A word of caution:

Cloud storage as it is a third-party system is inherently risky. What it is, is another person's computer that you are putting on your information.

If that computer is in another country, then the information is also subjected to another country's legal system, in some cases, this may be an issue with Australian law. 

More importantly for most of our clients is that there are numerous examples of cloud providers evaporating like the cloud they are named and information being lost despite these people using well-established companies like Microsoft.

For example:

One of our clients a few days ago just got burnt. What happened is that he hired a professional photographer a few months ago to photograph his shop. This the photographer did and then gave him a USB stick with the photos on it. Then my client did was look for a good deal and then signed up to a cloud storage service. He then transferred the photos to this online cloud storage and thinking that as he had the pictures, he could score a USB stick for other tasks, so he reused the USB stick.

He needed the pictures a few days ago and discovered that the photos were gone from the cloud. He then in a panic contacted the cloud provider to ask where the images are? He was told that as he had not used the account for 60 days, the account was automatically cancelled and so the photos were lost. Now he has no pictures, and the photographer has to come back.

The solution is

If you are going to use cloud storage, I recommend that you also use as a backup an external hard drive just in case. For a few hundred dollars you can pick up today a massive hard drive. You will not be sorry if you have too many copies. 

This is a tip. Open up a computer editor like notepad or Microsoft Word and start a user guide making pages on what to do at the end of the day, week, month, quarter and year end. Now save it on the windows screen. This is now your user guide.

I also put in my user guide pages for computer procedures, contact information for the specialist for a particular point and just about everything else that I may need as I discover it such as extras like the procedures to return goods to supplier ABC, etc.

So the next time you do any of these tasks you write in the user guide step by step exactly what you did, e.g. you go to this document, put these options in here, then print off a copy and then send this copy to person XYZ. Now you go to this website and enter these figures in there. Now you do this... 

The reason I say use an editor is so you can edit and add extra items as they catch your eye.

The problem is often that you do a quarter processing for GST and then you do not usually remember all the steps the next time it needs to be done. So the idea is that soon this user guide will give you and your staff a set of instructions that you all can turn to for guidance. This user guide is not something that you write once and never look at again. I run through it religiously before doing the task, and if I discover a better way of doing something, I edit and change it. At all times I make sure that everything is up to date. 

This user guide will save you heaps of time. 

Are you prepared for Christmas?

 We are now to the start of this year's festive season, have you checked to make sure that everything technically works? 

Here is an interesting question to ask yourself, what will be the cost to your business if you suffer a Point of Sale outage on this holiday? 

If you want to deliver the level of service that your customers demand, check that your computer system is working correctly now!

 Although I do not want to name names, one of our clients, a small newsagent has finally settled with one of their old suppliers their case. The amount of money our client has recovered about a quarter of a million dollars which is not all their loss and they have to bear their costs which will make a substantial dent to the payout figure.  I will not be surprised if it is over half the payout amount.

So I think it is a good example to discuss the dangers of taking on agency sales in modern retail. 

An agency sale is a product for sale that a retailer markets on behalf of another organisation e.g. transport tickets,  bill payments, dry cleaning drop-offs, transport, lotteries, etc. Often the payout is seen partly in the number of customers coming to the shop to get these items. As the margins on these products tend to be low, to get a decent return you need a lot of sales which became the problem here as you will see. Say you make $20,000 at 2% margin you are looking at a million dollars of turnover. 

What happened here is that the supplier gave our client an electronic key once our client had signed the appropriate forms and also gave the supplier their bank account details. 

The problem is that someone else got a copy of my client's electronic key and soon they were trading on this account. As they were selling my client got billed for their trade. This other business did about $100,000 a year of trade in these goods and over time, the amount grew to about a quarter of a million dollars. 

This was only noticed by accident when an item was sold in this other business that my client had never traded. My client then immediately questioned this sale. Soon a stop was put on the account. Then my client requested as it was an error for a full refund of a quarter of a million dollars.

A dispute started.

No-one disputes that these trades were done by someone else.

However, the supplier stated that the only way for this key to have gone to this other business was if our client or people associated with our client had intentionally or otherwise given this electronic key to another business. So my client is at fault. My client does not feel that this happened. Also, my client's lawyers stated that even if this was true, it was the supplier's fault as their security is clearly not good enough as all a person had to do was copy an electronic key. 

Now you would think that it would be in everyone's interest to find out who this other business was? Well not really as it might establish who is at fault and if that other business did not have a quarter of a million dollars, then whoever is left with the blame and so probably the debt they would not be able to be recovered.

However, both sides did agree that my client was at fault for not having proper control over their accounts, something they are legally supposed to do. 

So began a three-year case which went on and on until finally, both sides came to a deal.

Here are some points that I think came out of this legal case

1) You need to audit your agency sales, your point of sale software needs to produce reports detailing your sales which you need to match up to the supplier's figures.

2) You need to ensure adequate security of your computer system. The supplier's argument that someone who knew what they were doing *could* get a copy of the electronic key given access to my client's computer system is valid. 

3) The authorities were not helpful, and the legalities are not straightforward.  Here is suited both parties interest not going to the police.

4) Agency sales even if they do not make much profit can generate a lot of turnover so giving a high risk.

In my position, invariably as some organisation comes up with an idea that they want use of our point of sale software the second person I meet after the organiser is the consultant and the first thing that this consultant wants to do is a SWOT analysis.

First off

It has become the framework for thought for business today in Australia. 

What makes it so powerful, is that it is easy to do once you get the hang of it, in groups.  Although it works well, I find just with one person.

It works great on a whiteboard but you can also put a big white cardboard on the wall for people to write on. 

What you do is get a few people together to look at your retail business.

Here’s how it goes:

On the top left is Strengths

Here you list your good points where you have edge e.g. you have a better range of stock. You have better trade knowledge, faster service, a good location, etc

Weakness

Now you think up points that you are weak. These are your problem areas, eg your prices are a bit dearer on certain items, people going to the station do not pass your shop, the front of the shop needs work, your hours are not as good as your competitors, etc.  

Opportunities

This is where you list what you see is the growth areas in your business. Maybe you could put in a coffee machine, maybe increase your educational range, etc.  List here where your business could go? 

Threats/problems you face. 

Here you list what problems and difficulties you see in your business, e.g. salaries costs are so high now, that staff has to be cut, pet food prices here are dropping, magazine sales are down, a shopfit has to be done, but the cost is prohibitive, etc 

So here it is:

How you have filled in the board, you have something that a business consultant would charge you several thousand dollars. I am sure you will have much to think about this board.

I have clients that every year, do this to see how they are going.  I do it for almost every new business idea, I get.

Now make it happen for you

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Our POS software integrates seamlessly into many leading accounting systems. This reduces much of the data entry and eliminates the error that occurs with manual entry of entering in daily sales, payment, accounts, stock movement, etc. 

This allows you to spend less time with your accounts and so have more time for other things plus be more accurate at the same time. 

The major reason is it is more practical, quicker and easier to use, as you do not need to learn and operate two separate systems. 

It is almost certainly a cheaper solution too as you are only buying one system, not two.

With two separate systems, someone will need to move information from one system to another.

A typical cycle might be something like this. 

• Stock information has to be taken from your POS software and put into your eCommerce website.
• Orders from your eCommerce website have to be put into your POS software
• Stock levels need to be checked on both systems.
• Then the shipping information and tracking reports have to be put into the eCommerce website from the POS software.

During all of this mistakes happen.

What I have seen is

• Shipping addresses entered wrong.
• Stock levels are wrong so there is the problem of no stock due to overselling.
• There is a lot of stock information required to be put in, so many items are not put on the eCommerce site as it is too much work.  

All these problems are avoided by integration.

If you do not integrate your eCommerce and POS software, it will cost you. 

Check our solution out.

Here is a tip that you can do with our point of sale software that one of our clients is doing.

When you pack a parcel to send off to a customer, lay the goods out and take a picture with your smartphone. Then attach this picture to the invoice in the POS System. That way you will have a photo ID of what was sent.

After being burnt badly, this client is now doing it religiously as he states photos is one piece of evidence that the authorities do accept.

They say that a business is "not a product of circumstances. but of decisions"

No decision should be made without facts and your point of sale software has lots of facts.  We have hundreds of reports, more then any other system I know.

So here is a tip, organise the reports you want in your favourite folder, these are all the reports that you want to run regularly so you can find them when you require.

All you have to do is right-click on the reports, then this will put it in your Favourites Section.

Soon all your favourite reports are there one page, so there is no more going from a screen to another screen as all your favourite reports are in one convenient place!

It is easy then to add more reports or take out a report that you no longer need (just right click on the report in favourite and then click remove).

Using our software you have a unique ability to quickly design a smart list just for yourselves of reports so allowing you to increase your overall productivity.

There are several tax and management advantages to renting rather than leasing a POS system.  Overall the costs are in my experience, a bit dearer with the rental. 

Generally, these rentals are done for a four year period. At the conclusion of the agreement, you have the following options

1) Return the system to us which we accept as long as it is in good working order.

2) Purchase the POS system at a fair market rate. This is normally agreed at the start of the rental. 

3) Continue with the rental on a month to month basis which is a very popular option particularly if you are unsure of what is going to happen soon in the business.

This is to clarify that there will be *NO* increase in software fees to our clients despite what we have all seen that all our competitors have this financial year increased their software support fees, some quite dramatically, way beyond what I think is fair especially if you consider that many of them raised their prices last year too.  Based on some of the software agreements, I have seen their users are now paying 50% to 100% more than our users. If you have any of their software agreements, we are happy to supply a competitive quote.

As announced at the start of this year, despite that we have *NOT* increased these fees for many years, we have no plans to raise them. 

You are planning a holiday. It going to be a great time.

Fair enough everyone needs to get their batteries recharged and stepping away for a week or two is I think a necessity. If you are like me, you need a week of holidays just to unwind enough to start enjoying the holidays. You start making plans, counting the days 

But hang on a minute...

Have you prepared the shop for your absence? Who is in charge while you are gone? Does everyone know what they are supposed to do while you are gone?

Of most importance to us, do they know how to work the computer system? If they do not, do you have support available while they are gone? 

Test runs

What I recommend is that you do some test runs, organise the shop, take a couple of days off and then see what happens.  

Aldi, here has made an extraordinary attack, on Coles and Woolworths, claiming that they are not worth chasing.  They have made a calculator to show how small the benefits of these people's rewards program.

I think they are right.

However what the article goes on further to say is that "60 per cent of Australians saying it influences where they shop and 36 per cent of people admitting they spend more because of the schemes" so for such small rewards people are being influenced.

To me what it says is that your loyalty program offering does not have to be much to get decent results and there is no denying that it does have an effect.

In your shop, what is strongly suggested all things being equal that you keep heavy goods on or near the floor! Although there is no limit as such, as a general guide anything over 45 kgs needs to be looked at ASAP.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg

Legally a heavy item depends, on many factors eg if the item is wet or slippery if the items are stored in a cramped area so that people had to assume awkward positions to lift them etc. Here is a guide for retail {Link removed} that explains much of it from a legal point of view.

The other issue is forgetting the legal problems, do you really want anyone to get hurt?   Everyone is trying to do the right thing here.

So what can you do about it?

So once you have identified the heavy stock, move them to safe areas.

What I further recommend is that you mark in your software these items so that people will just by looking at the item on the screen know that they are potentially looking at a lifting problem and these items require special handling.

You’d do it like this:

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

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

What is driving retail today is information. A few days ago, I talked of the 1% rule. Let me show you another example. 

Taking from the ATO benchmark study they give what I consider the best benchmarking figures for typical businesses in Australia today, so I picked a stationery shop just because it is something most of us can quickly get our head around.

Putting in typical figures for their figures, I made this chart.

So here what I am saying is that on the first column So on 150,000 turnover a business from the chart would have about 78% expenses leaving it with about $33,000 profit and I did the same on the other rows.

Okay now let us say that these businesses make a 1% improvement, so they sell 1% more and they reduce expenses by 1%. What do you think the effect will be? I think you are going to be surprised.

Look at 1% did?

What is clear is that you do not need much to do dramatically better. All you need is 1% better.

So how do you get 1%? 

• Information, here are some ideas in no order
• Speed up the queues by making your point of sale faster by increasing your POS sale scanning.
• Find out your best sellers and move them into your best selling locations.
• Better and more accurate buying.
• Getting a better loyalty program going just using a simple customer birthday marketing offer helps a lot.
• Monitor your theft rate
• Speed up your computer processing by getting your suppliers to automate 
• Controlling your debtors better.

All this is available from your computer system now.

That is how it looked in 2016, in 2018 we now have about 1.4 million Chinese yearly visiting Australia and they spend about $10.4 billion here. For almost all of these people, the preferred payment method would be Alipay because with cash or other credit cards they have to pay extra fees plus it is on a platform that they are familiar with, and they can see their transaction in their own language.

The other big market is Chinese nationals living in Australia who have relatives overseas and students.

So if these Chinese customers are of interest to you, I do suggest that you look into getting Alipay into your shop.

I recently published an update article on our company's blog discussing this critical but often overlooked detail when buying or selling a business - formally transferring software licenses. The initial post provided a brief overview of why software access rights don't automatically carry over to new owners and some potential issues that can arise. 

However, given the number of questions I received after publishing, there was a clear interest in a more in-depth look at this topic. So I'm pleased to share that we have now expanded the article into a comprehensive guide on smoothly handling software license transfers during business ownership changes.

You can find the updated article with all the details here plus an FAQ:

Let me know if you have any other questions! Proper license transfer diligence now saves immense time and trouble later.

It is October now, and already we can start to see that retailers are getting ready for the holiday season. 

As the economy is doing well now and the public mood seems positive, this looks like it will be a good Christmas. 

Measured interest using Data Source: Google Trends (www.google.com/trends).

As you can see the public interest has not changed over the last 4 years.

It certainly now the time to start planning your stock ordering, so you need to estimate your stock requirements which is something our point of sale software can help you do. You also need to start looking at roistering again something our point of sale can help you with all this. I will be talking about all of these soon.

Before we go any further

You need to check is all your POS system ready for Christmas?  

So let’s get to work

If you are planning to bring in some of the old POS computers “out of the closet” to accommodate the rush period, tested it to make sure it works? If it has been in the closet for a year, who knows what state they are in now?

Here are some other points

Have you checked that you have all the cables to connect to this equipment?

Do you have a connection into your network where you need it?

Can this equipment be linked into your system, it been a year since it is been used?

Now try it now to see if it all works if you plug it in?

The closer it gets to Christmas, the harder it gets to repair in time.

Here’s the kicker

What is going to happen if you have extra staff and the computer register does not work over Christmas? I have seen this happen all too often. 

Well, nowadays we have holidays for just about everything,  so why not this too.

Today is Fight Procrastination Day!

The odds are that much of the stress that you are under is more due to the procrastination then the task yet to be done. If so then today's holiday is the created just for you, get up and do it *NOW*. 

A useful tip 

To fight procrastination get a TODO planner. I find if I have a list with items clearly marked to be done, that I will go through the list and do them.

There are many online available. The two that I would recommend are:

1) I use Todoist all the time. Using it I note what needs to be done and when. What I particularly like is that I can plan on my computer and smartphone. It has a lot of options and good support 

2) Wunderlist which I briefly used which I do not think is quite as good as Todoist but it was very good too. 

But here’s the kicker:

Procrastination is not productive.

Cloud base is all the buzz now. What it means is that your information is stored on another computer and generally accesses over the internet.

As a company, we have no views on the subject but here is a discussion on some of the ramifications for point of sale systems.

Location

The big plus with cloud is that you can be anywhere as long as you have an internet connection you can access your information. It can be a convenient function particularly if you have several locations.

Budgeting

Cloud systems are generally easier to budget. A fixed fee sets much but not all the hardware and technical aid required.

The disadvantages are several.

Complex

A cloud system is more complicated. Generally, they are run a hybrid system which means they are both cloud and local.

Cost

The cloud is dearer as you need to purchase a good internet service. What we recommend an emergency internet connection as well just in case the primary internet goes down and/or a local computer to act as an emergency server in each location.

Security

If you access cloud anywhere for your information, it is almost sure that other people can access it too. You have very little control over how it is stored and where it is stored. You are looking at a legal issue this could be a problem. You have no idea what the cloud provider is doing with your data.

If the cloud provider closes now which I have seen then your data is possibly gone unless you have a backup. If you have a backup, it is generally a new installation to get you up and running if they close down.

Reliability

If something goes wrong with either the internet and/or the cloud provider, then there is often little you can do until they fix it. Now, these both generally claim about a 99.9% reliability. I think these reliabilities are greatly exaggerated What they mean here by reliability is no service, going slow often does not count in this calculation. But let us assume it is true, that means a shop running 363 days a year, 8 hours a day, then it will be down about 6 hours a year. If you have two locations say two shops or a shop and a warehouse, you can double this to 12 hours. If say you ran an average of 10 hours a day your shop and many of my clients would be running more then you could increase this by 25%.

Without emergency systems in place No internet = No business

This would not include going slow and going slow is a significant problem in a cloud. Come for example 6 pm in a residential area, when many people switch on cable TV to watch something, and all the internet in the area runs slow. Instead of processing in a register going beep, beep, beep, it goes beep (wait) , beep (wait) , beep (wait) . Queues are building up.

Speed

Cloud is slower however with our POS system because it uses a good quality SQL you may not notice the speed drop.