Point of sale (POS) reports are generated based on the data gathered by a POS system. The POS terminal tracks register data and activity and store it for future analysis via POS reports. The reports provide detailed data in several formats to help retailers analyze sales, track revenue, evaluate employee performance, monitor the overall health of their retail business, and make informed inventory purchases.
Here are some ways you can increase efficiency with POS reports.
Simplify Sales Reports
There’s more to the sales process than exchanging goods or services for cash. Sales can also include discounts, returns, and the sale of liabilities such as gift cards. Applied discounts, goods sale, and price of sold goods are reported by quality point of sale terminals.
Track Employee Success
Effective management of staffing can have a major impact on your retail business’ success. Staff reports help retailers identify what’s selling and their best employees. POS staff reports help you calculate commissions, measure staff productivity, and determine what you busiest hours are with hourly reports. The last option makes it possible to staff accordingly.
What is more, a quality POS system helps prevent the risk of employee theft by keeping a record of all transactions and changes to the cash drawer involving pay-ins and payouts.
Maximize Inventory Management
POS inventory reports provide businesses with accounting for sold and unsold inventory items, stock level data, and changes in inventory such as items removed, damaged items or lost items. The wrong inventory management can lead to loss of profit and have a negative impact on your business’ cash flow. It is therefore imperative to establish an internal process for managing inventory.
POS systems make inventory reporting tools available that catalog your retail establishment’s stock items. The data you’ll be provided with often includes profit margins, the value of inventory items, how many items are in stock, and more.
A POS for small businesses can offer images of the health, growth, and performance of your establishment at any time without overloading your team. Your investments have to yield a good return, and your POS can help make sure that you’re making smart business decisions.
Smart Purchasing Decisions
Retailers want to make intelligent purchasing decisions, and a POS for small business offers valuable insights into how much inventory to purchase, how much to sell it for, and whether it or not it should be discounted. As your business grows, you’ll see that the reports you run at the end of the month won’t give you all of the info that you actually need. A POS can let you view sales on a weekly or quarterly basis and can be adjusted and programmed to capture specific sets of data.
A business owner can identify what items are selling well and which aren’t, so you can make strategic purchasing decisions.
It’s not smart to ignore financial data beyond your sales figures. You’ll be able to see what payment method most of your customers use, how much your average customer spends, and what they purchase. You can run reports on your Value of Goods sold so you can see if you’re really obtaining a good return on your product.
A POS can help your business with the following things:
- How many discounts you give and the average amount of each discount
- Selling patterns for each supplier’s product
- Busy and slow sales times
- Trends in product sales
- Best-selling product categories
- What products are often sold together, identify possible bundles
- Percentage of offers redeemed
POS Helps Act on Data
A POS doesn’t just provide the data you need; it will also help you act on the data. As you add staff, locations, and new items, your POS can grow right with you.
Managing Inventory
Retailers have to know what items are in stock and where they’re located no matter their size. No business owner wants to have inventory gaps, because these lead to loss of clientele. Luckily, inventory tracking doesn’t necessitate separate software when you have a reliable POS. Your POS can tell you when you need to reorder stock. This is crucial for small businesses experiencing rapid growth.
If you plan on adding new locations, a POS will help you trace all inventory movements, keeping you from accidentally double ordering.
Sometimes small businesses have issues with keeping track of inventory as they expand to more warehouses or new locations. You can use your POS to pull info on the last time you reordered inventory and at what price. For growing retailers, this data will help you decide if you need to change your prices and at what locations if that’s the case.
As a small business grows, increased inventory may yield higher volumes of product returns. Your POS can help you reduce risks by identifying reasons why customers returned goods and periods of high returns. Using a POS makes managing goods a much easier task, saving retailers valuable cash and time.
Meaningful Growth Tools
A business owner should never consider rapid growth without an action plan and a solid foundation. A POS system can foster meaningful growth by means of connecting your business with customers. Loyalty programs are a key feature to look for in a POS. Loyalty programs attract new customers and help keep current customers shopping at your store. Not every POS for small businesses has integrated loyalty programs, which is why setting up a loyalty program can seem like a big commitment. However, the right POS will make the loyalty program process simpler, giving retailers more time to run their business.
Loyalty programs can grow your small business by:
- Building brand loyalty
- Giving customers an incentive to shop at your store
- Encouraging additional sales per customer visit
Conclusion
A POS will make it simple to view data from your loyalty program and employee data, such as total hours worked or POS access permission. Your POS indicates how many hours each employee worked a day, week, or month. Using your POS data can help you decide when the right time is to make new hires or when you should wait until a more opportune time.