Retail Point Of Sale

There are probably a couple of reasons why you are reading this article. Most people who are inquiring about POS systems are experiencing frustrations from a couple of different area: Too much time spent on back office activities, not growing as fast as you want or bad profit margins, bad sales projections, human error, losses due to theft, inaccurate and time consuming ordering.

Anyone of those reasons is sufficient enough to motivate a business owner to look how he can increase his business from all aspects. Many people want to get right down to price but it's not always that possible and so many variables and questions to answer beforehand that you should be ready for. Examples: How many tills will you have, will you have a separate backoffice, what peripherals will you include (scanner,receipt printers, cash drawers), wireless or wired, how many people will be trained, who will setup the inventory, etc.

How will a POS benefit me?

Inventory Management - Every retail owner can quickly learn how fast items sell out as fast as you can order them and some items sit on the shelf and gather dust. Automated ordering can save you time and money by reordering for you based on a minimum and maximum value you pre set per item. You can even have it setup by "1 in 1 out" meaning it will reorder basically every item you've sold. You can even get into scientific ordering meaning the system will automatically calculate based on previous sales history what you should carry more of or less of depending on the season. Every owner knows that his inventory is his number 1 investment and by managing it closely you can increase your profit margins and overall revenue.

Scanning - By including a scanner that reads the barcodes you eliminate most human error by entering in the wrong price on the cash register. As an example if an item is listed as 16.50 and the cashier rings it as 6.50 that's a 10$ loss the store must cover. All of these error have a negative impact on short and long term profitability and growth as well. Using a barcode scanner significantly improves customer service, wait time, and check out sold items.

Reporting -Advanced reporting can help a retailer who previously only had financial reports. Advanced reporting can include when your busiest times of the days are giving you the opportunity to staff around those peak times cutting your labor expense down. Reporting can give you a report of your hottest sellers and your not so popular sellers giving you the opportunity to adjust your inventory.

Customer Loyalty - A POS system that enables you to rewards customers can retail customers in the future. Printing a barcode on a receipt which gives the customer 5% off future purchases is a great way to retail and make long term customers. Further more having a customer database with a point system can reward customers as frequent shoppers by giving them rewards points to redeem for in store purchases. All of these little measures will increase your revenue.

Network Retail

Point Of Sale hardware typically used:

	Computer System: This is the heart of your point of sale solution, there are many types of computers used, typically a tower with a non touch screen monitor is used. There are All In One systems used which have advertisements on the side facing the customers.
	Thermal Printer: This printer is used for printing out receipts for the customer. With a speed of around 7.9" per second you wont be waiting very long for a receipt or reprint a receipt. These printers are capable of printing barcodes which are used to recall a sale or provide a discount for the next purchase
	UPS : An uninterrupted Power Supply is cheap insurance for any POS System. provides enough backup power for you to work through short and medium length power outages. It also safeguards your equipment from damaging surges and spikes that travel along your utility and data lines
	Backoffice Station: A backoffice station can be added onto your networks weather it be 1 station or up to 5 stations. At the backoffice station you can enter products into the system, product purchase orders, update special pricing, print off reports.
	Cash Drawer: used to store your money
	Handheld Scanner: This scanner is a point and shoot type of scanner. Usually usefull of entering products into the database, creating a purchase order or receiving one, or maybe used in a low to medium traffic store as the primary scanner for barcodes.
	Orbit Scanner: This scanner is superior over the handheld scanner because of the fact it does not just project 1 laser it projects around a omni direcdtional laser.As well it is perfect for retail applications where counter space is at a premium and its unique contoured design allows it to be picked up to scan large, bulky items.
	Pole Display: This is used to give the customer a visual represenation what items are being scanned through at for pricing.
	Router: This is used for networking all the computers in a environment where internet will be provided. The router can be configured to let any computer on the internet or disable any computer from using the internet. In addition we can setup remote desktop software to allow you to dial into your backoffice.
	Scale/Scanner : Scale Scanners are used in situations where you may do a large majority of scanning and calculating weight of items with predefined prices per weight setup in the point of sale software.
	Switch: The switch networks all the stations and backoffice computer in a situation where internet is not needed. A router provides security on the internet where a switch does not and can be used on a network with no internet access.