These sorts of emails are, regrettably, common now. COVID has made business peoples lives difficult. In spite of the best efforts of delivery people, everyone currently is encountering delays and lost parcels.  

Fortunately, most people now understand the obstacles. 2021 is a challenging year for everyone. We are all trying to do our best to make it easier.

In my experience, the sooner you notify your customer, the easier it is to deal with the problem. Let them know by a call or email there is a problem. Give your customer the carriers new delivery date if possible, the carrier's reference number and contact details. That may get you out of the loop. 

What you need to do is let your customer know that you are here to support them.

If you do a lot of shipping with one carrier, we have several carriers integrated to automate this process. Unfortunately, many of these are not free services from the carrier but subscription services. So there is a cost for this service.

Each retail business needs a solid inventory control system. This often requires the use of retail labels. The is, as products you sell may be impossible to scan without explicit identifiers. So, you need bar codes tags.

There are many other advantages besides scaning if there is no available bar code:

-Easily count

-Instantly consult many details of the product

-See the quantity values

-Customize their prices

-Track the products on a shelf.

Our retailer labels are perfect for doing this in your store. Usually, they are adhered to the products by the adhesive on the back of the label.

If the RFID encoded required can be added to help prevent theft.

Above is a sample of our most popular label and the details that are put on it.

Our software allows many methods of producing such labels but the best and most professionals labels and in the long-term cheapest method are using direct thermal printers rather than ink cartridges or laser printers.

If you look at the big retailers now, you can see that they are taking advantage of their vast amounts of data to build muscle to run their business. Here is an interesting piece of statistic. 35% of Amazon purchases and 75% of Netflix viewing now are based on computer-generated recommendations.

Ask yourself if they use it, why are you not using it? You have AI, too, in your POS Software. In our market space, it's the best and it is *FREE*.

So why are you not using your data to make decisions?

To be successful today, retailers must stay in tune with their stores' unique preferences and behaviour. Yet, there are too many stock lines and marketing seasons to do it properly manually. The best way to do it is with your AI. These tools are generally too expensive for small to medium retailers. This is unless they have our point-of-sale system as we have incorporated it into our software and issue it free. Using it, you will find it intuitive and straightforward to do. It does not require a lot of training. It is less work than the manual order.

Let's say you have a shelf for toy soldiers. You can not ask for unlimited amounts of toy soldiers. You have to decide how many to carry. So, our users can get a focus order. This is an advanced type of stock control method. It gives you an estimate of what you should order based on the time of year, the product current selling history and suppliers terms.

The AI follows the stock on hand and its business history. It then estimates the stock level required for these goods in the coming period. If it deems that the stock on hand is too low, it will recommend an order to a supplier. This is done with the speed and precision that no one manually can match.

 It is easy to set up and use for details. Please, click here

Data-driven ideas can create value throughout your business. 

Roy Morgan has released their expected Christmas Shopping Survey. I'm sure you find this useful.

The Australian Retailers Association provided a good visual representation here of the survey results.

If you prefer the detailed figures click here.

More than a year has passed since the coronavirus outbreak shut down theatres. This has placed many blockbuster release dates in jeopardy.

Today we are already beginning to see these lockdowns worldwide going. Soon some blockbuster films, such as The Matrix 4, Dune, and The Many Saints of Newark are expected to be released... maybe we will go to the movies soon.

Check here for the dates

In the hype already we can see Dune toys are selling exceptionally well. This is expected to be released this month. 

Soon many of you will be getting goods early that can't be sold before the official release date. 

For this, we have a *secure* category to mark these items.

How to mark items as secure.

Go to stock maintenance in your point of sale software -> Edit marked them as secure in the red box.

Just another example of how our software has useful items that you can use.

Vaccination rates are hitting 70%. Soon they should get close to 80%, which is the least that the politicians in Australia are demanding to open up the country. What is the situation for retailers now? 

Does anyone know?

The fact is that employers are required and responsible for making a safe environment for people to work, shop in and enter! 

So some employers are now publicly starting to demand that people applying must have proof of COVID Vaccination for jobs in their job advertisements. As you can see, these jobs listed here have nothing to do with medical, old age or childminding services which has been the case of so many legal arguments now.

I am not sure that this is legal. My understanding is that it's okay to ask, but someone does not have to tell you whether they have had the jab. Now it's clear that many employers are demanding proof.

What is the situation soon with existing employees?

Also, what is going to happen with customers entering the shop is unclear. 

An official in a shopping centre told me that he expects that everyone entering the shopping centre will soon need to be cleared first. If so, then unvaccinated people without a decent excuse will not be allowed into the centre. So your employee may not be able to come into your shop to work. If so you may be in your rights to dismiss them as they cannot work. That is going to cause a problem guaranteed. 

These issues need to be cleared up.
 

If your store has a Facebook page, please consider the recent High Court ruling. 

Now, if you post or share content on this Facebook page and allow comments, you may be responsible for the statements made even if you do not know of these comments.

One solution is that you can disable comments, but this is not what any of us want to do, so we are introducing on our Facebook page more surveillance in case.

Under the new defamation laws in some states, you must get a "concerns notice", and only then do they have 15 days before they can file a lawsuit. So you get some time to plead your case. You may want to check on this in your state. However, even if this is true in your state, I am unsure what happens if the affected person is in Western Australia and you are in NSW. In which case, you may not be given a grace period. I am not a lawyer, so I cannot answer these questions.

But, if you receive one of these notices, I firmly recommend that you take action.

For many of you, this Christmas will be the defining moment this year.

There are some big positives this year:

1) Our vaccination rates are rapidly growing. Based on current rates, if it keeps up, we should be able to achieve 80% earlier than Christmas. This is much better than anyone thought possible, even a month ago.

2) The other big plus is the public has plenty of money. For Christmas, people will spend so some of that money should come out.

The big negatives are:

1) The new COVID variants are less lethal but more contagious. The big concern here is delta. Still, we are losing control of the situation. Despite stricter lockdowns, COVID is up. It will not disappear. It will mutate, just like the flu does every couple of years. Everyone who wants a vaccine will get it, and the rest will end up with their immunity after fighting the disease. We have to open up, and somewhere between 70% to 80% is the agreed point. That will be earlier than Christmas.

Still, this is something you need to consider for your shop. If I were in a shopping centre or a strip shop, my thoughts would be very different about the possible effects of more lockdowns on my business. Also, is my industry is classed as essential or not?

2) The supply situation. All stages of the delivery network are now reporting problems. Delays and shortages are everywhere. The public is aware of this, so we can expect that consumers fearing product availability and delivery delays will start to buy early.

Currently, most forecasts are for higher holiday retail sales than last year.

This is why I am saying that it is time to think about Christmas.

Don’t let this Christmas be a retail nonevent for your business!

About two weeks ago, I noticed that sales related to children are increasing in the United States. After receiving comments, I decided that if people like my tip, why not provide another category that experts expect to perform well?

In the past year, outdoor-related products have flourished. People that sell products related to any outdoor activities, bicycles, outdoor sports goods, etc., when open are doing well. Not surprising as one of the few activities many during lockdown can do is go outside for exercise. So consumers are looking for activities to help them stay occupied so they are paying more attention to the outdoor lifestyle away from indoor social activities.

Interest in these activities will continue as these lockdowns have been going on for more than a year, so it has become a habit for many. Plus, COVID will still be with us for a long time,

I suggest you investigate such items. See what products you can sell here. The list is endless, eg outdoor games for kids, outdoor furniture, backpacks, thermos mugs, bicycle accessories, etc.

Consider building an outdoor department as it looks like a robust category.

We have been talking to The Australian Lottery and Newsagents' Association about our thoughts that today, in 2021, it is unacceptable for publishers to make bids for the distribution of their titles without providing some form of EDI support to the sellers of these titles.

This is urgent as many of these titles are big sellers so producing a lot of *unnecessary* work.

Currently, these titles are affected. 
ERA
Highlife
The Saturday Paper
Best Bets
Winning Post
The Guardian Weekly
Scottish Banner
Swell; and
Ladies Golf

It appears, though, that many more titles are going to be affected.

Can you please contact the publishers of these titles to explain what this means for your company if you are affected? 

We would be very grateful.

The ANLA has sent the following newsletter out here, please read.

Here is the finding from the latest edition of the UK ACS Local shop report.

This was taken after more than a year of COVID. Like here the UK public had to go to their local shop. If these figures are true in Australia, then 40% of your customers know your staff, and 76% interact with the people in your shop.

Select your staff wisely.

To print receipts quickly and efficiently in a busy shop, you need a good thermal receipt printer.

Print speed

The print speed is affected by many factors. Generally, faster is better. This is especially true if you are often in a high-volume situation. Seconds here mean the difference between keeping the customer queue moving and people walking out.

I have noticed that modern receipt printers tend to have faster speeds but not always.

Another point to notice is that your receipt printer suddenly slowed down or waited longer than it used to before printing. If so, check the setting on your computer and make sure you have the most recent driver for that receipt printer.

Paper jams!

This will happen all the time, probably when the queue is big. It can be stressful and frustrating. Make sure that everyone knows to keep cool.

As a rule, it is best to turn off and on the receipt printer; this often releases the paper then try and fix it.

Make sure that the receipt printer is easy to open the lid. That it is easy to pull the paper at the jam and gently remove it.

Memory

Another excellent function is that it has a memory, and if you lose the last receipt, e.g. paper jam, it can be reprinted.

Warning light

It is an excellent function for the receipt printer to show a flashing light when a receipt is printed. It alerts people nearby. This can be very useful in the back office or the kitchen.

Roll load

The paper regularly needs to be changed. Everything will stop till this is done.

It needs to be simple as you may not be around when it needs changing.

You want something that all you need to do is remove the paper roll from its box. Lift the printer top up. Insert the roll into the printer, lower the top and start printing. This needs to be done in seconds.

Receipt printing

Some receipt printers print too much space on the top and bottom of the receipt. You only need a small receipt. Save some trees, print smaller receipts.

Support and documentation

Some receipt printer comes with very little documentation. If the documentation is only in Chinese, it can be a problem.

Standard size printer rolls.

It would help if you had a receipt printer that uses receipt rolls that you can get quickly. You will run out, and then you are going to need some new rolls ASAP. Often that is days to get more rolls.

Cutters

What they do is separate the receipts.

This will make life so much easier.

Common problems without it:

-The paper will often tear in the middle of the receipt

-That you accidentally give someone two receipts there and some else's.

The other advantage is less force is required.

If your receipt printer has cutters, despite what some salespeople say, it does not matter what type of cutter it has, just that it has cutters.

On/off switch

It makes life much easier if it has an On/Off switch. There are times that you will want to turn the receipt printer off. The switches is much better than pulling the cable out.

Looks

Something important in retail but often overlooked is that these printers are usually on the front counter and so viewed by the public. If it looks old and antiquated, it will send your customer a message.

Lastly a bonus tip.

Do you have enough spare receipt printer rolls?

This is always a problem. Running out of receipt rolls can be a significant problem as it may take a few days to get more. Plan ahead.

Also, immediately after you buy, check that the printer came with a whole roll of receipt paper. If not, you may run out very quickly.

A good receipt printer can increase your speed and efficiency in your shop.

Make sure you have a good one.

Hooray, This Child Turns 38! Happy Birthday, Dear POS Solutions 

Thank you, guys, for choosing our POS Software. We’re so grateful for the trust you’ve placed in us throughout these years and will continue to improve our products and performance.

Also, a huge thank you to our best team in the POS world! Without your brilliant work and full commitment, we would never reach this milestone.

Today is POS Solutions 38th Birthday. 38 years ago, it was officially established.

We had no business plan then. All we knew was that other people were writing specialised Point of Sale software. That as we were the best programmers and engineers that we knew plus were hard discipline workers if they could do it, so could we.

This was to be the start of our amazing journey. 

Retail data analysis analyses everything in your business, from sales to stock to your customer data. The AI now makes it better. It is often used to track customer behaviour and traffic, but it can do more for you.

It is not only applicable to large retailers. SMB retailers, like you, can use information collected from your POS systems. Then the significant advantage that you have is that you can move quickly and so react faster.

Retail analytics example

We are using Father's Day as an example so let see how it went for you with this quick and easy method. It will take you less than a minute to do!

Go to Register reports

Now select Sales register > Sales comparison

​

As a first and quick example enter in this:  

Retail analysis report

You will get a very detailed report of what happened on that day for you to review.

Retail data analysis provides the information you need to make informed decisions. This will increase your revenue and profitability.

Note: What does appear to have sold well this Father's Day was decorated Coffee mugs and Whiskey tumblers.

People who sell products based on weight such as fruit and vegetable stores, spice shops, garden centres, butchers, supermarkets, etc., find that integrated scales make a big difference. 

Here are some significant advantages

Reduced handling 

You can serve more customers by eliminating the need to move some products from the counter to the scale. 

Faster
You do not have to enter the weight into the POS system here. You send the information directly to your POS system.

Accurate
Double handling from the scale to the POS system does cause transcription errors. People do make mistakes.

Customer confidence 
Your customer can see weight and other transaction data as you do it. This gives your customers peace of mind.

Decreases employee fraud
The amounts weighed goes into the POS System.

Costs 
The cost of an integrated scale is not much different to a manual scale. Plus, you get the advantages of a POS System. 

Try it and see how integrating the scales will immediately improve your efficiency, profit and boost customer trust.

Maintaining your business depends on your ability to manage financial resources efficiently. To do this, you need to know the financial state of your business. This is why we supply an automatic function that allows you to directly talk from your POS System to many accounting software, e.g. MYOB, Xero, etc.

For example, the above MYOB integration software belongs to our market's most popular accounting system.

You have free access to the integration, and you can use it now. Check out the Automatic Data Transfer in the MYOB section of your POS software. Once set up, select the dates and run.

This integration allows MYOB users to save time by removing manual data entry. This reduces errors and speeding up the information transfer.

Using a POS system linked to a financial system, you can get detailed financial reports about your company. You can use this information to manage your finances better. What you will like is being able to perform instant cash flow analysis.

It also saves money because you don't have to pay an accountant to enter numbers.

Or why is Stock Control Important to your Business Operations ...

Please take a closer look at the benefits of integrating inventory management with your POS system.

1) An Integrated POS system with an inventory management function will save you a lot of time.

2) Your POS system tracks inventory levels.

3) You don’t need to spend days keeping manually controlling your stock.

4) You can also choose our integrated inventory management system. You can set your system to automatically place orders as you need them.

5) You will have fewer shortages as the computer will not forget to order.

6) Know where stock is. If you have a storeroom in the back, a few stock locations in the shop where an item is placed, where is the item? In your POS System, you can see where the stock is in the many locations in your shop. Suppose a customer comes to buy something. You look at the place where it should be. It is not there. So you now can glance at your POS system. It may tell you that you have one in another location in the shop. You have saved a lost sale.

7) Get the figure of shrinkage.

8) A POS system with inventory management functions will tell you what is selling when it was selling and to whom. You can then order more hot-selling items and divert your business from less popular items.

9) Save money on not needing a professional stocktaker.

This guy was a genius businessman.

In this video, I do admire the way Steve Jobs explains here the importance of 

Starting with the customer experience and only then going to the technical and financial problems. 

This answer is good advice for any business person. We have all come across the technical guy with his great idea that takes us nowhere.

Please have a listen, see what you think and let me know?

Video advertising like this is excellent for engaging with your customers. It provides value other mediums can't. it is an ideal attention-grabbing combination for showing your products so driving sales in your shop. It does not cost much. Many of my clients have done it for no cost.

How to advertise my products in a video?

The package we recommended was Proshow. Now it is no longer available, which is the reason for this post. But there are lots of free alternatives here. 

Whatever you select,

1) Make sure it allows you to enter captions with your products, you require up to 6 words a line and no more than 6 lines a page.

2) Make sure it can do different fonts.

3) Blank slides which you can enter in your shop information. This is critical.

4) I don't recommend that you worry about sound in a store because it will drive you insane hearing the same music repeatedly.

Overall, I doubt you will find these packages difficult to learn if you keep them simple. Also, I've found it worth learning because I use it for personal purposes on occasion.

You then need about fifteen (15) good images to display. Use a smartphone that takes good photos. Put black cardboard on a desk. Put the products, one at a time, on the cardboard and take many shots of each. Now select the best fifteen.

If you are unsure which items to select, the Top N Stock sales, I talked about yesterday should help.

We will need an old TV or a spare monitor plus a computer which many of us have. That will also solve one common problem of what to do with this old equipment. Place the TV on the wall, which from where people are standing can see it. You're now ready to go.

It's a good idea to display it near the checkout, where consumers are likely to be waiting. This would be an efficient way to promote and move your products, especially if they are conveniently located nearby.

After that, you may alter the video to make it more relevant as the situation changes.

Note: If you want and are unsure of making a video. Email me 15 good photographs and some text, and if you are a client of ours, I will do it for free.

As always please let me know your results if you do this!

There are seasonal trends in retail based on weather but just as important are daily weather changes. These cannot often be planned for yet this often determines what we buy, e.g. on rainy days, you can find umbrellas on many shop fronts. Do you think this woman above is going to buy the same products on this day as on a hot day?

If you are not using weather, you missing out on sales opportunities.

So let us start small, and you can build later.

Find some interesting days

So first go here 

Put in the option for weather, your location and note some hot, cold, and wet days. We need a few of each.

Determine how weather affects sales in your shop

Keep an open mind as you may be surprised with different weather conditions, e.g. indoor toys, coffee and glove sales. So what we need is a detailed analysis of historical demand in your shop for these days 

Easy to get it, go to Register reports.

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

Now in the form put in a few hot days, instantly a report comes out that looks like this with your top sellers listed for those days.

Take notes of what is unusual.

Now do the same for cold and wet days 

“What if?”: Scenario Planning 

If it's a hot day, what do we want to bring to the front? 
If it's a cold day, what do we get to the front?
If it's a wet day, what do we put to the front?

Now prepare these goods in advance. You may need to do some ordering here.

Most importantly, have some signage ready to bring these goods to the public attention.

Create an Implementation Plan 

When the appropriate day comes, bring some of the goods and the signs to the front. Give them a chance to sell.

You can pick up much business by just looking at the connections caused by weather as it is one of the most critical influences on people.