The economics of successfully running a small retail business operation involves an efficient cash management system, seamless and error-free payment processing, precise bookkeeping and excellent inventory management.

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Today’s advanced point of sale systems can do all these and much more automatically, accurately and efficiently.

It is natural for some retailers to get attracted towards electronic cash register (ECR) for its low upfront cost, but the return on investment for the modern POS systems is much more in the long run. Technology has given retailers smart, sleek and highly efficient POS systems which can do several of the mundane functions automatically in a matter of time with absolutely low human involvement thus saving significant amount of time and money.

If you want to spend less hours in a week and work smarter, then you should go for an efficient POS system for your store.

Defining POS system

POS system is just like your personal computer having two parts – software and hardware. Software will decide the applications your POS can perform. For example, if you own a retail store, you’ll want your POS software be able to assist you in tracking inventory with respect to date, colour, size and style, sales support, customer management, sales record and analytics and much more.

POS Software

While selecting POS software, it’s important to analyze your business functions and your needs before deciding the functionalities you want to incorporate in the point of sale system.

Modern POS systems are capable of managing your entire business independently. Apart from providing an exhaustive analytical insight into your business, they provide real time data about inventory and stock, workers’ costs, customer footfalls, high demand products, efficiency of store executives, loyalty programs and customer relationship management (CRM). Will the cash registers do all these functions?

Today, merchants need not have to invest on POS peripherals and software. They just have to use a small tablet or smart phones to connect their business using “cloud” POS system. Cloud POS solutions help retailers store critical data on a remote server which can be accessed in real  time provided you have secured internet connection at your workplace. Though you won’t store your data in your server situated at the backend of the store, you can save space, money and risk of losing data due to nature phenomenon like sudden power outage, flood, theft, virus attacks and other technical issues.

Some POS manufacturers and POS vendors provide customers a local server setup along with an option to push the data to a cloud server thereby giving the best of both the worlds.

POS Hardware

Selecting the POS hardware components is very important as they should be in compatible with the POS software. POS hardware provides retailers a user interface along with the required tools to perform the functions of the software. However, you can’t use any kind of printer or barcode scanner for your POS system as POS software must be in compatible with the hardware certified by the POS Company concerned.

For example, let’s imagine that you have an extra receipt printer of Epson brand in your store collecting dust. You feel that instead of buying a new printer, you want to use the one you already have. But your software vendor confirms that your POS system will only work with Star Micronics printer and not any other printer brand.

So, you can’t assemble pieces of hardware in random and expect that your POS system would support. Software is made to communicate in a very distinct way with the hardware which is configured in a particular way. It is like trying your iPad charger with Samsung phone. Will it work?

To ease this difficulty, point of sale suppliers recommend a variety of POS hardware bundles such as touch screen monitor, receipt printer, customer display, cash drawer, barcode scanner, MSR and other related peripherals. Depending upon your needs and type of business, you may also need weighing scales, payment devices for contactless transactions, kiosks and mobile wallet payment facility.
So, choose the right POS system to enhance your business.