By: Anna Chevtkovich
Opened a Retail Store
May 18, 2022
Read time: 23 minutes
Introduction
We get it: shopping for a point of sale (POS) system can be time-consuming. There are many other things you might prefer to do, like preparing your store for opening day or focusing on expanding your thriving business. However, once you find the best POS system for your business, you’ll never have to shop for another one again.
POS Features
A retail management system (RMS) should have essential POS features that support the checkout process, customer service, and payment acceptance. Here are some features to look for when shopping for a retail management system.
Global Search Bar
When the search bar in a POS system allows you to look up anything, such as a customer file, products, or discount codes, without entering an exact match, you can find what you’re looking for faster, ensuring a seamless customer experience.
Mobile POS Devices and Payment Terminals
Payment should not be limited to the cash register. Mobile POS systems and payment terminals allow you to turn any smartphone or tablet into a payment point, so you can process transactions from anywhere in your store or on the go.
Customer-Facing Display
In some U.S. states, such as California, merchants are required to have a POS system with a customer-facing display. This feature is built into the Shopify POS platform.
Product Descriptions
If you run both an online store and a brick-and-mortar shop, having your product descriptions online sync automatically with your POS system saves you time and gives staff more information about the products.
Save and Retrieve Carts
The cart-saving feature in Shopify POS allows store staff to save a customer’s shopping cart and retrieve it later. For example, if you’re serving a customer and they forgot their wallet in the car, you can save their cart, serve other customers, and retrieve the cart when they return without having to scan or add items again.
Order Notes
If you sell items that require customization, such as jewelry or wedding dresses, for example, order notes are essential. This feature allows you to add special requests for each purchase, so the staff responsible for fulfilling the order can see them and meet customer wishes precisely.
Pay Anywhere
With Shopify’s mobile payment capabilities, you can speed up the checkout process and avoid any congestion at the cash register. When any debit and credit card and mobile wireless payment devices can be used as a POS, store staff can stay with customers and provide a more guided shopping experience.
Customizable POS Screen
Look for a POS system that allows you to customize the dashboard, workflow, and shortcuts to speed up the checkout process for customers and simplify staff operations. The Shopify POS home screen is fully customizable – add shortcuts for frequently used items to accelerate workflows in your store.
Automatic Discounts
If you sell online and in-store, you’ll benefit from a POS system that syncs discounts and promotions from your eCommerce store and automatically applies them to the appropriate orders at checkout.
Camera Barcode Scanner
While barcode scanners are great for some tasks, like inventory counting, some merchants prefer to reduce the number of devices at the checkout station because it can look cluttered or out of brand. With Shopify POS, staff can scan product barcodes using the camera on their iOS devices only.
Custom Email or SMS Receipts
Sending custom email or SMS receipts is a great way to collect customer contact information and build your mailing list to enhance marketing in a way that feels natural and non-intrusive. Shopify POS allows you to send receipts via email or SMS, customizing what they say and how they look.
Receipts
Gifts
With Shopify POS gift receipts, your customers can shop for gifts with confidence, knowing that recipients can easily return or exchange the gift if needed.
Local Currencies and Taxes
When the POS system automatically calculates taxes based on your store location and collects payments from customers in their local currency, you can reduce administrative work when expanding into new markets.
Unified Commerce Features
These features bring together your online and in-person sales channels, allowing customers to shop in whatever way is most convenient for them.
Sales Channel Integration
You should be able to manage sales from all your channels in one place without jumping between systems or creating complex solutions or facing unreliable APIs. With Shopify, you can easily and seamlessly manage e-commerce sales, in-store sales across multiple locations, and sales from third-party online sources like social media, Google, and marketplaces. Seamless integration ensures a consistent customer experience across all sales channels.
In-Store Pickup
Offer online shoppers the option to buy products online and pick them up in your store. Local pickup can increase foot traffic, reduce shipping costs, and help shoppers get their products faster.
In-Store Purchase and Ship to Customer
Shipping in-store purchases to customers is helpful when selling products that take a long time to deliver, are not available in-store, or are difficult for customers to carry (if they are traveling, for example). This strategy also allows you to keep less inventory in-store, saving you more money on real estate, just like Allbirds did.
Buy Online and Return or Exchange in Store
Be wary of POS systems that require complex solutions for return and exchange processes, such as issuing gift cards and using them to buy another item instead of making an exchange. With Shopify POS, returning and exchanging online purchases in-store is a seamless experience for both customers and staff.
Email Cart Reminders
With the email cart reminders feature in Shopify POS, you can send purchase carts via email to hesitant shoppers who browsed in-store but didn’t make a purchase. The cart comes pre-loaded with all the products the shopper was looking at in-store, along with any applicable discounts or promotions.
Product QR Codes
For businesses focused on showcasing merchandise, QR codes on product tags make it easy for customers to discover products in-store and purchase them online.
Virtual Shopping
With the help of virtual shopping tools, store staff can assist online shoppers via video or chat, provide product recommendations, answer questions, and even allow shoppers to virtually try on products.
Appointment Booking
If you see customers by appointment only, or offer time-based services such as fitting, booking apps can assist you in managing appointments and sending reminders to customers.
Social Selling Integration
Meet your customers where they are and sell through Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. With Shopify, merchants can create and track social selling campaigns that increase store visits and sales.
Online Marketplaces
If you sell products through Walmart Marketplace or eBay, look for a POS system that simplifies these channels by syncing products, inventory, and sales between online marketplaces and your retail management system.
Inventory and Product Management Features
Your POS system should have inventory management features that make it easier to order, track, transfer, and sell products.
Unified Inventory Management
While many POS systems help manage store inventory, most do not assist merchants in managing that inventory across multiple channels, including multiple store locations, your online store, and warehouses.
Forecasting
Order
The inventory order is a significant challenge for most merchants, as it requires careful analysis of seasonal sales, product data, and trend identification. Not everyone is good at knowing which data should be analyzed to gain these insights. Why should they struggle and take risks that could reduce demand? Shopify POS comes with demand forecasting reports that suggest products to include in the next purchase order based on total sales, turnover rate, and seasonality.
Low Inventory Reports
Why leave reordering inventory to chance or instinct? You can view low inventory reports in Shopify to see which products are low in stock, and you can set reorder points to receive notifications when inventory levels for a product drop below the minimum you set.
Reorder Points
A reorder point indicates when you should reorder inventory so you can restock before running out entirely. While many merchants calculate reorder points manually using this formula, Shopify POS allows you to set reorder points so you don’t lose track.
Sold Item Suggestions
Instead of having to analyze inventory quantities, sales rates, profit margins, and seasonality for each product separately, Shopify’s sold item suggestions page displays products that should be discounted or put on sale so you can recover liquidity and free up space for new inventory.
Inventory Count
Inventory count is a core function that your POS system should help you perform. With Shopify, you can conduct a full inventory count or a periodic inventory count, filter inventory levels if there are any discrepancies, and view historical quantity adjustments.
View Historical Quantity Adjustments
Instead of disappearing, Shopify saves each time you modify inventory quantities after an inventory count. You can always go back and see what was adjusted at each of your store locations, know which employee modified the stock, when the adjustment was made, and view any notes related to the adjustment.
Purchase Orders
Instead of manually creating and tracking purchase orders or using another system, Shopify allows you to create them with suppliers and vendors from the back end of the store. View the estimated delivery time, inventory costs, quantities needed, and more.
Receiving Inventory
When you receive inventory from suppliers or vendors, you want adding the quantities of stock you receive to your POS system to be quick and intuitive. With Shopify POS, you can swiftly add the inventory you receive to stock quantities. Just scan the products with a barcode scanner and the stock quantities will be automatically adjusted.
Inventory Tracking
Managing inventory can be time-consuming – especially if you sell online and in-person using two separate systems. If our systems don’t communicate, you may need to count inventory and reconcile it daily to ensure that the inventory quantities available in your online store reflect what you actually have in stock. With Shopify POS, stock quantities automatically communicate when you transfer stock between stores or process sales, returns, or exchanges online or in any of your stores.
Inventory Status
Your POS system should include inventory statuses to help track and share your inventory’s condition while receiving products, transferring them, or fulfilling orders. This ensures that your team is on the same page and that your inventory data is accurate and reliable.
Store Transfers
If you have more than one location, you’ve likely transferred stock from one store to another. When this happens, you want your POS system to help you request stock transfers from other locations and track what has been received and what has been sent. While this is helpful for merchants with multiple stores, it is also useful if you have one store and a warehouse. If stock runs low at your store, you can transfer stock from the warehouse to your store before you run out.
Barcode
Barcode
Essential for most retail stores. You want your POS system to have the ability to assign current barcodes to products or create new barcodes for inventory tracking and to speed up the checkout process.
Unlimited Products and SKUs
You don’t want the number of products you sell to be limited by your POS system. Make sure the point of sale system you choose allows you to add as many products and stock keeping units (SKUs) to your catalog as you want. Although you may not need it now, you might need it in the future.
Product Bundles and Variants
Whether you have a few or thousands of products, keeping your product index organized is essential. When items are organized properly, it becomes easier to find, sell, and track them.
Shopify Fulfillment Network
If you don’t have a large warehouse, you will likely need a warehouse to store all your inventory. However, storing in a warehouse can be costly. Additionally, it may not always be easy to find the right warehouse. With Shopify Fulfillment Network, you can focus on running your business while Shopify streamlines your order fulfillment, returns, and product storage. Gain a competitive edge for your business with two-day delivery and pay a predictable fee covering inventory management, delivery, and storage.
Inventory Management from One Dashboard
Shopify POS comes with tools to help you manage inventory in the warehouse and store from one place. Anticipate demand, set low-stock alerts, create purchase orders, see which products are selling or sitting on the shelf, count inventory, and more.
Payment Processing and Cash Flow Features
Look for POS features that simplify payment processing.
Accept Common Payment Types
Your POS system should allow you to accept common payment types such as cash, credit cards, debit cards, mobile payments, wireless payments, and even cryptocurrency.
Transparent and Predictable Pricing
Look for a POS system that charges a predictable, pre-set rate for all credit cards rather than a different rate depending on the card used by the shopper. Shopify Payments offers this and allows you to track payments and financial information related to payments from Shopify – giving you full visibility into cash flow.
Compliance with Security Standards and PCI Compliance
Compliance with security standards and PCI compliance ensures that transactions are secure.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/retail/pos-features
Leave a Reply