A business’ point of sale (POS) system is what you see at the outset as a cash register. Beyond that, it’s what’s responsible for tracking the cash flow and inventory, helping a company have easier accounting and bookkeeping methods at the end of every business month. It’s almost close to impossible for any business to run without having a point of sale system.

That said, here’s a breakdown of why having a point of sale system in your business can be advantageous:

1. It Allows You To Accept Credit Card Transactions

The economy today is slowly moving towards cashless transactions. Fewer people pay in cash and bring along hefty amounts of money. Thus, paying through debit and credit cards are now the norm. Especially if your business is in the heart of the city, you need to cater to the credit card needs of customers, lest you lose this valuable market when they walk away. The absence of a POS will discourage them from coming back to your store because they have no means of paying for a purchase. This also applies to the tourism industry, as tourists also prefer to first pay through cards when they have yet to acquire local currency on hand.

2. It Enables A Faster Checkout Process

Imagine if, for every purchase, your checkout employee has to manually write down the item and code on a receipt. This works only if you have a few customers, or if you’re a tiny shop. But if you’re in a bustling city and your foot traffic is heavy, manually writing everything down will only prove to be inefficient. Customers are going to get tired of waiting in line when, in fact, there could’ve been a faster alternative.

A point of sale system from companies like Retail Express is the answer to this problem as its software allows for a faster checkout process. All you have to do is scan the code on the tag of each item, and then the system creates the running total.

3. It Helps Mitigate Employee Theft

Employee theft is an unavoidable risk in any business industry. When your inventory system is still in manual form, it’s tough for you to monitor every single detail or item that you have. It will also be hard to track and record every sale that was made. It is through these circumstances that employee theft can prosper. While it may only be a few pennies at a time, this can add up, and the next thing you know, your business is losing so much due to undetected employee theft.

To eliminate this risk, a point of sale system is the solution. With this automated system, there’s very little window for error, as well as a minimal gap. This means that every sale transaction is also automatically updated with the inventory. Employees who are planning to commit criminal activities towards your business will have a tough time succeeding when you use a POS system.

4. It Simplifies The Day-To-Day Operations Of Your Business

In a restaurant or fast-food setup, when an order is made, the employee on the register immediately enters this in. Once it’s encoded, this order is automatically sent out to the kitchen staff for them to know what they have to prepare. This eliminates the noise of unnecessarily talking to each other (or shouting for orders), and walking to and from the kitchen to deliver the order the list.

If you’re in the retail business, the same principle applies. After a sale is made on the register, the inventory is also updated immediately. Hence, at the end of the day, it’s easier for you to oversee which stocks still have a good supply, and which stocks need to be replenished before the season ends. Along with sale record, a POS system also automatically updates your customer records, indicating who’s shopping the most in your store. This makes it easier to track customer loyalty programs and gifts.

Apart from the sales and inventory department, a POS system also works as a time clock that can serve as the daily record of employees’ time in and time out. This also makes it easier for you to prepare the payroll of every employee during each payroll season. Hence, in these examples, you can see that having a POS system in place allows you to be more efficient in your operations. Not only do you operate faster, but you’re also simplifying manual and arduous tasks into faster processes.

Conclusion

A POS system in your business in the defining aspect of having business efficiency and success. If you used to think of the POS system as only limited to the cash register, you can now think of it from an even more in-depth perspective. A POS system goes beyond what you can physically see on the register as it is the device that connects almost everything in your business. From inventory to sales, the POS system can help you achieve efficiency in all departments.