In this post, I am going to discuss the common pos system features you need or features you probably don’t need for your retail store or your restaurants.
What is a POS or a point-of-sale? A POS or traditionally called a sales register is a bundled hardware and software tool to capture orders in real-time upon customer checkout and generate receipts and sales reports.
Before talking about the software, let’s talk briefly about the hardware and infra requirements. Needless to say, you will need a POS machine that comes with a POS printer, cash register, barcode scanner, touch screen monitor, and an optional customer display monitor. There are two types of POS in the market, one is on-premise, meaning the software installed in the POS hardware, and cloud-based which is a browser-based POS with offline transaction support. Obviously, you’ll need an Internet connection if you opt to go for the cloud-based. A cloud-based POS is advisable especially if you have more than one branch as you will want to have a consolidated sales report in your HQ.
Some POS requires a back-office app that consolidates POS terminal transactions if you are operating with more than one terminal. In this case, you will need a local area network.
If you are operating in the Philippines, the government or the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) is requiring merchants to purchase the POS from a BIR accredited POS vendor. This is to make sure that the POS is compliant with BIR reporting requirements such as the x,y,z reading, sales, and tax reports.
Now once you have decided to go on-premise or cloud, and you have shortlisted the POS vendors, then let’s jump on the different features you need or probably don’t need for your business.
Let’s talk about the basic features first.
1.Seamless sales entry (touch screen for retail, table layout for restaurants) and support for barcode product scanning, quick keys, and product lookup. This feature is important because the nature of retail operations is fast-paced. You have to ensure that you capture sales and print sales receipts efficiently and with less friction.
For restaurants, a waiter kiosk or a mobile device to punch orders integrated with a kitchen or bar monitors or order slip printers and a customer tab or bill management to merge or split bills, add orders, or cancel an order.
Table management for transferring and merging tables is also advisable for restaurants.
2.The next feature is the management of returns, refunds, and credits with controls and audit trail reports. Purchase returns and/or refunds are inevitable in a retail transaction hence this is an essential feature.
Controls and audit trails on the other hand are important to prevent pilferage and manipulation of transactions by the employee which is sadly common in this industry. Usually, a POS requires a supervisor override on every purchase return or any unusual transaction.
Price and discount management. By default, a senior citizen discount, PWD, tax/vat exempt options should be available but an option to create a custom discount with supervisor control should also be considered to set up pricing for VIPs, employee discounts, and whatnot.
3.Real-time inventory on hand report. Inventory visibility should be always available to make sure the store replenishes stocks on time to avoid loss sales.
4.Support for multiple payment methods, cash credit card, multiple payment methods or, multiple currencies if you are operating say in an airport.
So those are the basic features of a typical POS system.
But before we proceed with the advanced features, I want to introduce my business process automation workshop, it is an online one-on-one coaching session to help you in your business process automation and digital transformation such as implementing a point-of-sale for your business up to back-office accounting and ERP implementation. I can help you choose the best software tools and vendors in the market down to implementing them. To learn more, feel free to email me at [email protected]
5.For the advanced features, contactless ordering and payment with an optional QR code scanning have recently risen due to the pandemic but this is something fancy that you might want to have.
6.Loyalty programs to capture and accumulate points for a customer are also a trend if you want to establish your brand and provide gifts and rewards to your customers.
7.eCommerce (mobile or web) for order ahead with pickup or delivery option is also a fancy feature if you want to capture customers who are on the go or if you have an in-house delivery process.
Lastly, most POS also has a feature to capture employee time-in and time-out to manage their timekeeping and productivity.
So there you go, I hope I have provided you value in choosing the right POS for your retail or restaurant operations. If you wish to learn more then, feel free to contact me at [email protected] so I can understand your requirement and provide you the best POS in the market.
This blog post is brought to you by our free accounting software and free payroll software Snap Solutions.
Want to learn more? Check out my Basic Accounting Terms and Definition
Or enroll in my Accounting Course Online