What Is a POS?

Tracking your sales and inventory has never been easier. With a point of sale (POS) system, details of transactions are captured accurately. You have all the information that you need at a glance. It’s a device where your customers make payments when they buy something from you. It’s also where sales taxes can be automatically recorded. It’s contained in a POS terminal which is a computer serving as a cash register.

What kind of industries or businesses use a POS? 

Retail businesses are the primary users of POS. Retail owners especially benefit from being able to track small units of inventory. Some POS systems even integrate with an accounting program to have more visibility on sales, returns and exchanges, accounts receivables, payables, and other retail-specific data.

Restaurants, especially the fast food industry, use a lot of POS. This is where payments are handled, orders are received, and transactions captured. Some restaurants even use POS to guide customers to tables.

Department stores are heavy users of POS. They need them for categorizing various product groups like clothing, electronics, and appliances. A sales staff can refer to an existing record of stocks for sale to guide a consumer in a purchase decision.

What data does a POS capture

Business owners can benefit a lot from being able to generate sales reports and manage inventories quickly. To elaborate, here’s an overview of what your POS should be showing you:

Sales reporting

Ideally, your POS should be able to generate a detailed or quick snapshot report on how your store is currently performing. You should be able to filter statistics on data based on the following:

• Employee
• Product
• Hour
• Net profit
• Total cost of items sold
• Profit percentage
• Total retail amount
• Gross margin

Inventory management

Likewise, you should be able to keep track of all the stocks you have in your store. This will also give you an idea which products sell and which don’t. This way, it’s easier for you to schedule which products should be replenished ASAP and when. For these reasons, your POS should be able to perform the following:

• Count and scan products electronically
• Categorize your stocks by color, size, style, etc.
• Integrate functions like bar-code scanners and credit card authorization for improved pricing accuracy
• Let you see inventory levels across locations
• Consolidate orders and purchases from multiple terminals
• Automatically set purchase orders for your best-sellers

Customer management

Last but not least, a POS with a  customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities will let you track your customer data. You’ll be able to review your customers’ past transactions with your store which you can use to profile their preferences. If they’re making purchases online, your marketers can accurately show electronic ads that can influence your customers’ buying decisions.

What are the hardware components of a POS system

A POS also requires hardware components such as the following:

Monitor or tablet display – where you’ll see the sales and database of your products. This is also where your employees can clock in or out.

Cash drawer – is a secured vault in your POS to store cash for transactions. This has no associated fees for credit cards 

Barcode scanner – is integrated with your electronic inventory management systems. This automates the checkout process by pulling out product information and adding it to your customers’ total checkout.

Credit card reader – which you should make available for customers to prefer to pay with their credit card. You should only use EMV-compliant credit card readers.

Receipt printer – even though there’s already a text or email receipt, you still need to print receipts on paper to let your customers see their transactions.

What’s the point of a point of sale system

You can leverage on POS to grow your business. It lets you track inventory changes, revenues, sales patterns, and other data. You integrate software components with hardware to coordinate information collected from various transactions. All these data can help you come up with strategic business decisions to improve the way you do business.