15 Benefits of Using POS Software for Your Business

Operating a retail business requires a wide range of administrative, management, and marketing skills. You have to ensure that there is enough inventory available at all times to prevent any item and particularly high demand items from going out of stock.

This might not sound particularly tough, but is – imaging having to keep stock of hundreds of items made by multiple brands!

Point of sale is the location where your customer makes payment for products and services at your store or business place. In simple words, whenever a customer makes a purchase at your store, they complete a Point of Sale transaction.

POS or Point of sale serves as the central position of your business. It is the hub where various aspects, such as sales, inventory and customer management, merge together. Therefore, it is necessary to have a POS Software or Point of sale system to ensure the smooth running of all your business operations.

Way back in 1970, the first point of sale was installed at a stationery shop, which included a computer, bar code scanner and a printer. Now, web and mobile-based point of sale system have revolutionized the traditional way of selling goods and services in a business. A point of sale system consists of software and hardware components that help run your routine operations smoother and faster.

Let us compare the two types of Point of sale software

Cloud POS	On-Premise POS
Users can access the software on the internet via any device.	Users can purchase more than one license to install the software on different computers.
Software updates are pushed to POS.	Users update and maintain the POS.
1-2 individuals are required to manage the POS.	It may require an IT professional for a larger organization.
Low upfront cost	Requires costly upfront hardware

Fifteen Benefits of Using POS

Here is a list of fifteen benefits you can harness for your business after employing a point of sale system. For a better understanding, refer to the following pie chart:

1. A point of sale system offers you easy-to-use modules for accounting, analyzed stock counting, vendor ordering, customer loyalty, and reporting. It creates an easy way to perform all the complex work functions, such as purchase ordering, stock transferring, quotation issuing and barcode scanning. The point of the sale system makes the business functions faster, easier, and cheaper.
2. You can easily connect various gadgets to your point of sale system such as barcode scanner, barcode printer and thermal printer. Linking all such gadgets will ultimately reduce your working time. A point of sale software also allows you to have a separate login for different users for proper separation of account details.
3. POS reduces the overall cost of ownership due to rapid implementation, minimal investments in training, platform, and database independent design, and scalable SOA architecture. It has a high business impact and tangible ROI through the rapid mind to market conversions as well as a business intelligence engine for dynamic decisions and strategizing. You can centralize the pricing and promotions with seamless integration of point of sale and store-level flexibility.
4. Point of Sale system makes massive upgrades in your customer relationship management (CRM). You can easily find the record of single or multiple customers so that they can easily return or exchange the purchased goods in no time. Being able to return or exchange is an important consideration these days.
5. POS software has simplified the accounting process in leaps and bounds. As was the case earlier, you do not need to hire a number of accountants to maintain various transactions. It also allows you to hunt for the details of any past transaction.
6. You can completely automate your ordering process by employing the point of sale system. This way, you will never run out of your hottest selling products. It also boosts the level of transparency between customers and retailers.
7. Point of sale system allows you to track and manage inventory in real-time. You can easily monitor a number of items remaining in your stock and top up your stock as early as possible.
8. Such a system eliminates the chances of error because this software has inbuilt checks that ensure that the information entered into the system is correct. For further calculations, it requires a minimal amount of human intervention. Thus, there is less or zero scope of any error.
9. Point of sale provides you with real-time analyses on the ongoing business processes. It provides accurate reports on various business aspects which help to take better decisions. Ultimately, it facilitates the growth and flourishing of your business by simply pointing out the basic changes which you need to make in the business processes.
10. Modules offered by POS software allow you to control sales and return operations, discounts, sale transactions, CRM, inventory management, product bundling, etc. It also enables you to manage customer’s credit card information privacy, labor working hours and shift management.
11. The point of sale system provides you with Omni-access to your business. You can easily access important information via the internet from anywhere in the world.
12. If your company is running various promotions or programs at different locations, then you can track their progress from a single point using the point of sale systems.
13. Such a system helps you identify the gaps and loopholes so that you can manage and make new strategies and plans. It directly helps you hike the overall productivity of the business.
14. You can add additional discounts and promotional offers on the products using point of sale systems.
15. Your customers can receive a more detailed and customized receipt of the items which they have purchased by using the point of sale system. You can also personalize the offers and discounts as per your necessities and the customer requirements.

Conclusion

Point of sale or POS software greatly simplifies the management of your business functions. It not only increases the versatility of the business, but also helps you expand it by managing complex functions.

It generates accurate reports and analytics which facilitate your transition to a paperless office. Point of sale provides business intelligence as well as captures the data, which can create an end to end business view available on both mobile and desktop. You can access crucial information from any smart device such as a phone or tablet and can get transaction updates, customer feedback and more.

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