As long as I am on holidays, out of the action, I thought I would write a business tip that I think many of my readers might find useful.

A birthday is a significant occasion. How long your store has been in business is a measure of success. It shows stability. For many, it can add to your trust. Many of you would have purchased businesses from other people, or if you are like me; you have been in business for many years, me over 30 years, why not advertise it?

I felt good when I slapped on Facebook, hey, I have been in business 30 years. It's a great accomplishment.

Why not many of you too? My store is 20, 50, 100 years old, and we are still .... Write something of Mr and Mrs So and So who first came from blaa blaa etc. I am sure if you can contact Mr and Mrs So and So they have some interesting stories you could use.

Once you find out when the business was established, you can make an event of serving the community for XX years. If you can find old photos, notes, memoribila (what good is the old stuff in the store room anyway) and accomplishments even better.

It costs little and can boost everyone sense of pride being associated with your store with this milestone.

Taking a few days off for the school holidays to Far North Queensland, trying to escape the latest Melbourne cold weather.

As expected by readers here, the ACCC has ruled that the trials are to proceed as the magazine distributors (MPA) requested. Click here for the ruling.

Here are some facts about the TLC rewards program that we wrote and implemented. We think it's been an outstanding success much better than the discount voucher which really does not compare as you will see.

Currently, it has signed over 300,000 members, so showing that a rewards program can work in our market space.

The average TLC Rewards member basket size is $27.00 compared to the average basket size of all TLC cust­omers of $17.12 compared to the Pre TLC Rewards program (2011) where the average basket size was $12.68

Percentage of all sales by department by rewards customers

Ink: 50% of all sales are sold to TLC Rewards customers.
Stationery: 19% of all sales are sold to TLC Rewards customers.
Cards & wrap: 20% of all sales are sold to TLC Rewards customers.
Magazines: 32% of all sales are sold to TLC Rewards customers.
Lottery: 33% of all sales are sold to TLC Rewards customers.

The average customer age has been reduced from 58 years to 52 years.

Much of the cost of this program is being funded not by the shop keeper but by suppliers.

Here are some reasons why using a computerised ordering system for stock control is better.

Improved control of stock
With our order management system, you get a centralised spot where you can examine all orders both current and historical. You can see when the order was received from your client, when the supplier order was placed, when the order was received by you and when the order was dispatched to your client all in real-time.

You can also check your coming expenditure, make sure that they meet your budget.

Since the process is automatic, you know the documents were filled out properly.

Better customer service as you have real-time information.
It is easy to email your customer, this information. Much of it can be set up to automatically be emailed or SMS your customer so too leading to customer service and an enhanced overall experience for both, you and your clients. Today this is not an optional extra as modern customers now get from most retailers and expect this service.

Bulk ordering
Bulk ordering can lead to considerable labour and as many individual orders can be consolidated into several larger ones with little if any affect on delivery times.

The comparison of where your customers go in your shop and where they buy can be a very useful procedure can be a very useful exercise in a shop. Ideally the two should be in alignment. In practice they rarely are not. Making sure it is, is a very important excercise.

The first step is to make a planogram of your shop.

Here, for example, is a blank planogram of a small shop, I quickly made. You do not of course need a computer; you could just use a blank sheet of paper and a ruler and pen to put one together for this exercise. If you are doing it by hand you will need four marking pens - Red, Yellow, Green and Blue.

Now the next step is to make two copies of this blank planogram.

Now in your software, please do a top stoock report here for the top 200 selling items in your shop for the past year.

You will find it here marked with a red arrow.

You do not need to print it, only call it up on screen.

Now on the planagram:

• Where the items are on the first page mark their approximate location with the Red marker.
• Items on page 2 should be marked in Yellow.
• Items on page 3, should be marked in Green
• Items on page 4, are marked with a Blue pen.

For the first attempt, I do not recommend if an area has two or more colours to put in all of them, we will discuss this situation in another article.

So you will get something that looks something like this.

By the way, the situation on the top let with the green is quite normal, people need a few seconds to adjust when they come into a shop, so these spots are often not as good as many imagine.

Now the next step is to take the second blank planagram and mark on it how people go and stay around your shop.

A similar convention is used for this.

• Red is where they go a lot.
• Yellow above average
• Green is average.
• Blue is below average.
• White you just leave, as it is where people rarely go.

Now what you do is compare these two planagrams. Immediately you can see that something is attracting the buyers in the back of the shop. Not a lot of people going there but those that come buy plus it also is producing extra sales nearby. Conversely there is a real problem in items next to the front counter at the front (Bottom left). Plenty of people there but little is being sold. My first reaction would be to stand there and look what does the customer sees. Something is wrong.

This sort of analysis compares the beginning of your sales cycle of where people are to what they end our buying helps you to refine your product offerings.

This is of course a initial analysis, if there is much interest I will show how to add to this anaylsis.

At the end of the financial year, you need to consider the following steps.

• Contact your accountant and get a list of documents that they require.
• Review your bad debts and credit the accounts that you deem to be bad debts to zero. Otherwise, you may find yourself having to pay income tax and GST on these debts.
• Prepare a creditors listing. Again crediting out what is not going to be paid.
• Review your stock. Consider writing off old stock. As a rule of thumb its better to sell it then count it.
• Prepare and do a stock take.
• Take an end of year backup of your information and file it away somewhere. Remember you will need to keep this for seven years at least after you lodge your return. Please do not use any EL Cheapo USB sticks

Let's say you print out an enquiry (report) for example, of what is currently selling in the shop. So you select today and run it. Now while you are looking at it, the sales figures are changing. People are buying all the time as such what you have on the screen is no longer the latest figures. This is what *refresh* fixes.

Now where you see the red arrow pointing, is the refresh button, if you press this button, the report will rerun and the latest figures will be added to the report. (Click on the screen for greater detail)

That way, you will always have the latest figures on your screen.

The latest copy of Andrews McMeel Publishing special product files, are now available for download.

• 2016 Calendars
• Paperblanks 2016 Diaries
• Paperblanks journals.

For these and other supplier files please click here

30% of Hubbed has just been sold to Singapore Post for $4.3 million dollars.

Singapore Post is one of the largest in world and is well placed in Australia to expand. Among other things in Australia, it owns Courier Please, which is Australia’s leading metropolitan express parcel delivery service with nationwide operations in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Toowoomba, Sydney, Canberra, Central Coast/Newcastle, Melbourne, Bendigo, Ballarat, Geelong. Carrum Downs, and Adelaide.

This I am sure will mean quite a lot to the 680 newsagents who by way of Hubbed provides a parcel delivery service in every major city across Australia. Included in this announcement is an expansion in Hubbed e-commerce delivery service to Australian customers using Singapore Post plus a new product for parcel drop-offs and sale of delivery products. It will also mean an expansion of Hubbed's customer base as Singapore Post huge customer base will be entering the Hubbed network.
 

For those that were worried, the $20,000 tax write-off would not get through the Senate; the good news is that the Senate approved today the tax cut for small business companies and the small business instant asset write-off.

So if you are seriously planning to upgrade your computer system soon, it would be a serious loss not to take advantage of this year instant asset write-off. As I stated it’s a great opportunity to spend on something that will help you work smarter and more efficiently, improve your shop and allow you to offer better customer service. We are currently sending out some good offers for our clients.

I would suggest that you speak to your accountant about it ASAP.

The latest communication by the MPA is a real beaut. You will find it here.

It is a two-pronged attack, firstly, which should be seen as an introduction is against Mr. Fletcher from newsXpress. This is I think the result of the fight we have seen by the ANF and him back and forward, in front of the ACCC. In my view, this fight is not helping the people that both want to help. In a tribunal or court in front of judges, clearly too many are being caught up in the glory of the moment and losing sight of the goal. In front of the ACCC is not the place to attack your representative. At present, ACCC feels that the ANF represents newsagents. You want a representative who argues what you want, you do this outside the tribunal. All this conflict is doing is proving to the tribunal that one side is unclear of what it wants, it is in conflict and that certainly weakens that side. This must stop.

This moves to the second point of the MPA's letter which appears to me to being the main crux of their letter (certainly by space and word count) . It's basically an attack on us on the issue of the lack of transparency of the pilot trial. I was upset that the MPA did not even give us advanced warning that they were going to argue this.

The ACCC in the conference, agreed with me that the trials need to be transparent. Then not even the MPA disagreed with that. In fact, the ACCC has asked several times before and after the conference that these trials need to be transparent. Despite this, the MPA states it "does not intend to make public all raw data obtained from the Pilot at the conclusion of the Pilot."

The big issue with their current proposal that the data that is released will most likely be de-identified possibly even more would be affected.

Absurd! The position of the shop is vital, to the pilot for the public (magazine sellers) not just for the ACCC to assess the success of the pilot. I know a shop in a shopping centre that is pushing tattoo magazines. It is working as they are selling heaps and heaps more tattoo magazines. What does this mean to magazine sellers? Does that mean magazine sellers should push tattoo magazines much more than they do now? In reality, it means nothing to most magazine sellers as the shop is right next to a naval base filled with people that have many more tattoos then the Australian average. In fact, in many areas a magazine seller may actually offend people who do not like tattoos, if they attempted to copy this tattoo sale trying to chase sales of tattoo magazines that are not there for them. This shows the danger of a shop being de-identified.

There is a great danger of having a shop de-identified. If you go into such a trial, I would argue that you must be identified because only then can the relevance of the data be assessed by the public.

Then next point is what misuse of the raw data cannot anyone do if the raw data is released? Why argue that third parties (us???) have an agenda, I would argue that everyone has an agenda! I do not pretend otherwise. What is the agenda of the magazine distributors? Do we have to hear possibly only their agenda in the analysis? Is there is something wrong with having several people with different agendas, presenting their results to enable the public to help them make an informed decision?

I have no problem with the company selected by the magazine distributors to do the analytics Boston Analytics. Although I will say going through their website, I find nothing about magazines and newsagents or newsagencies and very little about Australia and/or retail.

Also why should the MPA ask that this discussion on transparency be delayed? What is the point of the delay? The ACCC has already stated that it should be transparent and there is no reason to believe that they would change their mind. I would argue if it's not transparent, it is not what the ACCC requested.

Finally, I do not see why the MPA should drop the pilot program if the pilot is made transparent. In the absence of a good explanation, many will see the reasons for this drop as something else like the claim that they are not getting what they wanted "no early returns"

We are the only point of sale provider at the Nextra Conference.

What we have found is that there is much interest in the Nextra Rewards programme which is rapidly growing. There are a growing number of retailers supporting such loyalty programs, which has grown tremendously this year, although some programs are setting the bar higher for the rest. Clearly, Nextra through its innovation, generosity, and overall effectiveness is driving customer loyalty as the figures that they are getting their reward's members to spend significantly more then non-reward members in their shops. That the gross profit is up for those Nextra retailers compared to those Nextra retailers not in the program.

So we put together a poster to show how Nextra are winning in the customer loyalty game.

Apparently, many people are experiencing a lot of problems with the current lot of Microsoft's updates. It is not effecting our clients as much as others, why I am not sure.

However, looking through the Microsoft Community forums here it confirms that there is widespread problems, but we cannot find an answer exactly, what is causing these issues and why compared to others we are so much less affected? Clearly, it is a more serious problem than Microsoft can handle on such a short notice.

This download is now in standard format and available for you.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

It is now the time of year when many people start reviewing their unpaid debts, so they can claim a tax deduction for them.

You can write off a bad debt and claim back GST credits, if the amount has been outstanding over 12 months, or you have evidence that it is a bad debt, e.g. the debtor is bankrupt. However, a written record must be kept.

If you do this, I suggest that you make a dissection called bad debt and issue a credit note to the debitor for the debt. This will adjust the GST, sales ledges and keep a note in the system.

There is much that has been said about these magazine trials by its critics. Much of it in my view is nonsense. For example, it is certainly not true that all newsagents at the ACCC meeting that spoke criticised the ANF handling of the issue. All were upset about the current distribution model and if one looks at the figure below, it's quite clear why they were upset.

Another point, although not brought up at the meeting is that despite all the problems with the magazine distribution, the current system is legal. Furthermore, I am not so sure to the ACCC view that it's a bad model. What it does is guarantee a much greater range of magazines being distributed to the public then other model that these critics were proposing. Finally, everyone who has signed up for the trials is a volunteer. No-one is forcing them in it. I do not see how anyone should try to stop these trials from proceeding. Let us, firstly, hear what they come up with before criticising.

My complaint was that because all the raw figures are not being released, it's impossible for anyone else to confirm or deny the success of these trials. I believe without data all you have is opinions. I am certainly disappointed with the outcome, as the ACCC did state several times that these trials should be open, and yet I do not think they are.

Okay having said that the MPA is starting to send information to those on the trials. Many of these are our clients, and they are sending us the data as the first step is to match up their systems to the magazine distributors.

What I find interesting is that these figures are from the magazine companies, so there is no argument here that there is something wrong with our figures as these are their figures.

Here is a graph over a 12-month period of the magazines titles delivered to one newsagency. The list is not perfect. I quickly calculate about 3.7% internal errors but to be fair for this sort of work this is quite acceptable.

It is the sell thru rate by the 2800 titles.

As you can see marked with a purple arrow, there are many titles with zero or almost no sales. Much of this is caused by the lack of space for the newsagent to display these magazines. They just cannot display all the titles they get so they have to make a choice on what to display. This is not a small group as it makes up about 34.7% of all magazine titles. Almost 50% of all titles sell thru rate are less than 20%, 75% have sell thru rates less then 40%.

The average sell thru rate is 45.47%.

On the other side of undersupply where the arrow is marked in red, we have about 1.78% that not enough stock is given.

This is not a good score.

Interestingly both G&G; and Network figures are almost identical. G&G; sell thru rate is 45.37% while Network is 45.47%. So they are probably just about as good as each other although as G&G; magazines are a bit dearer, it does mean that G&G; is slightly more profitable.

The complaints that many of the magazines sent to a shop are too expensive to sell in them seems to have only some justification, the average cost of a magazine coming in is $5.79 while the average cost of those that sell is $5.39, not that much difference.

The trial should produce an instant cut of 41% of magazine titles which is making those involved so far very happy.

Let us see what happens, and I will report back as the trials continue.

Fingerprint scanners

The best security now for your point-of-sale system is fingerprints. I do admit that they do take some getting used to, you need to learn how to put your press your finger into the device but after a short time, you will find them a delight to use.

Here are three advantages of fingerprint scanners are.

1) It is the only identification system widely in use in retail that can verify with near certainty the identity of an individual. Security on passwords is always dubious. People you work with may know your passwords, but they certainly do not have your fingerprints. Unlike ID cards and passwords, people cannot steal them to gain access to places where they should not go.

2) It is faster, much faster than entering in passwords. We also tested it against swiped employee cards and found that it's about 1.4 seconds fasted then swiped cards.

3) Saves money and time as you no longer have to issue ID cards, which often tend to get forgotten, lost or stolen. In fact, you can stop producing such ID cards.

If you are seriously planning to upgrade your computer system soon, it would be a serious loss not to take advantage of this year, immediate $20,000 tax write-off if your business turnover is less, then $2 million dollars. If so you are running out of time, for this year's deduction. I would suggest that if you are in a position to take advantage of this concession, you should do so. Note you can always get another $20,000 next year, and then it ends.

It’s a great opportunity to spend on something that will help you work smarter and more efficiently, improve your shop and allow you to offer better customer service. We are currently sending out some good offers for our clients.

I would suggest that you speak to your accountant about it ASAP.
 

We were informed a few days ago that Tyro EFTPOS is now sub 3 which means that its transactions will now process in less than 3 secs via tap & go terminal like this one.

The account is risk-free now as it comes with no lock-in contract, no cancel/break fees, no admin fees, no setup fees, no charge back fees and does not require a phone line.

If you want to learn more, please click here