One successful and popular method of improving a business is called kaizen. It originated in Japan, and the word translates to mean change (kai) for good (zen). It works by using an approach of continuous, incremental improvement. 

The idea of kaizen is that you work on making small improvements. Every day you fine-tune your processes and practice. What you are working for is continuous improvement and that over time, all of these incremental changes will add up, and make a significant positive impact on your business.

Now people often tell me that for some reason their retail shop cannot do what someone else in a similar retail shop is doing. For some reason, they are different. Okay, what about doing what you have done in the past with just a little better. That person you were had with similar resources to you now, a similar shop and customers? Ask yourself, what did your past self do better? What about competing with that person? Interested, if so, you are looking at kaizen.

What you do is use your historical reports in stock, sales trends, promotions and customer sales and now compare it to what you are doing now?

It is easy to do look at the calendar last year and find a date comparable to yesterday and now check your performance compared to their performance.

Now look at their tomorrow and see what they did then and how your shop looks for your tomorrow? It will be a massive benefit to you to try to predict what items will sell well and which probably won’t. What you are trying to do is your stock, get your prices right and guide your promotions (Father's Day coming). This can add up to running a profitable and successful small business.

Here is a start

Go to Register reports

Now select "Top N Stock Sales for a Given Period"

Now the following popped up.

Put in *their* tomorrow

A report for the top sellers for today comes up.

Now, these need to be checked that you have enough stock because that is what they sold, why not you.

Also while you are at it, one point that comes up a lot in retail is a top seller today will be a good seller tomorrow. Technically its called decay. Typically in retail, what you expect to see is that an item that sells 50 today will sell about 66% of 50 or about 30 tomorrow and day after that 66% of 30 and so on. What you need to do is identify today what is selling well to check you have adequate stock for tomorrow.

Gives there two tips a shot, I am sure you will pick up some business.

A person rings us and asks for support. We do not know him although we know the shop. He then asks us for information on how to get a customer listing. Okay, do you see the problem we have?

Here are several more reasons

- We have a policy of free training for new owners, not letting us know means the new owners miss out of a service they could use. 

- The new owner does not own the point of sale licence until we are notified. As such, the former owner of the shop may be responsible for the cost of services that the new owner has incurred.

I am sure you can add a few more.

So there are many sound reasons for making sure that we are notified on a change of business ownership, preferably before the actual transfer takes place. 

All it takes is a few minutes to let us know, then allow us a few days for your request to be completed.

If a valid email address is on the form, both the Releasor and Acceptor will receive an email confirmation once the change of ownership has been completed from us.
 

I was invited today to go to the AI FOR BUSINESS SUMMIT  

We have been into AI for many years.

A while ago, I worked out that almost half the out of stock problem in a typical client of ours can be avoided by the use of our AI ordering system in your POS Software.

This can avoid much of the harmful problem in a business such as people coming and walking out because you do not have the product they wanted. What is even worse is if they get frustrated with you not having the stock they want and going elsewhere.

It does not look good either. What do you think of this shop shelf?

What does it say about the business to its clients?

The problem is that 

To be successful today, it is essential that retailers keep in tune with their shop's unique preferences and behaviour. However, there are too many stock items and marketing seasons to do it accurately manually. The best way to do it is with AI. These tools are generally too expensive for small to medium-size retailers unless they have our point-of-sale system because we have embedded it into our software and give it out included in. Others I notice charge for AI or do not have it.

I think it's great system (maybe because I designed it), but I assure you we made it so that it is both simple and reasonably intuitive to use. It does not require much training either to handle. It is less work than manual stock ordering.

An example

Let say you have a basket for tape. You cannot order limitless quantities of tapes.

This is how the tape is set up

Now what happens is the computer tracks the stock on hand, estimates the stock level required for these goods in the period, if it thinks that the stock on hand is too low it can send an order to a supplier with the speed and accuracy that no-one can match.

It is easy to set up, and use for details click here.

With our AI software, you can control your stock with relative ease.

A few days ago EFTPOS went down, almost every point of sale software support bay like ours was hit by our clients ringing up asking what is happening. Yesterday Westpac went down in many places because every other EFTPOS provider was working we go even more calls what is happening. Unfortunately, there is little we can do once the EFTPOS goes down.

The reality is that a retailer cannot assume that their EFTPOS will suffer an outage every so often.

Note in England; they have a pretty good fix that seems to work well to stop these outages, they fine banks for outages.

What can be done when it is happening?

What I do suggest you do first is check whether it is your POS system or whether its a bank problem. Some banks, e.g. tyro have a status page here that tell you whether it is their bank's error. Also if you want you can subscribe so at least you will get a warning if a tyro scheduled maintenance is coming up.

Now also test, whether a payment can be accepted by another channel e.g. sometimes people's credit accounts, do not work but their debit accounts do work.  

What can be done before it happens?

You may be able to do something before it goes down so contact your EFTPOS provider and check with them if something can be done.

For example, many EFTPOS providers can supply you with a unit that has an Electronic Fall Back (EFB) mode. If so, this will allow you with some limitation and conditions to continue to process EFTPOS even when their network is unavailable.

Some EFTPOS units do allow a backup internet so you can switch either to a 3G mobile network as a back-up and/or can use WIFI. So if your internet goes down, the unit can switch to another internet provider. Just make sure it switches back with the outage is over.

Note WIFI is not generally considered secure so you may want to discuss this option with the bank in detail.

Hope this helps.

Cause Marketing is simple to set up with our point of sale system and something you might want to try. What you are trying to do is leverage a charity to help your business. I do suggest though if you are trying to do something like this that you do mean it, people are not fools. If they talk to you, it will not take long for them to see through you if it is false. Besides, it will mean something more to you if it is real. 

I would suggest that the best and easiest way to do this is to piggyback on a charity collection day. This has the additional advantage in that it is temporary on a set day only as this makes going to take several shots to get it bedded down in your shop and the last thing you want in your shop is a long time commitment just yet. 

Now pick a charity local has the advantage of bringing in, locals, if you think of yourself as a local, it is a big plus. On the other hand, a large national charity would probably supply you with better signage and mainstream advertising.

Make sure what you pick is a remarkably uncontroversial choice, eg heart, cancer or children suicide, etc. Try and selection one applicable to your business or person if possible. For example, we had a terrible night when my wife, who is a teacher got an email about 11 pm from one of her students that he was going to commit suicide. It took a dozen telephone calls to the police and the school and many hours till the student was tracked down and questioned by the police. After that, I assure you, I meant it when I said it was an issue that needed to be addressed by the community. 

Here is an example that might surprise you how many people can be turned off by a charity, for example, this was a result of a study done by the research firm Roy Morgan on people views on the environment.

Now if in your shop you pushed the environment issue, you would have about 62% in favour and about 25% of the population in Australia in 2016 against you.  I am sure the figure today would be more negative.  Plus about 68% would think your product is overpriced. These are not good figures to cause marketing. I do believe that business is not an appropriate forum to push politics.

Now the next point you need to decide is how you are going to do it. 

What I suggest and what works out well in practice is you offer to give an amount for a purchase of a product, eg $1 goes to charity for every purchase of this soap. A bonus here is if people do not like the charity they could buy a different soap in your shop and not have any issues. Some people put a cap on the total amount say only on the first 300 sales this money gets paid, but I would suggest not doing this. 

Here are some more advantages

• Most consumers have a more positive image of a company then supports a charity
• Studies show that people tend to go ahead more with the proposed purchase by as much as a third if a charity they approve of is involved that is partly why companies like Amazon do it
• Customers faced by two alternatives which one has a charity they agree will pick the company or product that supports their charity. Studies have shown up to 26% more purchases.
•  It helps people to become more aware of your shop and build a good image in the community.
• A bonus with cause marketing is that you can advertise before and the event how it went by showing your certificate etc.
• These donations are tax deductible 

Try it and see what happens.

If you want to read more about it, click a case study here.

This is the last workday so as busy for us business owners now it normally is at the best of times to stay on top of things, we all have now the last minute stress of making things happen.

From a computer point of view, make sure that you prepare to make an end of year backup and a spot to put it so it can be safe for at least the next five years. 

Now I will leave you while you make sure you have your payroll reconciled, superannuation payments prepared, stock count and all your accounts are up to date.

As the end of the financial year approaches, many of you, as are most people now, considering their plans for any last minute changes this year and what they are going to do next year. 

There are several considerations that you should be aware of approaching 30 June date.

Currently, the new EFTPOS rates are starting to roll up, and they all seem to be up.  If you intend to stick with your present provider, I suggest you find out now what the new rates will be. If you want a comparison, Assembly thought Westpac (which if you are with Westpac is an extremely inviting option) and Tyro EFTPOS both of which we interface into now have good deals. These rates, I think they are going to look in retrospect a lot better when you are in 2019/20. If you want to know more, let us know ASAP as we are looking at ten days left.

Also, the government accelerated investment allowance for 2018/9 ends then too if you are looking at upgrading your computer and/or software requirements well again it is only ten days left.

PS If you are starting to budget for the next year, check out your new insurance rates, I got a shock when ours came in. 

This function in your point of sale is convenient and can save you a lot of time, so it is worth studying. What is most commonly used by our clients is to manage their business supply relationships.

Go into creditors and select the Creditor contacts.

Now call up a creditor and enter in your contacts for that organisation here. Often we have heaps.

Select one and add a few contacts to this supplier, you can enter as many as you like.

Now the immediate advantage that you have is that it is a very handy spot to find the contacts details where ever you are. Just go to the computer and call them up.

But there is much more. Notice the three tabs on the top.

If you click the Office links, you will find there some standard communication methods, eg faxes, email etc.  

Select one, and you will find that your proposed communication is half written.  This can save a lot of time.

Now if you want more communication letters or emails, you can create them in the Templates, and you have a lot of flexibility as you have pages of document codes below

so you can create detailed and personalised notes to these contacts.

Try it, and it will save you a lot of time.

The End of the financial year is an essential time for businesses. We all need to complete the bookkeeping for our tax returns and plan for the new fiscal year. Putting the hard work now can help you get your business organised and prepare for the year ahead.

As a minimum, I would suggest you need to get the following in order 

Sales reports
Stock Valuation
Customers Outstanding
Subagents Outstanding (if applicable)

Creditors Outstanding (if you do it from the point of sale software)

You need to go over these now as you need to see what can be written off in the debts and stock if you wish to claim a tax deduction for this year.  Otherwise what will happen is these losses may end out in next year's financials.

 Click here for a webinar on End of Financial year reporting from your point of sale software. It discusses in detail these reports

Although not required from our software, I do recommend that you do make a special End of Year Backup to store in case you need to refer to it. The 30/June this year is a Sunday. You may also want to check out the ATO Record keeping evaluation tool

Also, note that your stocktake needs to be done very soon, which we will have a webinar on very soon.

It is now time to start planning for the stocktake. 

For most of you, it is an ATO requirement for most organisations, as it states here {ATO link removed}

"If your business buys or sells stock, you usually need to do a stocktake to value your stock at the end of each income year if:

• your business turnover is $10 million or more
• your business turnover is less than $10 million and the difference between your stock level at the beginning and end of the year is more than $5,000 (you can make a reasonable estimate to determine this)."

Plus doing a stocktake has several commercial advantages.

Now here are some tips to help you plan the stocktake.

) Try and reduce the count. Why have the added cost of counting? Can you get rid of stock?  For example, return as much of your inventory that is unsellable to your suppliers if you can, then you do not need to count it on the stocktake. 

Make an EOFY sale. Everyone else does why not you? 

) Make sure that your point-of-sale software is up to date with the stock listing, the last thing you want to do during the stocktake is entering in products.

) Plan an actual date for the stocktake. Some of my clients do a significant part of their stocktake outside, so you may need to look at the weather. Plus you may want to break it up in stages to reduce on any one day the workload.

) Make logical divisions for each section of the shop. This is particularly true if you have specialised stock that requires expertise to count. 

Now go over the shop and make some order, so all the stock is tidy and in place.  

) Make a policy on how you will be handling damaged stock? You will almost certainly find it on stocktake day, what are you going to do with it then? 

) Make a convention which should be followed religiously on how the count will be done, e.g. commonly it is top to bottom and left to right. Now make sure everyone supports this order. Interesting, a study has shown that counting from right to left is more accurate than counting from left to right but slower. 

) Lean the stocktake procedures in advance, even if you have done it a few times, the odds are you need a refresher course. Do a test run to get a feel of what is involved before the day? If you do not then on the day, you could have extra staff all waiting while you work it out. We will be releasing webinars on this very soon.

To help you we have updated the help documents in posBrowser's help files so press F1 while in the register and check them out.

There are four documents there; I suggest you look at:

Stocktake = Standard stock take doc using Posbrowser on its own to run the stocktake.

Stocktake with a PTD = Stocktaking with the help of a PDT

Stocktake with the stock management system = Stocktaking using the mobile PDA browser program.

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

 

Imagine that someone now wants some goods that you supply, eg say flowers, what most people do now in a strange area is pull out their phone and do a Google search for “flowers near me" and then look at the map to review what is close to them. Now they might be less then a block away from you, but if it is not on the map, the odds are they will be directed to someone else, a competitor, just down the road. This is the reality of today's retail world that today large numbers of your potential customers are using Google to find businesses like yours, and if you want to reach them, you need to be on Google Maps.

It is not hard to get yourself on Google, although it can be frustrating if something goes wrong as I know from personal experience.

Here is a step by step listing of how to put your business on Google Maps.

Also if you are already listed on Google Maps, I would suggest that you check that your product and services are listed in Google Maps, for example, a florist in the above example might also sell chocolates if so they should register themselves as selling chocolates in Google Maps too?

The end of the financial year is just coming. We know that this will be for all of us is a very busy time.

Here are some steps from your point of sale software required.

Contact your accountant and get a list of documents that they require. Although our software does not require any additional handling for the end of the financial year, I would suggest as a minimum you need to prepare the following documents

Sales reports
Stock Valuation
Customers Outstanding
Creditors Outstanding
Subagents Outstanding

To do this I would suggest that 

1. 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.
2. Looking at the creditors listing, crediting out what is not going to be paid.
3. Review your stock. Consider writing off old stock.
4. 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

To help you we are doing some webinars on these subjects

1. Stocktake 
2. Sales reports 
3. Stock Valuation 
4. Customers Outstanding 
5. Creditors Outstanding 
6. Subagents Outstanding

This is the image many people have of how people are stealing money out of their point of sale software. There is much truth to this but as an example a few days ago showed with one of my clients the main problem is that it is not high tech people the big problem but that people are not taking security seriously enough.

We are sure that someone that worked in the shop and had access to a generally locked cabinet full of smokes took quite a bit of stock over some time and then tried to cover it up by changing the stock figures in the computer. What they did was take one or a couple of cartoons each time, and it quickly adds up.

When we asked our client who knew the passwords in the POS system that allow the stock levels to be changed, we discovered that at least ten people did or could have known them.  When we asked them who had or could have had the key to the cabinet again, we discovered that most of these people could have.

Okay not taking passwords seriously in the computer is in inexcusable. All passwords for financial information should be changed at least once a year, we recommend at the start of every year. It costs nothing to change a password.

Changing keys is more difficult, plus unlike passwords, they do cost money. Still, a shop should have a strict policy with its keys. Keys should not be allowed to be taken off the premises. They should only be given to a trusted employee, and when not in use, they should be in a safe place e.g. your safe or a locked cabinet. If they have to be on a cabinet, they should be on chains while they are there.

I do believe that vigilance is essential and will often, as this example shows reduce the chance that things will be stolen.

We went to see a Chinese person whose English was reasonable. However when we started on their business requirements, it quickly became apparent that his English skills were excellent for coffee and tea and general discussion, but as the conversation moved into some extremely technical details for their accounting and computer requirements, he could understand but speaking he had a lot of difficulties. So how do we communicate? 

If this happens to you too, here is a tip.

What we did, whenever the conversation got unclear was went to google translate on their computer here. 

Then he typed into the computer when communication started to break down his questions in the Chinese section, and out popped out immediately an English translation that I could read. Although I am sure that the translation was not brilliant, we were able to move on with our discussions. 

If you find yourself in this situation, then this is something you may want to try too.

Since this sometimes happens, partly, for this reason, I have a Google Home unit on my desk at work, among its many other functions it that it has an interpreter function.

I say to it "Be my (insert language) interpreter.”

It knows a lot of languages. I find that its interpreter mode gives me a fast and effective translation. All I do is raise the volume, and then the unit will translate for us the conversation if I speak in English it will translate to that language, and if they talk in that language, it will translate what they said into English. Again it may not be brilliant, but it is fast and quick and helps me out fairly often.

If you want to know more here is a youtube video well worth looking into too.

This might all help you are work too.

Soft costs in EFTPOS and credit cards are extra costs that you have but are taken into account formally.  But I do suggest that you run through them as they do add up.

Examples would be

Incorrect keying in of information

A sale of $23.44 is incorrectly processed at $13.44, well that is a $10 cost. If your business made 10 of these a month, your soft cost here is $100/month

Time is taken to key in the transactions

If a transaction takes a staff member 10 seconds to do and you did 2,000 transactions a month, well your soft cost here is 5.5 hours, say staff time is  $33/hour, this item is about $150/month

Reconciliation 

If it takes you an hour a week to reconcile your point of sale software to the bank records well there are here another 4 hours.

There are many others that you can add, I am sure to the list.

Typically on a non-integrated, I would expect that these costs to a merchant are about $400/month, on an integrated EFTPOS system about $200/month.

All major retailers, when you meet them one report that you see that they use all the time is a comparison report of what they did in the last previous period, to the same period last year. So what they will show you now is a report that shows the year 2018 Q1 compared to 2019 Q1 and a column of percentage changes. Then the question they will discuss what was different, why did these figures change?

We have written a report almost exactly the same as one produced by a major retailer to give our clients this report. It is called the dissection comparison report.

What it does is compares by several measurements of the sales of stock items in different period.

Go to 

Main Menu > Cash Register > Register Reports > under the Select Report tab, expand the Stock folder > select the report “Dissection Family Class Period Sales Comparison”.

Now you will see this screen.

What I suggest you measure the first three months of this year with the first three months of last year to see how your sales are changing over time. The two measures that I recommend that you check are the quantity and profit percentage changes. There are many other key performance indicators (KPIs) listed too there, which can make interesting reading. From this, you can determine whether the problem is prices, your margins, your sales quantities etc. If you want you can check your figures to the in the Australian Bureau of statistics but do not use the seasonally adjusted figures as you have the actual figures here.

Now once you have bedded down that part of the report, check out the More Criteria tab marked with a green arrow. There is a lot more there.

 

This is one of these fun holidays celebrated on the First Thursday in May every year.

It was created to awareness of how important it is to take care of your passwords. In my experience, all data breaches, that I have seen and I have seen quite a lot has been caused by bad password security.  

For example, we had someone who had their passwords on a sheet of paper that was stuck on the wall near the computer and anyone who came into the office could read it.

If you want to know some figures on what a data breach could cost you, click here.

Change passwords. 

Do not use the same passwords for all your sites.

Try and make each of your passwords as long and unique as possible.

If this is too hard, have you considered using a password manager? 

@passwday

In the retail point of sale, one problem seen with loyalty programs is that retailers want new customers, but often the primary users of the loyalty programs are the existing high users. So when they are starting a loyalty program what they tend to see is that they are giving a discount to customers that they already have. So I was engaging in reading a report by Paytronix Systems, a provider of reward program solutions, what they had to say about this.

Their conclusions seem to have a ring of truth as it appears to match our clients' experiences.

They tended to find as we do that that the high-frequency then the medium-frequency customers were the first to join a loyalty program. They are the ones that can most easy justify doing it. It took about four months for the proportion of new members when we start to see the existing medium- to high-visit frequency to drop to one-sixth.

They conclude that if you are doing something like this, you need to run it for at least four months of actively trying to get new customers to join your program and that you need to be continually enrolling new members during this period. After that, the program tends to get a life of its own.

Overall their conclusion, I think it is valid that customers on a loyalty program tend to come much more often and buy slightly more and you need to budget about four months.  

This is one very successful programs that we are actively involved with that you may want to examine.

With our POS Software, you can have an integrated website. That is a big plus.  Then what you will have is a shop that can take orders all the time. 

Now what you need to consider is a name for your online shop. Here are some points I recommend for an Australia shop.

1) Do not try and save a few dollars by selecting .NET, .BZ, .COM, .ORG, etc extension. Australians want to see your website with a .COM.AU extension. 

2) The shorter and easier it is to remember the name, the better. If it complex, it will be harder to find. 

3) Make it relevant to online. Say for example your name was Simon White and you owned a stationery shop in the suburb of Moorabbin.  If your business name was "White Stationery shop", how is that going to help your business? On the other hand, a name like "Moorabbin Stationery shop", would alert Google and Bings search engines that you sell stationery in the Moorabbin area. It would come up in people's searches. 

4) Keep it as short and simple as possible. I suggest that you pick a name that is easy to spell and simple to pronounce. 

5) Do not be too clever in your name eg haveagr8tday is not good nor is komputer.

6) Check your proposed name that you do not get in trouble eg if your name is McDonald and you open up a hamburger shop, there may be problems.

Bonus tip

For most SMB, I suggest looking at your location and what you do to make your name.  See point (3).

There are my tips, 

Today business is all about information and control.

When I talk to large organisations they know what they are you selling, they know their margins, their basket size, etc. The essential information though, is that they know their trends of what it is that is selling. Ultimately they know where their business is going NOW.

Knowing what is happening is should be one big advantage an SMB business has over a larger one. In practice, often it does not appear so.  What you need to do is set up KPIs that you are comfortable with and select some reports out of your POS system once a month to review your business formally from an information perspective. 

However, to get the maximum benefit of your point of sale information, you should make sure that your POS information is correct. Only if you do this can you get accurate and up-to-date reports!