Here is a typical loyalty program today in a small shop that I snapped a picture of a few days ago. If you notice, they offer their loyal customers a 2% discount on sales. 2% is not arbitrary, as this is what most experts think a loyalty program can return without supplier help.

It will not be 2% as most points will not be redeemed and, if redeemed, are in shop goods, so the shop has a margin.

Here a customer would need to spend $500 to get a voucher for $10 on their next buy, and there are variations on the scheme, which I will discuss in a future post.

Enough to say now that here are some advantages.

- It is free, quick and easy to set up as it is in your software now.
- This scheme has a proven track record.
- The rewards to the customer are tangible, concrete, visible, and measurable
- It works over time, so a customer is incentivised to return.
- The reward directly supports the shop
- Give a person a $10 voucher, and they will probably spend more. Few will hit $10 exactly, $12.50, $20, and I have seen $50, etc., being spent with the voucher.
- The value to the customer is more than the shop as the goods purchased with the discount voucher have a margin.
- The customer sees the reward as valuable and practical rewards as it's what they already buy.
- You get a loyalty program mailing list to market to your clients. Using something like Mailchimp, which is free, you can drive more business to your shop.

Have a chew, and as always, let me know your thoughts.

The slogan "Buy One Get One FREE" is one of the most effective promotional invented. Studies show that it beats "50% off" even though both offer the same. This is because, marketing-wise, FREE is very powerful.

Here are some tips for using it:

1) It is better for cheap items where customers are prepared to stock up.

2) You need to pick items with good margins; after all, you are giving away half the money. Some people would use something like this

Buy two and get another free.

Here at least, is only a third off.

3) Works better for flash sales. Try running it during a festive season, for example, as a Father's Day special.

4) Many products customers cannot use two of the same product. For example, two jackets for the price of one might be a problem, but two pairs of socks for the price of one should be okay. In which case, for jackets, consider something like

Buy a jacket and get One from Category B for Free.

This Category B has proven to be a great way of selling stock you no longer want.

Setting it up is easy. All you need to do is follow the red arrows in the image below.

Over-the-counter bill payments are when people go to a shop to pay bills such as water, phone, electricity, etc. All the large utility companies providing telephony, electricity, gas, water and similar are mandated to provide an over-the-counter payment option for the customers. So this is a big market in Australia. Australia Post processes more than 100 million Post Billpay transactions yearly, so many people use it. So for many of our clients, it is a service they provide their customers, bringing them to the shop. When I did a study in 2020, I noted that a shop pushing bill payments were processing about (3) a workday. A quick check shows that this is unchanged today. 

How much would you pay an advertiser who gets 2 to 3 people into your shop every day who buy something?

So over the past few months, we have had several attempts to keep it going. Yet, despite our efforts, our Bill Payment service will close at the end of this month. We had yesterday a discussion where we offered several options to keep it going, but all were rejected. The decision is final. 

In retrospect, all we did was help give our clients a reprieve, an extension, as today, our clients are the last ones left on the service. 

The immediate problem was not economical. It was the concern over the legal liability involved in handling such large sums of money. These figures are enormous. Here is a graph of one of our accounts, showing the amounts going through for Bill Payments over time from a group of 20 clients of ours. 

So next month, we are closing our Bill Payment service.

I want to thank everyone that participated in the program. 

This is not a good decision as a large segment of Australians needs a facility to pay their bills in cash or card over the counter. Many of these are far from post offices.

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Many retailers are using lockable glass displays. These are clear retail display cases that can be locked with a key but showcase their products so customers can see them. This means shoppers would need a staff member if they want to handle the item. It is a frequent means used to secure costly stock.

This is how you mark the item you want to be treated securely. Go to stock maintenance and then catalogue; you will see a list of several specialised item categories. (See below) Tick secure.

There are plenty of other options marked, and I suggest you review them, too, as they may be helpful.

​I love this quote, wise words, wise man.

It is unbelievable that we are almost at the end of 2022. It's been a better year than 2021. It is time for us to start our annual support and customer perception survey for 2022,, which will be going out soon. I am hoping for a good result in 2022. Over the last few years, we have used Net promoter score (NPS) KPI for our business. This is the most popular KPI used by public and private organisations today. You can read about it here. I do recommend that any organisation use this KPI. It is easy to adopt and tells you a lot. Need any help, let me know.

I am hoping for a good score this year; our figures look good so far. Here are our support ratings for the last four (4) months. 0=bad, 8=very good, 9=even better and 10 = perfect

Interestingly no one is in the middle.

So now we will start our annual support survey for this year. This we have done for 39 years to seek feedback from you about the services we provide our community. Your responses will be used to assist us in improving customer service. The survey is designed to measure the effectiveness and quality of our services and will take only a few minutes to complete. Please contribute if you want your say in improving our performance. Thanking you in advance Bernard

It will go out Monday.

It's a fact that today when quoted, EFTPOS rates are often complex. It was great when EFTPOS suppliers USED TO provide a single rate for each item, as it was simple to understand. Today many few EFTPOS providers give a single figure. Here though, are some points to consider.

1) Nothing we can do about it anyway, most EFTPOS suppliers have their policies, and if you want to deal with them, we have to accept these quotes.

2) As conditions change, those who accepted the more complex figures often do better, e.g. during the COVID lockdowns as the tourist with their dearer EFTPOS cards did not come, those with the complex rates did better. If you get a single figure, you cannot plan for changes.

3) Often, these flat rates include little. You notice that extra charges get levied, which in the fine print is allowed but not specified in the quote. It's good to know as much as possible in advance.

4) You can get a precise figure if you ask whoever is giving you the quote to provide a figure of what it would have cost you on these rates in the last 12 months. You can do the exercise with some simple maths too, but I recommend asking the people giving you the quote for legal reasons. This you can use for comparison.

Refrain from believing the hype of free EFTPOS; your business pays for it even if the customer pays for it. So look at the figure.

Today many people are delivering goods to customers through mail or courier. What does cost is incorrectly labelled parcels? So it is a good idea to validate the customer's address before sending it.

Now you can use, as one of our competitors is currently marketing an address validations tool to their customers. What these do is check the addresses in bulk. For most of our clients who are not sending parcels in bulk, we recommend a free tool, google maps.

Call up Google Maps.

Put in the search bar the address you require (see arrow above), and google will give you a list of valid addresses for free. It is quick and easy to use. What I particularly like is that you can get a photograph of the place where the delivery is to go. This allows you to check for any potential problems in advance.

If you feel you need better, I recommend using only an Australia Post-approved address validation supplier.

A quick validation for new addresses will save you time and money.

Some points to help you decide on Amex. 

The problem with many premium cards is that they come with high merchant fees. One such notable example is Amex. Often what happens is a growing number of Australians prefer to pay with Amex. These people get annoyed when you tell them that you don't accept Amex. Fortunately, most have Visa or MasterCard, but they do get irritated then, and you have created friction with the customer.

It can be a much more difficult problem dealing with people from overseas and business accounts. Overseas VISA or Mastercard cards are comparable in cost to Amex, so by rejecting Amex, at best, you have annoyed them unnecessarily if they offer their VISA. At worst, they cannot trade with you.

Many salespeople are commonly given expense accounts that basically need them to use Amex. Businesses do this as they can get more details on the Amex statement than VISA gives them on their account.

Now should your business accept Amex as complex? First, check with your credit card provider about the fees.

Then consider that today many majors take Amex, e.g. Bunning, Woolworths and, interestingly, afterpay.

The last afterpay has me wondering, as buying using afterpay will not cost me anything as the merchant pays the afterpay fees. This gives me progress payments every two weeks to pay interest-free. Pay afterpay when they come due with an Amex card which gives me another 55 days interest-free as afterpay is paying the interest. Plus, I get a whole lot of points. Let me know if you have tried it?

Well, inflation is here; it's a fact that prices are going up. Here is something for you to consider. This is something that all your suppliers are thinking long and hard about. Here is what they are doing about it.

Let's say there is a parcel of 36 cans for 18 dollars or 50 cents each.

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Such bulk packing is commonly used to sell many different items, e.g. gift cards, dog food etc. Many suppliers and retailers often put together items to make their own bulk parcels.

Now you sell these 36 at $18 with a unit price of $0.50. There is a price rise of 10 cents, so now the unit price requires you to sell at $0.60. This makes the price for this parcel $21.60, which rounded up to $22 or, if you are being sophisticated, to $21.99. Nothing we can do about it. It's the new price.

Often where the market and suppliers set the prices and packet sizes, but sometimes people have flexibility. If so, they have three choices.

1) Reduce the packet number and sell the new packet at the old price.
2) Keep selling the same packet but at a dearer price.
3) A combination of both, change the package size and increase the unit price, so it is a new item at a new price point.

Research shows the consumer prefers the last combination; here is a detailed explanation for you to chew over.

The end result, we see packets with new sizes coming out.

Your Improved Data Protection in your POS Software

You are lucky if you did not receive a notification last month on a data breach involving your personal information. Buy a lottery ticket now; it's a beauty. For the rest, it's time to upgrade your security, so your POS system's new version has an upgraded password controller.

Doing research, we discovered that Microsoft and Google now demand at least eight (8) characters; after some discussion, we adopted the Microsoft standard below as all our clients use it on their windows computers.

When someone enters a new password on the screen below, they will see the following.

A note highlighted in green contains what a password should have.

Now see the blue arrow.

It shows graphically, like a thermometer, how well the software rates the password. This allows you to check that your employee has made an acceptable password without you seeing their private password.

Red = no good
Yellow = almost passable
Green = Okay

We have made it optional that the password must be okay. It is your choice if you want to run with a substandard password. However, consider that the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act), which is being upgraded, could soon have one of the most severe financial penalties for data privacy violations in the world. Fines for large businesses potentially reach hundreds of millions of dollars. How your small businesses will be affected is unclear now but if you want to know your company's status now, click here.

If you use Australia Post as a delivery agent and require your goods to arrive by Christmas, then you must plan to move. Australia Post Recommended lodgement dates for Christmas are here.

Of course, these are only recommended dates, and sometimes they do not make these dates.

I would suggest that you set our software delivery options to reflect our dates.

Our support lines will be open during the Melbourne Cup day today for help.

Good luck if you are having a punt today.

What could I have sold or finding dropped product lines in your shop

Suddenly you no longer got stock of some products, and you never knew it and often, because the losses are small for any item, you do not even notice it. Much of this loss may be due to poor stock ordering by yourself or your suppliers so it may be actionable. So it is helpful to figure out what effect these product losses had on your business. Fortunately, you have a report that can help determine the loss in our point-of-sale system, which is well worth using. In Cash register reports > Stock, There is a report "Stock Sold During Period (a) Not Sold in Period (b) report." So we can now run a report for, I generally recommend, six months. So put dates last year for the six months and then six months this year. 

So t looks like this:

Period A - 20/04/2021 - 19/10/2021 
Period B - 20/04/2022 - 19/10/2022 

That gives us items the shop sold in period A compared to the last six months. Now I always think it's easier to work by departments, so I picked magazines.

Now when I press "View Report", I get this.

Look at the first line, almost $20,000 worth of stock in six months with a profit of over $6,000 lost. Although some are noticeable, you would never pick most as they are small. Still, much here should be in the shop selling as they add up if you put them together! 

Once you have the list, it's time to see whether what you have lost is worth looking into and, if so, what you can do.

I would recommend running this report monthly.

Here is another illustration of our POS Program's functional and helpful benefits.

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The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) now released its latest inflation report.

Now officially, we now have the highest inflation in 33 years. Anyone who can remember the 1970s knows how disturbing this can be for the economy.

Unlike the last peak, these figures show indications of continuing up. We now have a significant risk of recession. Interest rates are up, and the country's debt is now a trillion dollars. Servicing that trillion figure will be expensive. Plus, unemployment is starting to rise, and wage growth is slowing down which is worrying for retail as wage growth has not kept up with inflation. Then we have electricity prices which are expected to go up by 56 per cent. Do you see anything coming down?

What retailers need to consider now are the products they are dealing with and whether these products' prices can be raised as inflation increases.

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 A few days ago, I pointed out that this year the expected Christmas season shopping will be up by 3%; I should have added that the shopping season is expected to start earlier.

The public got burnt last year with shortages, and there are enough shortages and delivery problems now to remind people that the issues have not gone away.

Here is a study done in the US expected sales in 2021

source: Jungle Scout consumer data

The results in Australia were close by the end of November 2021. 57% of all Christmas retail sales were completed.

If you have not yet done so, you have to act immediately to start your stock ordering, which is something our point-of-sale software can help you do. We recommend shadow and focus analysis which our system can do, and I will discuss soon. 

Remember that November sales in 2021 were almost identical to December 2021. Why not this year too? 

It would be best if you also started looking at roistering again, which our point of sale can help too. 

Here is a quick checklist for your computer system

Is your POS system ready for Christmas?  

Start checking

If you plan to use some old POS computers “out of the closet” to accommodate the rush period, test it to ensure it works. If it has been in the closet for a year, who knows what state they are in now?

Check the following

-Have you checked all the cables connected to this equipment?
-Do you have a connection to your network where you need it?
-Can this equipment be linked to your system? Its been a year since it has been used?

Please do it now; the closer it gets to Christmas, the harder it will be to organise in time.

Security is a very important topic at the moment. Australia has had seven (7) significant breaches in a month. 

So please see our latest newsletter for information on how best to maintain security in your software.

The reality is that almost all security hacks today result from someone doing the wrong thing. 

Now your computer and its POS System can be set to allow security settings based on an employee's role in the business. This approach gives you control over who has access to your information. We suggest that you put this in place if it is not in place.

As it is often so easy for unauthorised people to get your passwords in a business environment, we suggest that your passwords be regularly changed. Industry-standard is at least once a year.

At the very least, please ensure someone needs your password to log onto your computer. That simple procedure will stop most computer data breaches, and it is so simple to put a password on your computers. Consider this your first and most powerful line of defence. If a hacker can get through this, they can get into your system.

Our POS system comes with a free cloud backup system that you can use. With the recent floods on the East Coast, it's been a real relief that many are using it.

What it does is store a copy of your information in another location. In the case below, a disaster happened, and the people's backup information was safe. Not much else was safe.

If you have not implemented it, please look into it. The amount of work involved is trivial, and even on the basic free version, it can protect you from the most severe computer backup problems. Ransomware is about the only thing it does not cover well, but for a little more, we can make it protect from ransomware too.

It also has other advantages; notably, people found using it during the COVID-19 pandemic that they could work better from home. 

Using a cloud backup offers you the best protection now available and is vastly more dependable than other backup services.​ 

​At the Fine Food Show, I noticed that many suppliers offered extensive ranges of snack food bar products under the healthy banner. Some actually tasted quite nice. The reason is that during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a significant increase in snacking. Today millennials are likelier to snack four times daily, which is more than any other generation.

The Australian snack bar market is expected to register a CAGR of 4.38% during the forecast period (2022 - 2027). Of that, the health food segment now accounts for more than half.

So have you considered adding health food bars to your product lists?

Margins for these products are high, there is little work, and there is a growing demand. There is increased public acceptance of these goods. Parents are happy to give their kids these bars with antioxidants, fibre and a natural fruit source.

Your POS Systems are now used in health shops, so there are no computer issues.

With agency work, you are handling someone else's products/services. Typical examples would be lotto, dry cleaning, Australia Post, etc.

Typically the commissions for handling these products/services are sometimes tiny. Yet the claim made by the agency is that these are good commissions, plus they give the shop customers that they would never get. 

Observations I will make here.

1) The commissions, over time, have a habit of dropping.
2) The commissions stated by the agency do rarely add up to the quoted figure. When I added up one client's figures, we found after fees; the 10% commission was more like 8%.
3) Good agencies demand the shop often do and spend to get these agencies.
4) Agencies often put barriers to the shop to sell other products. Yes, the customer comes in, but the store is limited in how it can offer additional products.
5) They interfere in the shop's management which is sometimes a positive as agencies know their business.

Is it worth getting these agencies? Many say YES.

Yesterday with the superdraw for $100 million, we saw long lines of people in shops. People who never came to a shop were coming into the shop. Loto was bringing in lots of customers to shops. 

The challenge for the retailer is to use that added foot traffic to make more sales of other items because that is where the profit is found. The trouble with lotto is that their product rarely leads to additional sales. Still, a small percentage can add up, say 300 people buy the lotto. 10% purchase something else well that 30 new customers for the shop.

As yesterday's long queues show, it promoted the shop, and people got used to dealing with the shop. 

Also, many shops are unmarketable without a good agency and cannot be sold. People will pay for a lotto agency, and they will pay for an Australian Post outlet. 

What I suggest is that you look at your profitability 

If you want a quick and instant way of finding out what did sell in your shop yesterday in the superdraw

Go to Register reports.

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

In the form put in yesterday, 20/10/2022 now compare the same with the report with figures from 13/10/2022, you will be able to see immediately what lotto brought into the shop.

Speed up your transaction time!

Say when processing customer transactions, you notice something is wrong. Here is a super quick fix, use direct editing. This will allow you to change the price, description, and quantity directly and set discounts simply by touching the details you want to change. See the image below.

For example, to change the description of an item in the cash register, click or touch the description of an item, and then a description override window will appear. Edit the description and click OK to return to the register. The description is changed.

For more details on what direct editing can do, please click here.