A POS terminal for retail, or store management system, is the heart of your retail business
How should you choose a POS terminal for your shop? Start simply, by imagining you are a customer who wants to buy something but has to join a long queue at the till to pay. Your only choices are to wait in line or come back another day. If that is happening in your business, it is time to look for a smart point-of-sale (POS) system — the intelligent store management system we call a POS terminal — to strengthen how you run the shop and to strip out steps in service, so that paying is as easy as it can possibly be for your customers.
A POS terminal or store management system is the beating heart of a retail business or any ordinary shop, because a POS is what lets customers pay in whichever way is convenient and secure. Beyond that, choosing a good POS terminal will make running the shop more efficient over the long term as well.
Whether you are looking for ways to improve how service works or to serve customers better and leave a stronger impression, you cannot avoid the question of a store management system, or retail point-of-sale (POS) system, that answers what your business needs. But there are a great many POS terminals on the market to choose from, so which one should you pick, and what should you be looking at? Today Qashier has some advice on choosing a POS terminal that fits and that is right for your business.
The basic capabilities of a sales management system, or POS terminal
Because there are so many POS terminals for retail to choose from these days, narrowing down what you need and picking the right one can be a daunting task: there is a wide spread of prices and manufacturers, each with different capabilities. Even so, if you want to choose the right POS, these are the basic capabilities worth considering when picking a POS terminal to help you run your shop.
- Product management, or a product catalogue
A POS terminal for a retail business or an ordinary shop should have a product management system, to help you and your staff find and manage products more easily and more quickly. That matters especially if you carry a large number of products or a wide variety of them; a good POS terminal can cut working time considerably, as well as keeping the product list updated so that staff always know where things stand.
You can also organise and filter data in fine detail on the POS terminal, whether by product category, type, size or colour, and each item can be given a full price and SKU (stock keeping unit).
- A range of payment options
Giving customers plenty of choice improves the odds that they decide to buy, all the more so in an age when cashless spending has become the norm. A POS terminal that supports several payment methods — cash, credit card, mobile payment, e-wallet, or even QR payment such as PromptPay — makes life a great deal easier for customers.
What is more, a POS terminal that supports payments in this way makes any refund or return that may come up far easier to handle, because every order is recorded in the system, so you can check and pull up the details conveniently and accurately.
- Customer relationship management, or a membership system
A store management system or POS terminal that comes with this feature helps business or shop owners record details of the customers who visit, so they can improve the customer experience, or even improve the odds of those customers coming back. Beyond that, having the data lets the business understand consumer behaviour and what customers want, so it can offer them exactly what they are after.
Customer relationship management, or CRM, also builds loyalty towards the brand — Customer Loyalty — through points, for example. A POS terminal lets you set the points earned on each order, encouraging customers to use your services more or to come back and buy from your shop again in future.
- Cloud-based online data storage
Joining or connecting a POS terminal to cloud storage technology (a cloud system) lets the business owner or shop manager reach the data they want, or look at shop reports, at any time and from anywhere. All they need is a phone or tablet and an internet connection to reach, manage and improve their shop in comfort.
- Staff management
By linking staff management to the store management system, or POS terminal, you can work out commissions, salaries or working hours easily and conveniently, with the data recorded straight from the POS terminal through staff names and working hours. That lets you measure performance, or reward the staff who perform well, and lift the whole team's output with very little effort.
On top of that, you can set permissions governing which POS functions each role can reach — shop manager or sales assistant, say — so that capabilities are defined and mistakes easily prevented.
- Inventory and stock management
A good POS terminal for retail should come with inventory management, so you can track and manage your stock more easily. And if your business or shopfront has several outlets, inventory management on the POS terminal will let you handle it more quickly, and even move stock or transfer inventory between outlets with ease.
Beyond that, this system lets you connect sales to inventory intelligently, so you can see updated figures for the stock that has sold and a running balance that is kept up to date.
Extra functions and special capabilities
The extra functions you may want depend on what each type of business needs. The capabilities below are ones you can find in a good POS terminal, or add on to the POS terminal you want, to make running the shop more efficient or to leave your customers with a better impression.
- E-commerce – connect your POS terminal to an online store system so that you can link your inventory and update sales both online and at your outlets, giving you a real-time view of the stock you have left.
- Accounting – accounting on the POS terminal makes it wonderfully easy to handle receipts or issue invoices to customers, and lets you keep the books or measure performance accurately.
- Marketing – with this capability, you can build email lists from your customer database, order history or total accumulated spend, and use them to send news and announcements or run marketing activity, all very easily.
- Price management – price management lets you set dynamic prices, or price tiers by membership level, or prices that vary by time of day, or even separate takeaway and dine-in prices, giving you control over pricing and the freedom to run the shop the way you want.
When you choose the POS terminal for your shopfront, do not forget these functions and capabilities, so that you can start and run your business smoothly and grow it more effectively than ever.
If you are an owner looking for a POS terminal for a retail business with a full set of functions — one that improves efficiency, keeps your several outlets in good order, and helps lift sales as well — Qashier offers modern POS terminals that manage the shopfront efficiently and keep a thorough watch over what is happening across multiple outlets, with back-office data you can reach in comfort anywhere, at any time. Just as importantly, we have specialists on hand to help and advise you throughout. If you are interested in our products and want to push your business forward, ask us for more details on Line Official: @qashier.th or call 02-544-0267