POS systems are no longer just cash registers -they are smart systems that help manage your store efficiently. If you are shopping for a POS system, these are the key features you need to look for.
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A Dozen Essential Software Features in a POS system
The size of the POS terminals market is expected to grow steadily over the next few years, at the rate of 14% each year until 2024 by when the share of the software component of the POS system market is expected to be around 30%.
source:squareup.com
Here’s a list of 12 important features you can look for when you shop for a POS system. The main features expected by retailers in POS solutions are low or zero transaction fees, remote POS management with mobile apps, employee management and tracking capability.
Inventory Tracking and Real-Time Updates
In the current retail scenario, it is common for even a small retailer to sell through multiple channels – in-store, online and through social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. Also, a retail chain will have multiple store locations. Therefore it is extremely important, to update stock levels in real time, and to manage inventory from your POS system. Good POS system software like Shopify provide these features, ensuring you can always monitor your stock levels and do not encounter understock or overstock problems.
Employee Management
A store may have more than one sales clerk working at the POS terminals. It is essential that the POS system software allows you to create staff accounts and keep track of their activity.
source:harbortouchpossoftware.com
Customer Profile and Tracking
Retail business is now focused more on customers than ever before. Top POS systems, make it easy to quickly create customer profiles and track customer activity. This customer profiling and tracking enables better customer relationship management and makes it easy to design loyalty programs and rewards for regular customers.
Remote Management
Efficient POS systems provide POS apps that enable you to keep track of your store activity, staff records, sales, and inventory on your mobile devices, even when you are on the move.
source:zdnet.com
Analytics and Reporting
Analytics reports on sales volume help improve business.
The purpose of collecting huge amounts of data is so you can extract meaningful information from it. POS systems provide you an in-depth analytics dashboard to analyze the data in various ways and extract insightful reports.
Multiple Payment Methods
Besides cash and card payments, your POS system should also allow you to manage multiple payment methods. There are different payment options – split payments, accept custom payments, and more. It is important to mention integration with more than a hundred payment processing gateways. You can also accept, swipe, chip, and tap payment.
source:squareup.com
Ability to Handle Returns and Refunds
The POS system dashboard should give you an easy way to handle product returns and refunds. Shopify POS makes handling returns and refunds a smooth process. This goes a long way in enhancing customer trust and loyalty.
Setup Product Variants
When you are creating a product catalog, you also need to be able to create variants for that product like colors and sizes for an apparel store. It also enables you to import product lists from other systems.
Barcode Scanning
Human data entry is prone to errors. Scanning barcodes to record items in the shopping cart minimizes the error margin by a huge percentage. It also makes the checkout process very quick. All the best POS systems support barcode scanning.
source:amazon.com
Creating Discounts and Promotional Offers
Offering various types of discounts, setting up promotional sales, offering loyalty rewards and discounts are all effective ways to increase sales and retain customer loyalty.
Management from a Single Dashboard
Your POS system is keeping track of not just sales. It is tracking inventory, employee records, customer profiles, and much more. So, it is essential that the POS system should provide a single easy-to-use dashboard from which all activities can be managed.
source:squareup.com
Integration
Your POS system is just a part of your business solutions. You will have other systems in use, like accounting and ERP. Top POS systems like enable easy integration with other business solutions, and also provide apps and add-ons to widen the range of software that you can connect to and share data with.
The best POS systems support all these 12 features and more, to make business easier for retailers.
