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What is point of sale software and what should it offer you?

What is point of sale and how will it help you grow your business? Point of sale otherwise called POS, is a software module used to control the following in your business.

Stock control: Stock is the greatest asset any business will ever have. Your point of sale (POS) system must give you accurate stock control, without this, your point of sale system is absolutely useless.

Debtors: Do you offer debtor accounts? If so, your point of sale has to make accurate and fast debtor calculations. The last thing any business needs is letting one of your greatest assets wait while your system does balance calculations.

Creditors: Any business has suppliers (Cash of Account), your point of sale system should allocate the supplier stock to the supplier. This will allow you to draw reports on items with multiple suppliers, this report comes in handy when you want to see over a period of time what supplier gives you the best pricing on certain products.

Permissions: Any point of sale system should offer you user permissions. This means you can give your staff restricted access. This will prevent them from viewing and printing various turnover and profit reports, voiding sales, opening cash drawers etc.

Loyalty system: This is an important feature in any point of sale system, although not a lot of point-of-sale systems offer this. You need to keep contact with your clients; your loyalty systems should SMS or e-mail your clients on special occasions like: birthdays, anniversaries, children birthdays, etc. Although all this seems like small gestures, this will increase your businesses income by an extra 10 - 35%, not bad just for keeping contact with your client and showing a bit of interest.

Rental Module: Is your business in the rental market (games and movies)? If so your point of sale system should offer you a rental module.

Point of sale: This part of any retail software package is one of the most important features. Yes the reporting side is very important I agree, but without an effective front shop your business is running downhill very fast. The first thing you should look at is the speed of the point of sale (POS), you don't want clients waiting forever and a day just because your point of sale is slow.

Virtual Airtime: This is a vital part of a point of sale system, it is very safe (no airtime theft), convenient and can be utilized by any retail industry. Imagine owning a liquor store or a clothing store and be able to sell your client airtime for their children. Not only are you unique but your turnover is definitely going to be affected positively.

Credit and Debit Card Authorization: How many times have you heard or seen till clerks ring of a card sale before the actual transaction has been approved? What if that transaction gets declined after the transaction has been processed? Your point of sale software automatically processes the transaction if it has been approved.

The Database: Many point of sale companies still run on old databases like MS Access etc. although these are highly effective it is old technology. As MS Access is not a self maintainable database (database keeps on growing and growing until eventually the database crashes) it is not recommended for bigger faster businesses. Rather opt for a newer faster database option like: SQL, My SQL, etc. these databases are self maintainable and don't grow and grow until they eventually crash.