How incorporating a POS will help you avoid feeling like it's Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day is fine as a whimsical annual news headline, and it wasn’t a bad movie. However, the last thing you want as a business owner is to live the concept every day at work. Fortunately, this ultimate POS guide is here to come to your rescue to free you from many of those devastatingly boring but essential tasks.

POS defined.

The owner of any physical or online store that takes credit card payments already knows the general definition of a point of sale (POS) system. At its most basic level, the POS is there to read customers’ cards and securely transmit that information to the processing company. In a matter of just a few seconds, the transaction is either accepted or declined, and the customer goes on their way with the merchandise in hand or ready to be shipped.

There are several elements that go into a standard POS system.

• Tablet or terminal with optional customer-facing screen.
• Software that communicates with the payment processor and acts as the “brains” behind the system’s many other functions.
• Card readers. These can be attached or mobile and can even use a smartphone.
• Peripherals such as barcode scanners, receipt printers, and cash drawers.

If you don’t already have one, you can get a point of sale system that includes all of the above elements from any payment services provider.

How your POS can streamline your business and please your customers.

As a secure way to take payments and interact with your processing company, a POS is worth its weight in gold. Having it on hand reduces the chances of costly human data entry errors and decreases the likelihood that you will be the victim of fraud. But that’s just the beginning of the things your modern POS can do to transform your business. Here are just a few of the most compelling gifts it will give.

• Employee management tools. Once your POS is on the team, you don’t need to do all of your time sheets, tracking, and communications with your workers by hand. The system can keep everyone’s schedules and vacation times straight, and you can set it up to send weekly emails that let everyone know exactly when they will be working and for how long. You can even make changes on the fly from wherever you may be. Wondering how well a particular person is doing on the sales floor? Your system can quickly whip up a report giving you all the details you need.
• Customer relationships. You may have been wanting to launch a loyalty program for some time but been unable to give it the time and resources necessary. Now all you need to do is to encourage your regular customers to provide helpful details like contact information, hobbies, birth dates, etc. Load it into your POS’s database, and you will soon be able to reward your most faithful patrons with personalized promotions. Additionally, your POS’s accurate product purchase records make merchandise returns smooth and stress-free for everyone.
• Inventory management. If there is one area that can quickly become a source of endless drudgery, it is keeping track of your products and figuring out how much to order and when. With your POS on the case, you will have real-time knowledge of each piece of merchandise throughout its time in your store, even including data on who purchased it. That makes it possible for you to re-stock only what is necessary. What’s more, you can keep your eye on what is failing to sell so that you can put it on sale, relocate it in your store or stop selling it altogether.
• Integrate with financial software. Don’t spend hours each week with your eyes crossed, poring over spreadsheets and attempting to reconcile your books manually. Your POS will work seamlessly with other third-party accounting software that you already have on board to ensure that your books are straight and your accounts are ready for the eagle eye of Uncle Sam.
• Generate a wide array of reports. When you truly understand how your business is performing, you can finally get a grasp on the direction you want to go. Your modern POS is equipped with a robust reporting feature that coordinates with your inventory data as well as the databases you have set up. With a firm idea of the parameters you are looking for and in a matter of just a few clicks, your POS software can put together actionable, visually understandable documents that you can use to gauge past successes, understand your profits and losses, learn which employees are the most productive, and who needs help and even forecast the directions you want to take your next marketing campaign.

When you fully grasp everything your point of sale system can do and take advantage of it, you can delegate many of the boring, repetitive tasks you dread the most to this silent automated partner. The best news of all is that the results you get will be accurate, fast, and efficient, leading to a more streamlined business for you and an improved shopping experience for your customers. When you can put this scenario on a daily repeat, even Groundhog Day might just come up looking like Christmas.