One Reason To Upgrade: Using The Point Of Sale As Inventory Management

Electronic payment has become the norm for much of the retail customer base, including the move to mobile payment systems using smartphones. For stores that have already upgraded their payment terminals to allow all forms of payments, a further upgrade to a point-of-sale system may seem, well, pointless. Point-of-sale systems offer more features than plain payment terminals, but it's not until you see how those extra features can materially benefit your store that you gain a full understanding of why you need to upgrade.

Automatic Inventory Out-Go Tracking

The immediate benefit of using a point-of-sale system is that the register now functions as an inventory-tracking computer. You have records of how many of each product come in, but with a plain terminal, your only way to track what goes out is to either just keep checking the shelves and making notes, or to hold manual counts, which, in a big store, can take many hours. A point-of-sale system records what's sold so that your inventory manager (or you) is alerted when something is sold out. Having these records is also helpful if your store offers online sales; customers who want to buy a product will know immediately if you have it in stock.

Pre-prepared Records for In-Store Inventory Count Comparison

Of course, the point-of-sale system can't track items that were stolen or misplaced on another shelf (the twin banes, product-wise, of all store managers' existence). For these you'd still need to hold manual counts to compare what you should have with what you really have. But with a point-of-sale system, you have a pre-prepared report of what has been sold, all ready for your use. You won't have to spend extra time adding and subtracting all of the sales that you noted manually.

Tracking Down Mistakes and More

One more benefit to using the point-of-sale system is that, if you notice a pattern regarding missing items, wrong prices, and more, the system will hold records of who was working on that register at the time. That does mean that you have to be sure people log in and out of their register when they go on breaks; don't allow two people to work under one person's name, even if one of those people is a manager (the risk is that someone innocent could be framed for another cashier's attempts to help someone get inappropriate discounts).

More benefits stem from using these point-of-sale systems. Take a look at the parts of your business that you feel take too much time. Then take a look at how point-of-sale systems may be able to make those parts go much more smoothly and efficiently. Chances are that you'll discover ways to make your job a lot easier once you switch systems. For more information, contact a company such as HarborTouch Bay Area.