Point of Sale Software

Here are some Articles from the Blog Subject - reports -

Keep in touch with mobile and email

POS SOFTWARE

Some you are now on holiday or thinking about taking some time off, yet you would like to know how the shop is going. Well, we have many reports, eg shop's End of Day that can be emailed to many different email addresses. If you prefer it can be sent by SMS to your mobile.

This is an excellent feature if you are away from the shop.

PS Another use is to allow you to archive these reports into the cloud for storage and later reference.

 

How you travel in 2019?

POS SOFTWARE

Knowing where your business is going is essential. This is afterall 2020 (20/20 vision)

 

Now is an appropriate time to take a quick look find how well you went in 2019 and how you compared to previous years.

Go to register reports.

 

Now select the item marked "Sales Comparison for a Given period".

Note you can do it by a supplier, but that can be done later when you have more time for detailed analysis. What we are doing here is getting a quick idea.

It takes two steps.

1) Put in here the dates 

01/01/2018 to 31/12/2018 AND 01/01/2019 to 31/12/2019 dates

It only takes a few seconds and out will give you pages of detailed information showing how went in 2019 and how you went compared to 2018.

 

Write down some key figures.eg Turnover18, Turnover19

2) Now go back in and run the report with 

01/01/2016 to 31/12/2016 AND 01/01/2017 to 31/12/2017 dates

Write down some key statistics, in this example Turnover16, Turnover17

You now have four years of information to study. This should give you a pretty good idea of how your business is travelling now. I find drawing a graph of sales shows me a clear picture.I hope it went well for you.

Note if you use our Ad Hoc reporting you can automate much of your analysis, but in practice, I find keeping it simple like this seems to be more meaningful. If you want to go into something more scientific, you may find this an excellent place to start.

This is just another example of how powerful our point of sale software is for retail management.

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My customers can inspire me

POS SOFTWARE

Sometimes, I get inspired when I talk to my clients about what they do in their shop.

Frequently, I hear from newsagents that their traditional markets are down and how it is affecting their businesses. Well, Nextra Sunbury is a newsagency, one of many nextra shops.

Ten years ago if you had gone into it, you would think that it is big but other then that, nothing extraordinary different to other newsagencies out there.  Like many newsagencies, it has experienced dramatic declines in its newspaper and magazine trade, but unlike many others today, its profitability is way up.

Why?

Because it has changed its product mix, they made the changes away from the products that were declined and switched to products that sell well and had high margins. They now sell gifts, clothing, jewellery and stunned me, shoes. They now trade between one and two million dollars annually of products with excellent margins. These products are growing now in their shop by about 28% a year.  

What is the secret?

If you talk to them, they will tell you that the secret is to use our software profitability reports. That way, they keep track of all stock movements, including sales so that they can easily rank their products by best sellers, location, revenue, profitability, margins, seasonal sales, and much more. Then they use the information.

Taking your reporting to the next level works. 

Here are some points to consider 

  • Identify your slow-moving stock, then make an action plan, eg reduce your reliance on these products, move to a different location or maybe get rid of it.

  • Identify your fast-moving stock, then make an action plan, eg increase your reliance on these products and/or move to a better location and look to leverage it with companion stock.

  • Find your best areas in the shop. You may be surprised. 

  • Work your VIP club, Sunbury Newsagency now has a huge VIP club. This is an excellent source of repeat business.

  • Use free services like Facebook and email marketing to inform customers of new products. Check out their facebook page here you will see that they are writing many posts and putting up pictures every day on Facebook.

  • Help structure your seasonal inventory through analysing past years’ sales.

  • Examine your stock levels and costs. You may be stunned, I heard of a small shop that depending on the greeting card companies to look after their cards, finding out that they had way over what they required in cards. The owner told me afterwards that he was shocked as they had way over what they needed, and the card company was suggesting that they buy more.

Take Advantage of Your Retail POS System

There are many other ways once you get into it that you can analyse retail sales trends in a meaningful way. You have, though posbrowser the most powerful POS system, I know. Play around with the software yourself, and learn the retail reporting and data analysis that it has to offer. Then use it. At least once a month, set up a formal review of your shop.

 

 

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KPI boards

POS SOFTWARE

This is a tip. What I have noticed in many companies, that what you will see in the back is a KPI board. This is filled out regularly and shows relevant details for the people that work there that management is particularly interested in everyone following. In a factory, I saw a board listing is the number of accidents. In a collect house, I saw one listing the amount of money collected this month.

For people into it, you can buy KPI boards special for doing this.

I saw one in a retail shop that showed top-selling items, the top-selling department, queue sizes, and the growth of loyalty program sign-ups. What the owner did was every Tuesday afternoon update from the computer, the latest figures from last week. I thought it was a good idea to get everyone on the same wavelength.  He said it worked. 

I saw another one in use in a fast food place being used as a marketing tool. They have a special burger. They put a sign up as to how many they sold last month compared to the same month the previous year and the year to date figure compared to the year to date figure for the previous year. The number of burgers they sold was quite impressive. When I enquired about it, the girl serving said this is the burger we are famous for so I decided to buy one to test it out. 

Give it a a go and see how it goes for you.

 The information is there in the computer, and it is not doing much good there if its not being used.

 

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The power of Ad Hoc reporting

POS SOFTWARE

The Techopedia explains here, Ad Hoc reporting as "reports that are put together creatively by users in real-time, rather than pre-designed according to a template." and for "one-time reports that are done in a customised way, to provide results for one specific question or objective." 

What it is that as the demands on businesses are incredibly varied, all the time, the business is being asked answers to specific questions which are hard to get from standard reports. 

For example, a stationery supplier, might be asked by a customer can you get the  BIC Australia pens that are about $6? Yes you could probably print a 20 report on BIC Australia and look through it, it can be done, but it is going to take time. Plus if the customer wants the purple one, it is going to take more time. 

As a rough approximation, I would say 80% to 90% of your reporting needs are of this type. A person has to find a specific piece of information, an invoice on a date, which item had the $2.30 discount, who served a person who brought this item, etc.   

Now if you ring your point of sale software provider, they might be prepared to add some options to do this, but it will take time by then the customer is long gone.  Generally, Ad Hoc reports are needed now, and for single use only so it is not worth the time and effort to do it.  In fairness to the developer of your POS System, there is a limit to the number of business questions that can be anticipated and programmed in advance. So the solution is that you spend some time, probably over a telephone call to your software expert and sweat it out.

This is what Ad hoc reporting helps as it allows almost unlimited flexibility enabling the information to be easily found instantly.

Let us do an example to show you the power of our software.

Above was a simple example; that I want the code of a stationery product that is about $6 for BIC Australia.

So what I could do is go to the register reports and select a full listing.

 

I now ask for BIC but note it does not have a question cost price, with ad-hoc reporting you do not need to worry as it is not required.

 

I then get this excel listing.

I go over the column labelled Wholesale price.

Press on the top Sort & Filter

Then press select turn off all the costs.

Then I click on all the costs that are about $6.

In this case, there is only one, and it is listed immediately here.

 

The code I wanted was 41330, pretty nifty. It took me about a minute.

Ad hoc reporting reaches beyond your static pre-defined software that traditional software provides, allowing you an enhanced interactive end-user experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

Very nice article! Sharp and clear, it is great to see that even such a simple tool like spreadsheet can be used for an analysis that should become our daily routine. We can no longer rely on any long and slow path of getting up-to-date information. At least our competition would not wait! More details on advantages of ad hoc reporting can be found in https://www.lumeer.io/ad-hoc-reporting/

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Suppliers how are you going with them?

POS SOFTWARE

Good suppliers are essential to retailers but they are always changing and what our point of sale software can do is show you over time exactly what you are doing with each of your suppliers. It makes fascinating reading.

As a rule, I think that suppliers are often accessed on various factors like price, reliability, location and competency however often its difficult over time to determine just how important they are now and how they are going with you now.

So go to register sales reports and then go to "Sales comparison by supplier"
 

Supplier options

I recommend for this report that you use a previous year and compare it to this year.

For the initial run use percentage.


Then a report like this pops up.

Supplier report

What you will see is big variations over time for each supplier.  

This will give you an idea of just how important a supplier is now to your business and how you are going with that supplier. This will help you to make better business decisions.

This report can also be used to access how in holiday periods different suppliers perform for you.

 

 

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Your sales performance

POS SOFTWARE

Now is the perfect time to assess how you went over the last quarter and last year in comparison to the year before. This will help you to determine your growth or decline rates. It will show you where you are going. 

Although there are a few such reports with slightly different emphases, the one report I would like you to look at now in your point of sale software is the dissection comparison report. 

You will find it

Main Menu > Cash Register > Register Reports > under the Select Report tab, expand the Stock folder > select the report “Dissection Family Class Period Sales Comparison”.

 

Then you will see this screen, this is what you will get

 

 

Now put in the left side

  • From dates 01/01/2017
  • To Date 31/12/2017

 

On the right side 

  • From dates 01/01/2018 
  • To Date 31/12/2018

 

Now see what it says

 

Now check the last quarter, so go back into it and put in

Now put in the left side

  • From dates 01/10/2017 
  • To Date 31/12/2017

 

On the right side 

  • From dates 01/10/2018 
  • To Date 31/12/2018
  •  

Now check this and see what worked for you and what did not.

Knowledge is power.

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Last check on your stock levels

POS SOFTWARE

Now is your last chance to get your stock levels right.

Fortunately, with our point of sale software, you have both real-time reporting and low-stock alerts to warn you when the stock is running low. This is to keep your stock levels at your ideal level.

However, running out of stock now can severely impact your bottom line and do untold damage to your customers’ view on you.

 

Good news:

We have a unique report which gives you an immediate way of checking your current situation.

In Cash register report, call up the GMROI (see the selection highlighted) in your point of sale software in the reports here.

You can select the list of options you want, and I suggest you go over these options later.

I recommend doing this by departments for a first run.

Then you will get a report like this.

As you can see the items are all listed.

Let’s look at it in detail:

What we are looking for is items with low stock on hand figures, decent sales, and reasonable ROI% figures, ROI% is the return on investment, it is one of the best ways to determine how valuable your stock items are to your business. It is calculated by the (unit sold) x (Profit)/ (Average stock cost) and you need about 3.2 in industry, but as you can see here, there are many items above and below it.

Now it is up to you

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Comparisons with previous sales figures

POS SOFTWARE

Our point of sale software reporting feature allows you to dive into your sales so you can get a better understanding of your business.

There is a common problem that we face almost every month is that some months have four Saturdays and some five Saturdays. This often makes it hard to budget. It also makes it hard to compare periods for sales analysis. The other problem is that making sales comparisons meaningful between periods is that different periods are different September month is very different than December.

That is why our POS software when it makes comparisons asks you what period do you want to compare to the nominated period you request. If you look at the above example, you can see that I put in some bizarre dates to show what you can decide what works for you. 

Many of the commonly used dates such as Last Fiscal Year, Last Year, Last Quarter, Last Month, etc. are already programmed in for you.

Some that are commonly used are the moving or rolling time frames such as the last 30 days and compare this result to the same period the previous year for 30 days. Another common request available is to examine how the current YTD versus the last year to this point.

For more ideas, please click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Australian retail sales up a bit

POS SOFTWARE

Overall most retailers are pleased with the latest retail figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). It shows a moderate increase. The report itself is available here.

 

Now since this is coming out in excel, what you might want to do is merge your figures with an appropriate set of figures from this report to see how you compare with an average appropriate to you.

This you can do as unlike most point of sale software that can only produce standard reports, which works about 80% of the time. Ours has ad-hoc reporting so all you need to do is export your information into a spreadsheet, and put it into the Australian Bureau of Statistics report. 

If you have Microsoft Excel, you can use that, or you can use the free OpenOffice both as very good.

If you are unsure how to the export here is a training video which shows you how to do these exports.

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Stock that is not performing

POS SOFTWARE

Do you have some slow-moving stock items?

Maybe you can cut back on their space to make more room for your profitable products?

I suggest that we do this in two stages. 

To begin with

Firstly let us find the items that are the slow movers

Go to Register reports > Stock > Slow moving Stock lines

 

Now call it up here

As you can see I am looking at the stationery department over a twelve month period for anything that I have sold less than $100 and am now stocking something.

Now out pops a report in this case of 81 pages of detailed information of all the items that match this condition in this case, we have almost $80,000 worth of worthless stock.

Now check them out, pull out what you do not want to keep and put in your sales area.

Once you’ve got this done

I suggest that you do a report of your top selling stock items and at those items that are selling well. A rule of thumb in retail is double the space of an item increases its sales by 50%. So the idea here is we are going to replace the marginal items with those that sell well.

Go to Register reports

Now select "Top N Stock Sales for a Given Period."

Now the following comes up.

Now put an appropriate period the default here of a day is not enough for this but I just wanted a quick report for illustration.

Out comes a report with the top sellers

Now, these products need to be checked that you have the right display for each of these products.

Note anything, not on this list you also need to look at as they are marginal..

The bottom line is this

You do not want to pay to a landlord for the space to stock items that do not sell.

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EACH STOCK ITEM HAS ITS OWN TREND

If you are seeing that you need to discount a lot to sell stock you are overstocked, it is a sure sign that you need to do something. As a punt what is happening is that you are overordering on some items and probably underordering on others. What often we see in retail is that our memory is by definition the past and the memory remembers old top sellers but what we need is the top sellers today. Here is how to identify what is selling well now to check that you have enough stock for tomorrow and it is very easy in our point of sale system.

Go to Register reports

Register reports POINT OF SALE

Select the "Top N Stock Sales for a Given Period"

Top Stock Items Point of sale

 

Now out pops the following.

 

Now select a day, as it is an old database I put in an old date. Usually, you would put in yesterday or today, just make sure you get close to a full day of trading.

 

Top Stock Items reporting

 

Now you get a report with the top sellers now

 

Keep track of top selling items

 

 

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Performance Indicator Management Report

POS SOFTWARE

Employees are not equal to the business, some do their task much better then others. Some are very good and some not so good that is why you always have to check on the performance of each employee. A performance report will help you keep an eye on the performance level of different people in the shop.

 

What it enables you to do is give you an objective evaluation for everyone on regular basis. I believe that all businesses/organisations should run such evaluations regularly not just for the employees but also yourself. Please see a discussion on the Wikipedia here on this topic.

What our system does is produce a "Performance Indicator Management Report" for all the people in the business. It displays each employee, and then this allows you to compare their performance over a range of KPIs to others. Here is the opening page of the report. In this report, you will see that I am there as I stated you should be checking yourself as what you learn about others can be useful to learn about yourself too.

 

 

 

As you can see on the opening page that it shows as you can see a wealth of information on employee's performance.

Here you can see a list of the number of items the employee range up, the discounts they gave, the sales they put in and so on.

This makes it incredibly useful in a retail or many other businesses both for monitoring performance and checking security.

You will find the report in cash register reports > Staff > Sales (Detailed) for a Given Period.

 

 

How often should you run this Performance Indicator Management Report? The government standards state an employee performance report should be done twice a year, but I know companies that do it once a quarter.

With the support of the performance report, your business can run better and smoother and actively manage it and its another example of technology from POS Solutions.