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The earliest cash registers were glorified calculators. A cashier would type in the prices of the items a customer brought to the counter – whether from memory or price tags – and that was it.
Of course, this left dozens of other issues, which were considered outside the jurisdiction of the cash register. How many of those items were left in the store? Did you forget to add a discount you had on an item and as a result, overcharge a customer? Is that item selling particularly well this time of year—and will you remember that next year?
Today, a good point-of-sale system can help you simplify time-consuming and tedious processes with useful, inventory-management features.
Group Items and Categories
Of course, any point-of-sale (POS) system, above all else, must have a simple user experience. Cashier positions often have high turnover, so it’s important to have a simple interface that allows an employee to learn a system quickly.
The best POS options allow you to group items in categories, and then present those to the user in logical ways. For instance, instead of 40 different categories for T-Shirts of all sizes and colors, a POS can allow you to group by t-shirt, then color, then size.
Use Groups To Price Inventory
When you group items logically, you can quickly change prices for a relevant group of items. A fish market, for instance, can adjust prices for the day’s catch in real time according to both supply and demand. Restaurants, too, can price the daily specials. Similarly, modern POS systems allow you to apply modifier sets to specific items as in the case of prices for Happy Hour or other events.
Keep Track of Inventory Levels
Perhaps most importantly, you can track quantities being sold and get alerts when supplies are running low. This is crucial in any retail store, especially those with multiple locations.
Even the most organized merchant can lose track of their inventory levels if they only track them manually or mentally. On a busy day, when demand runs high for a particular item, you may lose track of the amounts you have left because of the hectic buying patterns.
But a modern point-of-sale system can offer you alerts after a sale to let you know that particular item is getting low. This is especially crucial in the era of online shopping when customers who can’t find an item in a store won’t hesitate to simply go online and find an alternative.
Alerts and More
In fact, today’s point-of-sale systems often have an array of possible alerts for certain items within your inventory—far beyond low inventory levels.
For instance, if a clerk is selling alcohol or tobacco, your POS system will recognize the inventory being sold, and ask the clerk to request ID. Or, if an item being sold contains peanuts, your point of sale can prompt your clerk to mention this fact to the customer.
An Easier Life
Today’s point-of-sale systems have come a long way from the old-school cash registers, and they can help with aspects of a business that go far beyond just “payments.” By connecting payments to inventory management and other back-office tasks, these POS systems allow business owners to automate tasks like inventory tracking, and even to use it in combination with analytics to allow you to order and sell more efficiently.
And when these peripheral tasks become simple, you can do what you really want to: focus on the core of your business and what you’re passionate about.
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