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ProphetLine POS has been our lifeline for seven years in our four retail stores. The software is robust and offers many more functions and ...
Read MoreAre you still not selling gift cards because your current POS software can’t handle it? You are losing sales and increasing your product returns. With gift cards the consumer can purchase what they want and they will usually spend more than the value on the card. ProphetLine POS Software has built in gift card processing through its payment processing partner, Mercury Pay, and they do not charge any transaction fees. Below is an article from the National Retail Federation.
As gift cards become more popular during the holiday season, consumers said they are actually returning fewer items than in previous years, according to NRF’s Holiday Returns Survey, conducted by BIGresearch. The survey, which polled 7,982 consumers from Oct. 31-Nov. 7, 2007, revealed that 64.3 percent of consumers did not return anything last holiday season, up slightly from 62.4 percent in 2005. "Gift cards take the guessing out of giving and are one gift that people actually want to return," said Tracy Mullin, president and CEO of NRF. "Retailers will be sure to keep extra gift cards on hand this holiday season, especially for last-minute shoppers." Gift givers said that they are continuing to increase their use of gift receipts as well. According to the survey, 57.5 percent of consumers plan to hand over a gift receipt with holiday gifts either most of the time or some of the time this year, compared to 56.9 percent from last year. When it comes to return policies, 87.3 percent of consumers polled feel that retailers’ policies are fair.
Most Pos software can do all the basics like perpetual inventory, cash controls, sales analysis and the day to day functions. What really makes great POS software is information that is fully automated, seamless and gives you an advantage over your competitors. This advantage comes from department, class comparatives, a retail stock ledger that gives you department/class comparatives, vendor comparatives and an open to buy program that requires very little work and gives you information to make you an informed buyer.
Almost all POS software will act like a glorified cash register and track money, inventory and your basics. They also give you a bunch of lists at the end of the day that you don’t have a clue about how to use to improve your business’s bottom line. There is no reason that you should not be using a great POS software system instead of a glorified cigar box that gives you a bunch of lists. The old adage ‘It doesn’t cost much more to go first class’ should say ‘You can go first class and pay less with ProphetLine POS Software.’
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
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.
