I received a lot of questions yesterday on my article on the RBA ban, not surprisingly, as we did submit a paper.
Rather than make a new post, I decided to add the questions people were asking to yesterday's article to clear up any questions this article raised. Go to the FAQ section to read up on them here.
If people like this I may switch to this format, let me know.
The RBA has officially decided to ban card surcharges in its RBA conclusion paper here. This means that come October 2026, you will no longer be allowed to charge a surcharge for Debit and Credit Card purchases. However, you will still be able to offer a cash discount.
The 2026 RBA Surcharge Ban is a federal rule that takes effect in October 2026 and prevents Australian retailers from adding surcharges to card payments at checkout. This new rule forces business owners to pay the full cost of card processing out of pocket. For example, if a customer buys a $10 notebook with a rewards credit card, you cannot add a 1.5% fee to cover the extra credit fees charged by the bank.
Next, the RBA mandated a reduction in one of the bank fees (interchange fees) to help businesses cope. Interchange fees and scheme fees are the hidden wholesale costs that your bank and the card networks charge you to process every electronic transaction. When a customer taps their card, the payment network takes a tiny slice of the sale before the money hits your account. For instance, Visa and MasterCard charge a fee just to use their global networks to verify that the customer has enough money. This should reduce some of the fees merchants are charged.
Also, by forcing banks to publish these fees, the RBA hopes to increase competition. If you know exactly what your bank charges compared to other banks, you can negotiate a much better deal for your store.
The RBA claims to close the gap between small and large merchants by strictly limiting the maximum interchange fees banks can charge. You will need to actively check your merchant statements to ensure your bank actually passes these savings down to your account. Do not assume your bank will automatically lower your bill.
These cards affect your margins by imposing significantly higher processing costs. Soon, you will no longer be able to recover via a checkout surcharge. RBA thinks that lowering interchange fees will help here, which it will, but only to a limited extent. I am sure merchants will end up having to keep paying for the lavish rewards programs attached to platinum travel cards. For instance, processing a basic debit card might cost you 10 cents, but processing a premium platinum card now costs you over a dollar for the same sale. If a customer tries to pay with a premium Visa or MasterCard, and your terminal can accept them, you must also accept their premium cards, even though they carry higher fees. Mind you, in reality, often you do not know until the transaction has gone through whether it is one of these cards.
You have complete control over whether you accept American Express. If you feel their rates are too high to match the new 2026 realities, you are entirely within your rights to put up a 'No Amex' sign and turn it off on your POS system.
The surcharge ban will cause retail price inflation because shops must raise the cost of their goods to absorb the banking fees, which everyone agrees on. The RBA optimistically estimated that this policy would have only a tiny, 0.1%, one-off inflationary effect across the whole economy. We will see whether they are right.
These are items where the merchant cannot change the fees. Products such as lottery tickets, newspapers, and phone credit do not offer flexibility for recovering absorbed bank fees. For example, if a magazine publisher prints a strict $9.95 price on the cover, you must swallow the card processing fee entirely. This needs to be addressed ASAP, as the solution proposed of keeping a fixed price item like a magazine at $9.95 but raising the price of a greeting card from $5.00 to $5.50 to balance your overall shop profit, is not workable in the current economic environment.
This is the only solution; cash discounts are completely legal price reductions offered to customers who choose to pay with physical notes and coins instead of cards. While the RBA banned card penalties, it openly supports offering price breaks to cash-paying customers. For example, you can price a hardcover book at $20 on the shelf, but program your till to give a 1% discount for cash. Our POS System can be set to do this automatically. Many customers will appreciate the savings. If you are going to do this, put a big sign up so everyone knows.
When new items, like gifts, come into the shop, you now need to factor in a percentage for bank fees into your pricing. Again, your POS System should be able to handle this automatically.
Retailers must actively audit their current banking costs and overhaul their store pricing strategies long before the October deadline. Do not wait until the last minute. Follow these three steps to protect your store:
Call your bank: Contact your merchant facility provider today and demand a clear breakdown of your current fees. For instance, ask your bank exactly what percentage you pay for standard debit versus premium rewards credit cards. You need to know your baseline costs.
Audit your inventory: Review your stock to identify which high-margin items can safely handle a small price increase. For example, find your best-selling toys or gifts and plan a small price bump.
Fixed price items: You need to review these now. Ask your suppliers what they plan to do about your margins on these items.
Q: What's the current status on the RBA banning card surcharges? Is it actually happening?
A: Yes, this is Labor policy and is almost certainly going to come into effect.
Q: Will cafes and shops just jack up the price of everything to cover the ban?
A: Yes, you will likely see the cost of card processing baked into the everyday sticker price of items, similar to GST. Some shops may adopt a discount-for-cash policy.
Q: Why don't they just cap the merchant fees as they do in Europe?
A: Good question, I think that is what they should have done. What many lobbied heavily for in Australia was a more targeted fix, of banning surcharges only on debit cards or low-value transactions, as New Zealand did. This was unfortunately rejected.
Q: Are weekend and public holiday surcharges getting banned too?
A: No, the RBA's proposed ban only targets payment processing surcharges, the 1% to 2% fee applied when tapping your card. Weekend and public holiday surcharges are legally separate and designed specifically to cover mandated penalty rates for hospitality and retail staff.
Q: Does the ban apply to both credit and debit cards, or just EFTPOS?
A: The changes aim to eliminate surcharges across all major networks, meaning it would apply to Eftpos, Visa, and Mastercard debit and credit transactions. The ultimate goal is to mandate that the price you see on the shelf or menu is the exact total you pay at the till, regardless of your card type.
Q: How are small businesses supposed to absorb these costs without going under?
A: You can ask your customers to support your local shops by selecting the Savings account, which routes the payment through the cheaper Eftpos network rather than Visa or Mastercard.
Q: Who actually benefits from this? Won't Visa and Mastercard just keep making billions?
A: Well, Visa and MasterCard are certainly winners, but to be fair, consumers will benefit from transparent, upfront pricing.
Q: Why am I being charged a percentage fee for tapping when the technology costs the same?
A: A good question, as it costs as much to process a $1 transaction as a $100 transaction.
Q: Is this just a push to make us a cashless society?
A: I think so.
Q: If a shop is still charging me a tap fee right now, are they breaking the rules?
A: No, it is still entirely legal for merchants to charge a card surcharge, provided it is not excessive and only covers their exact cost of acceptance. The ban only starts in October. This gives retailers a transition period to adjust their pricing models and negotiate new merchant terminal rates with their banks.
Q: How are we supposed to absorb the high costs of premium credit cards without going under?
A: People are expecting a price rise as the actual cost of processing payments has not disappeared; most businesses will have to put these bank fees into their standard shelf prices.
Q: Why do big retailers like Coles and Woolworths get away without surcharging, but we get slammed?
A: Large retailers indeed process an enormous volume of transactions, so giving them the leverage to negotiate significantly lower merchant fees with the banks and card networks than smaller retailers who lack this bargaining power, but what I have noticed is that most of these retailers have quietly given up surcharging a while ago.
Q: Is the government doing anything to lower the actual merchant fees we pay to the banks?
A: Yes. Alongside the surcharge ban, the RBA is requiring banks to disclose previously hidden fees and is enforcing strict reductions on interchange fees. The RBA estimates that 90% of smaller businesses will be better off under the lowered wholesale caps, though most of us remain deeply sceptical.
Q: What happens if we just keep our surcharges active after October 2026?
A: Once the ban comes into full effect, applying a card surcharge will be a breach of consumer law. Non-compliant retailers will likely find that this is a matter for the courts.I would not suggest doing this.
Bernard Zimmermann is the founding director of POS Solutions, a leading point-of-sale system company with 45 years of industry experience, now retired and seeking new opportunities. He consults with various organisations, from small businesses to large retailers and government institutions. Bernard is passionate about helping companies optimise their operations through innovative POS technology and enabling seamless customer experiences through effective software solutions.
I have been following the ACCC vs Coles case, which is a major legal proceeding examining whether the supermarket's "Down Down" promotional pricing deliberately misled everyday consumers. Closing statements for the ACCC and Coles are here.
Specifically, the ACCC alleges that Coles temporarily spiked prices on hundreds of products purely to establish an artificially high baseline for an upcoming discount campaign. For example, say a gift shop suddenly raises the price of a book from $10 to $14 for three weeks, and then heavily promotes a "massive discount" back down to $11.
I find some of Coles' arguments about the challenges posed by fluctuating prices and inflation fair and relatable. However, I have my doubts about their logic here in an ACCC's example: an item was sold at a set price for 649 days, raised to a higher price for 28 days, and then "discounted" to a price still higher than the original price. Would an ordinary, reasonable consumer genuinely think that the product was on sale? It strains credulity. Furthermore, the internal planning documents submitted by the ACCC, showing Coles actively planned to take products off "Down Down," spike the price, and return them to "Down Down" four weeks later, seem to me difficult to explain away.
Retail pricing compliance matters because it may legally protect your business from regulatory fines while preserving the essential trust of your local shoppers. Deceptive pricing directly risks destroying your community's goodwill.
Besides, fighting a deceptive pricing allegation is financially impossible for most businesses.
Admittedly, managing genuine wholesale cost increases is a frustrating daily reality for any Australian retail business fighting inflation today. If your wholesale costs for stationery, magazines, or gift lines increase, as they often do due to freight charges, the legally compliant approach is to update the standard undiscounted shelf price immediately. If a supplier raises the wholesale cost of premium dog food by 10%, a pet store owner must immediately raise their standard retail price to protect their profit margin.
Next, you must strictly avoid artificially inflating a price with the predetermined intention of dropping it later to claim a "discount". Trying to soften the blow of inflation by staging a fake sale is legally considered deceptive pricing. A boutique clothing shop cannot raise the price of a dress from $50 to $80 purely to advertise a "30% off" clearance sale two weeks later.
Finally, the law strictly requires that advertised discounts be compared only with the price the item is genuinely sold at for a reasonable, sustained period. Because the exact legal definition of a "reasonable period" remains frustratingly murky, testing your luck with brief price spikes is highly inadvisable. Retailers maintain legal safety by completely avoiding "was/now" tags on items that recently fluctuated in price.
A point-of-sale (POS) system is comprehensive software that tracks inventory costs, processes transactions, and logs historical pricing data. Instead of manual spreadsheets, it provides a digital record of product prices over time. For example, a retail manager can quickly generate a report showing a wine remained at $20 for six months before a sale. Using a trusted Australian POS system also allows effortless documentation of reasons behind price changes, enabling instant proof to regulators of when, why, and how long a price changed.
Furthermore, keeping your software up to date reduces the risk of human error on the sales floor. When supplier costs fluctuate, updating the central database ensures the correct baseline price instantly syncs to the front-of-house register. A busy cashier will never accidentally sell a garden hose at an outdated, unprofitable price if the system automatically locks in the new baseline.
Undeniably, the most crucial next step is to fully audit your current promotional tickets to ensure they reflect a genuine, sustained prior selling price. If you recently spiked a price specifically to accommodate a supplier's recommended retail price. If you have been using "was/now" tags, I suggest you be careful. I am not going to.
Bernard Zimmermann is the founding director of POS Solutions, a leading point-of-sale system company with 45 years of industry experience, now retired and seeking new opportunities. He consults with various organisations, from small businesses to large retailers and government institutions. Bernard is passionate about helping companies optimise their operations through innovative POS technology and enabling seamless customer experiences through effective software solutions.
Rocket and feather pricing, also called asymmetric price transmission (Wikipedia), happens when suppliers quickly raise delivery fees for reasons like higher oil prices, but are slow to lower them when costs drop. For example, a greeting card supplier's trucking company might add a 10% fuel levy, then rename it as a shipping fee and keep charging it for as long as possible. That’s why I believe these higher prices will stick around, even if the oil crisis ends. It’s unrealistic to expect them to drop soon.
Right now, freight surcharges and mandatory carrier fees are being added to your invoices to cover diesel costs. These charges increase your inventory costs before you even make a sale.
For example, when a distributor ships toys to your shop, they add a trucking fee that raises your costs.
If you ignore rising fuel levies, your retail profit margins will shrink. Australia Post's domestic parcel contract fuel surcharge is set to rise from 4.8% to 12% (Source: Australia Post, 2026). Most small business owners can’t afford to absorb these sudden shipping fees. That’s why you need to include transport costs when setting your shelf prices. For example, if shipping a plush toy costs two dollars more, you should raise the retail price to protect your profit.
I know many retailers choose to absorb these fees, but I recommend reviewing this policy as soon as possible. It introduces a new level of uncertainty into the system, which makes it difficult to set consistent retail prices. Retail pricing strategies require stability to work properly. Fluctuating diesel costs create a chaotic accounting mess. For instance, identical boxes of toys might cost you three different amounts across three consecutive weeks. You may need to review the prices of the existing items in the shop.
Where your shop is located makes a big difference in how fuel supply pressures affect you. Suburban newsagents usually see smaller but more frequent freight surcharges. Country retailers, on the other hand, face higher delivery fees and a bigger risk of running out of stock.
A POS System tracks every item from wholesale purchase to final customer sale. It can automatically split bulk freight charges across individual items so you see the full cost. For example, your software can divide a $20 freight charge over 100 greeting cards, showing a 20-cent cost per card.
They can also be set to order stock strategically to minimise transport fees. By ordering larger quantities less frequently, you combine multiple delivery fees into a single charge. This is what we have done in our business.
Keep an eye on your prices regularly using your POS system. Next, review your delivery fees to protect your margins. Make sure you’re not covering customer shipping costs yourself. Push click-and-collect services to your local customers instead.
We’re all in this together. While you can’t control global diesel prices, you can control how your store adapts. Use your tools to ensure your cost data is accurate and margin management is tight. Don’t let hidden supplier fees chip away at your profits.
Bernard Zimmermann is the founding director of POS Solutions, a leading point-of-sale system company with 45 years of industry experience, now retired and seeking new opportunities. He consults with various organisations, from small businesses to large retailers and government institutions. Bernard is passionate about helping companies optimise their operations through innovative POS technology and enabling seamless customer experiences through effective software solutions.
Running a retail shop or newsagency involves managing foot traffic, staff, and stock, but often overlooks cash flow. The gap between paying suppliers and waiting for sales to convert to cash drains working capital.
Fundamentally, retail cash flow is the net balance of cash moving into and out of a retail business at any given time. It represents the actual cash you have on hand to pay the bills, rather than the theoretical profit. It is all too easy for a retailer to show strong profits on paper but have those profits tied up in massive stock orders, leaving the owner still struggling to pay staff wages.
Consequently, understanding this difference is the first step toward budgeting stability. Profit indicates that you are making money, whereas cash flow dictates whether you have the actual funds available when you need them.
Therefore, comprehending this timeline entails careful review of your cash flow management. When you bridge the gap between paying out and getting paid, you instantly reduce the stress of running an independent shop.
Unfortunately, poor cash management is a silent killer in the Australian retail industry, and the problem is not getting better.
Usually, the most common cash flow issues in retail are slow-moving stock, overdue customer accounts, and poorly timed supplier payments. These problems don't usually make a loud noise; instead, they gradually choke your working capital over several months.
Primarily, slow-moving inventory penalises your business twice: it depletes your cash reserves during purchase and paralyses your buying power while sitting unsold. Every item sitting unused on a shelf is, in effect, a stack of five-dollar bills you cannot use to pay your electricity bill. For example, holding onto last year's calendar stock in February is a direct drain on your shop's working capital.
Thankfully, modern reporting tools in your POS System can identify these items. Use your old and dead stock reports at least monthly.
Similarly, buying stock on a gut feeling rather than hard data is a guaranteed way to freeze your cash. Buyers often order heavily into new product lines, hoping for a trend, only to find their customers are not buying them. For example, a client of ours a boutique gift shop ordered a pile of expensive imported candles that looked great at a trade show, only to find their budget-conscious local shoppers completely ignore them.
Another problem occurred when a salesman from a greeting card company helped one of our clients place a large order, but no one checked the existing stock in the storeroom in the back. Piles of cards just sat uselessly there, eating the cash flow.
Use Automatic orders do not kid yourself the computer will win
Undeniably, overdue customer accounts restrict retail cash flow by forcing your business to act as an unpaid bank for its clients. Extending credit to local schools, sporting clubs, or corporate offices feels like a great way to secure loyal business, but it comes with immense financial risk. Many of these will eat up your cash flow, leaving you waiting 90 days for their corporate office to settle their monthly invoice. Use credit limits which are easy to setup.
Interestingly, large organisations and government departments are often the worst offenders when it comes to timely payments. While you might assume a massive account is perfectly safe, its size actually makes it harder to collect from due to complex internal bureaucracies. For example, a government agency might have the funds, but their strict accounts payable policies mean your invoice will not be processed for a minimum of 60 days. Threatening legal action rarely works, the employees often do not care and/or there is nothing they can do, they work to organisational policy.
Years ago, I was stunned when I had a cheque from a goverment agency bounce as the bank said they had insufficient funds.
Consequently, you must lay down clear credit limits from day one, rather than allowing a customer to quietly accumulate unmanageable debt. Its easy to set up.
Furthermore, proactive credit management requires catching the problem ASAP. Relying on staff to manually remember who owes what during a busy lunch rush is a recipe for disaster. For example, one of my clients happily hand over $200 worth of stationery to a local school teacher, completely unaware that the school's account was already 45 days overdue.
Essentially, a modern Point of Sale (POS) system automates your credit and inventory tools by hard-coding your financial policies promptly into the checkout process. It removes the emotional difficulty of cutting off a loyal customer by letting the computer be the "bad guy." For example, when a customer attempts to charge items to an account that is over its limit, the system simply blocks the transaction and forces the operator to request immediate payment. That is actually the best place to collect a debt, when the customer is standing directly in front of you, wanting more goods.
Naturally, making the leap from manual observation to automated POS controls represents a massive operational shift. Here is how automating the areas immediately impacts your cash flow:
You need to transition immediately away from reactive debt collection and emotional inventory purchases. Actionable cash flow management starts with creating boundaries today so you do not have to chase bad money tomorrow. For example, informing all account holders this week that standard terms are moving to 14 days will immediately pull your cash cycle forward.
First, start new accounts with very small limits to test their payment reliability. Let the amount build up only after they have proven they can pay on time, and be certain to review all existing credit limits annually. For example, start a new corporate client on a $200 limit, and only raise it to $500 after three consecutive months of on-time payments.
Additionally, consider whether a customer actually needs an in-house credit account. With the widespread availability of business credit cards and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services, you can often shift the credit risk entirely to a third-party financier. For example, running a high-value transaction through a BNPL provider guarantees you get paid immediately while the customer still gets to pay in instalments.
If your existing system cannot automatically block overdue accounts, warn staff at checkout, or identify dead stock that is draining your capital, it is time for an operational upgrade.
Bernard Zimmermann is the founding director of POS Solutions, a leading point-of-sale system company with 45 years of industry experience, now retired and seeking new opportunities. He consults with various organisations, from small businesses to large retailers and government institutions. Bernard is passionate about helping companies optimise their operations through innovative POS technology and enabling seamless customer experiences through effective software solutions.
We’ve just launched a big update to our POS System’s AI reporting: the Commercial Operations Profile (COP). This new feature will make your AI reports much more useful. The COP gives a quick overview of your shop, including your location, traffic patterns, what brings people in, profit categories, customer types, competitors, operational limits, and growth goals. With this, your AI business analyst gets the context it needs to understand your business.
Let me explain. If you printed a POS report and showed it to a bank manager, accountant, or business analyst like me, they could read the numbers, but without knowing what your business does, the figures wouldn’t mean much. For example, selling five dog toys might be insignificant for a supermarket but great for a small kiosk near a train station. The COP adds this context. It turns your POS System’s AI from a simple calculator into a strategic adviser, helping it explain what your numbers mean for your shop, your customers, and your profits.
Info: Without the COP, the AI just gives you numbers. With the COP, your POS System provides tailored, realistic retail analysis every time.
After years of working with independent Australian retailers, I know what the end of the month looks like. You find a quiet moment, sit in the back office, and open a spreadsheet or POS report. You see what you sold, but the data doesn’t clearly show what you should do next.
Recently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) promised to change all of this. Retailers were told that AI could look at their sales data and magically offer brilliant business advice. However, many who have tried asking the current AI for help have been disappointed. All they got was a textbook answer, typically "run a 50% off storewide sale" or "hire a social media manager." Those answers are useless for most analyses.
Now, why does this happen? Well, the simple answer is: there is no business context. Yes, the AI can summarise numbers, but it cannot explain what they mean. Until now, you had to manually add business context each time you wanted a deeper analysis. If you tried with AI, you had to type out your entire store history to get a good answer.
Our new AI POS reporting software changes everything. You now create a form for your business. You save it in your system, and it acts as your personal space.
A good AI retail software needs to understand the physical reality of your store. Here are five reasons why the Commercial Operations Profile turns basic reports into powerful POS business intelligence.
Raw data lacks context. Let's say a generic AI looks at your sales report. It notices that your "Greeting Card" sales dropped by 15% in February. The AI will immediately flag this as a major business failure and tell you to panic.
However, if your COP states that your store is located in a coastal holiday town, the AI understands the bigger picture. It knows you have a massive transient tourist population in January. Therefore, the AI realises that a drop in February is a normal seasonal baseline return. It is not a crisis. It will tell you that your sales are perfectly on track for the season.
An AI analysing a spreadsheet will naturally focus on the biggest numbers. If selling Lotto makes up 60% of your top-line revenue, an unguided AI will tell you, "Lotto is your most important category. Dedicate more floor space to it."
As an experienced retailer, you know this is terrible advice. The profit margins on Lotto are tiny. The COP explicitly separates your "Footfall Drivers" (what brings people in) from your "Profit Drivers" (what actually pays the rent).
When the AI reads your sales report now, it looks through a profit lens. It will give you actionable advice, like: "Your Lotto traffic was up 10% this week, but your premium gift sales remained flat. You are failing to convert that extra foot traffic."
When you look at basket-size data in your POS dashboard, you need to know what should be happening. This helps you spot what is not happening.
For example, your shop might act as an Amazon or Australia Post parcel collection point. That is a great footfall driver. If your COP lists your target cross-sell as "Parcel pickup + Greeting Card," the AI will specifically scan your transaction report looking for that exact combination.
It can then report back: "Only 2% of parcel customers bought a card this month. The counter-placement strategy is not working. Try moving the card spinner closer to the parcel pickup zone."
Standard retail analytics software assumes you have unlimited resources. If an AI notices that Friday afternoons are your most profitable time, it might suggest, "Double your staff on Friday afternoons to capture more sales."
That is useless advice if you run a small family business. If your COP clearly states your constraints—such as "Owner-operated, no additional staff budget"—the AI adapts its analysis.
Instead of suggesting more staff, it will offer a practical solution: "Since you cannot add staff on Fridays, you must streamline your checkout operations. Pre-bundle your top-selling Friday items to speed up the queue."
A modern point-of-sale system captures hundreds of metrics every day. Without direction, the AI does not know which numbers you actually care about right now.
Because the COP includes your "Top 3 Goals" (for example, growing your parcel-to-purchase conversion rate), the AI prioritises that specific metric. It will ignore distracting data points, like a slight dip in newspaper sales, to keep you focused on your main objective.
To help you create your COP quickly, we have built a simple questionnaire. To answer it, you do not need to look up exact numbers. A decent estimate is perfectly fine. It does not take long, one of the retailers using our newsagency POS software told me it took him eight minutes to complete the questionnaire.
Please take a few minutes to answer the questions below. I suggest you copy and paste this list into a blank document, then fill it out under each question.
First, we need to establish the physical asset.
Next, we define how people move around your store.
This is the most critical part. We must separate traffic from profit.
An AI needs to know exactly who it is talking to.
We need to establish your current marketing baseline.
Finally, we set the AI's boundaries.
Once you have answered these questions, you should not just paste your conversational answers directly into your POS System, as some suggest; there is a much better way to do it. AI programs do not behave as humans do. To get the AI to perform perfectly, the output needs to be in what we software engineers call dense data-point formatting.
This means stripping away all grammar, conversational padding, and full sentences. We present the raw facts as compactly as possible.
Here is a clear example of the difference between human writing and computer formatting:
Narrative Formatting (How humans write and read):
"The store is a stand-alone building located on a busy corner. It gets a lot of foot traffic from the local train station every morning between 7 am and 9 am. Because of this, our biggest seller by volume is newspapers, but we don't make much money on them. We make most of our profit from selling premium Hallmark greeting cards."
This is 57 words. This has a high word count but not much actual data.
Dense Data-Point Formatting (How AI likes to read):
Premises: Stand-alone, corner position.
Key Anchor: Train station.
Peak Traffic: 7:00 am - 9:00 am.
Footfall Driver (High Volume): Newspapers.
Profit Driver (High Margin): Hallmark greeting cards.
This is only 28 words. We have a much lower word count, but we deliver the same information with perfect clarity.
Formatting your COP this way gives you two major advantages.
It saves memory space. AI models have a limited working memory. Your COP must be short and sharp. Ideally, it should be between 300 and 500 words. The shorter and denser it is, the more "brainpower" the AI has left actually to analyse your sales reports.
This is the most important, as it reduces AI hallucinations. Have you ever noticed your AI making things up or guessing wildly? We call these "hallucinations." This usually happens because the AI gets confused. Strict data-point formatting creates absolute clarity. It forces the AI to stick to the facts you provided.
You do not need to write this type of dense format yourself; in fact, I recommend that you use a free AI tool (like ChatGPT or Gemini) to translate your human answers into computer-friendly data.
Copy the prompt below, paste it into your AI tool, and paste your filled-out questionnaire answers right at the bottom.
Role: Act as a Senior Retail Analyst.
Task: Analyse the provided Business Owner Questionnaire data and generate a highly accurate, concise Commercial Operations Profile (COP).
Formatting Rules: Output must be strictly under 2,000 characters (approx. 300 words). Use dense data-point formatting (e.g., Key: Value). Do not use introductory or concluding paragraphs. Eliminate all conversational filler. Use Markdown headers and bullet points.
Structure: Provide a structured summary of: 1) Business Identity & Premises, 2) Location Mechanics & Traffic, 3) The Revenue Engine (Highlighting the Gap between Footfall vs Profit), 4) Customer Personas & Digital Health, 5) Competitors & Operational Constraints, and 6) Top Growth Opportunities based on their stated goals.
Input Data:
[Paste your completed questionnaire answers here]
When you hit enter, the AI will spit out a beautifully clean profile. Here is a sample of what the final COP looked like in a test store. I created Parkmore Newsagency. Notice how clean and sharp the data is.
Commercial Operations Profile: Parkmore Newsagency
Gap: High-footfall/low-margin (Lotto, magazines, stationery) vs. high-margin/low-traffic (greeting cards, gifts).
Once you have your clean, dense profile, review it to ensure everything looks correct. If it has errors, you are asking for trouble. Now log into your POS System and paste that final profile directly into our AI reporting settings.
Once your COP is saved, you are ready to go. Run an end-of-month sales report and ask any specific business question.
For example, you can ask: "Based on my profile, why did my profit margin fall this month, and what low-cost actions should I take next week to fix it?"
You can also ask it for daily operational help: "Based on my peak traffic times and staffing constraints, write me an optimal staff roster for next week."
You will be amazed by how incredibly useful, realistic, and profitable the answers become. Once your AI truly understands your retail business, there is no limit to the insights you can discover. It stops being a calculator and starts being a true business partner.
If you are tired of generic advice and want a system that actually helps you grow, you need the right tools. Suppose you want to see exactly how our new AI POS reporting software can transform your business. Let's get your technology working harder, so you can focus on making sales.
Bernard Zimmermann is the founding director of POS Solutions, a leading point-of-sale system company with 45 years of industry experience, now retired and seeking new opportunities. He consults with various organisations, from small businesses to large retailers and government institutions. Bernard is passionate about helping companies optimise their operations through innovative POS technology and enabling seamless customer experiences through effective software solutions.
Can Artificial Intelligence take part of the headache out of pricing your stock? Answer: It can, but, as with everything, you need to use it carefully.
In a retail setting, the right retail price for your products is one of your most frustrating tasks. Supplier costs constantly change. You need to stay competitive with others; however, you also need to make enough profit to keep your doors open. Historically, people often have to walk down the street with a half-dozen items in mind to check competitor prices. It's a slow, clunky process.
Because of this, many retailers are excited about the promise of AI retail pricing. As with everything, you need to understand how retail AI technology works in the real world.
When you hear about AI price look-ups, the pitch sounds like a dream come true. You press a button, you select an item, perhaps a popular brand of local honey or a top-selling magazine, and instantly, you get:
It shows you what you charged for this item last year compared to today, helping you track how your prices have grown over time.
It uses your current wholesale cost to aim for a healthy profit margin. This stops you from accidentally pricing an item below cost.
It gives you a broad view of what other local shops are charging, so you know where your price sits.
This sounds like magic, and it is not true.
To use AI safely, you must understand how it actually thinks. AI is not a living brain. It's not a tiny person sitting inside your computer.
AI, as a massive pattern-matching machine, reads millions of pages of text on the internet. When you ask it a question, it quickly searches its memory to find words that usually go together. It doesn't know the answer. It just predicts the most likely answer based on what it has read. This is a brilliant skill when you want the AI to write an email for you. It's fantastic at summarising a long lease document. However, this same skill makes it very dangerous when you need precise, factual, live numbers.
AI is not a live data feed; it doesn't have a secret camera looking at the shelves of the shop next door. This is what we call the "Live Data Illusion." It's one of the biggest traps for retailers using AI retail pricing today. When you ask an AI tool to check a competitor's price, it scrapes public websites to find numbers and then guesses the price based on historical patterns. The AI is guessing based on what it read on the internet weeks or months ago.
Let's look at a real-world example to show the problem.
I asked an AI tool for the price of fuel in my suburb, Keysborough, Victoria, today. The AI confidently told me the following:
\
Now sounds like a sweet deal, but it's nonsense; no one will sell me petrol at 162.9c/L today.
I actually decided to drive down Springvale Road and look at a few petrol stations, the cheapest on offer I could find is
U91 at 236.9 c/L
U95 is 249.9 c/L
U98 is 259.9 c/L
Diesel 285.9 c/L
As far as the tip, 747 Springvale Road was not the cheapest and was offering U91 at 249.9/L.
Now, why did the AI get it so wrong? Because it reads an old price on a web page. It didn't plug into the live, real-time computer system at the petrol station. Then what the AI did was stitch together these pages it found on the internet and presented them as today's truth.
Now, the same flaw occurs when you check other retail stock prices in your POS system. Now petrol is a well-advertised product; imagine what it's doing to less-advertised prices like chocolates. There are several problems here. A typical problem is that the AI looks at an old web page showing $7.99 for a special Christmas promotion from three months ago. But that promotion is over, and everyone else is back to selling it for $12.99. The other issue is that, unlike petrol, companies actively block AI bots from reading their live prices online. This means AI can't see what these companies are charging today.
Info: If you unquestioningly trust the AI, you'll slash your prices for no reason. You'll throw away your hard-earned profit.
Now it can be worse as AI is built to sound confident. Developers designed it to be helpful and polite, but not to say "I'm not sure, you should probably check this yourself." It's very hard to argue with AI because it is so emphatic.
So, should you ignore AI price look-ups completely? Absolutely not. They're a powerful and exciting tool when used correctly.
You need to treat the AI like a very smart, but slightly inexperienced, junior assistant. You'd never let a brand-new staff member change all your prices without checking their work first. You must treat AI the same way.
Here are four golden rules for using AI retail pricing tools safely.
Treat any price suggested by AI as a second opinion. It's a helpful hint, not the final word. Never rely on an AI tool for live competitor pricing. You may still need to make a trip to see current prices. If the system suggests a price, pause and think about it. Does it feel right for your specific neighbourhood? Does it make sense for your typical customer? You know your local community better than a computer ever will.
AI is fantastic at spotting big trends. Instead of asking for an exact price, use the AI to look at the bigger picture.
For example, notice if the AI says prices in a certain category are trending upwards. If the software highlights that greeting cards are generally selling for more this year, that's valuable information. You can use that trend to raise your prices across the board gently.
Before you change a price, you must cross-check the AI suggestion against your own numbers. Look at your current wholesale cost. Look at your minimum required profit margin.
If the AI suggests dropping a price to $10, ask yourself if you still make money at that price. If the answer is no, ignore the AI. Your software holds your true wholesale costs. Always let your true costs dictate your final decision.
Nothing beats walking into a competitor's shop and looking at their shelves. You should still run a short, periodic scouting routine.
Pop into nearby stores once a month. See how they display their products. Look at their actual price tags. This real-world check keeps your AI tool honest. It gives you a realistic view of what's truly happening on your street.
Info: There is specialised software available for price look-ups; both Google and Bing have a shopping option, Amazon can be useful and has a very sophisticated price look-up system, and there are other specialised price look-up software like PetrolSpy, which I use a lot. Be careful, as they have errors too, but they can give you a guide.
The technology is moving incredibly fast. In the next few years, AI tools will get much smarter. They'll become better at understanding live data. They'll integrate even deeper into the retail software you use every day. Today, however, we can only use what we have.
In summary, AI price look-ups are a brilliant addition to your Point of Sale (POS) system, provided you know their limits. They're fantastic for spotting broad trends, catching pricing mistakes, and saving you from tedious spreadsheet work.
However, they're incredibly dangerous if you treat them as a live data dashboard. Always remember the petrol station trap above.
Bernard Zimmermann is the founding director of POS Solutions, a leading point-of-sale system company with 45 years of industry experience, now retired and seeking new opportunities. He consults with various organisations, from small businesses to large retailers and government institutions. Bernard is passionate about helping companies optimise their operations through innovative POS technology and enabling seamless customer experiences through effective software solutions.
This guide shows you how to track monthly stock sales over the last two years using your POS system's 24-month trend report. You'll learn why two years beats one, how to run the report step-by-step, and how to use the insights to boost your retail profits. Let's dive in and make your data work harder for you.
Your POS system automatically records every sale. But a standard 12-month report often misses the full picture, especially for seasonal items.
Think Easter. Chocolate eggs and decorations sell well in March or April. A 12-month view skips last year's Easter rush entirely. That's why smart retailers and suppliers always check two full years. They compare "this time last year" figures to spot real trends.
Your POS System makes pulling this data simple. Here's exactly how.
Well, it's easy to do and will take you a second to find out.
To get started, go to Register Reports > Sales Stock > Stock Sales Details 24 Month Trend.
Now enter the criteria you want, and you will see the report above.
You get a lot of detail: the stock-on-hand figure, two years of history, total sales, etc.
No need for the whole department; filter to a single supplier or product range. It takes seconds.
This report isn't just numbers – it's your secret weapon. Here's how top Australian retailers use it every day:
When you line up both years side by side, patterns jump out. You'll see your store's real rhythm.
Australian shops face unique seasons, think Christmas heatwaves or Anzac Day baking. A good POS system in Australia delivers these reports fast. No spreadsheets. No hassle.
Two years of data reveal what one year hides.
Don't just glance and go. Dig deeper:
Pro tip: Run this monthly. It's your early warning system for stock-outs or overstock.
Log in to your POS System now. Pull that 24-month report. See what last Easter really taught you.
Bernard Zimmermann is the founding director of POS Solutions, a leading point-of-sale system company with 45 years of industry experience, now retired and seeking new opportunities. He consults with various organisations, from small businesses to large retailers and government institutions. Bernard is passionate about helping companies optimise their operations through innovative POS technology and enabling seamless customer experiences through effective software solutions.
This report can help you to get helpful insights into the stock that you sell.
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