As an Australian, it is lovely to celebrate Australia Day because it reminds how blessed we are to be in such a wonderful country.
For those that need support, rest assured that our support lines are all open today.
First of all, a very happy Chinese New Year to all our Chinese readers, we hope for your good health, good luck and much happiness throughout the coming year.
Surprisingly for non-Chinese, the rat is actually in traditional Chinese legends considered to being quick-witted, resourceful, and smart but lack courage. With rich imaginations and sharp observations, they can take advantage of various opportunities well. As a person who has involved in a few rat hunts, I can confirm that they are all this.
For those that do not realise it, this festival is celebrated by about 1.5 million people in Australia now and here is an article on how to attract Chinese tourists.
Say you have a spare spot (See the orange button above) and you want to set up a register shortcut key for a department so you can press a button to quickly process a department sale. It is even faster with touch but that is another point.
Well, it is easy and quick to do.
1. From the Main Menu, go to Cash Register and then Register Setup.
2. Click on the Quick Links tab.
3. On the layout on the left, click where you want the shortcut to go. You should see the green plus symbol on that square now.
4. In the department list on the right, click the department you wish to add to that location.
5. Click on the Insert at Location button.
6. Click the Save button.
Now the changes should be there.
It looks like now the worst of the bushfires are over. Although most of us were not directly affected by the actual fire, the smoke was everywhere. Although we have all experienced plenty of bushfires, I have never know the smoke to be so bad as this one. We did here what most people did, double-checked that the air conditioners were on at work.
Today almost all the smoke is gone although people today in Queensland told me that there are still problems with the air there. They then asked me if there were any detectors that I knew that could monitor the air quality as I had spoken about it earlier. I thought if they are interested others might be too.
The one we use is Airrater, and although I am not sure how good it is, it seems to give good results. You can get it on both android and from apple.
It is very easy to set up. You put in there, the places that are important to you, eg work, home, etc. and as long as your mobile phone has an internet connection, it will report the air quality in real-time and also you can set it to give you a warning if the air quality in one of those places goes bad.
It is also good if you or someone you care about suffers from asthma, hay fever or some other lung condition that impacts their lives.
I have clients now that are on social media all day. Today any retail business that wants to reach a broader target audience and attract new customers needs to go on social media, particularly if it is not in a centre. A centre will drag people in for you.
That is why often you will see cashiers in small businesses on Facebook on the front counter typing away, answering customer enquires.
Today many of your clients are using social media sites like Facebook frequently throughout the day. If you connect with them on these social networks, you help keep them engaged and interested in your business while they are outside the shop.
It also allows you to get real-time feedback from the people who are most interested in your goods and services. This is vital if only because of the damage now bad reviews can do to your business. A nail parlour near me got a few bad reviews and was begging its customers to say something nice about them because they were losing business as people were reading bad reviews and then not coming.
Getting involved is not hard, try by sharing some cool photos of new stock items, if you have 10 major suppliers they odds are you will get at least one new photo or news item from one of them a day for you to share, then there is also news to share, eg your support for a bushfire appeal, worst case you always have the weather, etc.
This will result in you having a loyal, engaged audience.
If you are thinking of growing your social media presence, you are probably wondering which social network is the best for you. It depends on the specific products you sell, but I would say Facebook first and then ask your customers.
If you want to learn more, click here
Often a supplier will tell you the gross margin on their products. Do not believe it? Do you think you should check?
After all, this is a key indicator in your shop
One big problem here is that in the real world often, this margin they give varies. The other problem is that this margin depends on you getting their price. Maybe in your area, you cannot get this price. Perhaps because you have too much stock you, you need to discount to get rid of some of it? I am sure you can add many reasons why the theoretical margin is not what you get, and it is easy to find out what is the actual margin you are getting.
Go to the menu
Now in sales select the "Discounted Item Sales Summary."
Pick a period, I suggest the last 12 months and now check, I would recommend as a first attempt by the department
Now you will get a detailed report of where you are discounting both by quantity and price.
Knowing which products lines are your most profitable in your shop can lead you to actionable advice.
The problem is monitoring the security camera in shops. Something like this could warn you that a suspicious person has come into the shop or that someone has done something questionable.
Under Beta, it has detected some shoplifters in a Japanese convenience store.
I can see such technology having a dramatic effect on reducing shoplifting. As it uses face recognition, a shop keeper that knew from his tapes that this person is a known trouble maker could get a warning that this person is in the shop. It would also serve shop keepers to sell more as by using face recognition it knows the average spend amount, the number of visits, and frequently purchased items. It could give the shop keeper, the name of many of their clients too.
What we are discussing is that our optical people counting system can already do much of this, if anyone is interested and using or thinking about our optical people counting system we could *NOW* do something like this!
If we get enough interest, why we could do something like this too!
This is our cash register. If you look at the screen, not the girl, it is from a publicity shot that we did what you will see is buttons all over the screen. Also, every one of them is user-definable. What this means is that you can change them, or move them to match exactly what you want it to look like.
