Electronic payments allow customers to pay for your products and services without cash. There are huge advantages all the way from customer experience to bookkeeping, and the key to making this all work is a modern POS software system. Technology, in the 21st century, is a really beautiful thing. The main reason for this is because it saves your most precious resource: time.
As a business owner, you’ve got your hands full. On any given day, you could be juggling accounting, paperwork, inventory management, staff scheduling, dispute resolution, marketing, forward planning, and more. Oh, and you’re probably trying to fit a life of your own in there somewhere! Time is precious, so it makes sense to use it as efficiently as possible.
Ready to start saving time at work? Call our team today.
Link Your Accounting and POS Software
The fact you can link your POS software with your accounting software is a game-changer. This means laborious data transfers are a thing of the past. Let’s be real, we’ve all looked at enough spreadsheets to last us a lifetime, and no-one has time for painstaking data entry.
Using your POS system this way will significantly cut down the amount of time you spend looking at your accounts, especially when it’s time to file your taxes, because it will significantly improve the accuracy of your accounts and make them much easier to reconcile. For example, you can process your credit card transactions in batches, eliminating senseless repetition. This means your gateway provider will make a single call to your network, and will get back to you quickly with all of the transactions that have been approved as well as any declined transactions.
This is so simple and it makes so much sense. Innovations like these free you up to get back to business, giving you the time to focus on things like growth and strategy.
Use POS Software to Automate Inventory
A defining feature of modern POS software is enhanced inventory and order management. This basically makes it much simpler to track what you’re selling, so for example your system will alert you when stock is running low to ensure you can get more before you run out.
POS software systems like Clover provide detailed reporting, so you can see at a glance what’s selling and what’s not, and proactively tailor your approach. This could include special offers, Facebook Ads campaigns, or conducting an old-school flyer drop – whatever it takes to keep your stock rotating. Technology can make a huge difference when it comes to maintaining cash flow.
The other main advantage to using new POS software to automate your inventory is that it will most likely use a cloud-based system. This is essentially insurance, because it will help protect your data if your network goes down for any reason, meaning your team can continue operating normally. It also means you can check in even if you’re off-site to ensure everything is running smoothly.
POS Software Can Digitize Scheduling
For many of our clients, staff scheduling is one of the most stressful and time-consuming parts of the job. There are always a lot of variables when you’re coordinating a team, and it’s difficult to avoid errors if you’re still doing things manually on a color-coded sheet hanging in the office.
We’ve already established that modern POS software can do a lot more than just facilitating transactions, so by now it’s probably no surprise that they can also automate your schedule. This means it really easy to see when your team members clock in and out, predict shifts, and avoid errors. Even better, you can send that data straight to your accounting software, making payroll a breeze. If you manage a large team, this will save a monumental amount of time.
Track Customer Trends with POS Software
One more point and then we’ll let you go. Using your POS software to simplify accounting, streamline inventory, and smooth scheduling issues means it’s inevitable that you’ll collect some pretty interesting data. If you choose a system like Clover (which is the one we recommend to all our clients), you can access this data right at the POS terminal. It will provide a series of customizable graphs and diagrams that allow you to see at a glance how your business is going.
A key part of this is customer trends. You can see what they like and what they don’t, what day of the week are the busiest, and what time of day they’re most likely to stop by. You can also see how much they spend in each transaction and find out if this is affected by events like holiday. You can also see how often they use loyalty cards to find out if they’re new or repeat customers. This kind of information is invaluable when it comes to planning, because it will help you decide on the strategies best suited to help your business continue to grow, which maximizes your efficiency.
So there you have it. There are lots of ways a POS software upgrade can help you save time. As a business owner, this is important not just to maintain the health of your company, but to help you toe the fine line of work-life balance and ensure you’re making time for what’s important.
Ready to maximize your efficiency? We’d love to help.