What Is Point Of Sale System?
POS system is an integrated business management software suite that is used by hospitality and retail businesses to simplify billing, sales promotions, product returns, and much more. From monitoring inventory to tracking sales, processing financial transactions to maintaining customer relationships, providing real-time reports to improving employee management, a full-featured point of sale software can handle all operations needed to run and grow businesses.
Though the POS software is meant to drive complex business operations, the intelligent system in itself is designed to enable anyone, from a tech-savvy professional to a technophobic entrepreneur, who want to turn their business successful.
According to a Gartner report, “By 2022, 60% of organizations will utilize packaged artificial intelligence to automate processes in multiple functional areas.”
6 Must Have Point of Sale Software Features?
For businesses from the retail and hospitality industry, selecting the right point of sale system is of utmost importance to ensure their organizational operations run efficiently. But not every point-of-sale software function in a similar way. Its features decide the usability of the application. Therefore, to select the POS system that is the best fit for your business, you need to know about the most essential features that would help you in keeping your business operations running smoothly.
Here are the six must-have point of sale features that you can lean on as a supportive management tool:
Inventory and Stock Tracking
Accurate inventory tracking is critical to ensure goods or services are always available to the customers when they need them.
Advanced POS systems include barcode scanner and other inventory tracking tools to provide you with complete visibility and accountability of stock movement, helping you avoid over-purchasing or shortages. The technology even identifies high-demand goods and notifies you to reorder inventory that is performing well.
Sales Report Monitoring
Knowing what is ordered most at any given time is the best way to determine sales trends. This insight is necessary to save your business from unnecessary product overspend.
A cloud-based POS system with modern features makes it easier to track and manage sales information. It is able to generate robust reports, enabling you to understand and make informed business decisions for increasing overall productivity.
Task Automation
Task automation is another great feature of a smart POS system. It allows you to handle sales, purchases, inventory, and other processes in a smarter way. You won't need to manually log the information, as the system automatically collects data from different processes and generate reports required to run your business smoothly.
Loyalty Program Manager
Loyalty programs are not an absolute necessity, but they help hospitality and retail businesses grow.
POS software with a built-in loyalty program manager makes keeping track of the rewards offered and loyalty incentives your customers are getting hassle-free. A strategically planned and well-monitored loyalty program increases sales thereby improve business profits.
Return and Refund Management
Product return is an inevitable part of retail businesses and customers nowadays prefer stores that have shopper-friendly return policies.
Your POS system must include the feature to facilitate the acceptance of cross-channel returns and faster refunds. This makes returning purchased items a stress-free process for customers and keeping track of them easier for you.
Split or Multiple Billing Facility
Your customers might want to make payments partially with credit cards or cash or gift cards or split the bills.
POS software can make billing and transactions swifter for everyone. Go beyond traditional payment methods with an advanced POS system that supports options for splitting bills and accepts payments made through multiple formats in a single transaction.
Choosing the Best Retail POS System
Overall, a technologically advanced POS software is able to make your business processes more organized. It is necessary to have all the above features in your point-of-sale system, however, depending on the type of business you have, you can also opt to include additional features to enable you maintain superior business management practices.
Still, unsure what to look for in your POS software, get expert’s help. Connect with us to discuss your challenges with our product consultants.
