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May 8, 2023
POS Essentials
Payment options are constantly changing, but a POS helps you support quick and seamless transactions of all types. Curbside pickup, delivery, QR codes, contactless payments, gift cards—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 without missing out on new revenue streams.
If you’re still counting inventory manually, it’s time to upgrade to a point of sale system. When you scan an item’s barcode at checkout, it’s automatically taken out of your inventory. With all your inventory data being logged digitally, you’re able to:
With this information, you’re empowered to order top sellers in bulk to save money and better control your margins to maximize profit.
With a cash register, every customer needs to come to your checkout counter to complete their purchase, limiting your flexibility and creating long lines that strain employees and hurt customer satisfaction.
But if you have a POS that enables mobile payments, you gain the freedom to ring up purchases wherever your customers are. If there are a lot of shoppers at checkout, you can send additional employees to check customers out, dramatically reducing wait time and engaging your guests on a more personal level.
Your POS system enables you to take payment processing outside your brick-and-mortar, too. As long as you have a portable, connected device with you, you can make sales wherever you need to, no matter how far from your brick-and-mortar location. This is a great option for festival booths, pop-up locations, food truck services, and, a bit closer to home, curbside pickup. Bring customers’ items to their cars and run credit cards right in the parking lot. This is a great way to make your store more accessible and convenient for all your customers.
Is your return process easy for both customers and staff members? Return rates are high, and a POS makes it fast and simple to complete these types of transactions. Search for customer purchase histories—even if they don’t have a receipt—return items to your inventory automatically, and designate final sale products as non-refundable in your system.
It can be challenging to keep track of all your orders, especially if you’re working across multiple channels (in-store, online, pickup, delivery).
Whether you run a store, a restaurant, or a service business, a POS can give you complete visibility into status and location for every order, plus help you plan ahead with preset information, including delivery zones, associated fees, and pickup and delivery windows.
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’s appointment system.
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. Simply enable the offline feature and continue scanning as usual. Your POS will store purchase data and process payments when it comes back online. Plus, you can limit transaction amounts if you’re worried about delayed processing.
POS systems offer elevated levels of service with improved accuracy, speed, and personalization. Input orders quickly—including any required modifiers the POS system prompts for—while customers can verify their information 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.
With a modern POS system, you can make staff management easier:
Cut out the extra steps involved in typical operations upkeep. Use your POS to get to know your team better, provide support where needed, and spend more time taking care of your primary retail responsibilities. Plus, your employees will appreciate working with a standardized, predictable system.
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. You’ll get to set up point value and redemption parameters before customers can then earn points on every purchase—no on-hand loyalty card required. Simply locate the customer in your system, see how many points they have, and apply points to their purchase with just a few taps of the POS screen.
A major benefit of a POS system is the built-in customer database. Build your customer list using loyalty program incentives, then use it to market to your existing base and increase sales. You’ll be able to send customers promotional emails for products they’ll love based on their purchase histories or even select certain patrons for special offers (double loyalty points, for example). Having an incentive to buy from your business helps drive traffic through your doors and provides an excellent customer experience—all enabled by your point of sales system.
Do you run multiple sales simultaneously? It’s often difficult to keep track of what’s discounted and when. A POS can help. 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. Plus, you won’t have to manually set up sales using a pricing gun anymore, giving you more time to focus on your larger business goals.
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.
A POS has robust reporting capabilities giving you maximum visibility into all aspects of your business. For example:
Data like this can give you the insight you need to make profit-boosting decisions that grow your business.
A POS system is essential for modern businesses and comes with so many benefits. If you’re not using a POS yet, you can see why it pays to take advantage of the features that your competitors are benefiting from.
But not all POS systems are built the same. You need to find the right fit for your business.
Electronic Payments offers Exatouch®, a leading point of sales system for retailers, service providers, and restaurants. If you’re new to the world of POS, Exatouch comes with an added benefits you might not get elsewhere—like 24/7 technical support. 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.
A POS empowers you to manage your business more effectively, streamline operations, and grow. It’s an invaluable tool for any merchant looking to maximize profits and automate daily tasks. Learn more about our customizable POS systems tailored to your business’s unique need—get to know the Exatouch POS.
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