Point of Sale Software

Here are some Articles from the Blog Subject - management -

Christmas, what you need to do now for your store

POS SOFTWARE

It’s October, and you can already see many retailers are adorning their shop fronts with Christmas paraphernalia and starting to adding Christmas stock such as Christmas trees and decorations. However, many leave the preparations too late.

Although the economy is not doing well now this year, the signs do appear to show this will be a good Christmas, retail sales are up, interest in Christmas is up from last year, which was up from the year before and the public mood seems positive.

 

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

One of the points I have noticed and this graph show that the selling season for Christmas is in recent years getting longer. It is now from mid-December to late January. So we are talking about 6-7 weeks.

Among the million and one jobs, you will need to do now is to plan your stock ordering, so you need to estimate your stock requirements something our point of sale can help you with. You also need to look into your staff levels again something our point of sale can help you with all this; I be talking about these soon.

Right now, there is something else that you need to check is all your equipment work? The odds are its going to get much busier. Many of you are now planning to bring in some of the old POS machines “out of the closet” to accommodate the rush period. Have you tested it to make sure it works? Some of it have not been used in almost a year, a lot can happen in a year even if its just in the shelf. Have you checked that you have all the cables? Do you have a connection into your network where you need it? Can this equipment link into your system? Does it all work if you plug it in? I suggest you try it now.

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

It is wise to test this now in advance to ensure they’re running properly.

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

Preparing for the Christmas holidays is a fun time, but you need to use these next two months wisely to put your best face on your store.
 

Instant asset tax write-off explained

POS SOFTWARE

One of the shocks in the budget was the government quite generous offer (proposal) to write off tax. The proposal itself was a surprised, and a double surprise that it is to be available now in this financial year.

Here is an explanation of how it will work, but let me first start off by saying I am not an accountant, and I do suggest you contact your accountant to discuss it first.

If say you were to buy a computer system for $8,195 inc GST. This is not a random number as its actually one of the quotes we issued today with someone who is jumping on the offer.

The first point it does not cost $8,195 as 10% of this is GST which they will be getting straight back so the proposed cost is $7,375.50.

Under the old system

  • 15% of this would be allowed as depreciation, which works out to $1,106.33.
  • As the company tax rate was 30%, which means the business would get back $331.90 in income tax credits.
  • This means the business needs to fund the purchase which needs to be arranged in the first year $7,043.60.

Under the new scheme

  • 100% of this would be allowed as depreciation, which works out here to $7,375.50.
  • The company tax rate under this scheme will be 28.5%, which means the business will get back $2,102.02 in income tax credit.
  • Which means that the business needs $1,770.12 less to fund the purchase which will be to it $5,273.48.

 

 

Accounting in the cloud

POS SOFTWARE

Now there is a lot of interest with my clients on whether to move their accounting from a computer to online. It is a good time for the consumer as there are quite a number of good choices now. MYOB Essentials, Xero, Intuit QuickBooks Online, Reckon One, Saasu and Sage. We at moment are waiting to see what our clients do.

Here is my view on the market now.

MYOB

I think it is nice and easy to use the software. It is fairly easy to automate the bank into it. I would budget to use it about $40 a month which includes payroll. Press this link here for details

Xero

It is also a nice program, which has some big improvements coming particularly with the dashboard. People say its confusing at the start to use but after a while its good.

You are probably looking at about $50 to $60 a month for the basic package. What you also might consider is the integration which we have not looked at but one of our competitor's charges about a $1000 plus $35 a month on top for this function. Together it makes it a very powerful package.

Click here for more details

Reckon One

I have not seen it yet, as we're just invited to go to the launch but from what I am hearing its possibly the best one. Apparently, it has a really good dashboard. Pricing is difficult to establish now but it looks very much that the user will be able to nominate exactly what they want and the charges are determined from that.

Click here for more details

Discount Vouchers again

POS SOFTWARE

Readers here may be interested in discovering that not everyone liked my article on loyalty programs, in particular, one small part that dealt with Discount Vouchers. I presume everything else they agree with.

Let first start off with the obvious, I would be delighted if Discount Vouchers worked. It would be a good for my clients, and I am in business to make my clients better. Furthermore, I do not appreciate name calling or rudeness. I am not trying to divert anything, and I have done a significant amount of research on this question.

Now this scheme is not new. Discount Vouchers have been used by merchants since Noah brought his wood for the ark. You can read up on it in the Wikipedia here. We have had it for years, just doing a search on our website. 

This states for over a year so we are looking in 2012, and we never claimed it was new or unique. Actually, we did it for a book shop client of ours to their specifications! I am sure that many software suppliers to bookshops like us would also have this or something similar.

Now all the data that I submitted on Discount Vouchers came from publically released information released by a competitor of mine from their system. So it is not my system or what facilities it does or does not have that is in question with these figures. It is their facilities and systems. Click on this image below which is the data I worked from.

 

At the time I released this report, I noted that their users felt that the results I got were consistent with their results. You can read yourself the comments. Not one person said, "hey my results using Discount Vouchers are different to these figures."

Additionally, at the time, this critic offered to release more data and then withdrew that offer immediately. See here for the formal withdrawal.

This report as such I believe is the most accurate analysis done of what is publicly available. If more data is presented, we (and I mean all here as not only I) would be happy to review the information.

That I feel that this loyalty program is expensive, well most reward programs in a retail run at about 1% of sales see here. The Discount Vouchers scheme as you see from the above image run at $4,475.89/$98,299.79 = 4.6%. It is expensive! My immediate thought when I first saw this figure is that it is worse because it lacks any form of targeting, so it would find it hard to get any suppliers to help. This supplier help is a great help to almost any other marketing programs such as the Lucky Charm program.

I would like to see what evidence that this discount voucher scheme attracts “a valuable shopper delivering bonus margin dollars at the high GPO end of the range offered in the business.”

This brings up another problem with the scheme, how could a retailer know that it delivered a “valuable shopper," this scheme has minimal measurements! The biggest question with this scheme is trying to figure out what business you would have got without the program compared to what you would have gotten with it. A VIP rewards program has an A/B testing facility. You give part of your VIPs a benefit, and you see whether it makes a difference compared to the rest. This is simply easy, straight forward and it works. Unless something can be measured it is vapour, and it cannot be controlled.

Finally, a Discount Voucher scheme, gives a voucher for every sale, if I have never brought anything in a shop, how does the shopkeeper give me a voucher? To give me a voucher the retailer needs some means of giving me a voucher, e.g. a pamphlet, an email message, a letter, etc. This is what a VIP rewards program does. So we are back to a VIP rewards program of some type.

I remember one client of mine that ran for a while a Discount Voucher system, told me that a customer came in and took two magazines. He then purchased one and promptly used the discount voucher to buy the other one. What he felt was that Discount Vouchers produced no incremental sales lift but caused a cannibalisation of his existing revenue by selling at a discount, product that would have been bought anyway. This was the first sign, I had that something was not right.

I leave it to you the reader to decide whether I have raised valid questions and reply hopefully without rudeness and name calling.

 

 

 

 

Loyalty marketing

POS SOFTWARE

Customer loyalty in retailing is important. One of the main tools today to get it, are loyalty programs.

Over my recent holidays, I thought a lot about loyalty marketing, especially when I saw this advertisement in the January edition of the N-View magazine. Its about a loyalty program we wrote.

What it did not say was that the basket size of an average shopper was $16.60, but a rewards program member basket size was $26.08. I do not know why; I would have talked about a 57% increase still what it does show the importance of measurement. Just think what can happen if you do *NOT* measure! The idea that you should rely on intuition to judge something you have little no experience makes no sense. You are also going to get quite a bit of misleading answers as although all stock and services you offer to receive some marketing materials and advice offered by supplier, it is all based on their needs.

It comes down to this.

*NO* measurement = *NO* control

I would also argue that the results should never be measured in turnover but in profit. Talking in turnover is missing the point that an increase in turnover is expected when price is cannibalised and rewards programs are a cannibalisation of price. Although to be fair to Lucky Charm their rewards program is free to their members so depending on your point of view, the franchise fees are the cannibalisation of price, or it is a free benefit. Still this franchise figure is available for all members, so they can do their figures.

However, without control due to no measurements, loyalty programs will descend into discount programs, which cost the retailer more than what they get, for example, see here my thoughts on discount vouchers a scheme that has no measurements and so no control as a simple yet vital question it cannot answer, how much is existing business loss compared to the new business gained?

Many loyalty schemes are available; all differ in quality and effectiveness from one another. However, whatever you decide you need to have the reporting in your system that can measure results to questions like these:

1) What is the cost? Most loyalty marketing programs work on about a 1% cost on turnover. If you can prove an effect, this may be reduced by suppliers` help, for example, both Lucky Charm and Nextra loyalty programs use suppliers help. Actually, one of the key elements of a retail management company Brendan Geyer and his team is to show how even small rewards programs can get suppliers' help.

2) Next question what is the key driver of the increase in sales? Is your marketing program giving more sales or is it simply giving discounts to people that buy now?

3) What can you do to deliver an improved return on investment? Can you open up new marketing avenues? In my experience, you can always pick up customers by segmenting them into categories and accessing what each segment might be interested in. To do this you require their names. You can also if you have names do before and after analysis. A real benefit will come through measurement and the subsequent control of your loyalty marketing.

Please make sure your system can do this before going into a loyalty marketing program.

Ours can!
 

Another store drops discount coupons

POS SOFTWARE

Discount coupons are when you offer your customer a concession off the next purchase, based on the current purchase, a typical figure often mentioned is half the profit. It works in the sense that it increases sales but in practice often, the retailer discovers that the profit goes down. In Toowoomba newsagency, they did an extensive calculation similar to the one that I did and the result is that the owner decided to stop using discount coupons. The analysis is showing all its done is produced a large number of bargain hunters.

What is at the moment proving to be a major problem, is that they have educated their customers with discount coupons and have decided to get rid of them, a lot of customers are getting upset. Switching them to a rewards program is proving to be a difficult sell even though the rewards program is much better.

I think one lesson is clear if you decide on a discount coupon program, and it does not work; it is very hard to make an exit strategy.

 

 

End of financial year approaching 2014

POS SOFTWARE
Although our software does not require any additional handling for the end of the financial year, I do recommend that you start to plan to keep a copy of your backup from the night of the 30th June.

Furthermore, as you need to prepare for the printout of several reports for your accountant, make sure you know what they want. I suggest as a minimum.

Sales reports
Stock Valuation
Customers Outstanding
Creditors Outstanding
Subagents Outstanding

End of financial year approaching.

POS SOFTWARE
Although our software does not require any additional handling for the end of the financial year, I do recommend that you start to plan to keep a copy of your backup from the night of the 30th June.

Furthermore, as you need to prepare a printout of several reports for your accountant, make sure you know what they want. I suggest as a minimum.

Sales reports
Stock Valuation
Customers Outstanding
Creditors Outstanding
Subagents Outstanding

Correction to a small newsagency system offer as reported by a competitor

POS SOFTWARE

http://www.accesspos.com.au/posblog/tower-systems-pos-package-trumped-b…

A competitor has just released an announcement about their small newsagency system offering which indirectly refers to us although not mentioning us by name.

Firstly I agree with them about the scanner. we do not recommend a hand-held scanner in the cash register. These hand-held scanners are perfect for the back-office say for magazine returns and customer statements but not retail. So we always offer and recommend a hands-free laser scanner for the counter. It is rare that people do not take this offer.

Point 1: Our standard small newsagency system includes a hands-free laser scanner.

We offer our clients’ on-site manufacturer’s warranty on computers too. It is not free. Often we can offer you computers cheaper, without such warranties. Also, I think they oversell it as they come with heaps of conditions which vary between suppliers. It is important if you intend to take a manufacturer's warranty that you read their conditions first. 

Some point to note while reading their warranties is they generally are from three to five years. These conditions change over time, so the first year might be labour and parts, the second only parts. So in the second year, you will pay for the engineer time of travel as well as the time in the shop to fix it on-site. This can be expensive.

Also, these companies can be expensive for a free warranty. For example, one client called one when a computer did not work. They traced the problem to a wrong driver that the newsagent installed when he brought a new printer. So the repair company said it was misuse and sent the newsagency, a large bill for a non-support urgent job.

Another issue is many are the next day. Say the computer breaks down on Thursday night. You will not be able to register it for a support call till Friday morning when you will talk to their technicians and then if they decide to send someone it will be Monday. If say it was Friday evening they come on Tuesday, if Monday they come on Wednesday and so on. You should find out exactly what next day means.

Other problems I have with them are they are ruthless on support. Say a hard disk breaks, they will replace the hard drive but they do not reload the software. So you have a computer that needs a new installation.

Point 2: Our standard small newsagency system includes an on-site manufacturer’s warranties too generally for three to five years.

As far as product preset buttons in our cash register, with us, there are no limits.

Point 3: We have no limitation on the number of product preset buttons in our cash register.

I agree computer is much faster and accurate with touch than a physical computer keyboard or mouse. Much of our system has our own preset computer keyboard and mouse inbuilt. Some software providers claim to have touch but it is only in a few places like the cash register and even then it is restricted, so I agree you should be wary of these claims. Check that they provide complete touch before continuing otherwise you will have a computer which can be used fast in a small section. Note I am sure if you compare our touch to others, you will find their wanting.

Point 4: Our system does not need a physical computer keyboard or mouse for any function.

Credit Terms for Subagents video

POS SOFTWARE

Today I was asked about setting a subagent's credit term, the client had seen a newsletter about it but could not find the video as he had deleted the newsletter.

What he wanted to do was know how to put a credit limit on this accounts.

He then suggested that since training videos are now popular and that we should create a special section for Garth's training videos.

So I sent him the link for a video, that Garth created last month. Then I thought that he maybe be right, so I decided to post this video immediately and possibly create a new section for training videos on our website.

How it works is once the credit terms and credit limits for a subagent are exceeded, the account will be automatically stopped.