The holiday season is a small retailers major source of income for the year and also creates a huge amount of potential return fraud. Your store policy should be a refund only if accompanied by the original receipt or you have the ability to easily pull up that transaction on your POS software. ProphetLine prints a bar-coded unique number on each receipt and when recalled, it brings up everything purchased on that transaction at the original price that was paid. If the customer does not have the receipt, it can be easily recalled and printed.

The last thing you need to do is make an exchange or return difficult on your customer and any goodwill made up to that point would be lost. Your return policy should be easy to manage to reduce store fraud and customer friendly. The best way to issue credit is to use a stored value gift card that the customer can redeem at a future date. That will make them return for a future purchase and they will probably spend more than the value on the card. Have a great holiday season from your friends at ProphetLine POS Software/Retail Systems.

Every POS software product has certain feature sets that fit a need better than others, but you need to look at the total picture and not just a small portion of the product. ProphetLine POS/retail management software is a very rich and proven software package that has been on the market for many years. It is designed for retailers of hard- and soft-goods, such as apparel, sporting goods, and other types of specialty retail. These retailers typically have certain features that are required, such as size-color matrix, serial number tracking, customer tracking, accounts receivable, and multi-store support. A good POS software product will have these features and others considered must have for the specialty retail market. If your business is mostly accounts receivable, then it is imperative that the software properly manage accounts receivable, such as invoicing, statement generation, and reporting. ProphetLine also has many features not found in other systems, especially for many micro-verticals within specialty retail, so it is literally designed for hundreds of different types of retailers and is rarely a bad fit for most of them.

Sometimes retailers get caught up in the fact that they are looking for a system that does not exist. If you can find a POS software package that is 90 to 95% of what you are looking for straight out of the box, then it might be easier to alter your business processes rather than reinvent the wheel and go through the headaches of massive enhancements. Small retailers spend so much time trying to find this elusive software that immediate improvements in their business are lost. If you’ve been searching for months or years, spoken with over 5 or 10 companies, and have yet to find the perfect POS software, you may be losing sight of what your original goal was and that is improving the profitability of you business. As you evaluate POS software, when a feature is missing, ask yourself how important is that feature to the overall goal of business improvement. Make a list of the must have features and don’t confuse them with the” it would be nice to have features.” Choosing and buying point of sale/POS software is an important task – just don’t little things get in the way.

Never ask how much POS software will cost, but how much will it make your business in additional revenue. Price is important, but a good POS software company should be able to justify the cost, training and maintenance in a short period of time. The easiest two ways of noticing a difference in your revenue is better cash controls and inventory shrinkage. Procedures should be built into the POS software so that employees are accountable for all their actions. Exception reports will allow you to identify those employees that are making transactions out of the ordinary and inventory shrinkage can be identified quickly with measures put in place to limit the damage done by internal theft.

The next way to improve profitability is to use all the data obtained From the POS software to better understand your customers buying habits and buy according to their preferences. The easy way to accomplish this is with built in department/class comparatives, retail stock ledger and integrated open to buy. Capturing information at the POS software terminal is essential to mining more business from your existing customer base. Your customers will gladly give you some personal information if they know that preferential treatment or special pricing is the end result. Notifying them of new product arrivals, private showings or a pending sale are a few of the ways to build your customer loyalty and keep them shopping with you and not your competitors.

The next best way to improve your business is to implement an easy to maintain and efficient Internet presence. A brick and mortar retailer can expect a ten percent increase in sales, according to industry averages, within the first year if the web store is properly worked and maintained. If your web shopping cart is fully integrated to your store POS software, there is a minimum amount of work to do and you will have another way to get your product line in front of the buying public. So the answer to how much will the POS Software/Retail Management System cost is, nothing if used properly and maintained.

Understanding your business climate and the changes revolving in it are essential to continued growth. Maximizing profits can be obtained by changing as your demographics change. A small retailer cannot be everything to everybody and targeting niche markets is a must for survival. Baby Boomers are now becoming senior citizens and the same product lines and spending patterns you were accustomed to buying for are frequently changing. You can only make informed buying decisions based on a plan that is constantly evolving using information obtained with POS software that captures everything at the inception of the sale. This information is then seamlessly run through your retail stock ledger, departmental comparatives and open to buy planning. Identifying your clienteles likes and dislikes, work habits and lifestyle changes will make your buying patterns target your customer’s needs.

Your buying budget should reflect the demographics of your clients and their buying habits. Your open to buy plan will target your customer’s needs and as their preferences change, so should your open to buy plan. This plan cannot be static, but always a work in progress reflecting the changes in your business. You must monitor your profitability by department, class and vendor performance to give you a maximum return on your investment. Develop your plan from past history obtained from your POS software and educated information from your best performing vendors. If you find one of your vendors have product that gives you better turns, sell through and an increased gross return on investment, use their past experience in making and revising your open to buy plan.

When asked how fast our POS software works, I respond that it is as fast as you want it to be. That means that we have built into our POS software many on-off switches that allow you to be as fast as you want without getting customer information and having employee security. The more information you require your clerks to get, the better the future of your business will be and the slower the check-out process will be. To market to existing and new customers, you need to obtain accurate information, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, birthdays, etc. People will give you this information if they know that they will be treated special, notified of pending sales and loyalty perks. Too many times I hear that their customers want give information and that is wrong. You can get all the information you need by showing them that there is value to them and that information is secure and not shared.

The rest of the information you obtain is done through the normal check out process of the type of product your customers are purchasing, the frequency of visits, dollar value of transactions and are they full retail customers or only on-sale customers. If you are not willing to put in the time and effort to do the job right, keep using the Old Cigar Box. Good POS software will allow you to be the retailer your competitors are always trying to catch up with. We have pricing from entry level to full blown merchandising systems. Give us a call and improve your business.

By Jeff Haefner

www.possoftwareguide.com

If you have retail POS software, you’ve probably invested significant time and money into the system…So you better make DARN sure that you’re getting a return on your investment!! How can you better utilize this powerful software tool and make more money? It’s really simple, but first we need to lay some ground work and show how you truly can double your profits!!

When you think about it, there are only three ways to make more money:

1)Reduce your expenses. 2)Increase your gross profit margins. 3)Increase your sales. And here lies your hidden secret to making more money and doubling your profits. If you just reduce expenses by 1%, increase profit margins by 1%, and increase sales by 1%, then you just might have doubled your profits. When you break things down like this and implement some of the tips I have for you, this is EASILY doable.

Let’s take a 1 million dollar a year business with a 40% gross profit margin as an example. If you improve each of those areas by 1%, you just put somewhere in the neighborhood of $18,000 in your pocket! Not bad. And this is VERY conservative. With some of the tips I’m about to show, you could easily improve by much more than 1%. But this is a nice conservative approach that is doable. You can make just a 1% improvement in each area, can’t you? Let’s get to it…First, we’ll start with an easy way for you to increase profit margins:

Step 1 – Determine your Gross Profit Margin goal. You’ll want a goal for your entire business and probably each department too. Perhaps your overall goal is 45%. I can’t tell you what your gross profit margin should be because it’s different for each type of business. I suggest that you start by taking an educated guess on your own. But don’t stop and wait to figure out your “perfect” goal. You should still take a guess and implement this tactic right away because it will make you money immediately. Most specialty retailers settle for profit margins that are too low. But that’s not for me to say because each situation is different. Onward.

Step 2 – Open your POS software and look at your gross profit margins at the end of EVERY day! At the end of every single day, you need to look at your gross profit margins report. You will also want to look at your profit margins for each department. Did you hit your goal?

Step 3 – If you did NOT hit your goal, then fix it! If your goal is 45%, but you were only at 38% today, what’s the problem? You’re losing money!! So figure out the problem immediately…..Do you have pricing errors that are lowering your margins? Find the errors and fix them right away! Do you have employees giving out too many discounts? Fix it! Do you need to rethink your pricing structure for a certain category? Fix it! You need to make sure your profit margins are on track every day, and when they’re not, fix them.

How do you find the problems? With a little research, you can figure out what’s wrong. You can start by drilling down into each “category” to figure out which area has a low profit margin. Then you can drill even deeper into certain invoices and products. Your POS software should make it easier to do the research and find the problem. Your software should give you profit margin reports by Department, Category, Sales Person, Invoice, or Product Number. This will help you pinpoint the problems and track things down.

Is it really worth it? It might sound like a pain in the butt to check this every day. But that’s what you have to do. That’s what the successful retailers do to keep their profits high. If you’re not checking this every day, then you are NOT managing your business. Your business is managing YOU!
Just by looking at your margin reports every day, you could literally raise your profit margins by 3 or 4 percent. How much more money would you have if your profit margin was 4 percent higher at the end of the year?

That’s why this is so important. And this is why almost all successful and profitable businesses do this. Make this a habit and part of your documented end of day closing tasks.
You’ll sleep better at night knowing that you will be profitable tomorrow because you fixed the problems from today.

Many small retailers that are just starting their business probably don’t have the knowledge or expertise to order that perfect inventory selection when first starting up. They will need to set a tight budget, probably leaner than they would like and make the constant adjustments as they have a better feel for what their customer base wants. A friend of mine, Alan Fisher, president of Retail Business 101, said buying inventory without a good plan was like throwing mud on the wall, some would stick, but most would slide to the floor. The mess on the floor is the overbought and bad selection purchases that now have to be cleaned up. If your initial inventory is not moving, make that first mark-down as fast as possible and re-invest that cash in inventory that the customer base you are building wants and needs.

Always remember in retail that cash is King, and you have to keep a close eye on cash coming in and going out. But until you have developed the instincts of a seasoned buyer and have established a good history through your POS software, always learn toward under bought as opposed to overbought. Effective inventory management is having the right products in the right place at the right time in the right quantities. You will learn this over time as long as you are conservative in your starting inventory.

If someone told you that good POS Software would put a lot of money in your pocket and you didn’t investigate how, wouldn’t you be short changing your business. Good POS Software has been proven to: lower theft and shrinkage, give you accurate pricing, eliminate inaccurate inventory counts, add gift cards to your product line, capture customer marketing information, ensure proper inventory levels and much more. POS Software needs to be thought of as a business necessity and not an expense. If you are one of the fortunate small retailers that can afford to lose this additional revenue, then you are in a great market. Good POS Software will help you get to the next level of profitability. The longer you wait, the more you lose!

When you are considering new point of sale/POS software or an upgrade to your current POS Software, make sure the POS Software vendor you use has a clear and stated path they are on that will get you to where you want to be and keep you there. Your small business is your livelihood, a way of life, a retirement fund and you do not need a total redo of your business processes every time you upgrade.. We would like to think, ProphetLine POS Software/Retail Systems can help you get you where you need to be and keep you there through a series of well thought out and implemented upgrades.

We spend all of our time trying to figure ways to enhance our POS Software to better enable you to maximize your profits. ProphetLine is not perfect, but we strive to make it better every day. When you purchase ProphetLine, you can have all the bells and whistles or pick only the features you need. We do not sell an entry level POS Software product, but function points that suits you retail genre. We build in all the functionality you would expect to find in quality POS Software, including accounting, customer marketing, internet communications and much more. Start your retail selling season out right and make a resolution to improve the quality of your business and life.

The answer on when is the best time to upgrade existing or new POS Software is NOW!!! Every day you wait is one more day of lost benefits from all the great new features that enhance the marketing and sales side of POS Software. Small retailers are coming under more and more pressure from the big box retailers and you stand around and procrastinate about good timing on the POS Software implementation. This is a sure fire plan for disaster and will do nothing except give your competitors more time to kick your butt. You have to differentiate yourself by better service, unique product lines and an atmosphere that makes a customer comfortable doing business with you and a good quality POS Software system is the bridge you need to make this happen. Making the customer feel their needs are being fully met through a pleasant and efficient shopping environment, knowing them by name and having the ability to quickly identify their product preferences. This last part can be accomplished by having POS Software that is intuitive and robust. Not surprisingly, the point of sale system has become the focal point of the retail operation.

Today’s point of sale/POS software has become instrumental in gathering customer data to use in the four major marketing decisions that store managers must make: product, price, place, and promotion. These are the variables that can be worked with to attract and retain customers. So back to my original question, when is the best time to upgrade POS Software, NOW, NOW, NOW, the longer you wait, the further behind you will get.