Reduce Costs

A POS lowers your operating costs. For instance, you can set the minimum quantity of an inventory item you need to have on hand in your POS. The system will automatically alert you when that threshold is reached prompting you to order more. Now, you don’t need to spend more on inventory than you need because you’re not sure how much you have in stock.

Offer Mobile Payments and Transactions

With a cash register, every customer needs to come to your checkout counter to complete their purchase. But if you have mobile payment processing, you can send multiple staff members to bust up the line by checking customers out wherever they are. Not only do mobile payments reduce wait times, they offer a more engaging customer experience as associates connect with patrons one-on-one without a counter creating a barrier. Mobile payments also enable you to offer curbside pickup because you can bring a customer’s items to their car in the parking lot and run their credit card right there.

Process Payments Offsite

Mobile payment solutions empower you to sell offsite, away from your brick-and-mortar location, too. If there’s a festival in town and you want to set up a booth or you want to open a pop-up location, you can accept payments on site. For restaurants that are condsidering a food truck to reach more customers and increase sales, mobile payments are ideal.

Learn more about mobile payment processing. →

Meet Customers’ Evolving Demands

A POS helps you support quick and seamless transactions of all types. Curbside pickup, delivery, QR codes, contactless payments—a modern POS system enables you to meet customers where they are, accept all payment types, and tailor your service to fit patrons’ changing needs.

Simplify Returns

Is it easy for both your customers and your staff members to complete a return? With the level of returns continuing to rise, a POS makes it fast and simple to complete these types of transactions. A POS allows you to search for customers to see their purchase histories when they may not have a receipt, and puts returned items back into your inventory automatically. You can even designate items as non-refundable in the system if they’re final sale.

Manage Orders

Whether you run a store, a restaurant, or a service business, keeping track of in-store, online, pickup, and delivery orders is challenging. A POS gives you complete visibility into every type of order, including status, location of deliveries, and more. Plus, you can preset key information in the system such as delivery zones, any fees associated, and the times pickup and delivery are available. Installing a POS with complete order management capabilities that saves you time is critical to your business’s success today and in the years to come.

Set Appointments

For service-based businesses that depend on appointments, including salons and automotive shops, a POS enables you to input, track, confirm, and change appointments with ease. Set shifts and employee schedules, double book a staff member when needed, rebook appointments from a customer’s history, email follow-up and appointment reminders, and more—all within your POS system.

See how a POS helps your business schedule and keep track of appointments. →

Process Payments Offline

What would you do if the internet goes down when you have a long line of customers waiting to pay? Without an internet connection, you can’t process credit card payments. Do you turn away patrons who don’t have cash on hand? Do you close your store and lose sales until the internet is restored? A POS with offline processing makes it possible to continue accepting card payments, even if you lose connection to the internet. When the connection is restored, all payments accepted offline are processed. You can predetermine limits within your POS system such as the highest transaction amount you’re willing to accept offline or the total dollar amount processed offline. These are important considerations because some transactions may not go through when the internet is back up if funds are not available.

Find out how offline processing works. →

Provide Better Customer Service

A POS empowers your staff to offer elevated levels of service with improved accuracy, speed, and personalization. They can input orders quickly, including any required modifiers the POS system prompts for, while customers verify their orders are correct by reviewing them on a customer facing display. With a POS system’s customer management features, team members pull up a patron’s information and purchase history with a few taps of the screen using only a phone number—facilitating a more tailored, personal approach to service that encourages repeat business.

Improve Inventory Management

If you’re still counting inventory manually, it’s time to upgrade to a POS. At checkout when you scan an item’s barcode, it’s automatically taken out of your inventory. With all your inventory data being logged digitally, you’re able to pull real-time reports to make informed decisions. See what stock you’re low on—and set reorder quantities within your POS to alert you when it’s time to replenish. Additionally, a POS identifies which items are best sellers, which ones are the most profitable, and which aren’t moving. With this information, you’re empowered to order top sellers in bulk to save money and better control your margins to maximize profit.

Schedule Employees and Monitor Their Activity

Not only does a modern POS help you optimize staff scheduling for the week or even the month ahead, looking at historical sales and staffing data in your system will help you determine your busiest times and how many people you need on each shift. Break down sales by employee to monitor their productivity, detect who may require more training, and discover who your star performers are. When you put your best people on your busiest shifts, it boosts your overall sales.

Manage Payroll

Take the stress out of managing employee payroll. A POS has a built-in time clock to automatically track hours worked. When it’s time for payroll, pull a report that outlines each staff member who worked within a selected date range, including staff type or level, net hours worked (i.e., hours worked minus clocked-out breaks), total hours to pay, and any tips staff members earned. Generate this report as needed or schedule it on a recurring basis—including automatically sending it to your accountant, business partners, and payroll partner.

Get ideas on how to manage employees more efficiently. →

Implement Loyalty Programs

A loyalty program is a strategic way to convert new customers into loyal ones—and once they begin receiving rewards for their purchases, they’ll return to your business again and again. With a POS, it’s simple to implement a loyalty program. All it takes is a few pieces of information like a customer’s name, email, and phone number to set them up to earn points on every purchase they make. Once they reach a defined threshold of your choosing, customers can redeem their points when completing a purchase. You determine the value of a point as well as any limits or restricted categories. It’s all about customizing your loyalty program to suit the needs of your business while enticing customers to come back frequently. When a customer is in your POS system, all that’s required to look up, earn, and redeem points is their phone number. There’s no need to carry a loyalty card. Simply locate them in the system, see how many points they have, and apply them to their purchase in a few taps of the POS screen.

Market to Your Customers

A major benefit of a POS system is the built-in customer database. Encouraging customers to share their information in return for loyalty rewards is a smart way to build your customer list. And with that list you’re able to market to your customers to increase sales. Send your customers emails promoting items you know they love based on their purchase histories. You may even want to send select patrons special offers such as earning double loyalty points on specific items. Having an incentive to buy from your business rather than your competitors helps drive traffic through your doors and provides an excellent customer experience.

Keep Track of Vendors and Invoices

It’s easy to keep track of vendors, billing and invoicing, and purchase orders (POs) with a POS. Create POs within the system and when the items are received, simply scan the barcode, type in the quantity received and the total paid—and your inventory is updated instantly! You also have visibility into how much you’ve paid vendors for the same items over time to monitor costs. Additionally, a POS integrates with your accounting software, making it quick to create and send professional invoices and monitor payments received.

Manage Discounts and Promotions

Do you run multiple sales simultaneously? It’s often difficult to keep track of what’s discounted and when. With a POS, managing discounts and promotions is simple. Select which items you want to discount in the system and input how long you want the sale to last. You can even designate different types of promotions like buy one, get one (BOGO) or mix-and-match specials. This eliminates the hassle of price confusion at checkout—everything’s in the system and rings up automatically ensuring the line moves swiftly.

Increase Profits with Gift Cards

Implementing a gift card program that’s integrated with your POS gives you a new revenue stream and a way to bring in additional customers. What’s more, with a POS system like Exatouch®, gift card processing is free!

Discover more benefits of offering gift cards at your business. →

Use Reports to Gain Business Insights

A POS has robust reporting capabilities giving you maximum visibility into all aspects of your business. Identify what your average basket size and ticket size are. Run tax and payroll reports to ensure compliance. Have daily snapshot reports of your sales automatically emailed to you, your accountant, and any relevant business partners to keep an eye on your revenue. From service rating reports and inventory counts to delivery reports, data is what gives you the insight needed to make profit-boosting decisions that grow your business.

Get Help from Technical Support

When it comes to point of sale, having a professional technical support team to call for help is critical. Whether you have a line of customers waiting to pay and you can’t get your terminal to work, or you want assistance with downloading the latest software to access your POS system’s newest features and capabilities, you want an experienced team you can rely on to solve any issue that may arise.

See what makes Electronic Payments’ 24/7 U.S.-based, in-house Technical Support team the best in the business. →