What is a Point of Sale System?

What is a POS System?

You must have come across the term POS system. The acronym POS stands for “Point of Sale”. Now, what is a Point of sale system exactly? It essentially means a place where buying and selling of products or services can take place. It could either be a brick and mortar store or an eCommerce one.

Credits to digitalization, the activities for processing sales-related operations such as sales recording, inventory management, reporting, etc. that used to take place manually on pen and paper have now been moved online. No more using cash registers and dealing with accounts. POS system has successfully managed to replace the age-old methods of administrative and management activities related to transactions of products and services. The features in a POS system decide its usability for a business.

Now be it managing stock and inventory, preparing sales reports or marketing processes, all are taken care of by POS systems. The point of sale systems has eased the process of handling sales-related operations to a large extent.

Why should you use a POS System?

The answer lies in your requirement of a solution that can smoothly carry out all the necessary managerial, administrative, monitoring and reporting activities concerning your business.

Point of Sale systems is such that it is capable of performing all the basic functions that are otherwise conducted through cash registers. These activities could include a wide range, starting from creating receipts to sale tracking to managing inventory, returns, reflecting taxes on your Magento platform and lots more.

POS systems consist of software that works to process the aforementioned administrative and management duties. Point of sale systems forms a crucial part of any business very soon since they go a long way in assisting with major operations of administrative, sales, management and marketing nature.

POS is gradually gaining long due popularity as people begin to identify its benefits over manual methods.

Let’s learn a little more about Point of Sale systems that will help improve familiarity with the system for deployment to businesses.

What are the Must-have Features in a POS system?

Once you realize the utility of POS systems and the fact that you need to pick one for your business, the struggle to make the right choice begins. There might be a number of options to choose from but what works for your business is the right choice for you. The POS system that fits your business requirements like a glove is what you’d want to go for.

Here we have brought together all the must-have features in a POS system that you shall look for before picking one for your business.

Inventory Management

Inventory management could turn out to be one of the most demanding processes while running a business. In the absence of a POS system, you would be required to keep count manually. This may end up taking a lot of your crucial time.

This is where a POS system comes into play and easily automates the process ensuring accurate results. Listing the features in a POS system could not begin without the extremely important one, i.e inventory management.

Thus while picking a point of sale system you might want to look for the following features for seamless inventory and stock management.

• Check if the POS system is capable of providing complete and updated information on store stock levels at all times. In other words, the system shall be fully accountable for stock level updates. With options like the product barcode scanner, SKU wise updating of products can be managed through Point of sale systems.
• The system should be able to share alerts in case of a shortage of stock. Using which you get the information to place orders well in time and always have your inventory stocked up.
• A categorized view of stock is also a much-appreciated feature. Transaction updates of product/service are crucial to analyzing the movement of inventory.

Sales monitoring and Reporting

When running a business you will have the constant need to generate exhaustive reports for your sale activities. Creating detailed reports is a tedious task when performed manually. Necessary features in a POS system must include sales monitoring and reporting without a doubt. Hence a POS system is a smart choice. For rigorous sales monitoring your POS system must be able to do the following:

• Create detailed reports of sales results on your platform
• The system shall generate reports that give analytics of sales over various time intervals, such as hour-based, weekly, yearly and monthly.

Properly recorded and well-analyzed data conveyed in the form of reports will help you make informed decisions concerning your business.

Employee Management

Employee Management is another crucial aspect of running a business.

Monitoring employee working hours, individual performances, maintaining staff levels, recording their productivity, etc. are processes that cannot be overlooked while you’re busy running the show at your venture. Thus entrusting the responsibility of employee management to a POS system seems like a smart decision to make.

Your POS system must be able to-

• Keep records of employee work hours
• Generate schedules and modify them for employees basis requirement
• As per sales records, helps identify the best and worst performers

If you’re able to successfully identify your top performers and keep track of employee efficiency you can be sure of the efforts your staff puts in to make your business a success.

Customer Management

Ecommerce marketplaces currently are becoming all about providing personal experiences to customers. Predictive searches to introducing chatbots, marketplaces are going the extra mile to be a bit more personal in their interactions with their customers. Predictive searches to introducing chatbots, marketplaces are going the extra mile in order to be a bit more personal in their interactions with their customers.

Point of sale systems can help in doing so by gathering and recording relevant data pertaining to customers. Your selected POS system must-

• Store customer data and the related purchase history in order to provide better personal experiences to customers.

Keeping a record of customer purchases will help you have a better sense of the products your customer is giving preference to. In addition to this, you could also plan your marketing strategies better with the help of such data.

Excellent Support Service

If your Point of sale system is going to be functioning at the fulcrum of your business nothing shall go wrong with it. The features in a POS system would be of no use if it keeps getting stuck with no solution at hand. A 24*7 support service is required for it to be fixed fast.

A POS system that comes with round the clock working support team will be the smart choice for you to make. In the event of any issues, 24*7 support teams can be contacted via phone, mail, etc. Also, self-help tools like documentation, tutorials, etc are necessary to help you get answers to your questions regarding the system.

Features in CedCommerce’s POS  System for Magento 2

With the POS system for Magento 2, you could manage your retail store, physical outlet and connect them to your eCommerce store, thereby taking care of all effectively. Through this solution you get to experience features like:

• It is a React-based Solution provided by Cedcommerce
• Experience Real-Time syncing
• Standard Magento features and product types
• Track sales performance of sales agents
• Adding Customer
• Adding Custom Product, if not available.
• Manage Inventory of product if the inventory move threshold level.
• Split Payment between cash and card.
• Design POS Invoice Slip.
• POS sales agents can even file the return and generate a cash memo for the product.

Final words

You must invest in a good Point of sale system. Before zeroing in on any one solution take into consideration the particular requirements of your business and your budget. Check out rigorously the features in a POS system before you make the choice. CedCommerce’s all-new Point of Sale extension for Magento 2 could be your go-to choice.

The point of sales systems is not just restricted to sales anymore. It can help you manage a lot more aspects of your business with the utmost ease. With the right POS system at your disposal, you can improve the overall efficiency of your business and take steps to make it even better with time.