Using a POS System

The right Point of Sale system will give you control over many different areas of your business operations increasing efficiency and profitability. A Point of Sale system will streamline business operations, including inventory and vendor management along with streamlining Point of Sale processes. The following overview, categorized by area of operation, highlights some of the typical benefits of using a Point of Sale system.

• Inventory: a Point of Sale system allows you to categorize your inventory by a number of fields for easy lookup and sorting of your merchandise. A typical inventory hierarchy would include Store, Dept., Class, Subclass, Item Description, Size, and Color. Most systems also offer extended inventory descriptions to track additional information such as alternate lookup and additional product descriptions. You can quickly search and sort your inventory to track quantity on hand and restock levels for each item in your inventory. In addition you can typically track suppliers, substitutes, aliases, and parent relationships.
• Purchasing: a Point of Sale system will help you replenish items efficiently and negotiate lower vendor costs. You can quickly generate purchase orders and add items on the fly. Purchase orders can be created for standard items as well as matrix items (size and color). Purchase orders can be tracked by order date, receive date and cancel date so you can take the appropriate action on your open orders. You will be able view what is on order and backorder at all times and print aging reports for open orders.
• Point of Sale: allows you to reduce pricing errors and speed up checkouts. A Point of Sale system enables cashiers to process transactions and serve customers efficiently, and allows managers to maintain tight control. Some of the benefits of using a system include the ability to automatically look up and sell items based on pre-set sales, quantity discount, and preferred price levels. In addition at the Point of Sale you can check availability of items on the fly and be able to support multiple tender transactions, including cash, check and credit card.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM): keep a complete profile of every customer who has shopped in your store. Customer information typically includes demographics, preferences and purchase history. Using CRM features will allow you to target market and send promotions to customer based on purchasing history or other specific customer preferences.
• Reports and Analysis: a Point of Sale system will allow you to preview, search and print daily sales reports and journals by register, batch, and receipt number.