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POS Software

98% of All WannaCry Victims Were Using Windows 7

Sunday, 28 May 2017 9:38:16 AM

Kaspersky Lab on Friday showed that over 98% of all documented WannaCry infections were running versions of the Windows 7 operating systems. We are not sure whether it is WannaCry, but a computer was examined by our engineering department on Friday with the most incredible virus; we have ever seen. It was on a Window 7 computer. Avast was up to date and said it was protecting the computer. The Avast software could do a quick search for virus, and it showed nothing. It could not however run a full scan. What alerted the operator that something was wrong was when he followed my advice and tried to run Bitdefender Anti-Ransomware and it did not allow this software to run. Then when he tried to run a competitors antivirus software, the computer crashed. We have never before seen such a sophisticated virus. Whether its WannaCry we do not know as yet but its a strong possibility which means it is in our marketspace.

Since now AVG and Avast are the same, I would say any user of either of these products is at risk.

Please follow my advise and try to run Bitdefender Anti-Ransomware and check your computer, particularly if you are on Windows 7. If Bitdefender Anti-Ransomware is deleted immediately after running you are infected.

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Age of privacy is dead, Google will track Credit Cards too

Saturday, 27 May 2017 7:12:00 PM

The future of point of sale is not all pretty and sometimes its benefits seem dubious to someone like myself who believes in twentieth-century privacy concepts.

Google has is starting to access credit-card transactions to push people to make purchases even in offline locations like retail brick-and-mortar stores. Soon I am sure that Google, Facebook, Amazon and others such as the authorities will follow as Google and Facebook make good spies.

Once they do that they will be able to match your Internet browsing to your purchases. This will allow them to make their work more effective but becomes another nail into your privacy, on the other hand. The consumer will win too as they will receive better service for those people who are switched on to the net.

Read more about it here.

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Group sell instead of discounting

Friday, 26 May 2017 5:11:31 PM

Right about now, while doing a stocktake you will be going around the shop collecting damaged stock and unsellable stock.

Here is an idea.

Instead of discounting it to zero makes either a buy one gets one free group sell or a 3 for 2 special deal.

Alternatively, bundle the unsellable item with a sellable item in a group to sell it, e.g. an old magazine worth nothing can be packaged with a new popular magazine's edition. The proposed buyer will be rapt as they want one magazine, and they are getting the second free. You are rapt too as it a sale you may not have got, and it cost you nothing as the old magazine is worth nothing.

What you will notice is that your customers will tend to see this as an add-on reward so less likely to devalue your brand in the minds of the customer by excessive discounting.

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Using Microsoft office

Thursday, 25 May 2017 4:51:00 PM

Our point of sale software talks to Microsoft Office which is in my experience a terrific program to use but in practice does require a lot of learning.

So if you feel you need to learn more to get a grip with its functions. Microsoft has released a training resourses and a roadmap here for it.

You will find these top-quality and highly instructional.

If you do not have Microsoft Office and do not want to get it, you can always with our system use the free Open Office system which is also extremely powerful.

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What Is your Retail Shrinkage?

Wednesday, 24 May 2017 1:01:39 PM

What is your stock shrinkage? How much are you losing in your shop by causes? Many cannot answer this simple question. And if you do not know what to do if how do you know what to do fix it? I very much believe in the value of using data to help improve the management within your organization and this question is one of the most important ones in retail. The good news is with our point of sale software; it would be an easy calculation to find out.

Briefly, stock shrinkage is the difference between what you should have and what you actually do have.

Some major reasons would be if you have decent pos software.

1) Customer theft - The five finger discount

2) Damage - We had one furniture shop that was recording huge numbers of damaged goods somewhere between receiving and customer delivery.

3) Supplier fraud - Which is all too often, for example, a typical example is that a supplier bills you for goods shipped, but for some reason, you did not get all these goods.

4) Staff theft - In my experience this is nearly zero or nearly 100% of the problem.

After you do a stocktake which you should do next month and do your financial returns collect these three figures.

a) The value of the stock you SHOULD HAVE at the end of this financial year. If your point of sale is up to date, print out a stock valuation before starting the stocktake, if it is not, then your accountant will be able to give you an estimate of the (Ending Stock Value).

B) What is the value of your stock you ACTUALLY HAD at the end of this financial year. Your point of sale software will have this figure once you enter in the stocktake figure in the stock valuation report. (Physically Counted Inventory Value)

C) What is your total sales ex non stock items such as agency like lotto, as here we are interested in stock sales only (Sales of stock products)

Please do the following calculation.

Shrinkage% = ((Ending Stock Value)-(Physically Counted Inventory Value))/(Sales) x 100%

As a punt, I would say that it will be about 1.4%, but it does vary a lot. One client of ours reported after doing this calculation that it was less than 0.1%, which is the best figure I have ever seen. Conversely I have seen a shop which a receiver told me he recorded 6%.

Damaged goods (2) above you should be able to estimate and put that part aside. Goods that suffer a major damage problem should be moved to a safer place. I know a gift shop that after calculating the damage rate stopped handling glass products.

For the others as a first guesstimate, assume that (1), (3) and (4) above are equal and calculate them.

Now act!!!

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Speed at point of sale

Tuesday, 23 May 2017 3:30:00 PM

People tend to be upset waiting in queues. Generally in retail the standard danger point occurs if the size of the queue if over 6 or more and/or the time taken is over 5 minutes. The problem with standards is no business is standard. If I go to a barber, I would wait 5 minutes. If I go to a shop and want a pack of cigarettes, I am not waiting 5 minutes, and I am walking out if I see six people waiting.

And retailers know this; this is why they want fast point of sale software and computers. Doing reports and data entry it's nice to have faster processing, but at the cash register, having people wait is retail death.

Ours is the fastest point of sale software that I know, as you can see where it is marked in green. The operators here were regularly doing transactions at a rate of four a minute in 2014 before the new Intel's Core i7 and AMD’s Ryzen computers came out and the new SQL was released. So I am sure we will now get faster speeds once we finish our new benchmarking results.

Although I said it is nice to have faster processing speed, it is mentally frustrating on the mind for people to work slow computers. People are extremely fast in detecting speeds. A typical person can detect changes visually at .013 of a second and react in .25 second, if you want to know your reaction time click here.

If you are waiting 20 seconds while your computer is thinking, you are reacting potentially physically 80 times. That is why time seems to go so slowly when you press on a computer Y instead of N. Your mind internally is going No, No, No, ... 80 times.

Computer and software speed does matter.

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Free Webinar: Stocktake

Tuesday, 23 May 2017 1:02:00 PM

Well, stocktake time is coming again, so time to get ready for the big count.

The documents in help section of point of sale software have been upgraded and should now automatically be in your pos system so press F1 and check them out as they list several methods of doing a stocktake.

I do strongly recommend that you whatever method you decide to run your stocktaking try it in training first to get familiar with the process. Better to know the process ahead of time instead of having trouble when trying to run the real thing, also consider attending a free webinar that will be done on 1/June/2017 at 2:00pm EST.

We hope to see you there.

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Point of sale Reporting and Analytics

Monday, 22 May 2017 2:16:01 PM

As a market-leading point of sale software provider, we deliver on our promise of creating a huge number of business reports that transforms our users into wizards by giving them accurate, on-demand, and highly interactive information that they can act upon.

We offer 100s of pre-written reports and if that is not enough, we give you ad-hoc reporting too where you can write your own reports.

Go to the reporting section and you get this.

Click on an item here and even more will pop out

RRunning through these reports in no particular order, you can see crucial sales metrics such as:

Profit

The number of items sold.

Breakdown of sales
Employee performance
Departmental performance.
Price performance
Sales
Inventory
Payments
Register breakdowns
Gift card sales
Gift card usage
Total sales
Hourly sales
Total transactions
Average transaction amount
Order history
Payment summaries
etc
etc
etc

All these give you massive insights that help you to better understand your shop. You see stock is over/under performing, what is selling, who is buying what, when they are buying, how they are paying for it buying it and which employee is selling it to them.

This is how you can gain the detailed insights you need to make informed decisions about your shop.

Note unlike so many other pos software systems you do not need to buy extras to access this data. Want to compare systems, demand to see the reports, count them quickly, I have not seen a system with more reports then us, demand to see them run with full data not play data as unlike us, many do not use proper SQL so the run like a dog.

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Here are some tips for stocktaking

Sunday, 21 May 2017 4:54:00 PM

Several retail experts, I have spoken to recommend that a shop should count all stock four times a year, as well as doing monthly stock takes for various high-risk departments such as tobacco much more. Personally, I have never known a stocktake, not to find something of interest. It is the only way to determine much about your actual stock. However, whatever in theory it is coming to the end of the financial year, and all stock should be counted soon.

A typical client of ours, tend to take about four working days to count the stock, so its not a minor investment.

Here are some tips.

Prepare - Set an actual date for the stocktake take.

Estimate what you are going to do when. Try if possible to pick a quiet period to avoid distractions. You can either do a rolling stock take which allows it to be done in stages, which is what we suggest or do it all in one hit, which is what many of our clients prefer.

Make sure that on this day, your point-of-sale system is up to date with the stock receiving and sales.

Go over the shop and make some order so all the stock is tidy and together.

Make policy in advance

How you will handle damaged stock?

How you will count? For an English speaker, the convention is to go from top to bottom, left to right. Set the convention to be systematic. This avoids counting duplications.

Learn

You may have known how to do it last year but the odds are you need a refresher course. So do one or two small sections first as a test run to get a feel of what is involved before the big day? Learn the correct computer procedures, I do not suggest you try a learn when you have extra staff counting. It is going to cost you time and money while you get organised.

Stocktake day

Do a backup at the start just in case,

Make sure that you have enough staff when the stocktake is required.

Have a place markers for each staff member so it is clearly marked where they start and where they are up too.

Make sure that the supervisor of the area is available if required.

If possible count everything although be aware that sometimes you will need to estimate.

Do a backup at the end just in case, I have seen people enter everything in and someone not knowing exactly what to do has gone into some section and wrecked all the figures. The stocktake had to be redone.

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Speed extra tills and security

Saturday, 20 May 2017 5:27:26 PM

I am sure you will agree that having many tills on one computer does speed up customer processing, but it has other advantages too such as employee theft.

One point that really annoys me, mainly because I have a financial background is what I see in many point of sale software solutions that are poorly implemented and badly understood by the owner and operators who have received marginal training.

In such a situation an employee with knowledge of the system is sometimes able to bypass the internal checks with disarsterous results to the business. Say if two or three people are working one till and money has disappeared then no-one is responsible. If on the other hand everyone has their own till, then every till has someone responsible. This is another big advantage of having many tills on one computer because this is what you can do, give everyone their individual till.

As a retailer, dotting your I’s and crossing your T’s must be at the top of your priority list.

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