. Even better, you can have the POS system order for you through automated scripts and target inventory levels.
As you can see, the reasons for installing a POS system are quite compelling. If you think your business cannot afford a POS system, think again. In the modern world of retail, you cannot afford not to have a POS system in your business.
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