Introduction:
A Point of Sale (POS) is where customers pay payments for their products and services. The retail POS system provides a central solution that manages the entire retail operation of retail stores. It is generally comprised of software and hardware. According to Grand View Research’s Point-of-sale Terminals Market report market for worldwide points of sale, terminals will be $130.91 billion in 2028, with POS and contactless payment terminals highly sought-after due to COVID-19.
Customers and employees communicate regularly with each other via your pos system. This is why selecting the best POS solution can keep your business operating smoothly and helps increase profits. On the opposite, an incorrect POS can have serious long-term effects because it could be challenging to understand and operate, costly, or not have the essential features required to expand with your company.
So, it is essential to have the correct details before you choose. Please read our guide for selecting the best POS system for your store.
Let’s begin with the features you need to be looking to find in the POS part of the retail management software. This section will include the features you’ll need at the point-of-sale counter.
1. Quick keys or product search
The Quick Keys are the shortcuts in the POS system that permit employees to press a single button to access a popularly sold product.
In the meantime, the other catalogs you have is likely to be accessible. Make sure you choose a POS system that allows you to quickly look up or search items when ringing sales. The ideal scenario is that this feature will be right on the screen that sells, so cashiers won’t need to go through a different screen to look up the item they want to look up.
2. Multiple payment methods/split payments
Be creative and go beyond traditional methods of payment like credit and cash. Find a POS that can accept mobile payments. It is also essential to be in a position to split payments for customers who want to spread the cost of their purchase across several gift cards, such as, for example, an Amex or cash.
3. Refunds, returns, and store credit options
A store’s return policy could be crucial to its success since customers are increasingly choosing stores with friendly policies for shoppers.
To achieve this, it is essential to ensure the POS billing software can assist you in developing the best Return policy in your shop by offering you various options for returning items for refunds and store credit.
4. Permissions and user accounts
If you’re not a single-person business, likely multiple employees are working your registers. It is essential to have an application that allows you to create an account for each of them to monitor the number of sales each person earns. This feature can ultimately help you establish sales goals (or determine if one of your employees may be insincere). Also, select the system that allows you to protect your password for each user and give you the option to choose whether you would like to enable an account for every sale they make.
This is, obviously, contingent on how your store is managed. For instance, in large-scale stores such as Target, employees log into the register once and actively works at the counter. This is because the employees are at a record for the duration of their work shift. While at mall stores, employees are logged in at every sale because they’re required to step away from their desks after a deal has ended.
5. Mobile Registers
The digital age is here, and you cannot afford not to possess mobile registers in this day and age. You’ll most likely want to search for an online POS system with a mobile application to operate the software from mobile phones (such as the iPad).
Mobile registers are great because they let you ring any time within the store to avoid waiting in line. They can also be taken to the go and set up pop-up shops! If you decide not to remove your registers from behind a desk, tablets are a lot less expensive and lighter than traditional registers on desktops.
6. Customer-facing display
A display that is oriented towards the customer signifies that when a person is waiting to be rung by the phone, they can see the transaction take place on a (usually secondary) screen that is in front of the customer. Displays oriented toward customers provide a full view of the process and help customers tell any errors before the order is put in.
This feature is not essential if it is out of your budget; however, it should be considered if you’ve got the funds.
Inventory management is the following aspect you need to be looking for in a retail management system, regardless of whether you’re dealing with five items or five thousand. As the name implies, the inventory part of the system will track all your items and aid in determining which products are performing well and which ones don’t.
7. Imports of bulk goods
Make sure that any system you select to manage your retail lets you upload all your products in the form of a bulk upload. If you are only selling one or two items for sale, manually uploading every item you own will become repetitive and a wasted time when you could purchase the system that allows an upload in bulk.
8. Composites and product variants
Find a system that allows you to design variations of your products. Imagine a clothing shop such as. If they are selling the identical shirt in six shades, the software must recognize that by recording it as the exact shirt with multiple colours instead of six different clothes.
Composite products share a similar concept. The term “composite” refers to constructed from your existing products. For instance, a retailer might wish to be able to offer cases of wine as an item since they offer 10% off on cases; instead of ringing all the bottles and performing the calculations to calculate the discount, the inventory system might allow the employee to purchase the case in its entirety with a lower price.
9. Barcodes
The inventory system you use should be equipped to print barcodes (or other labelling methods) to keep your items well-labelled and trackable. The barcode allows your inventory system to pinpoint precisely where the thing is within your system. You’ll scan barcodes every time an object comes into your inventory or when you ship it to a different store or sell it.
10. Auto-filled and stock orders
The inventory management system you use should allow you to buy more inventory for your business. Creating the stock order within your system should be possible, and then forward it to your suppliers via the system.
Conclusion:
Certain businesses can benefit from a system which can generate orders for the items they sell. If you’ve got some products that are recurring and require filling in automatically, an automated feature can make it easier to save time.
A sound retail management system will give you these options that make it as simple as it is to concentrate on expanding your business instead of worrying about things you cannot accomplish. Don’t settle for less.
