In the digital age of 2020, more and more businesses are finally becoming accustomed to technology improving their business.
Realising the powerful effects in terms of cost and time saving that technology possesses, businesses look more to various tools they can leverage to help better operate their business.
In this article I’m going to go through 5 simple ways, that retailers can benefit from using a point of sale system (an electronic one!), in their business.
1. Double-handling
A term that more and more businesses, are coming to term with! Double handling is the action of completing processes more times than necessary, and in any environment. This in relation to a point of sale system includes:
Transferring individual sales / invoices into your accounting system
Checking receipt balances at the end of the day
2. Cashing up the till
Inputting sales information into your accounting system
Manually keying the amount payable into an EFTPOS terminal
Any decent online point of sale system can save you many hours a year. Think about it, if you could save just 10 minutes a day with an electronic point of sale system, that quickly adds up to over an hour a week. That’s over 50 hours a year. You guessed it! Thats a full 40 hour work week of time saved. Those figures are no doubt conservative too, I’ve seen clients saving upwards of 30 minutes a day.
3. Accounting made easy
We all know getting our sales out the door is only the first step. Then we need to cash up the till, bank the money, then get all our sales into our accounting system. All which take time. With most online point of sale systems, there is integrations that mean the point of sale will connect in with online accounting systems like Xero & MYOB.
With an online point of sale system, you can have it setup so that essentially as soon as someone purchases from your shop, there is a record instantaneously sent to your accounting system, ready to reconcile.
Think about the time that can save. And then think about the potential freedom you would have saving 10-20-30 minutes a day on laboriously copying data over to your accounting system!
When choosing an online point of sale system, select one that automatically synchronises with your account system.
4. Links with eCommerce
Increasingly consumers worldwide are buying online. With more businesses selling online, getting a point of sale system that talks directly with your website is crucial to again, preventing time wasted on double-handling information.
If you sell a product, you should definitely consider selling online. But also consider ensuring you use a platform that can talk with your point of sale system.
If you’ve got a very special product that is flying off the shelf, having two systems talking to each other will ensure that when that last unit flies off the shelf, you don’t accidentally over-sell your available stock.
5. More accurate payments
Using an online point of sale system, generally means you can plug an EFTPOS / Credit Card terminal directly into the system so whenever you transact and take a payment - the total amount payable is instantly sent to the terminal.
You’re probably saying “it’s only a few seconds extra work, Matt!”. And I would confess you are right! However, if you are doing lets say 100 transactions a day, that quickly adds up to lets say 300 seconds or 5 minutes a day. Over a year that’s nearly 20 hours of time that could have been saved automating that one process. That’s less of a queue waiting to checkout, more customers flowing through your shop.
Many online point of sales also have a facility where you can track your total cash sales, so you can more easily cash up the till at the end of the day. Again, saving time.
Holistic business management
With businesses having many facets to manage: HR, Payroll, Inventory, Health & Safety, Sales, Ordering & Fulfilment, it can be extremely beneficial using an online point of sale system that integrates many of these areas into ONE.
So rather than having a cash register, health & safety booklets, paper purchase orders & delivery dockets, you can have a system that encompasses these core areas.
It also means It's easier for your business to scale. Because there is reduced cost in having all different types of systems, less cost in stationary and printing, plus your staff training is much more straight forward when they only have to learn ONE specific system and not an array of different online / offline processes.
You’re probably seeing the common pattern here - we are wanting to simplify everything into ONE system, and save time at every possible avenue. Time cannot be purchased, so it's a very precious commodity.
Implementing any new system or process into your business is a hassle. But how many times have you heard people say the old adage of “If only I did it sooner!”. I believe this is the case for online point of sale systems like Zulu.
If your business has an old-fashion cash register, or perhaps an ancient carbon-copy receipt book, you can greatly benefit from the powerful features of Zulu’s Point of Sale system. Try it for free yourself, or ask us for a free Demo and we’ll happily give you a demo of our cool system and all the other awesome features you can use in Zulu. Zulu can even act as your online e-commerce store!