Scanners have dropped in price a lot, so now we see ones designed with a specific purpose in mind. This is as if you are a scanner manufacturer; you can offer your scanners less to people who do not need a function by not putting it in.

If you buy a scanner for the back office, when they use it on the front counter,  you may have problems. This is because many back-office scanners have a button to press to activate them. This works great for people who only need to scan occasionally. For people on the front, they find it a pain to keep pushing the button for each sale.

The reverse can be true too. Front counter scanners often have a bright laser. In the back, it often gets directed against their eyes. This is because they do not have the scanner beam positioned away from them as it is in the front. This is actually dangerous.

Many scanners can be programmed to overcome these problems. The problem here is that programming them is a real pain and requires a person who knows what they are doing.

So please let us know precisely what you need.

At the end of the upcoming fiscal year, make a marketing plan for the next few weeks. Do they work? Well, look at any large retailer, these people have heaps of experience in this matter, what are they doing? Would they do all this advertising if it did not work?

If it works for them, why not you?

Take a look around your shop for some loss leaders to fuel the sale.

Need some ideas? Here is something that will take you a few seconds to give you these ideas.

Go to register reports > stock titled "Old Stock on hand by Date last received"

This will gives you a listing of your stock based on when you received it. Unfortunately, this stock is rarely doing you much good, and it often costs you to keep it.

Here are some ideas for you to season your EOFY sale.

1) What about making some of this into a bundle by putting some of these with something that does sell.

2) Make a bargain bin.

3) Use them as specials

Now put them out and put a sign on your shop.

Let me know how it goes. I doubt you will be sorry you try, but I am sure you will be sorry if you do not try it!

You can do quotes with your POS software with ease and accuracy. 
Providing a professional pricing quotation to interested people can lead to future business. 

Also, discussing a quotation with your customer allows you to understand what is needed. 

Quoting costs nothing. Often whether your quote is accepted or not, you are on the person radar. This is why doing a quotation is often a great introduction for your business. 

The problem, see illustration above, is that when you manually quote a client, much information is often unavailable. Plus, it is much easier on a computer if changes need to be done. 

-First, call up the customer.
-Select the make invoice button that returns you to the customer select page. 

Now you can create or edit an existing quote by pressing the edit button in the history view tab. Editing is much faster than making a new quote, so people often edit completed orders.

As a final note, state any restrictions or conditions relating to the quotation. Make these clauses as few as possible as every one of these clauses is a reason for the customer not to buy. I would recommend adding that your quote is only valid for a certain period. 

We have the Best and Easiest to use Mower Repair Shop Software and have created a niche in this marketplace. 

Although many systems can handle the accounting in a shop, few can handle the demands of a machine repair business that even a tiny mower repair shop produces. 

What we do is provide an organisation with a smooth work log. We use an intelligent ticketing system that guides many jobs through the repair cycle to completion including the work done off-site plus third-party repairs. If required tickets can be further broken down and assigned to someone else if required.

Another great feature is the automatic email and SMS communications for tasks. For example, orders waiting for parts, review quotations, notification when job completed and if required orders progress.

If the client rings up, in our system, you can view all the shop activities, the current progress tickets and work to be done—all in real-time. 

In the end, we produce an invoice to collect the amount owing, which shows the full details of what was done. Then what is often helpful here is that the information collected can be sent automatically into any accounting systems, such as MYOB or Quickbooks. 

Note any user of our system has resulted from all our work here access to a very sophisticated repair system.

A lot of people are not very helpful when trying to get them to scan QR codes. Some of my clients were bluntly told, no often with some colourful language added. Here, is a new twist, a man of 70 with Dupuytren’s contracture, which is like Parkinson or arthritis except it affects the hand. This meant that he could not fill use the QR scanning codes on his mobile or fill out the paper form. You can read up on what happened here.

From this, it appears that a bit more diplomacy here would have been in order. 

Still I do not know what to say here, the fine for not getting the details are in Victoria about $9,000.

Note if required, you can fill out the appropriate form on behalf of the customer.

Today the number of returns is going up. Much is due to COVID, which has caused many of our clients to update their return policies.  

Unless you have a comprehensive and straightforward return policy, returns can be time-consuming. I say policies because you will find that your return policy has to be different for many goods.

One tip: many majors can transfer much of the cost of the returns to their supplier. See how much you can. What you need to check from your suppliers what their policy is in many situations. Plus be aware that many of your return is not your responsibility but theirs. For example, if you sell an item with a supplier claim, it is not your fault if it is false. 

Also, I do recommend is that you look through the return section of our software. You will find that it makes it quick and easy for you to handle and keep track of the returns.

So as the diagram shows above, you press the print button to get a receipt.

Yet, many small businesses want a formal invoice to show what they purchased. Then they want a receipt (for GST) to show they made payment.

You do not need to print both with us.

Instead, use the detailed receipt in our system, which is instantly available. Click on the "Receipts" button, find the receipt you would like to print, then press the "A4 Print" button.

Now you will then get an A4 ticket to print.

Pretty cool huh!

I have warned people before about this scam. But, unfortunately, it has happened again, so it is worth repeating. 

Here is video footage and the story of  how two people swapped a merchants EFTPOS terminal with a scam EFTPOS terminal that they controlled. It is worth studying what happened. See how this swap took these guys 10 seconds.

As these scam EFTPOS terminals are freely purchased online, they do not need to be a computer wizard to do this today. 

It can cost the merchant a lot of money. EFTPOS suppliers view is that this is the merchant fault as they are supposed to look after the terminal. It actually states so in your contract.

Here are four tips to help stop this:

- Put a label on the EFTPOS terminal and write by hand your shops name on it. The worse the handwriting, the better. This makes it harder to swap as they need then to forge your label and signature, making your terminal a unique item.

- Make sure that your terminal is not easily accessible to strangers. For example, here, the terminal was available and *NOT* under any supervision.

- Make sure that it is clear that a camera is monitoring the area where the EFTPOS terminal is located. Few thieves will attempt something like this if they know it is under the camera.

-Whenever possible, have the terminal locked up.

According to research, a typical person who has a gift card will buy nearly 38% higher than the value on the gift card. It is pretty hard to get the exact amount on the gift card, so most people spend more. Plus, since items can be specified, these people tend to buy things with good margins.

Even better for the retailer on a gift card sale is that users are rarely existing customers; they are new customers.

Thus, what many retailers do is offer some discounts for their gift cards to get more sales.

I have a better idea. Instead of selling $100 at a 2.5% discount, sell two gift cards. One for the proposed beneficiary at $100 and the other for the gift card buyer for $2.50 as a thank you.

Here, you might get two customers, the beneficiary of the gift card and the buyer.

You will find here that only are gift cards a great tool for spreading the word about your business. They also bring two customers through the door with increased basket size with two separate sales transactions. 

For Spice retailers in Point of sale software, it became clear that spice selling is not a standard type of business. It's a truly international business, as products come from all over the world. Plus, there are so many different types of spices out there, no-one can handle that many. The other problem is that the same product, e.g. saffron, would be a different product if it comes from India, Iran, Greece or Morocco. My wife accidentally spilt a considerable lot of pure Kashmir's saffron on a chicken before cooking it. Trust me; it is worth getting the real stuff, not from the supermarket.

Serious retailers in spices need some demanding requirements. All of which our Point of Sale software does well. For example, our client Our Spices Tarneit frequently get many unique promotions. That is why our promotion system is that good.

Also what sellers of spices need is equivalences plus in one click, stock items information with raw material history.

Another report that any retailer can use but is of particular need to people that sell spices and food is the use-by date. Here every product has its shelf life cycle.

But the reality is that we all have old stock sitting in the shop. But, of course, there is always that stock that been sitting for ages. If you sell spices or foods, you will find that it is worth nothing if it is not sold on time.

So I suggest that every one of our clients do this.

Go to register reports> Stock> Old Stock on hand.

Now pick a department. It is always easier to work in a department with stock. Here you get the stock arrived and the quantity you have on hand. I am sure you will find some are very old stock that is sitting in the shop.

What is useful is as some supplier will take the old stock back. If so then it is often handy to do this report by suppliers instead of the department.

Now we are coming to the end of the fiscal year. Normally there are now some pretty good bargains opening up.

This is because computer wholesalers look at their stock. Then they think to themselves that they would rather get rid of much of it than count it. This is something that many of my clients should be looking about too. The new models will start to roll out soon, and do you want to be left with one-year-old stock?

Also, the computer wholesalers know that consumers are thinking of ways to offset their taxes. On their tax return, there is now an unusually high investment allowance on offer. Plus, this year, many have good reasons to justify tax deductions on office equipment. This is due to the increasing demand for home office, for example, many can now justify an extra printer at home.  So we tend to get significant discounts to pass on to our clients.

So if you want to save some money on computer products now is a good time to buy.

We thought some items were particularly good for you, but there is much more we can help you with now.

Anyone that uses computers in business should use a UPS for essential services. Many products and services include Eftpos, which need you to be connected to the internet, but there is often a lot more, e.g. the local WiFi to your phone. Annoyingly, this includes the NBN connection, which is often not the best and for which there is little that we can do.

Still, there is something that we can do, and one of them is plugging the router into a battery backup unit (UPS).

What happened to one of our clients is interesting a few days ago. They brought a UPS and plugged it into the computer and the router. A short time later, they started to smell a strong electrical fire odour. Something was burning. They traced the scent to something inside the UPS. So they decided to turn the UPS off. Then they returned the damaged unit to the shop and got their money back. So leaving them without a UPS.

Then, as sure as day follows night, the power went out for about 20 minutes a few days later. Besides everything else, they had no internet in the shop. So they pretty well lost most of their business until the power came back on. One of their staff got a problem with excessive data usage on her mobile. She was using youtube a lot then and did not realise that she was using her public mobile data.

I would suggest if you have a router to plug the router for internet to the UPS.

If this is impractical we do sell small UPS that can be linked to the router.

This question has been bugging me since yesterday when I got my COVID shot. While there, I started thinking about this question. My clients have many employees that work indoors and have contact with over 300 people daily.   If they have COVID, these people could create a 'perfect storm' by superspreading. 

Still, in the current circumstances, I was advised that most employers should assume that they can't require their employees to be vaccinated against COVID.

This is what the federal government are saying as they are not forcing anyone to take the vaccine. Yet, many state governments are saying something different, as more important here many of the public health bodies. Currently, there have been a few notable legal cases where employers have been allowed to sack staff who refused to take a flu vaccine.  There have also been cases where an employee has sued the employer over lack of care, resulting in them getting COVID.

This pandemic is a reminder that we are all interconnected and no cannot go it alone

As everyone is flat out doing enough vaccines for those that are voluntarily taking it, little is heard about inforcement. But what happens when the number who want it willingly winds down? 

Also what if an employer demands an employee takes a vaccine. The employee then takes it and although most people who are taking the shot report no symptoms, some do report pain, mild fever, headaches, etc. In our company, one guy had to take the next day off due to significant tiredness after taking the jab.

Another potential problem here is that the government wants to do the vaccinations on the employer's premises. What happens here if someone gets sick? Who is responsible here? 

This all is something that needs to be addressed.

Now doctors are worried about this. For example, I had to sign a waiver after a long speech on the possible effects of the shots. Then after I took the COVID shot, they told me to wait for after for about 15 minutes in the doctors' surgery just in case. I was also given a medical certificate for the next day. Plus, I was told several times if I felt anything wrong to call emergency ASAP. The process took over an hour.

Here are some tips if you are taking a COVID shot, from my experience.

1) Do it at the end of the day. If it affects you, you have a night to recover.

2) Plan what to do if you cannot come to work the next day.

3) Do not go with your partner and have the shot together. Instead, do it on different days. 

In a few days, the Naturally Good expo which is the leading business platform for natural, organic and healthy brands starts. Unfortunately, it is in NSW so I will not be attending. If you are in the area and you are one of our clients I recommend you attend as your POS System can handle such products. You might get some ideas. 

Our system is widely regarded in this industry. For example, when Health Food Thyme needed a Point of Sale system, they came to us. They faced the problem that Nutrition and Health Food shops have to deal with colossal product catalogs and inventory. So they have to manage products for the vast demands of the public health needs. Besides, there is always a need to find and sell special orders, even if they don’t handle the product. In the Health Food Thyme case, they also consulted with naturopathic consulting and clinic rooms. This needs management too. You can check out their goods and services here.

After doing many of these stores, other problems that we need to take into account with Nutrition and Health Food shops:

-They can be both retail and wholesale businesses. Plus they need to manage products at different pricing levels. For example, loyal customer or wholesaler as they often need customer-based pricing or discounts. Plus group price reduction, quantity pricing, multiple purchases, promotional prices and bulk discounts. So they need their system to have a robust inventory management system. With such a large stock, they need an automatically reorder facilities. 

-They also need an inbuilt CRM loyalty system to manage the entire sales history of a particular customer. This helps them to make recommendations based on past purchased items. It also allows the shop to provide a personal experience for shoppers. For example, check and track dietary restrictions, brand preferences, etc. 

-The specially designed price tag with bar code-suitable for items without barcodes. 

-Time-based promotional prices-set promotional or discounted prices within a specific date range.

-Tracking and manage self-made products by the shop made from other products in the store. 

This system was designed to help people that market Nutrition and Health Food to grow and succeed.

There was great hope that we were returning to normal with vaccinations finally rolling out and the virus contained. Suddenly it went South, the Victorian government has just invoked an emergency week of lockdown.  This tightens restrictions again in Melbourne. Another bump on the road, a reminder that things change and that we must all as a community be vigilant.

So we have decided to close our Melbourne office down for the week, we will review this decision as the situation unfolds.  

Be assured that we are pleased to announce that POS Solutions will continue to work and help our customers during this time of uncertainty. Our interstate offices are all open and our Melbourne staff are now working from home.

Stay safe. 

There are a few grants available for small businesses, by State governments, local councils and companies. It is worth checking on them. I have quite a few clients who apply and get them. But, most of you will find that these grants are pretty small and full of such small print that few can get them. With company grants, I have noticed that they are so highly competitive that only a few can get them. Still, if you are legible, you might be able to get something good out of it.

For example, in Queensland, they have now a grant that if your business qualify (and it probably does not), they will give you $5,000 for a website. If you can get it, that should get you a decent website.

If you do not qualify, don't be too upset. I have many frustrated clients reading the words reported and seeing the reality.

Having said this, we have many clients who are doing well with their websites. So I recommend that you look into this, whether you do or do not qualify.

Days of Supply KPI is how long will it take for a product to run out if sales continue as expected. It is evaluated in the periods based on your order cycle. This is as say you typically sell 20 items a month, you have 15 Days of Supply if you have ten items. But if your supplier needs 30 days from you sending them an order, the odds are here, you will run out.  If your supplier needs seven days, well, you should be okay. This is why knowing your supplier's delivery time is here critical. 

Calculating the *standard sell rate* for every item in the shop is impractical. But, not to worry as this is what your computer can help you do. 

Here is an example.

If you go to stock maintenance, call up an item, now press ordering as above. The product here has two (2) on hand. The focus (which is the standard sell rate per week) is on (4) sales. Thus, we can say that you can expect to run out in a few days. If my ordering cycle is weekly, you need to place an order as soon as possible. Otherwise, you will lose sales.

Our system gives you the information you need! 

Check it out. You will find it very useful.

A SWOT analysis is the most popular and influential method for analysing plans today. You tend to notice once you know SWOT what people who service your business the way they think. No surprise, as this is the way they are trained. 

SWOT will help in the decision-making process and test the feasibility of a business, marketing, product etc. 

It is simple, and it will take you about 7 minutes to learn here.

Now you know how to do it, here is my advice.

Grab a big sheet of paper. Experts often use a large A2 sheet. Clearly they think people have a lot to say.

On the top, write your project aim. I find keeping it simple best, e.g. do not say "Increase turnover by 10% "but say "Increase sales of XYZ product". Then when you get more experienced, you can move into more general cases.

Now draw a big cross in the middle of the page, so you have four quadrants. Look at the above example.

Come up with ideas. Brainstorm with others in your team is a great idea. Running computer reports can stimulate ideas as can internet searches on your ideas.

Now you have the idea, it is easy to determine where it goes on the chart. 

1) Is it good for the business on the right side (Helpful) if it is bad on the left (Harmful) ? 

2) Is it something to business has control of then on the top (Internal), else on the bottom (External)?

Now write down your points in the relevant quadrants.

Now highlight items that people think are significant.

In the end, you will have a visual image of where you are. I promise you that you will find it helpful to examine. You will find that doing a SWOT analysis will help you better understand and how others in the business see your business. 

Let me know how it goes.

We have regular training courses.

Due to COVID, we had to stop in-person training, but we did manage to keep online going.

Today, despite the problem of face-to-face training due to the risk of rapid lock-downs, we have reintroduced in-person training. Actually, the new COVID cases reported now are higher than last year. There are currently 29,997 Coronavirus Cases in Australia. It is not less than a year ago, it is just that we are now used to it.

So today, we provide a hybrid model where people can take part in person or online. The most significant advantage here is that as we share content. Our clients can join even if they can not make it at the scheduled time but only when they have time online. If you want to conduct online training, please use an area free of distractions -learning is not an easy task. Take notes-what works for me is that I have a pen and a piece of paper in front of me to write down the main points. Participate in the discussion if you don't know what to ask.

Overall, the rise of online activities has been very successful.

The Baking Industry Trade Show started in 2017, and it is in a few days. It is a unique exhibition in the Australian baking industry. They probably picked now as winter is coming up which is always a problem in the bakery industry.  It reminds me that we have many clients with our baking shop system now. Recently I was very pleased that after reviewing the bakery point of sale systems, recently Treats and Takeaway in Queensland decided on our bakery POS software.

Bakery point-of-sale (POS) systems need to have many functions of retail POS system, plus they need much more. 

Our system makes it easy to run a bakery. It is fast in action. It has a slick touch screen interface for them, possibly the fastest in our marketspace. 

-It can sell by units or by weight. 

-It can handle the large numbers of special orders often required. We can also help simplify order tracking and so increase efficiency, for example, wrong names. It also displays orders in a form that is easy to scroll through and find them. It also makes it easy to repeat special orders. 

-Also, we keep track of the many items required to be kept in a bakery. Plus, we can do it in the precise amounts needed. This can help avoid the delay in special orders because one necessary ingredient is missing. 

-Using our quoting system, you can accurately calculate costs for regular and special orders. 

The right bakery POS system will enable your small business to grow. By implementing this right bakery management software, you can improve your business.