Lockdown 6 and the necessity to be able to do remote working
 

Today, most of our work is done remotely. That is because we did one thing right – Remote working.

With the uncertainty surrounding this pandemic and the speed of these snap lockdowns that our governments are putting in place, today we often have to work remotely. What was once a convenience used to avoid a commute to the shop is currently a necessity. My accountant calls me. He is at home. I am at home, we are talking on the telephone. The only way to get the stuff done is by me remotely dialling into work. This is life now in August 2021.

What I have noticed with people remote working is that you need to return messages and telephone calls quicker than before. People tend to be more time-conscious remote working. Try answer straight away, even if it is to say "When I get back to the shop on ..... I will do this..."

 Questions About Remote Work, Answered

Here are some quick FAQs that some people ask me about remote working if you have not started yet.

Q) Can our software can work remotely?

A) YES, there are several methods you can use. Don't hesitate to get in touch with our support staff to recommend the best way to do so with our software.

Q) Do I need to make changes?

A) Yes, you need the technology infrastructure in place to support remote work. Often it is much in cost but organisation. Home machines that kids used for games need checking for malware.

Q) Do I need a good Internet connection?

A) Depends. Suppose all you need are reports. Often we can set up a procedure that can work on flaky internet connections. If you want online access, as if you are there, you need a decent internet connection.

Q) Is my information secure?

A) It depends on how you do it. I would suggest that you consider frequent password changes. For example, I dialled my company from a public WIFI in the shopping centre. When I came home, I changed my passwords immediately. I had doubted my sensitive data going through these public WIFI systems.

If you are concerned, you can use a VPN at a minor cost. I pay about $3/month for a VPN.

Q) Does someone have to be in the shop for it to work?

A) There are some pluses and minus to setting it up, so someone must be there.

Remote work considerations for the future

Today we have to accept that COVID is mutating, so producing new waves. Some employees are more vulnerable than others. Others have kids, and if the kids are in a lockdown, they often cannot come to work. Others prefer working from home. So we have to accept that a proportion of the workforce won't be returning to work soon.

Remote working will be with us from now on, your software has to be able to handle it.

This is 

Retail Analytics 

Years ago, by looking into their retailers' sales, the music industry found the best policy was to concentrate on their top 40 sales items.  

This is where the action is. 

Over the years, when looking at my clients' retail information, this great advice. Here is an example: a client of ours has sold 15181 different items in their shop over the past three years. See, when you look at the sales, once you are about the top 40 items, the sales are getting very close to 0%. There is a lot of profit past the 40th item but few people are coming for those items. 

When I decided to look at the profit that we're making from these 40 items, I found this, 

I do not think that remarkable and almost 25% of the shop's profit came from these 40 items.

As you can see, the profit between items varies, although the basic pattern follows sales. Note the item in negative. Much of the product had to be sold below cost to get rid of it.

What has proven very effective is leaving best-sellers where they are now as they sell well there. Then put some in a best-selling area at the central point of the customer's vision. Some have a few best-selling regions. This is to group products with similar attributes next to each other.

Now how do we find these 40 top best selling items? Well, it's easier than you think.

How to Perform Profit Analysis for Your Retail Business

Go to Register reports.

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

Now the following comes up.

For example, I will select a day, but you usually would put in a year, now select a department.

Outcomes a report with the top sellers.

Now, you're set!  

Make a few best-selling areas. Now every month, you run this report. Then move a few items to the best-selling areas and take out some.

Retail Gross Profit Margin

Sometimes you look at your gross profit give by the accountant somehow it does not look right. So what you want to do is analyse the details for yourself. 

Now there are a few reports that can help you.

Here is how you can calculate your retail store gross profit margin by department.

The best report to start is 

Register report> Sales Register> Dissection Sales / Profitability for a Given Period

For the time you are concerned about, select a suitable period. 

That report will give you a lot of detail by department, including the Quantity sold and %Profit. These are often an excellent sign of something wrong. 

Once you find something you want to investigate, click on the left-hand side to see the green arrow above. Now select the shop. Then you will find the details of what is in every department. I find it very useful in real-time to go from one department to another while looking.

Happy hunting.

From April 2021, Afterpay had a card that is a contactless Mastercard so you need no integration into your point of sale.

Note your EFTPOS machine will need to accept Paywave Mastercard and I know Paywave is an extra expense. 

To process, you will need to get Afterpay permission to become an Afterpay approved merchant. 

If you are interested, you need to go here and provide details like your EFTPOS terminal details. 

Once accepted which does not take long, then when you get an Afterpay transaction, your funds are settled like any other card payment.

Clients of ours doing this have reported that it is easy and straightforward to use and it is fulfilling a need for many consumers.

Everyone wants to supercharge their data entry. For this reason, we provide many windows shortcuts to speed up data entry.

These keyboard shortcuts can provide you with some real-time savings.

Go to the data entry point, enter many characters, cover them with the cursor, and press Ctrl+C on the keyboard. This will copy what you have covered in memory. Now press the space bar a few times. Then press Ctrl+V. This will paste what you put in memory. If you need to repeat what you have written many times, this can save time.

If you make a mistake, don’t worry. Would you please press Ctrl+Z on your keyboard? It is the undo. By selecting Ctrl+Z, you roll back your last operation. This can be a real saviour.

Another shortcut I often use in our software is Win+D. This minimizes all your open windows. This allows me to deal with some things else on the computer immediately. Now press Win+D again, pretty nifty, huh.

Another one that I like to use if I have to leave a computer quickly and I have security concerns is Win+L.

Try to get used to using these shortcuts because they are a real timesaver so we have done a lot of work to make sure they work in your POS software.

They say that a businessperson has two happy moments—one when they buy and one when they sell. I am not so sure as I have had much good time between.

Here are some further points that you need to consider.

Be prepared.

Often what I see is that a sale is being held up because someone is waiting for figures. Sometimes it cannot be helped as you will be asked for some strange pieces of information. It would be best if you were on hand to answer these questions.

Note how you say it may be more important than what you say, as potential sales can fail for the most trivial reasons.

The business broker is not really on your side. Some are good and some are bad. One point, they all act like they are good.

Then there are two critical people; either can kill the deal.

The buyer's accountant will review your figures. That person is putting his professional career on the line. They sometimes are sued if it does not work out the sale to the new buyer. I have often seen a potential buyer get the figures, go to the accountant, then be told it isn't worth it, and the deal dies. Make sure you give figures they like.

In the bank, there are two people. The first earns a lot of money, and it is their job to get the deal. The second earns even more, and it is their job to make sure no deal goes through. If the buyer cannot get the money, the sale will not happen. The bank is not lending the money till the i's is dotted and the t crossed. So before the deal goes through, you will need to sign a form that everything works and everything is there. For example, there are legal cases over computers that did not work or were there when the buyer looked at the place and are no longer there. Generally, the buyer wins. These arguments often are not trivial. What you think of a working POS System may differ from what a lawyer and/or judge may think.

Keep a paper trail and take plenty of photos of everything, I mean everything.

People try very hard to make the shop look good. To fit into this image, few people today want an old computer on the front counter. It is a bad look and gives your business the wrong impression.

So for a little more, people are buying cool computers like this for the shop. It comes with flashing lights too.

Its also a trend I have noticed for home computers too, more and more people want computers that not only are good but look fabulous too

Parcel delivery updates are generally emails. These are sent to people to tell them where their parcel is and the expected delivery details. 

Today most people appreciate getting them. 

So if you are sending your customers goods by courier or doing it yourself, it is good to send them. You can use our POS Software to do it, or you can forward to your customer the information as you get it by email. 

Here are some benefits

) It provides an appreciated service to your customer. 

) Provides a personal touch to your business.

) It reduces the amount of work you need to do. Customers with this tracking information will generally contact the courier company directly if there is a problem - this sort of keeps you out of the problem loop. 

) It puts your name out to an engaged customer. For this reason, always put a picture of your shop or logo with your details in the email. Also, set in the email a link to your social media, e.g. Facebook page. 

) It provides you with an excuse to get your customer's email for both future marketing and accounting reasons.

I do not see any downside.

You have a good reason to contact your customer; why not use it? 
 

It is worth checking that if you have a retail or commercial lease over your business in Victoria, the new laws about your lease. Its state government now makes commercial landlords provide rent relief which is linked to their tenants' fall in turnover.

Say your business lease is $1,000/week and say your turnover is 30% lower than before COVID struck. Now your business only needs to pay 70% of the lease or $700. Of that $700, half $350 can be deferred for now. 

Click here for details.

See how you go!

Unfortunately, it does not appear that such schemes are available in the rest of Australia

Cloud computing is when you do not have the software on your computer but run online on someone else computer.

Latest night, one of our users contact us because Xero was not working. We thought it might have been their password, so we recommended that they changed it. But, they told us that they could not log in to change the password. So we investigated and discovered that Xero was down. Xero admitted the problem. Unfortunately it did not release an ETA time when it would be fixed, something I'm not too fond. Luckily it was not the end of the month, all we could is wait. I did check about 2 am and was relieved to see it was fixed.

This incident highlights one main problem of the cloud: many factors need to happen to make it work. Often like Xero here, besides both your own and Xero computer and equipment, it needs a continuous internet connection to make it work. So the best you can do with the internet connection often is Telstra or Optus and both go down.

That is why we recommend critical systems, e.g. EFTPOS, have a *LOCAL* mode to work offline. That way, if the cloud goes down, you can still function.

That is also why our POS System has a hybrid cloud option.

Biometrics security is when you use peoples fingerprints, facial pictures, etc rather than passwords. Many mobile phones use it. Many of our clients use it on their POS Software for over four years since we first introduced it to our marketspace. 

One of my clients met a credit card, where the information was swiped. The owner of the card did not know it was swiped. Swiping leaves no trace. A girl with the info went on a shopping spree. She did not take long to spend just under $30,000. With the new biometric cards, this will be impossible. 

Soon I suspect all retailers will have no choice but to use biometrics as the banks move to this security. So if credit card details are known, even with the PIN without the owner's finger, it cannot be used.

In theory, whether in practice one hack is proposed for the most popular types of biometrics security, which most of us use. It is claimed that it can be cracked.

Now we use the fingerprint method.

This involves some new equipment that is not expensive. Its big plus is that even if others know the password, they cannot get in so its much more secure

Yet, although people talk about the advantages of biometrics, it does have some drawbacks.

Delay: This is the big one. It takes too long. You have customers queued up, and the operator, if they have to wait a few seconds to process, is just too long. That is why we currently do not use it on the cash register.

COVID, as fingerprints are contact-based, people do not want to keep pressing the same pad as everyone else. 

Errors caused by the sensors, which are not perfect, cause problems. Although a fingerprint is better than a pin, errors still occur. Some court studies show the error rate, fingerprints errors showed they vary from 3% to a dismal 20%.

Shops are dirty environments, so people have wet hands, dirty fingers, etc. Often the operator has to wipe their hands, then try again. This causes more delays.

Our system is often used by people with physical disabilities, e.g. MS. They can have problems using the fingerprint scanner. 

Have a chew and if you want to know more, let us know. 

Have a look at this advanced offer which you may want to consider in your shop if you have our POS Software.

We did this based on a study here

Mix or Match? Consumer Spending Decisions in Conditional Promotions - Sokolova - 2021 - Journal of Consumer Psychology - Wiley Online Library

As it shows that it works better than "Buy two, 10% off both".

You would think that they are the same, what is the difference to a customer of

1) Buy two and get 20% off the cheaper one.

2) Buy two, 10% off both".

But the answer is no.

The study showed that the sales number were about the same in both cases. Yet shoppers, when offered the "Buy 2 and get 20% off the cheaper one" offer, tended to choose a second item that is more expensive. This increased their return from the 20% discount.

So for the retailer, the sales total went up.

Try it out and let me know how it went.

After the stocktake, many of our clients discovered that they are carrying many old items. These items are clearly not moving fast so actions need to be taken immediately. If not, then you may be forced to make large discounts in clearance sales soon to free up cash and space as above.

There are two other points here.

1) There may be much more missed.

2) You may have overbought.

Say, for example, you had last year ten items. You sold eight. Then you purchased five more, so you have seven now. You have overbought as you did not need to buy the five.

In your Point of Sale system, we have a quick analysis in seconds to identify your old inventory on the shelves. Click here for a training video on how to identify such stock.

Please check immediately for any stock you are carrying that are over 12 months old.

Most people say to wait until Windows 11 is bedded down, which is sound advice. Many cannot wait.

We all want to have the latest technology, so I have installed a few Windows 11 Development systems.I would say that about half the installs are good. On these, it runs well, although you can see that it is not yet a complete system. For the rest, I have been reversing the upgrade because of problems. The problem is often huge.

What after speed is the factor that most of us look at - SECURITY. 

How often do we hear nowadays of security problems on the computer, EVERY DAY?

Windows 11 is both faster and is based on better security. Yet on many computers after the upgrade, the security is off and cannot be turned on. Then I found that few antivirus software works on these computers, although I got a good run with Bitdefender. Then there is more than the security functions not working. Weird other errors happen on these computers. The security function not working is a symptom that something else is wrong. Then you often get on those computers the green screen of death.

So far, I have never had a problem reversing the upgrade going back to Windows 10. I then set the Windows Insider Program to beta, and in a month, we will try again.

Some tips if you can't wait and want to try out the latest Windows 11 as soon as possible.

Only install Windows 11 Dev version on a second computer lying around. I used my home media player first. Worst case, I thought, I will reformat it, then make a new media player. Although I do not know why the sound is much richer on Windows 11.

Windows 11, I can see, does have bugs. 

Also, be aware that there will be incompatible driver issues. Many of you may, in the upgrade, will lose a working peripheral, such as a printer. This is as many manufacturers have stated that some of their models will not get Windows 11 drivers. 

Acknowledge you are upgrading only for fun and experimentation now. 

Also would you please not buy any computer that cannot run Windows 11? I know some of these are at a good price, but still, you want something that will give you many years of service. 

A good way of checking is using this Detection Script to help identify why your PC is not Windows 11 Release Ready

Microsoft hasn't yet revealed the actual release date of Windows 11, but it is generally expected in October if nothing goes wrong. Then give it six months before the business community starts to buy it, so we are looking at about April 2022.

​

A person takes an item in the store and then presents it to get a credit. This is one of the most common scams that target retailers.

You have this nice policy above, now watch it abused.

​In my experience, here are three common scenarios.

1) The person has no documentation, like this guy here.

2) A customer purchased the product. They give, use or often find a receipt often thrown out in the rubbish bin by the purchaser. Now someone comes into the stop with the receipt. They take the same product from the shelf and then request a refund.

For this reason, receipts should always be put in the packaging of the purchased item.

3) People fake your receipts to return stolen goods for cash refunds. It is easy to do with a smart camera and some image editing software.

To stop this you need

a) A good return policy

b) A POS System that can track sales. Always look up the item sale into the POS System to verify the original sale.

c) You need a good security camera.

This Delta variant is spreading. It now is the dominant variant. Now South Australia will go into lockdown too from 6 pm tonight. It joins much of Australia already in lockdown.

If you want to know what lockdown looks like in Melbourne, I took some pictures of the Parkmore shopping centre. This is a large shopping centre with 128 shops. It should be packed now.

But in shopping centres, there is no monkey business as shopping centre management enforces the lockdown immediately. The shops open were mainly shops classed as essentials. Although I did notice some in the essential list did shutdown, probably as the owners do not think it's worth opening. Some shops sort of stayed open as they use Click and Collect or do repairs. Most shops that were open were only available for a limited time.

If you want to know how your suppliers are affected in different states, I find this helpful site COVID-19 Restriction Checker. This is because they frequently update the information.

If you want to know how COVID is playing out, try this site COVID LIVE.

Keep safe, I like this quote by Mahatma Gandhi when he stated “It is health that is the real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.”

Pepper is a robot that they told us would revolutionise the retail market is a semi-humanoid robot designed to read emotions. Using this it could they claim chat to customers in a grocery shop. So one company in Scotland hired a one to direct people to where various products are. Pepper was fired soon because no matter what product people asked for, it told them to "look at alcohol." Now some here may  like such a robot but not the owner of the grocery shop. It was also suppose to do stocktakes that apparently did not work out either.

It was also hired by a Japanese nursing-home company to keep residents company and lead group singalongs. Peppers was fired thereafter for taking "unplanned breaks" at work. Plus the residents did not like them. It got fired from a funeral home and schools for similar reasons too.

It's being used now in a vaccination centre in Wyndham, Victoria. Anyone see it, please tell me about it.

Here is an interview with pepper the robot, its very interesting.

POS Solutions was invited to attend an Australian launch of a similar product which was very interesting but at the time we felt that this technology was not moving as fast as we were told.

If you’re a retailer not running a loyalty program, what does it cost you?

Let us do a guesstimate.

Say you collect a 1,000 email addresses of your customers.

Say you send out a monthly email newsletter to them. This costs you nothing.

At a super conservative value of 1% effectiveness, say with $20 profit per hit. That is a $200/month profit on 1,000 members of your loyalty club.

In one year, you have about $2,500. Its paid its way.

Plus, it puts your name out in front for no cost.

A card promotion advertised through a loyalty program resulted in

-No of transactions increased 20.7%

-Total average weekly increase (overall) on cards was 44.5%

-Average card basket size increase 19.8%

Plus, there were extra purchases as customers bought more than cards.

Read more here.

Now we have another five-day lockdown. Currently, I reckon over half our clients are under Lockdown.   If you are under Lockdown, we know how you feel as most of us in POS Solutions are now on our 5th Lockdown.

Software support will be as usual 24 x 7 by phone, email and online even though our Melbourne office is now closed.

Screens get dirty in a shop. They can also get easily be damaged. Then even a tiny flaw on the screen stands out.

For deep cleaning, you need some household or commercial grade disinfectant that states on the label it is viricidal or listed with specific COVID-19 claims. So first wet a microfibre cloth. Now wipe the screen with this damp cloth. Do not use force.  Now wipe with a dry microfibre cloth.

But do not clean the monitor while it is on as it is hot. Let it cool down. A good time to do it is in the morning before you start it up. What can happen is the evaporation of the cleaning material can cause streaks.