Point of Sale Software

Here are some Articles from the Blog Subject - management -

Planogram a discussion

POS SOFTWARE

A planogram is a diagram that indicates the placement of retail products on shelves to maximise sales.  

It does not have to be rocket science, here are two planograms, the top one will cost you nothing to make and will take you once you age organised less than an hour, details here and here.

 

Image removed.

And this one will cost you thousands, see details here.

Of course, the first does not do as much as the second but as we say "we get what we pay for." The ability to do product placement is minimal in the first one. Still, it is better than nothing. 

Budget

My clients widely use planograms before they do a shop fit. However, some of my clients do it regularly monthly or quarterly. Two main reasons, the first is that it gives them more control and it does improve their sales. The figures thrown around is somewhere between 1% to 10%, most probably closer to 1%, So if you are doing a million turnover a year with an average margin of 27%, you are looking at  $2,700 to $27,000 extra profit a year. This will give you as a first level approximation a rough budget. An hour a quarter can be justified.

Measuring

Keep it simple. I would suggest an SMB use three measurements

1) Number of sales per linear metre

2) Profit per linear metre

3) Shoplifting per linear metre (this you would do after a stocktake)

 

Finally please do not be concerned if you do not have everything right, 80% is better than nothing.

 

 

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Charging interest to your clients

POS SOFTWARE

Issuing credit to a customer in a business is often an unwelcome necessity.

This our point of sale software can do, but because of the recent changes in credit laws, we have had to change our system slightly. Today with many of my clients, the number of people who credit has been issued too and the outstanding figures are becoming now extremely high so much it has become a necessity to charge their clients costs.

As a retailer, you are exempt and so not need to be in some way licensed with ASIC. However, I doubt whether you are exempt from the ASIC provisions. So I do strongly recommend that you do not issue a credit limit of over $2,000 to any of your clients as this figure does pass a legal threshold. I would suggest that you give all your clients in your system a credit limit of less than that. 

To find the credit limit in your system, click on the main menu to customer > customer maintenance

Now call up a customer, now click Other Details. (see green arrow below)

Now you can see trading terms and a question what to do if a credit limit is exceeded to either stop the account or merely warn you if it's exceeded.

However, two new conditions that are confusing my clients.

The first is that you must give the person 16 days minimum to repay the amount. If someone comes to your shop and says "The money with my wife, I will pay you back in an hour", well there is little legally you can do for 16 days. Conversely, you may have problems collecting the money lawfully if the amount outstanding goes over a year so here you need to act in the twelve-month.  

The next point that is confusing people is that you are not allowed to charge interest, but you can change a monthly account keeping fee of 4% (maximum) of the amount that is on loan which is pretty close. So if I have a credit limit of $2,000 but only owe you a $100, I can be charged $4 a month. That adds up. I estimate that 4% a month is about 53% a year in fees.  

What I do recommend is that you do a careful analysis, establish appropriate credit limits that will reduce your risk while maximising your income. One point I do suggest is that if possible that you get your clients to sign a form clearly stating your terms and conditions. Without this form, if you need to go legal you may be in big trouble. Most industry bodies do have such a form, so speak to them.

 

 

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Google+ gone

POS SOFTWARE

Yesterday we had an example of how quickly and ruthlessly a major corporation can move with BigW closing 30 stores in Australia with probably another 30 to go soon. 

Google+

Today Google shut down Google+.  If you have a Google+ page for your business well it is gone now. I am stunned as according to its Wikipedia page it had 100s of millions of monthly users surely there would have been some loud protest from some of these and it would be a fortune that Google has written off, I saw figures of $585 million the project had cost Google in 2011, 8 years ago, I wonder what it would be now? The investors I am sure are concerned.

It is not the first time Google has done it, check out here, the so-called the guillotine and graveyard for Google's discontinued products, services, devices, and brands, 

What these examples do show is that business owners have to think objectively about their business just like these companies are doing to survive. If you do not do it then your competitors will do it.

Then like the Video stores (remember them), you will go.

Gone the last video library left near me.

 

 

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Order tracking

POS SOFTWARE

Tracking delivery monitoring

Order tracking allows your customers to know where their order from you are at any time from when you shipped it till when it is delivered. There are many reasons for that, for example, the customer wants to know

  • Has their order been sent?
  • Where is their order right now?
  • When is it expected to be delivered?
  • Has it been delivered?

The last point sounds a bit weird, but we have had clients that tell us that customers have rung them up querying when an order arrives that has already been delivered.

So one service that is getting very popular is that we can provide our clients who use delivery agents a tracking service where your customers can monitor the progress of their delivery from your shop.

What happens is that you send your client an email which its appearance can be customised to match your shop. In this email is a tracking ID and widget. This takes them to a web page.

This web page looks very professional. It is optimised so if they are looking at it for computer desktop, a tablet or mobile it will look good. They can read this page in a vast number of languages which is great if you are dealing with tourist.

Using this you and your customer can track the progress of the goods that you are sending them. 

You can also add advertising to the tracking page which is great as people who are interested in where their goods do read the tracking documentation.

There is a cost associated with this service but it is well worth if you use a lot of delivery agents to deliver goods from your store.

The other benefit is that you get a rating of how each delivery agent is doing plus you can track the items too.

If you are interested let me know.

As far as I know, we are the only ones in our market space to provide such a service integrated if you are thinking of a website, its a must.

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Direct integration with accounting software

POS SOFTWARE

Direct integration with your accounts

With your point of sale software, there are two schools of thought about direct integration.

The first school is entirely against it.  The problem that they see is that anyone in the shop can use the point of sale software, as such their accounting system can be mucked up by anyone in the shop. What they prefer is that they take the results from the accounting system, manually review it and then and only then enter in the information into the system.  If you are like me and have an accounting background, it is a powerful point. For example, a payment on electricity might be over two months and if its a month late being paid its actually three months ago. Every entry into your ledger does involve some thought. The other issue is an error is made for example a sales was put in incorrectly, then it goes directly into the books, and they really do not like that. If the business changes, then it is easier to change if it is done manually.

The second love direct integration. Generally, they see the time saved as far more important, It would be lovely to have a proper set of books going but they feel they lack both the expertise and time to do it beside the accountant can do the details, for what they want and need this is not so important. They want their BAS,  their cash flow, a general idea of how they are going, and they want to give the accountant consolidated figures as they do not have to pay for the accountant's bookkeepers charges too. 

For these people, direct integration with our point of sale software to an accounting program like MYOB (by far the most popular with our clients), Quickbooks and Xero can dramatically increase their business overall efficiency.

This would be the arguments

) Entering information manually is time-consuming and after all, in business, time is money. Even an hour a week is a substantial saving.

) They can save a lot of mucking around as once their program is set to direct integrate, it is automatic. They do not need an expert to get the information into the accounting program. The less contact with the accounting program the better.

) Yes errors are coming but the manual way also has errors, human error. For example, 191 can be accidentally entered as 119 and then it is very hard to find.

) Results are available instantly. This permits quick analyzation. It nice to be able to look at your books daily and get a real feel where your business is heading.

Overall I tend to think in most SMBs something is better than nothing so unless you have someone that really knows their accounting, I would say that a direct integration is better.

Make your own mind up as with our system you can choose manual, integrated or both as we can limit the information being sent into your accounting program. Then if you want integration let us know.

 

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Ransomware

POS SOFTWARE


 

Currently, I estimate that every month we have at least one point of sale client having issues regarding Ransomware and unfortunately many of our customers are falling victim to Ransomware attacks. We have had three (3) such attacks this week.

Our support manager Phil has put together step by step notes for you.

 

What it does

This form of attack encrypts all of your data and prevents you from using your computer unless you pay a fee. If this happens to be your server then this means your shop will not be able to trade.

What to do

Your only other option is to reformat your server and restore from a backup.

However, in many cases, we are finding that despite our best efforts there are no backups available as they too have been encrypted.

 

What can you do about it?

 

Your choice of Operating System

Firstly you should think about the version of Windows you use in your store. Windows 10 has a lot of features built in that make it much harder for Ransomware to take hold of your system.

 

If you are not running Windows 10 in your store, especially on your server and the computers you use to connect to the internet, then you should consider upgrading these as soon as possible.

 

While not as good, if you must or insist on running Windows 7, you should at least ensure that all Windows Updates have been installed. Windows Update includes many security patches, some of which may stop Ransomware from taking hold of your system.

 

In Windows 7, Click the Start button and in the run (or search box) type “windows update” and then press enter.

Click on the Check for updates and install updates button.

Windows Update may want you to restart your computer at some point and you should do so.

Remember that if this is your server then your shop will not be able to trade while your server is restarting.

When you have restarted, repeat the above process until there are no more updates to install.

 

If you are running Windows XP, then you are leaving yourself wide open to attacks from Ransomware. Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP in April 2014, so for five years there has not been any security updates for this operating system.  There is little you can do apart from replacing the computer with one that has Windows 10 as its operating system.

Make sure you have a backup

 

Ransomware attacks are happening, and as much as you may try to prevent them, it may happen to you. If it does, you either have to pay up and encourage these criminals to continue their actions or have someone reformat and reinstall your computer system.

 

Reformatting and in reinstalling the operating system is the easy part. What nobody can replace is the data. Your customers, stock, sales history etc.

 

To protect yourself and ensure you will be able to replace this, you should be taking a regular backup copy of your data and remove it from your network so that Ransomware cannot access it.

 

I will deal with Posbrowser, but you should also find out how to do the same with your other important data such as your accounting and payroll data and any documents you may store on your local hard drive.

 

Posbrowser uses SQL server. One of the features of SQL server is that you can take online backups.

This means that you can take a backup without having to bring the system offline and stop trading.

 

So find a time during the day, a regular time. 

Also, find a USB stick. Now go to your server and plug in the USB stick.

 

Open Posbrowser and from the main menu select System Maintenance / Backup and Restore.

In the “Backup to a location” section click the three dots and navigate to the USB drive you just plugged in and click OK.

Note that if the three dots are greyed out, you are NOT on your server!

 

 

Then click the Backup button and the backup will start.

Wait until you see a message telling you the Backup was complete.

 

 

 

If you see any other message, you should contact POS Solutions Support for advice.

 

When it finishes,

DO NOT JUST TAKE OUT THE USB STICK – REMEMBER TO EJECT IT SAFELY.

This is the only way you can ensure that the backup has been written to the USB stick correctly.

 

If you want to be double sure, after you have removed the USB stick, you can insert it again and restore the backup to your training system via the “Restore to Training” tab in the Backup and Restore document.

 

When you have removed the USB drive, place it in a safe place, and DO NOT put it into a computer again until you are ready to do another backup of your system.  Don’t let Ransomware have a chance to get access to it.

Even if this backup is a couple of days old, because you are not in on the weekend, it is a lot better than having nothing at all.

You should take the time and make an effort to protect the most valuable part of your business – your data.

 

 

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Less paper saves money

POS SOFTWARE

Paper on our desks

Remember when we all had desks like this.

Each page costs a calculation for a laser printer a few years ago estimated that an average cost was between $0.05 to $0.08 and went up to $0.12 to $0.15 for a page if a colour printer was used. These costs have not dropped.

If you have to print the delivery lists daily, use our Point of Sale software to email to the deliver's mobile, over the year this alone has saved our clients hundreds of dollars a year.

Often  I have seen people print a massive report when all they need is the final summary on the last page. Why not print the report to the view screen and then printout only the last page?

As rarely do you need the massive report printed, use our system document storage.

A tip

Make or use your existing Gmail or Hotmail account for digital storage. You set up its filter to put the documents to put it automatically into an appropriate directory so it does not bother you.

Now if you feel that you need to print a report for audit purposes, email the report to this email address. That way you have a copy, that you can access anytime you want it. Here are some added benefit these records date and times so supplying proof of when you ran this report if required. Plus are more secure and it also saves on filing cabinets. You also have the benefit of its search engine on your documents when you are trying to find something.

Why printout heaps of statements at the end of the month? Get your clients' email addresses and send it out by email, saves as well on mailing costs and gives you a marketing list too. Here is another tip, send a copy of the emails sent to your storage email address as well. 

Of course, one of the best advantages of going paperless besides cost is on the environment. 

 

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Importance of good cameras

POS SOFTWARE

I spoke yesterday about good cameras, today the issue came up about skimmers which turned out to be an excellent example of why I do believe that all businesses need good cameras.

A skimming device

These come in many types and are widely available on the web. What a skimming device is, is an electronic device used by criminals that generally are put on an EFTPOS reader to read (skim) the information off on the magnetic strip of a credit card and then to capture the PIN number.

The idea is that a criminal comes to your shop, in a few seconds installs a skimmer then returns in a few days to your shop and retrieves the skimmer with your customers' credit card details on it.

Skimmers have been regularly caught around Australia.

 

Cameras

These people would never be caught without decent cameras.

Take a look, I think you will find it interesting. Two guys come into the shop, the guy in front distracts the cash operator, now look at the guy in the white shirt installing a skimmer. He took about three (3) seconds to install the skimmer.

Here is a discussion about the incident.

 

What to do.

I always give a test pull on any EFTPOS reader before I use it.

My suggestion to everyone is to put a marker all around the EFTPOS reader with texture, this can help as a skimmer would need to cover the mark and be in your handwriting, always have a camera on your EFTPOS unit and try to monitor it at all times. If something looks off, call your EFTPOS provider immediately.

 

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Wireless security cameras

POS SOFTWARE

What is saving retail now are security cameras from shoplifting, it seems to be the only evidence that the courts are accepting. However, have a read here on monitoring and the law if you have or intend to have cameras.

For retailers, the best security systems are those that are directly connected to your point of sale software. With such a system if for example, a customer said, I gave you a $50 and you gave me change from $20, well you just press a button on the cash register, find the transaction and playback it back. Every till should have one.

However, there are many more places to cover than the till for example the shop itself, the front and exit of the shop, the back room and some parts outside. For these often you need wireless security cameras.

They have one great advantage that they are easy to move around. However unlike wired security cameras, wireless security camera are funny things, you install in one shop a few and they work perfectly, you put the same cameras into a similar shop and it is nothing but trouble so we have to pull them out and replace them.

Here are some points

Map out your requirements on paper.

Do it carefully as I assure you that paper will get a lot of use. Try to draw it to scale if possible.

Now, put on the paper where you feel the cameras should go, generally, to save cost people follow the power points as much as possible. 

Now measure the range of these camera positions to your camera base. You will need to know the range before you can buy the camera.  What you also need to determine where you will need a narrow vision and where you need a wide-angle camera.  If you are not sure the salesman can tell you what cameras they have for such range and angles.

If you are in an area of a lot of WIFI you need to make sure that it will operate in these areas. I have seen WIFI security cameras fail in shopping centres.

Camera requirements

You want cameras that are easy to install and setup. Over their lifetime, you are going to want to move them around. This, after all, is the point of having them wireless.

Most important it is easy to change the Date and Time, you do not want to have to try to explain to a judge why the alleged robbery took place at this time but why your camera showing a different time. If you are in an area that has daylight savings you, make sure your camera has daylight savings enabled and check to make sure it does automatically adjust the cameras time. 

I would say 1080p should be the standard resolution that you should use. With prices today there is little savings going much lower and often you need that extra resolution. Remember a shoplifter can be out of your shop in seconds and you need often to make an instant decision. 

Check how good the motion cameras sensor is, you do not want lags.

Make sure the camera got decent night vision, you do not want anything that looks grainy. Some of these cameras have a function that I love when it is dark a red light like a gun shines out, it helps to deter undesirables as they can see the cameras are working.

Final note

Much of the camera software supplied by the security companies are full of bugs. I would not count on it despite what the specifications say. 

How much to budget?

Impossible to say for the $800 they spent it was much for what they need, others that spent $20,000 will sigh and say that it was not enough.

 

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Suppliers how are you going with them?

POS SOFTWARE

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

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

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

Supplier options

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

For the initial run use percentage.


Then a report like this pops up.

Supplier report

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

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

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

 

 

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NO point of sale system = NO business

POS SOFTWARE

A massive power surge went through a client of ours a few days ago sometime in the night, and when everything started up again, the server that runs their system gave this.

Blue screen of death

It was only in the morning it was noticed on the computer, and for a few hours, until we fixed it up, much of the shop was down.  No electronic goods and only people that paid cash could be processed. The sales were handwritten down.

The problem would have been avoided if they had a UPS emergency power unit which is what I recommend on all servers, but it does bring up a question of what is the cost if your POS system goes down?

This depends on many factors including the nature of your business, including such factors as the time it happened, your labour costs and your time. For example, in this case, the owner had to on his day off to come to work.

You would also need to consider the duration and severity of the failure. 

In this case, an emergency computer had to be brought out and installed while the existing computer had to be fixed. The total bill was several thousands of dollars. The insurance will pay most of that, but it will not pay what about 50% of the trade of the business for three hours that was estimated as lost nor the owners time.

It has all become a rather interesting exercise in risk management.  Something that is well worth considering.

 

 

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Thermal receipt paper

POS SOFTWARE

Here are some more tips for buying thermal receipt paper.

I do suggest buying decent paper if only as it does not give a professional impression if you use some paper that looks cheap.

-Buy a roll first to test before buying a box. Too many people get burnt with thermal receipt paper that is not suitable for their needs. I have seen people having to unwrap a roll and wind it on a spool of a previous roll as the new one did not fit. Imagine if they had a box?

- Make sure the paper is what you want if you want double, make sure that it is double.

- I like the red/pink mark that shows you are starting to run out, some rolls do not have it, and some only show this mark right at the end so you little or no warning.

- Buy what you need, a typical problem is that as quality varies greatly even in the box you can return the bad ones but... For example, I have seen boxes of 50 rolls which have almost half bad rolls. If you are buying large quantities to use internally, it can take a long time to go through 50 rolls to discover all the bad ones. Good luck say over a year later trying to return all the bad ones.

- Be warned sometimes people report to me that the rolls are no way in length to the quoted length.

- Often advertisements do not show thickness. Make sure you do not get some that are too thin.

See my previous posts about buying thermal receipt paper here  and here.

 

 

Hope this helps!

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Loyalty marketing and price cannibalization

POS SOFTWARE

 

VIP members customers marketing promotions

 

I was reading an article that I thought was very interesting here and I think retailers will find it an interesting read even if like me they have some doubts about some of the points.

Here are some points I agree with

) Customers don't want or need loyalty Customers are not loyal.

) Why should customers want to be loyal? Why would people limit their range and options voluntarily? Unlike your pet, they have all the power anyway, so why should they give that up? The average customer can extract as much value from a retailer as a loyal customer, so there is not much benefit in being loyal anyway.

) Loyal customers are demanding customers.

) There is a cost in satisfying the demands of an existing customer. Give a loyal customer 10% discount, and after overheads, you got nothing out of the customer. Few of us can afford even 5% discount.

Here are four observations that I have noticed with loyalty marketing

) Since the economic incentive of most rewards programs is small, few customers are going to go well out of their way to take advantage of a rewards program. The main benefit is the information that the retailer gets on their customers. The information benefits are estimated at 1% of sales so almost all rewards programs work on 1% of sales. This is the retail benchmark. It is not as many think the increase in sales as such.

Most importantly they want their customers' email address to market too. If I send out a thousand emails every two weeks and I get a 1% response rate, I have 10 sales every two weeks.  If my basket size is $50, over the year, my newsletters have generated $13,000 extra income. 

) Most loyalty programs in my experience end out being taken up by people that were going to buy anyway at full price so offering people in the shop already discounts is very dubious. What you want is a loyalty program that will bring them to your shop.

) Many successful retailers like ALDI do not have a loyalty program. Conversely, Coles and Woolworths are more successful and they do have such programs.

) Very few customers that come or leave you do so because they are dissatisfied with the product or service they are receiving. Give them bad service or faulty goods, yes they will leave you but that is another story.

Hope these observations help at the very least give you food for thought.

 


 

 

 

 

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A business plan

POS SOFTWARE

 

 

If you are like me about now is the time of year that you look at your business and your business plans. It gives you a chance to access how you have done, what you did right, what mistakes you made in your planning and where you want to go. So I think it is not essential, but it is a good idea.

In my experience, there are three reasons SMB will do business plans, none of which are mutually exclusive

1) To clarify their thoughts

2) Get stakeholder and key staff on the same page

3) They need money from banks, lending institutions or investors.

The closer to (3) the more likely, I find that the business plan is professionally designed and written up.

A business plan generally takes about 10 to 20 hours of work, and it tends to be a lot of work. I know I am going back and forwards from our financial and helpdesk software to get figures and asking heaps of people for what they think. 

Now there are three main ways of doing it.

1) Use a template 

This would be my recommendation for starters, and if it does not work out at least, you know something about it and have an idea of what you need.

Most of the banks do provide their customers such a template free. The big advantage of using their one is that you will find their loan officers tend to think in the same terms.  

The Australian government does provide a free one too here.

2) Use some software

I used to recommend this as it does reduce the time to write a business plan by half. However what I discovered is that unless you are writing a lot of business plans but happened was that what the user gained in time using the software, they lost it in the time required to learn to use the software. The other issue as it only used occasionally, once mastered it has to be relearned the next time around.

3) Get a professional to write one up. If you are getting a professional, say 15+ hours of work at $250/hour is about $4,000. Remember although a professional knows what they are doing they need to get the information out of you, and they need to understand the business, this will take them many hours. 

Once you have a business plan, what you will find is that as time goes on, it does not take long to adapt it to the current date. 80% is the same, and it is only 20% that changes.

Finally, do not worry about it not being perfect, nothing ever is.

“A good plan now is better than a perfect plan next week.” ― General George S. Patton 

 

 

 

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Tortoise vs Hare

POS SOFTWARE

There is a famous story of the race between the Tortoise vs Hare, where the arrogant and over-confidence hare is is beaten by the steady tortoise.

Well, check what happens in real life when they race.

It is not actually an accident as this race been done a few times with 

The tortoise wins not because he was slow and steady as many say but because the hare stops while the tortoise won because it was focused and maintained consistency.

Like the tortoise we need to focus on the things will control, not get distracted and stay focused on the goal.

 

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HOW TO SAVE ON SHIPPING

POS SOFTWARE

Courier services

We have clients now that are doing the bulk of their business through delivery.  

The big problem is often that the public is demanding free delivery. You can work this to your advantage by setting a minimum order amount for free delivery. 

So I suggest that you take the time to figure out your delivery logistics so that it is both efficient and affordable to your business.

If you’re looking for ways to cut costs on delivery, here are a few suggestions.

* Can you make a route and do it yourself? One big plus here is that by going to the customer, you can maybe pick up more orders.

If not, then let’s begin

*  Try asking businesses near you who they use and why?

Now get quotes from a few delivery companies and some will be cheaper for some areas for others.

Make sure that all these costs are listed as you could find unexpected extra charges coming in. What I do find surprising is that you will find sometimes the costs vary greatly between areas that are very close.

Some delivery companies run specials which you can tag onto eg one may say on Thursday they have a cheaper rate so you would push delivery to your customers on those days. If they have an Xmas special, you can use that too.

Investigate their other services, e.g. the COD service which we find very useful. 

 You want a decent tracking service from the delivery company, there are always problems and you often need to find out where your goods are. I find being able to find out exactly where the parcel is and how long before the customer can expect its arrival makes me look very professional.

As you will probably be using more than one delivery company, an average client of ours doing lots of deliveries, I would say is using two to five delivery companies.

* You need a tape measure and scale, as most delivery agents require both measurements for their costings. If you do not provide these, the delivery company driver will often estimate these and you could be paying more. 

Reduce the parcel size and/or the number of cartons both can often dramatically reduce the price. 

If you start to find that you are shipping a lot, then you can look into:

* Insurance who pays for this? I would suggest getting your insurance agent to give you on your business policy, shipping insurance which works out much cheaper than the delivery companies insurance policy.  

* Save on packaging costs by buying in bulk

* You will be able to negotiate better discounts from deliveries. 

Hope this all helps.
 

 

 

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7 Tips for fairs and shows

POS SOFTWARE

Trade fairs

Watching the Cake and Bake Show this weekend and as over the years, I have done a lot of trade shows and fairs, and so I've put together 7 tips you should think through before going to a fair.

Is the fair right for you?

This is the big question. In my experience, people going to fairs are very tuned onto the theme of the show. If you sell a product that is not in line with the theme for some of them, you are probably wasting your time coming.

Do a budget on what it will cost and then ask yourself, is it going to be worth it? 

Product

Do you have the right product at the right price for the people that are coming?

A useful tip here, is to contact your suppliers and ask them for help. Many suppliers have special stock for fairs. Often they will provide product, signage and promotional material free for you too. 

Location

In real estate, they say the value is determined by "location, location and location."  If the organiser is not giving you a decent location, I would seriously think about not coming. Generally, I refuse to go.  There is no point in accepting an allocated location that puts your stand in the shows wasteland, its Siberia or Antarctica even if it is really cheap. 

Collection of people's information

You want to get new customers so plan on getting peoples names and email addresses, if possible have someone collect names and email addresses. 

Also have business cards, brochures, and promotional material for people to leave with.

Your stand.

Does it look presentable?

You need banners and signs.

Do you have access at the show to the internet and your point of sale software? At the show, you are going to be hit by questions and you need to have as much access to information as you possibly can.

Staff

I noticed what looked really bad at the cake show was on one stand a young man who probably was a family member serving behind the counter in shaggy clothes and was unshaven. I am sure that many of the people at this show were not impressed either. It did not create a good impression with me. Make sure your staff are appropriately dressed.

You need a technical person for your products besides answering questions for prospective and existing customers, they can also handle the timewasters. You are there at the show for business and you really do not want people to lose your time with kids doing university courses asking you questions for their assignments. 


Something to attract people to your stand.

A special offer, a free sample, some new interesting product, a little show, anything just something that will get people walking past to stop at your stand and look.

Payment type

Almost every stand at a show today takes cash, visa, afterpay and zippay and they are all being used. There is no such thing as layby at a show.  You need to have as many payment types as you possibly can.

Hope this helps.

Remember one point although it is not the reason you are there, it is almost a fun place to go, so have fun too and it is a great chance for you to network.

 

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EFTPOS with Tap & Save price reductions

POS SOFTWARE

What happens with EFTPOS and Credit transactions is that you get charged by everyone in the loop. For example, say the money goes from the customer's bank, into a transaction stream, which goes to another bank, the money is then moved into a new transaction stream, and then the money is transferred into your bank account, each transfer on this chain is being charged. So what happens is that each point of the chain is charging the next point of the route until it reaches you.  As you have no one to charge, you get the bill. 

What Tap & Save does, only available now with tyro EFTPOS,  is check what possible routes are available for the money to move from the customer's bank account to your account and then directs the money to be moved along the cheapest path.  The big plus here is that you save money without having to change anything. 

Overall the savings are in the order of 8.4% reduction in charges but this varies depending on what exactly is the route the money is travelling now. 

So I decided to see a benchmark of our clients EFTPOS over the past six months although I am still waiting for confirmation, I calculate that the savings with Tap and Save are 8.74% in our market space.

 

 

 

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Power of 1%

POS SOFTWARE

Increase by 1%

Peter Abeles one of Australia's greatest businessmen in his book talked about how just 1% difference could make a huge difference to a business. What he recommended was looking at significant factors in a business and trying to change them by 1%. 

Of course, nothing can look at a business better or faster than a computer.

Now here might be an example of how looking at your business reports can help in a cafe doing $600,000 turnover. So we are $6,000 ahead every year.

Say you could increase your basket size by 1%, that is $6,000 sale increase. So we are $12,000 ahead.

Say you could reduce not charging people, always a big problem in a cafe in my experience. People order goods and someone forgot to charge them, maybe a 1% increase in sales or $6,000. So we are $18,000 ahead.

Say you could speed up your orders by 1%, people in cafes rarely like to wait in a queue. Even if only 50% of that produced an extra in sales, that is another $3,000 sale increase. So we are $21,000 ahead.

Say you could with your point of sale systems VIP club get 1% more in sales, that is another $6,000 sale increase. So we are $27,000 ahead.

Say you could increase your prices by 1% by encouraging better products to be sold, that is another $6,000 sale increase

It is all adding up fast.

Etc 

Just imagine in your business if you can get a 1% improvement.

 

 

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Tips on naming your computer

POS SOFTWARE

Today is Name your computer day

 

Name your computer day

So it is an excellent time to review and give you some tips in naming your computer.

Basically, I suggest a name that reduces confusion and allows it to be easy to remember. Also like a pet, today most people like to give their computer a name.

Generally what happens in retail, is some technically minded person comes along and sets up your computer. With a big smile, they turn around to you and ask you what do you want to call your computer?   

Since it is not so easy to change in a retail environment unless you are very technical minded as a simple name change can muck up things, I do suggest that you give it some thought because you are going to be stuck with this decision for many years.

I do not recommend that you call the computer by function, the problem here is that you may be installing it for accounts, but soon it probably will be moved around to something else like a cash register so it will be called the accounts computer even though it is now a cash register. So you will be ringing up for support saying to a technical person, the cash register is down and its the accounts computer. The same problem can occur if you use location. If what was the computer is moved to the storeroom and it is now confusing. The storeroom computer is called the "back computer", the back computer is now called ....

Here are some ideas.

One advantage to using the manufactures name is that it is clearly marked which one it is and you just hope that you do not get another computer of the same name in the shop. 

If you want to be a little creative be inventive a white computer in my house named snow white and a media computer for movies got called the_box. 

If people in the shop are into the Game of Thrones, then the characters name there are recognisable and memorable. Here are some more ideas, what about naming computers after planets, biblical characters, superheroes, etc.

Try to avoid girlfriends and boyfriends just in case they are no longer around, and the last thing you want is to be kept reminded of that. 

If you want some more tips here are some more ideas.

 

See how you go?

 

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