features of pos software

1. KEY FEATURES OF POS SOFTWARE

2. What is POS? • The point of sale or point of purchase is the time and place where a retail transaction is completed. At the point of sale, the merchant calculates the amount owed by the customer, indicates that amount, may prepare an invoice for the customer, and indicates the options for the customer to make payment. A full-featured POS system can handle sales monitoring and reporting, analytics, inventory tracking, mobile connectivity, customer data management, employee management, and robust integrations.

3. Billing and order processing • A point of sale system must have the basic functionality of billing and order processing. It should be able to bill orders by scanning items and capturing different payment modes.It can generate order invoice, reprint and email to end customer along with adding the discount, customer details, additional remarks and salesman’s name to an order.

4. Sales monitoring and reporting • The point of sale system must be able to generate a robust report on sales result. It should be able to report hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly takings and outgoings so that the merchants can easily understand the overall success of their business. Sales trends such as seasonal demand in products, forecast based on sales trends, insights on unnecessary product overspend, and information relating to stock management are some of the features of an advanced POS reporting module.

5. Inventory and stock management A POS system’s inventory management module must provide complete visibility and accountability at store level at all times. The system should provide a view of lot-wise inventory, SKU transaction history about ‘in’, ‘out’ and ‘within’ movements of any SKU, and inbound & outbound inventory. It should be able to make stock adjustments i.e. increase/decrease stock while viewing inventory and capture the reason for stock adjustments.

6. Cross channel returns management • Accepting cross-channel returns and facilitating refunds and replacements from any store location are some of the functionalities of a POS returns management module. The system should facilitate the creation of multiple returns for one sales order at different time intervals. It should capture details like the reason for return, salesperson’s name, and remarks.

7. Customer relationship and experience • A point of sale system can help you retain your customers by storing customer data and purchase history. This can be used to provide a personalized experience to your customer. Customer data is highly useful for advertising as this data can provide insights on which customer would be interested in your sale. For example, sending a sale flyer for “30% off on oversized shirts” to the customer who wears a medium sized shirt would be a waste of time.

8. Employee management • It is surprising for many when we say that a POS system can be used to manage employees. But, an employee management module of a POS system can help you manage your staffing levels, employee hours, and sales performance which helps you to track employee productivity. You can track your employee activity by linking it with each transaction. This will help to bifurcate the good and weak performers so that you can take appropriate actions to improve their productivity.

9. Loyalty programs and gift cards • Instead of using traditional punch cards, you can now track your customer loyalty incentives using the POS system. As the sales of gift cards is increasing every year, your POS system must have the capability to manage those as well. Today’s POS system go beyond processing sales. As you have learned in the previous sections, a feature-rich POS can help increase efficiency and provide insights to help you improve your productivity. These are the reasons for you to switch to a POS system today. See how Vinculum can help you achieve that with a cloud-based Point of Sale system.