BLOGS AND ARTICLES FROM THE POS SOLUTIONS TEAM

A lot of your data is in your POS Software and this is another example of how you can use it to boost your profits and give you a competitive advantage.

Go to cash register reports > Sales stock > Sales by Store location for a given period.

Now for this exercise, I put in the last quarter which is what you would do usually, although not much is normal now. You want this exercise a reasonable time frame.

Out will come a report with a lot of what I am sure you will find interesting information.

Here look at the locations with

1) High holding costs and low profits. (Problems)

2) Low holding costs and high profits (Stars)

These are two of the best metrics for gauging the performance of the locations in your shop to see how well you using your retail space.

Now you can experiment.

Revenue in itself does little for you. It looks good but does nothing for the business as such. Generally all you are doing is working for the wholesaler.

Profit is in the long term the best indicator of business robustness.

But profit is often a fairy tale. You cannot pay bills with a good financial statement, to pay these you need cash. Run out of cash and generally if you are lucky you will be working for the bank.

If you want to sell gifts in your shop, you need to know how to tie a proper ribbon on a gift box. You want to look professional!

I remember my grandfather in his shop, teaching me. It took me quite a few attempts to get it right. Like so many things, it is easy to do once you get the hang of it. Note it would be best if you did it a few times as in retail you will need to be able to do it quick under pressure.

Your customers will often take it very seriously, so you need to do it right!

Here is a youtube that explains it very well a simple and good knot for you to start learning.

Do your customers know that you are open for business? 

If you are open during this period, you need to make sure that people know about it. 

This became clear to one of my clients when he realised that many of his customers were walking past. They did not know they were open. Now he has a big OPEN sign in the front window. 

Passers-by need to know that you are open and when. 

If you are closed and intend to re-open, you need to tell them clearly when exactly you are opening up again. If you do not know then try to make it as clear as you can. 

Also, post regular updates on your social media.

I did not expect my recent article on credit limits to get so much traction. So here are a few more tips for how to use your system better to collect debts.

1) Automate as much as possible your debt collection process. Use the technology that you have as much as possible.

2) Make sure that the customer details in your system are correct. If they do not get it or if it is not correct, what you are sending out is a potential argument.

3) Identify your difficult customers. Try to offload their debt problem to other people. VISA, Zippay etc. Why should you have problems let others have it? Trade with them with VISA, then let them argue with VISA. It may cost you a percent or so, but you get paid with no argument and most little friction.

4) Use our software late fee system, after a few times. This will send a strong message to your customers that you have firm credit practices in place.

5) Make it easy for your clients to pay, have several different payment types. The more, the better.

Hope this is of use and as always let me know how it works for you.

One of the most popular and successful loyalty programs in our software is issuing stamps. 

Here is a typical offer. A person comes into the shop and buys something. Every time they buy, they get a stamp in our case an electronic listing too so here after ten (10) visits on the next trip, they get something. 

This sort of offer works for anything, greeting cards, coffee, pet food, haircuts, etc.

Now follow where the problem arises. 

At first, the customer comes in and buys a product. They are notified of the offer, so they get a card. One item stamped so they are 10% into it (1 stamp out of ten), and they work their way to ten. But here is the issue, once the person has their free article, they start again from zero. Starting from zero does not motivate people much.

So here is a better way to do it.

Make program active on the 12 visits. 

Here is how it should be done.

- When the person first comes into the shop and buys something, they get one stamp for joining. They then get a stamp for their first buy. So they are starting with two stamps. This gives them the feeling that they are getting closer to their reward as now they are 17% (2 stamps out of 12) through it. 

-Once they redeem their free item, they get a new card with one stamp credited for rejoining the program. They get another stamp for the free offer they redeemed. This overcomes this problem of them starting with zero as now they are at 17% again.

Give it a try and see how you go. Then let me know.

This is a common problem in retail having:

Slow stock does sell but only slowly.

Dead stock does not sell at all.

Both cost money to the retailers, costs cash flow, money and takes up space that should have stock that sells better.

Now in identifying your products that are slow or dead go to register reports > stock titled "Old Stock on hand by Date last received"

I tend to do it in two parts. I check the overall problem in the shop to see the scale of the problem. Then I go by department in detail as its people find it better to examine this way.

This gives you a listing of your stock based on when you received it. This stock is rarely doing you much good. As I stated, it costs you to keep it.

Now once you identified it, what are you going to do about it?

I would suggest firstly move it because maybe it was in the wrong area. Good clean and a nice presentation can do wonder.

If your decision is to minimise your losses on this stock by slashing the price and to move the stock here are some options.

1) Offload them on sites such as eBay.

2) Use it to make a bundle. Put an old stock item that does not sell with something that does sell and turn it into a bundle.

3) Make a bargain bin.

4) Use the stock for your loyalty marketing program.

5) Use them as specials when you have a marketing season.

People tell me that it is too hard to get the point of sale software going. But to accomplish any task, we all start with a small step. I was 15 years old when I went in front of a computer, and I just stared at it, not knowing what to do. Then I pressed a button. I had started.

The most important thing is we START.

Planning the layout of your store is quite an art. This video may give you some tips on how to improve your shop layout and design.

One point here is that Australians shoppers do move clockwise. That is why when we set sales budgets in our POS software, we make the left side of the shop more than the right side. If you are not doing this now, I suggest that you start now doing that now.

Near the front counter, the items with the highest return on investment should be there. It is easy to get a list of these go to

Cash register report > GMROI (see the selection highlighted) in your point of sale software in the reports here.

Ignore departments and see what they are. Now see how you can use them at the counter.

We have a professional website analysis. What it does is audits websites for problems. These problems besides making your website look unprofessional with something like this,

will hurt your internet score if the google or bing bots pick it up.

If you are a client of ours. If you need a professional scan done of your website, please let us know, and we will do one for you free.

I can also if you need, help you with the analysis.

Say your supplier decided to make a marketing promotion and asked you to take part. Our client said yes. They went through quite a bit of trouble, and now they want to know how well the promotion did. They do not see much, yet the supplier does. So we are helping out.

The problem here is that no-one before it started thought to make any KPI. So what happened is that the operator adjusted the price with a discount. As there are a lot of discounts, it is hard to determine whether it was a promotion sale or not. Usually what we could do here is to try to determine what the usual amount of discounts are but now who knows what is typical.

What it shows is that it is crucial if you are promoting to make a KPI policy before starting.

Otherwise, it can be hard to determine whether the offer worked.

Do you want to see how your fathers day sales went?

Here is a quick and easy way to do it. It will take you less than a minute!

Go to Register reports

Now select Sales register > Sales comparison

​

Now put in the following

You will get a very detailed report of what happened for that day for you to examine.

Setting credit limits for your customers

In my experience, the biggest issue in business is cash flow. Bad cash flow and your business is dead. It is the most significant cause of companies collapsing.

The primary tool used here by businesses is credit limits. This sets the largest amount that they are willing to risk in a person.

As times change credit limits need to be revised often. Well, times have changed. It is a good idea to review your credit limits now to see if they are appropriate in the current conditions.

Our POS system gives you extensive controls on how to control these credit limits.

Go to the main menu> customer > customer maintenance. Now call up a customer, click Other Details. (see green arrow below)

You can see trading terms and a question of what to do if a credit limit will be exceeded. If it was exceeded, you could select to either stop the account or warn you. Now you will have to decide what amount you will give for that customer. There is, of course, no precise method of determining this. A simple policy that works well in retail in my experience 

Do a review of what you are prepared for your total exposure to be.  You may need to redo your figures.  If say you can afford $50,000 and you have 100 active accounts, that is $500. That gives you a benchmark.  

2) Determine what they usually buy off you on credit in a period. Now, look at what payment period they need so if they buy $10 to $20 a week and pay on 60 Days for them to trade with you requires at least $150. Since your benchmark is $500, you may want to go up a bit on that figure.

3) Consider your gut feeling are they as a credit risk good, average or low. 

3) Consider whether they are low and high-profit customers. A buyer that purchases low margins items means you are putting up more money than someone who buys high margin items. 

4) Now go through and look at their trading history. 

Here is a tip to make the process go much faster!

Once you come up with a figure for one person, write it down and compare the accounts to that person. Now use that figure, and go up or down.

If you want more here is a formal discussion, on how to do credit limits. 

What does present a problem is letting your client know what their credit limit. Many people will hold off paying if until their credit limit is reached. Others get upset, "you cannot trust me with $200?", "you have trusted me with $5000, and I have been coming for years a loyal customer now when I need it, you are not letting me take this ?" As a rule, I suggest you say its the computer, not me that set it and let us look at it together now. 

What you are trying to do is establish appropriate credit limits that reduce your risk while maximizing your income.

This woman has good ideas about how to package a gift bag, these gift bags do sell well but only if they look nice.

Here is how to make it look nice.

Most of us have bills and bills and bills.

Recently a company that collects debts from many companies released its findings.  It causes some comments.

The best day from looking at many companies for businesses getting paid was Thursday they claimed. They believe that this is because most people today receive their wages/salary on a Thursday. As they have money on Thursday, they spend it. Although they did not say it, people tend as well to get pensions on Thursday too. But it was interesting is that Sunday had the lowest clearance rate. It made sense if you think about it as about then most people would be budgeting for the coming week. 

So I decided to check using many of my clients' data, and what did I find? 

Well, some clients where all over the place. For example here is the result of four years by one of my clients.

Mon 13.3% Tues 16.4% Wed 8.6% Thu 14.2% Fri 10.3% Sat 37.2%

For this business, Saturday was best. I suspect it because they are in a small centre and people are coming to buy on that day the big weekly family shopping. As they are in the area, they come and pay. Why Tuesday was higher than Wednesday, makes sense as there is not much left on Wednesday. 

What it does show is what I have always said that all businesses are different. This is true even those that do the same things, and each needs to treated differently.

But overall the conclusion does seem correct as a rule, the day for people paying is Thursday. Here is my result from benchmarking 10 different clients over a number of years.

 If you want to know what is your best day to get paid, you can work it out by using Ad Hoc reports.

You will find it here.

Register reports>Customers>Transactions (Excel)

So based on this if you are sending people bills, you need to make sure that they get your bills before Thursday. 

Social media like Facebook is no longer optional with this pandemic. In the past, I have felt that it was an excellent way for small business owners to connect with their customers. Now its a necessity. People no longer just walk past your shop, see it and come in. The best, cheapest and possibly only way to communicate today to these people is online with social media. 

Here are some key statistics

1. 85% of the eligible (age 13+) Australian population have active social media accounts, Source
2. Australians spend an average of 1 hour 47 minutes per day on social media, and this has been increasing slowly over the past 8 years. Source

I have been doing it for years successfully, studied on it and here is my latest qualification.

I will do a webinar on the basics of how to market your shop free online in your marketspace if there is enough interest.

What is clear now that many retailers immediate and top priority in their loyalty programs is customer retention. Any increase in sales by upselling and getting them to buy more often is now all secondary. 
Not surprising as customers are up for grabs now. 

People are now buying brands that they never purchased before. They are buying from people that they never dealt with before. 

This is the kicker; they have been doing this for months and will continue to do this for more months and something done for months is a habit creation,

We are in the middle of a retail transformational period. 

Questions:

Are those people you lost, going to come back to you?
New people coming to you now are they going to stay with you? 

I have clients who are shut. I see that they are on pushing their store to their former customers on social media. Telling them, they intend to re-open.

Why? 
Answer because they do not want their customers to forget about them.

The first step at the front of the shop like here,

when they are buying, at the point of sale, make sure they know you have a loyalty program.

Then make sure that they can sign up immediately. 

Today, your monitor and computer come with a large number of settings. These can tweak your screen to make it look better for you. Many of these controls are standard such as brightness, contrast and colour. Many are quite advanced, and even experts have trouble understanding them.

So I get this question a lot, how to improve the screen.

As a rule, its the contrast that been set too high. Your monitor should not act as a light if it is then it is too high. If you look at it too long, it will hurt your eyes, so turn it down.

If I need more, what I find is that generally, the windows functions adequate, in Windows 10, you will find them in

Select Start > Settings > System > Display

If I want to go deeper, what works for me is to load on the screen a high-quality B/W image and then play with the setting. When I am happy with the B/W image, then I will put a colour image on the screen and check it out with that.

If you want to see a decent discussion on what to do, I recommend this video.

This came up a few days ago, and what it has done is mucked up a shop's sales history file about profit.

Say the retail item cost is $10.00 and it costs you $5.00

What happens is you may decide to do a sales promotion in your shop, and it looks like this.

Here every pack sold means that each item sells at $6.66 and they cost you $5 each. So you have made $1.66 profit on each item. 

Now the retailers had some dead stock and wanted to get rid of some of it, so he introduces a new product into the mix. 

An item (B) that say also sells at $10.00 and costs them $5.00. I am trying to illustrate a point here. 

So your promotion offer now is a “buy this item and the other item free”. 

Now should your sales and profit figures be recorded in your POS system? 

Method (1) The first item at full price. 

So each pack means that you have sold each one of them for $10.00. Their cost is $5.00 thus giving you $5.00 profit on each one. Item (B) is considered being given away for free.

Or

Method (2) All the items considered sold at $6.66. 

They all have a cost of $5 each. So you have made $1.66 profit on each item. 

You need to decide. 

What has happened here is that as a shop did not make a policy. Some people rang it up using the method (1) and others used method (2). 

Now what is showing in history is a higher sales margin on one item then there should have been. 

You need consistency in tracking promotions if you wish to correlate your sales.

Make a policy first.