I strongly believe that every serious business and organisation today needs a web presence. The web has become the major means of communication between business and their clients.

One place you have to be in is Facebook as every day, 10 million Australians are active on Facebook. Many spend almost two hours a day on it.

And it is free.

If you are not there, I recommend you go to Facebook, see what a few similar businesses to yours are doing on Facebook now. Check the ones you like and take a few notes about what your business needs. Note the words you need to say.

Then take a good camera, someone associated with your shop must have such a camera or failing that use a top smartphone. Now give the shop a clean, tell everyone to get nicely dressed tomorrow and take heaps of digital photos of shop, you in the shop, the staff, the shop, the products and services. You will not be sorry if you take too many, only if you do not have enough. Now go through them and select the ten best.

Now find the pages of your suppliers, similar businesses, your own and some other pages that would interest your clients, check out what they do, the details required and note these down. Change it to what you need for your business.

With so many Australians already on Facebook, the odds are that someone associated with your business knows how to set up a Facebook page.

If you are stuck and are a client of ours, we offer a free service to help you.

Now go to Facebook and set up a page. In my experience, it takes people about an hour to set up. If you do not know what you are doing it’s a pretty full-on hour. If you make a big blunder, do not be worried as you can correct later.

Once this is done now push your page on your clients. Ask them to like your page. Put a sign up the front of the shop, “Like us on Facebook." Put a similar message on all your receipts and statements. Push the page to all your VIP members, your staff, etc.

Now every few days check out the pages you noted above. Share or cut and paste an interesting comment from one of these. Please if you do a cut and paste make sure you change it so it becomes an original piece. Furthermore, add every now and then something interesting from your store, for example, a new service you are offering, an award you won, a new stand, new items, etc. Doing this will probably take you about half an hour a week and while you are doing that you will, in addition, keep you abreast of current affairs in your marketplace.

As an added bonus, our clients can integrate this Facebook page in our point-of-sale system.

Now if you want something more like an integrated website available through our point-of-sale system, stay tuned as I will discuss how you can do this in my next article.

Tomorrow the Reserve Bank will rule what will happen about interchange fees.

Interchange fees are fees charged to the merchant for EFTpos by the payment network.

The trouble with these fees are two fold. The first one is by world standards these fees are fairly high. As the Australian economy is not that large in world terms and is relatively detached so there is no competition for EFTpos so meaning that its a monopoly and these fees must be paid as few retailers can realistically refuse to accept Eftpos in Australia. The second problem is that Australia it is dominated by a few huge retailers who do not pay these interchange fees, so giving them a significant marketing advantage over every other merchant.

There are three options the Reserve Bank can take.

1) They may decide to cap these fees which is what the European Union did for most cards.
2) Abolish them
3) Do nothing.

My preference would be (2) abolish them and make the banks charge the consumers directly. If you think about it, the consumer is paying these fees now, its just hidden. By doing it direct this would make it a level field for all business and organisations. It would also make these fees open and also competitive as the consumer would be able to shop between the banks for the best rates.

Whatever the Reserve Bank decision is, it will have a direct bearing on surcharges. If the Reserve Bank decides to abolish the interchange fees, there will be significant pressure to force retailers to get rid of surcharges that the consumers do not like.

The other issue is that is not going to be addressed tomorrow are many merchants are supplied under long-term contracts and discover soon they have with their EFTpos and credit facilities extra fees and conditions that were not expecting. Then they discover over time that their equipment is old technology. This is particularly a worry true as smartphones are now replacing credit cards, and many of the existing machines cannot handle smartphones credit card handling.

My advise to any retailer is not to sign any long-term contracts. It can be done. Our EFTpos and credit rates, I think are on a good rate, and we are not under contract.

Here is a report that can help you.

You will find it here marked in red.

Once there you can get a report

Its in excel format so you can edit as required.

For years, Microsoft Office has been the champ of office suites, and it still is. I like it very much. However, that doesn't mean there are not free alternative. It's just that Microsoft Office is so much better and practical and was integrated into many point-of-sale systems so many people paid the $300 to get it.

Well unlike many other point-of-sale systems, our users have a choice, to decide whether they use Microsoft Office or the free Openoffice.

The choice depends purely on what you prefer. If you are a big user of word processing and excel spreadsheets, used to the Microsoft product and require much, then I would recommend Microsoft Office, mainly as I think it is better. If alternately you only write a few letters, a year and need only simple to moderate complex spreadsheets, then openoffice in most retail environments is fine.

Both are extremely good and solid products with all the basic office suite functions required. Both will do everything that most people require.

Both are getting better all the time so you can grow with them.

My recommendation would be if you do not have an office suite and feel the need to be able to do some word processing and spreadsheets try openoffice as its free. Use it with our software. Learn how to use an office suite. Subsequently if you decide you do need something better or its not working for you then switch to Microsoft Office.

Remember with us, you have a choice.

With our point of sale you can do it!

Checkout the above for transactions of 7 seconds and 4 seconds.

As the readers here know we have been actively monitoring the sales of magazines for those of our clients who are on the ACCC magazine trials.

So far, its the same result that I reported earlier was that from our measurements, I can see NO increase in magazine sales because of the trials. If the magazine companies went into the trialsto show that they were some super marketers that could increase magazine sales, well I do not see it, and I am certain I would if it was significant.

However, a distressing trend is beginning to appear that the number of unsellable magazines seems to be increasing. What we think is happening is that those on the trial had their titles reviewed and many that were considered to being unsellable were cut. What this did is create a reduction in the amount of magazines being sent. This reduction seems to be slowly filled with other magazines that do not sell either. One shop reported to me that they sold two of a magazine a month, they have started to get 20. When they complained, they were told it was, so they could create a waterfall. Well, no one is going to create a magazine waterfall if the sales are 2 a month. That shelf space is going to be used for something that sells better.

I will report back further shortly. If you want to know more before that let me know..

It is down, the good news, if you can call it that is that the decline in print has slowed somewhat.

Looking of the figures, I just cannot figure out some of them the Saturday Age, for example, they are claiming 96,768 printed copies, 64,266 digital copies, which if you add them up equals 161,034 copies. However, the circulation is listed as 168,411 copies. That is a discrepancy of over 7,000 copies. The same problem, I had with the Sunday Herald Sun and the Sunday Age which are also about 7,000 copies short.

Still looking at what we have the figure for circulation, it is down about 7%. South Australia, Western Australia and the national titles are a bit better than the average, but they are all down which is what newsagents are reporting too.

Interestingly despite all the talk of digital replacing printed copies, print still makes up 78% of all circulation Digital only is 16%. Most of the digital circulation today is someone gets a printed copy, and the newspapers throw in a digital copy in the deal which cost them nothing and that digital copy probably goes to a son or daughter who lives elsewhere. So from what I can see it been 10 or 20 years since the Australian newspaper companies decided to focus on digital but its not really working for them as they are stuck on print.

Anyway, you can get the figures here, read some discussion most of which I do not agree with and make your own mind up.

Also if you want a copy of the spreadsheet that I used to analysis the figures, click here

A frequent means used to secure costly stock to put out a damaged demonstration stock, or a sampler or a replica on the counter with the box but keep the actual stock for sale in a secured location.

Typical stock would be items like mobile phones, jewellery, expensive pen, etc. Only if the customer is keen, do you bring out the actual item when it can be demonstrated with a trusted staff member in supervision. As such the odds of stock getting shoplifted is considerably lowered

This is how you mark that an item is to be treated like this.

Go to stock maintenance and then catalogue, you will see there are a list of these very specialised item categories.

Tick secure.

There are plenty of other options there and I do suggest that you run them too as they maybe useful as well.

Whenever a product is doing poorly many retailers because it is taking up valued space that can be used for better products sell it off cheaply with a major deduction However, rather than discount it completely to get rid of it, why not consider creating a cross sell by packaging it with another product to make a group? What you do is get something that sells well, make a group and sell it off a smaller discount.

What everyone states that utilizes our software is how few key strokes a person requires to use our system. It's made for speed.

One big way to improve speed is to scan rather than punch department and product key strokes.

So what we suggest you check your scan rates to see which departments you are having trouble with scanning. This is really very simple and quick to do.

Go in cash register reports

Select in sales

Dissection Sales /Profitability for a given period

Now place here say the past three months and run the report.

Out will pop a scanning analysis.

Note the column highlighted, which you can now investigate.

PS A useful concept is to check on the following three months by using the comparable dates from a year ago. That will give you an idea of what you can expect within the next three months.

If you want to know which customers are set to get a late-payment fee? Check to make sure that the right people are being charged.

If so, please try this report.

1. From the Main Menu, go to Customers and then Customer Reports.
2. Double-click on the Customer Accounts options to expand the report.
3. Click on the Accounts Options report and then click the Go to Criteria Report.
4. Select any options on this screen and then click the Show report.
5. The customers set to receive a late-payment fee will have. Yes in the LateFee column.

There is also a lot more information there too.

The BrownTrout catalogue file is now available for download

For this and other supplier files please visit here

In your loyalty system, you collect emails and SMS details. Here is a tip how to use it.

Check the life cycle of the items purchased by your clients. You should get a fairly good idea of the average lifetime. If in doubt, you can always ask your clients during the sale process "How long do you reckon that will keep you going?" Now set the VIP system so it automatically send an email to your client prompting them that now the item they purchased needs replacement and you have it.

A related idea that works well is if the items they purchased has been upgraded or a newer addon coming out, send emails to these shoppers to remind them that they did purchase the item and a new model and/or addon is available now in your store.

You are going to find that many of your clients, if they do not buy from you in a certain time period can be lost forever, deliver them a individualised e-mail before that time period may induce a purchase.

This idea works with a wide diversity of products in almost any business.

Here is another tip to save you money while running your point-of-sale system.

As ink accounts for about 60% of the cost of printing, what you can do is by adjusting the font you can actually save a significant amount.

For example, if you look through this list of fonts. you can see that there would be significant difference in the amount of ink being consumed.

For statements, I would advocate you look at Century Gothic and Times New Roman fonts, which are among the most cost effective fonts. Although slightly dearer Calibri, is almost as good but has the advantage that many feel it looks better and is more professional. Microsoft for example uses Calibri because they feel that "The more pleasing a font looks at the screen, the less tempted someone will be to print it. This will save both ink and paper."

Additionally, test your printer on 'draft' and 'fast normal' that will save even more ink.

Our office will be open for the Melbourne Cup day tomorrow for your support calls.

Good luck and happy punting.

PS We wish all of our amazing clients a very happy Melbourne Cup day.

In retail management when it comes to stock, the more money tied up in stock means less money available for other purposes and/or more bank interest.
However, what it is, is a part of a much bigger problem the carrying cost. These would include beside the interest an almost an endless list of items such as rental on more retail and storage space, more insurance, more handling costs, more accounting, more shoplifting (shoplifting is now Australia's biggest crime estimated at over two billion dollars a year) and obsolescence costs. As a general rule, the carry cost is said to be about 20%. That is an average figure many items are higher.
So a business with a $100,000 of excess stock, has an extra cost of about $20,000 a year and unless this problem is addressed this cost will continue forever and ultimately affect the value of the business.

Our point of sale runs a perpetual inventory so it has the tools to address this problem. It also runs a comparision to the focus, an advanced statistical measure of what your ideal stock level of an item should be.

To make it work, you need to do a stocktake. To help you, we have updated the help documents in our point of sale's help files so press F1 while in the register and check them out.

There are four documents:

Stocktake = Standard stock take doc using Posbrowser on its own to run the stock take.
Stocktake with a PTD = Stocktaking with the help of a PDT
Stock take with the stock management system = Stocktaking using the mobile PDA browser program.

And if you are coming from another software to our software

3rd Party Stocktake guide = A guide on how to upload stocktake data to and from another program.

A reduction of 30% of the overstock figure will on a $100,000 save you a carry cost of $6,000 every year.

The latest copy of Artwrap catalogue file, is now available for download.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

Currently, we have 16 million smartphones in Australia, about 25% use them to make retail purchases. When asked 61% stated that they would use a mobile to make payments. So I am sure that lots of people will soon be dumping the credit card and replacing it with the mobile. No card and no PIN to remember as it uses face recognition. There is also no need to pick up the receipt either as it is in the mobile.

It is available now in our software.

Many readers will be struck by how similar the new Woolworths reward program is to our standard loyalty program. It's no accident. What happened was that just before we designed the program, we went to a conference that primarily dealt with loyalty programs. As we listened to what these experts from some of the largest convenience stores in Europe and Australia, such as 7-11, Telstra and Optus, said, we took notes and later used their ideas to make our adaptation. Presumably, Woolworths listened to the same experts.

You can see how it works here, and it's exactly the same as ours.

You must have a card, and to get it, you must supply Woolworths with your personal details. This is because the value of the customer monitoring, email addresses, and information is considered to be worth 1%, and Woolworths is not giving that 1% up.

Then, when you purchase selected products, such as items marked with an orange ticket, your account collects Woolworth's dollars (points) on your card.

When your account reaches $10 in Woolworths dollars (points), you get $10 off your NEXT eligible purchase. Unlike some rewards programs, part payments are not accepted.

If you do the figures, it works out to for every $800 of purchases, their customer will get back about $10, or 1.25%, assuming they redeem it. In practice, many do not redeem it so reducing the cost somewhat.

The payout figure is not surprising, as 1% cost, as I stated, is about what most loyalty programs work on. Note that the Woolworths rewards program is not going; I am sure it will cost Woolworths 1%, as I can guess who will be forced to pay for it!

Here are some links with more information.
 

http://mumbrella.com.au/woolworths-faces-protracted-battle-to-maintain-…

http://mumbrella.com.au/woolworths-axe-qantas-frequent-flyer-points-rew…

The system is tested and proven and is available to all our clients in our software.

This is just a quick post just because I think it's an article that many of our readers will find interesting.

Everyone is going for speed but is it right, at the counter yes, but not anywhere else.

Here is a statistic, people that sit "down in an Origins store, you’ll probably spend about 40% more than you would stand up." I believe it when grandfather in his shop put a chair out near the magazines so older people could sit while looking through the magazines. We sold more magazines as the longer people search, the more they find. The other issue is that if you have a shop full of people, many will come into the shop just because there were people there.