What Features You Should Have In A Retail POS System

When opening a store and looking for a new retail POS system, or trying to upgrade the existing one, you`ll find many options online, all with a large number of features.

With such a great amount of data out there, you can often be left with a greater number of questions than you had to start. That is the reason it`s so vital to understand exactly what a retail POS system can do, and what you need from one to drive your business forward.

It doesn`t make a difference whether you`re a small market stall or a nationwide store of vape shops, your retail POS System should be a central management tool for all aspects of your supply chain.

A retail POS system should not just help you with running your business efficiently in the immediate term, but it should also future-proof your business and be able to scale with you.

While a good retail POS System has many features, we need to feature those that are essential for maintaining your retail business, and staying ahead of the competition. Here are 5 fundamental features to look out for.

5 Features you need from a Retail POS System
1) Sales Reporting and Analytics

Getting full visibility over sales reporting will give you a real time view of transactional data. This allows you to track single product performance, just as Year-On-Year or Month-On-Month sales data so you can analyse easily.

Your retail POS System should have an inbuilt back office that allows you to easily lead a full business analysis.

Advantage of this Feature:

When making on key business decisions, you have to depend on concrete data instead of guess work.

Having full visibility over your historical and real time sales data will allow you to make informed decisions that will drive your business to next level.

Detailed sales data by product allows you to quickly validate real stock against expected stock levels, allowing you to pinpoint potential areas of waste as well as theft.

2) Customer Management

Customer Management allows you to capture important data on your customers and their purchase history. You`re ready to track your most spending customers and build important relations with them.

Advantages of this Feature:

By building up key customer data, you can track and analyse behaviour, including when your customers are spending and the amount they spend per visit. You can recording increasingly close to home data, similar to name, email, and number, to start speaking with your key customers.

You can also use customer data to build more intelligent marketing efforts, and send customers special offers or information about events when you integrate with an email marketing campaign. This will drive customer loyalty and keep your greatest fans coming back.

3) Inventory Management

The Inventory Management System integrated with your retail POS will streamline and automate what once used to be difficult and time consuming process, saving you lots of time. You`ll get full visibility over your stock, and will be able to automate the population in purchase orders when stock is low, so you never miss a sale.

Advantage of this Feature:

You need stock management integrated with your retail POS System just to save you lots of time every week. Having additional time will allow you to focus your customers and different areas of your business.

With a good inventory management system, you can also create automatic min and max stock alarms on products. This will guarantee that not just fast selling products never run out of stock, but also that any cash flow tied up inside stock is kept to an absolute min.

4) A User-Friendly Interface

A retail POS System should be both simple to use for your staff, and for you to work in the back office, when you`re adding and editing products and watching out on real time data.

Advantage of this Feature:

Having a user friendly interface on your retail POS system will boast up service and reduce time spent in the office, leading to greater efficiency and a healthier bottom line. Your staff will have more time to serve more customers if products are found easily on the front till, and when payments can be handled quickly.

5) Apps and Integrations

From online shop integrations to accounting integrations like Xero and Sage, a Retail POS system should have the option to support your business than just process sales. You can also add a loyalty integration where you can set up an integrated loyalty scheme to reward returning customers back.

Advantage of this Feature:

Having access to multiple apps and integrations will streamline process and help your business become more profitable. You`ll no longer need to physically enter sales figures into your accounting software and both your online and physical stock will synchronize so you know exactly what you have available in stock.

Conclusion:

With so many options available, choosing a retail POS system is a confusing and arduous task. At Epos Direct, we help retailers by making on their decision simple. With our simple to use Complete Retail POS System, we`ll concentrate your whole retail operations to help your business to work hard and smarter for you, so you can truly concentrate on what makes a difference.