How to Select a Point-of-Sale System

Depending on your technical aptitude and proclivities, choosing a Retail Point of Sale system may feel like a joy-ride of potential or a carnival fun-house full of trap doors, warped mirrors, and grinning salespeople. The simple truth is that a good Point of Sale (POS) system can be a cornerstone for your business and a tremendous aid in managing workflow and implementing reliable systems. A bad POS system can complicate and frustrate your operation, leaving everyone (customers and employees) with a poor impression of your business.

We’ll simplify a rather complex array of options into three basic components. A computer-based Cash Register lets you ring up and track sales, charge appropriate taxes, accept credit cards, etc. A Retail Management System helps you run your business and manage "back office" things like employees and inventory. Most modern point-of-sale systems include both of these components to some degree.

The system that's right for you depends in large part on the complexity of your business. For example, will you have one store or multiple stores? Will you sell wholesale? Will you sell online? You can purchase very simple computerized cash registers and handle all of the "Retail Management" manually. Still, there are some pretty cool systems out there that will make you much more efficient and allow you to focus more of your time on growing your business. Working on your business rather than in your business (or in this case, in the back office). Here are some of the features that you may require:



At the Point of Sale

• Advanced control of user rights allows for granular management, down to individual buttons or options on the screen, to control what different levels of users (i.e., cashier vs. manager) can do.
• Powerful search tools
• Options for offering discounts and price adjustments
• Support for coupons, gift cards, vouchers, store credit, etc.
• Place multiple transactions on hold and retrieve them for processing
• Search for past transactions and re-print receipts. Sell items by weight, case, set, or kit
• Suggest relevant add-ons or up-sell items

Inventory Management

• Assign and view the following for each item: department, category, sub-category, multiple suppliers, multiple bar codes, similar or associated items, and pictures.
• Store and view historic information on each item, including costs and movement (sales/transfers/inventory adjustments). Calculate the figure and store loaded cost information (including shipping and other user-defined costs) and automatically re-calculate the average price every time a new product is received.
• Able to set min/max order levels, including automatically based on sales history
• Integrate with the General Ledger in the accounting program to track all inventory movement and adjustments

Pricing

• Create price tables/matrices that allow multiple pricing levels
• Assign price levels based on customer type, department, category, etc.
• Mix and match quantity pricing with user-defined rules
• Maintain discount history with effective dates
• Support lot pricing (single, case, pallet, etc.)
• Support coupons, vouchers, and complex discount schemes

Purchasing and Receiving

• Manual or automated generation of purchase orders based on available stock and reorder points.
• Generation of purchase orders based on sales history
• Receive against the purchase order
• Print price tags and bar codes at receiving
• Interface with inventory and General Ledger to update average cost of items, on-hand quantities, and appropriate AP/AR accounts

Customer Management

• Store and view contact, billing, and shipping information
• Store and view notes and preferences
• Able to connect purchases to customers for reporting and marketing
• Able to assign custom pricing or tax status by customer

Employee Management

• Tie every transaction and inventory action to individual employees
• Assign security access levels to employees
• Built-in time clock with reporting
• Messaging application for internal communications

Reporting

• Robust reporting tool with copious built-in reports. Reporting is one of the most critical aspects of your system. Remember, it's not just about the report engine! Compare what each system is capable of tracking. The more complex systems can give you a LOT more insight
• Easy customization of reports and creation of new reports
• Automated report generation (email reports based on schedule)
• Able to assign custom pricing or tax status by customer

Multi-Store Support

• View detailed customer and inventory information at multiple stores
• Transfer inventory between stores
• Manage products and pricing from Headquarters
• Ability to view, update, and report on each store's data in real-time
• Automated and seamless integration between all systems. Data should never have to be entered twice!

General System Features

• Fully functional training mode (practice with offline store data)
• Extensive help menus that are context-specific (clicking a help button on a screen shows you that information, not just the Help index)
• Extensively customizable screens and menus (i.e., ability to hide disallowed or disabled features)
• Networkfail-safe (able to keep ringing up sales while the network is down)
• Accurate client/server database for reliability and easy integration with other systems

Hardware Support

• Cash drawer
• Signature capture pad
• Scale
• Touch screen monitor
• Pole display/customer-facing screen
• Receipt printer
• Barcode scanner
• Portable data terminal for physical inventory counting, invoicing/and order entry

You must choose your battles. If you enjoy tinkering with computers and configuring software, you can save 20% to 40% by assembling your system, skipping training, and taking other shortcuts. (That's assuming you get it right quickly and don't spend weeks trying to figure it out or end up paying someone to redo it in the end.) If you're not a computer geek and will be more valuable working in other parts of your business, just accept that it's going to cost some real money to do it right and consider it a required business expense.
There are a lot of options and price points out there. Balancing all options and including all hardware, software, peripherals, and professional services, expect to spend between $5,000 and $10,000 for a one-lane system in a single store location. If you're looking to be more aggressive, put a couple of lanes in each store, and support more than one location, you should be prepared to spend upwards of $15,000.