What is Retail POS Software?

What is Retail POS Software?

Retail POS software empowers the retail staff to deliver outstanding service levels to build customer loyalty in an omnichannel world.

The customer shopping experience is complicated nowadays. The market is competitive than ever; new startups are emerging every day, and the established ones are leaving no stone unturned to maintain their position in the market. As a result, retailers have to make sure that the in-store experience is engaging because nearly a quarter of customers have walked out of a store. After all, the staff was unable to answer their questions.

Modern Retail POS Software has blurred the lines between the digital and physical worlds. It has empowered the retail staff to maintain real-time inventory, purchase history, online browsing, and cart abandons. Not only this, but POS Inventory Software is also enabling retailers to create an efficient checkout process, reduce the wait time, and increase productivity to increase the operational cost to support their global business across all channels.

Today's retail POS software can:

• Accurately answer questions on every product.
• Provide recommendations to customers based on their purchasing history
• Complete transactions from tablet or MPOS device

Cloud retail POS software is the newest trend in the retail industry. The software can be accessed directly using an internet connection and is easily compatible with almost all POS hardware. Cloud-based POS software is less expensive and convenient as it allows retailers to access customer data from anywhere. All that is needed is a strong internet connection. A Cloud retail POS software linked with a shopping cart software can simplify and automatically adjust your inventory.

Benefits of Retail POS Software

1. Keep track of your inventory

An inventory that is updated in real-time will help you keep track of what products you currently have now and what products may have become back-ordered. The Retail POS software terminals will automatically refresh when a unit has been purchased or sent out for shipping. It also informs the merchant when it is the right time to reorder while providing the previous distribution purchase price.

In addition to this, if you are running a business from multiple locations, you can easily check inventories for other stores. This way, you can place orders for all stores from one location, thus saving you from placing orders for the same item multiple times.

2. Retention of records

Besides providing up-to-date information about the inventory, a Retail POS System can also help businesses keep track of consumers' purchase history. Using touch POS software, employees can recommend products and services to the customers based on their previous purchase records. This will not only increase sales but will also provide a positive customer experience. It also helps companies to identify the selling trends as well as verify the effectiveness of certain promotions. With this information available at your fingertips, you can correct your selling strategies and find ways to market your products.

3. Makes it mobile

Modern retail POS systems come with a mobile option that allows your employees to move about and provide instant services to the floor's customers. Your employees can start and end a transaction without being tied to a physical terminal, which may increase customers' shopping times and ultimately increase your company's overall sales.

4. Faster, cheaper, and easier installation

ManyManyMany retail POS systems often consume many hours in installation and require you to make substantial phone calls to the customer support team. But with web-based POS software, there is almost zero installation necessary; web-based POS is hosted, which means the entire software is on the provider's end. In addition to this, web-based POS software will take care of all the necessary IT tasks, which means you no longer have to worry about the software updates, nightly backups, or dreaded systems configurations. Spending less time and effort running your computer system gives you more time to concentrate on properly running a business.

Worried about the cost of all this? Surprisingly it is much less than you would have otherwise spent on a traditional POS system. A web-based POS system for retail industries can run on any device; all required is a strong internet connection, which can save you thousands and hundreds of dollars that you may have otherwise invested in new equipment. In addition to this, you don't need to purchase any backup software, backup hard drives, or a server.

5. Quick and Comprehensive Reporting

As the Retail POS software instantaneously updates the inventory amounts, it is much easier to produce accurate reports which will tell you by week, day, or month how your business is doing. Overall sales, profit after markup, sales attributed to each employee, and many other metrics can be monitored easily. This also helps you to know if a new sales tactic is working for you or not or if an employee is underperforming during a day. With all this information at your fingertip, you can easily address any quantifiable issues, and hence raise your sales and ultimately your revenue.

7. Improved Efficiency

The most important reason for spending on a retail POS software is to automate operational tasks and other business processes so that you are not stuck into the old-fashioned manual tactics. One of the most important transformations that you can see while moving from a cash register to a POS System is the overall time consumed in completing the business activities. The checkout process will be faster, which will make customers happy. Inventory processes will be faster, which will make you a productive business owner. Your accountants will be happy as they no longer have to track sales or employee hours via receipts or logbooks.

8. Greater Accuracy

A retail POS system can significantly improve your business accuracy. Automating tasks such as barcode scanning at checkout and for inventory, purposes can significantly decrease human error. By decreasing the errors here, you will indirectly decrease the impact it has on reporting. This will ultimately give you a more sound view of your business performance.

Best Retail POS Software Features to Streamline Any Business Type

The mistake that most retailers make is buying a retail POS software that is not actually intended for their industry.T. This confusion mainly arises due to a wide range of features available in thousands of pos inventory software available in the market. Retailers need to narrow down their research to the specific industry, making their lives easier and profitable.

1. Inventory Management

Software that enables precise inventory tracking is an essential part of any retail pos software. It enables store owners to make inventory purchasing decisions faster and with much greater accuracy. The inventory management solutions can also be programmed to generate re-orders when merchandise quantities have decreased beyond the pre-defined value.

Because of these functionalities, you no longer have to place orders based on guesswork. Instead, the order is placed after considering the historical and SKU-level sales data. This ensures that retailers have the right amount of inventory at the right time and in the right place and the right quantities. With a pos inventory software, you don't have to worry about disappointed customers or the excess inventory that occupies your store shelf or racks, gathering dust and interfere with your profitability.

2. Labor Scheduling and tracking

When a Retail POS software or a Grocery store POS Software includes an attendance and time tracking module, it becomes easier to view all the labor and scheduling related information in one place. Not only this, but the Retail POS Software also enables you to compare store traffic patterns with a total number of staff members on any particular day as well as during a particular shift timing.

This data can then be leveraged to determine how many store associates are needed to assist the customers in a given shift. Hence there will be no additional expenditures.

The time and attendance module of a Retail POS Software or a Grocery store POS software will ensure that no store associates can clock in during hours when they have not been assigned to work, nor can they clock out early and take home the money for the entire shift.

3. Gift cards

Being able to sell and distribute gift cards is a must for your Retail POS software. Gift cards are a great way to bring in extra sales that your business might not have normally gotten. When your Retail POS Software offers a gift card feature, it becomes easier for you to distribute and process them and offer store credit refunds.

4. Discounts and Coupons

When choosing a Retail POS Software or a Grocery Store POS software, make sure you select a software that can easily use discount and coupon feature. A retail POS software that allows for price changes and scannable coupons ensures it is easy to check out employee and customer processes. You no longer have to worry about validating a discount or waiting for an employee to calculate the promotion item while a long queue of customers is waiting to be rung up. Also, this greatly helps in the customer loyalty management program.

5. Centralized Customer Management

You can easily capture customer data through retail POS software. Retailers can then use this information to track sales patterns, run marketing campaigns, and more. A lot of Retail POS software helps capture this information and then transfer it smoothly to the online CRM software.

6. Accept all payment types

You can lose a potential amount of sales if your pos inventory software does not accept mobile payments. Accepting mobile payments will enable retailers to be more efficient, avoid less error, update stock levels automatically, and improve customer satisfaction. Retail POS software accepts debit and credit cards with leading processors worldwide. The ability to issue custom gift cards to use online or in-store will increase revenue while reducing processing costs.

7. User Accounts and permissions

Unless you are a one-person army, the chances are that you might have multiple people working for you. Hence you will need a system that allows you to create a user for each register to track their sales. This feature will also allow you to set sales goals. Also, make sure you get a system that is password protected.

8. Customer-facing display

Today's touch POS software is available with customer-facing displays, which means that the customer can see the transaction happen on the screen that faces them. Customer-facing displays allow for a high level of transparency into the transaction and make it easy for the customers to point out if they are any mistakes in the order. This feature is not mandatory, but if it fits your budget, you should definitely consider this one.

9. Offline Capability

A retail POS software with an offline capability is like a cherry on the cake. This means that even if the internet goes down, you will still be able to process payments and capture customer data. You can continue running your business, and everything will be added once the system is back online.

Artificial Intelligence in Retail

1. Gesture Recognition

AI has introduced in-store gesture walls that will make shopping less about searching and more about finding. Gesture recognition will enable touch POS software to interpret human gestures as commands. Shoppers now can easily find the perfect black dress or a pair of shoes with a simple wave of the hand. Instead of juggling through the racks, customers can easily search for a product they like using the touch POS software. It is a digital catalog that will help shoppers to make more informed and personalized decisions. It can even make a recommendation about which pair of shoes will go with which dress. Besides this, gesture, control, store owners gather data such as product views, product popularity, time of engagement, and store purchase history.

2. Virtual Mirrors

Artificial Intelligence has enabled customers to use Virtual Mirrors to see how an item looks at them instead of trying out clothes directly. Using this item, you can know which item suits you best and what another accessory will complement the attire, thus offering plenty of clothing options.

3. Digital Catalogs

AI has brought advanced Recommendation engines to Retail POS software. This allows consumers to find the right item for them in a few seconds. Instead of going through thousands of items, consumers can go through a Digital Catalog that asks the question regarding the item they are searching for. Based on Size, Colour, and other factors, the catalog will filter out items that will work for them. The same applies to non-apparel retailers who are into selling books, accessories, etc.