The Importance of a POS System that Understands Your Business

It’s something we’ve all heard before: “One size fits all.” Except, a majority of the time, it doesn’t. While basic POS solutions are great if a company is looking for a quick way to ring up orders, but many of those solutions are limited to generic features that fit every industry, like basic order entry, employee accounts, and some business analytics.

When there’s something a basic POS system can’t do, many business owners and operators end up trying to figure out complicated workarounds to fit the technology they already have, instead of switching to a different system that better suits their needs. This costs companies valuable time and, in some cases, money.

So how can switching to a system that better fits your business’ needs actually save you money and increase your revenue?

Accurate Accounting

While many basic POS systems include hourly tracking for employees, if your business has a more complex payment system, you might find yourself struggling to properly compensate your staff. Trusting manual calculations or third-party services to accurately account for commission or sales-based bonus structures can create errors without you even noticing.

For businesses that rely on negotiations and commissions, a POS system that has built-in flexible price options, as well as the capability to track and calculate individual employee sales is crucial to ensuring that you’re minimizing human error.

Added Customer Satisfaction

Options are crucial when you’re looking to turn new shoppers into paying customers. From obvious choices like whether they’d like to join your loyalty program to more subtle things like what payment options they’re offered at the counter.

Accepting both cash and credit cards is a basic requirement for any retailer these days, but other payment options like gift cards and layaway increase the chance of a sale without shoppers even realizing it. These extra options are especially rewarding during holiday seasons, when shoppers are looking to buy gifts of all types and sizes. If your POS system makes accepting anything aside from cash and cards a complicated mess, you could be losing crucial revenue to your competitors.

Employee Motivation

When revenue depends on your staff staying engaged with customers, it’s important to make sure they’re feeling motivated. Performance bonuses or comission can work most of the time, but offering extra incentives every now and then can do wonders for boosting your bottom line. Events like sales-based competitions—either between employees or locations—or holiday prize bundles for top sellers provide immediate, tangible incentives aside from the regular monetary bonuses offered from month-to-month.

A POS system that offers side-by-side tracking at both the individual employee and location levels makes tracking the stats needed to hold these special motivation events a breeze. Bonus points if the system has a built-in feature that runs these events for you.