About important things
Your inventory is your livelihood. Thus, the profitability and growth of your business, your team’s salary, and everything you personally earn from your enterprise can depend on you maximizing the sale potential of your merchandise. There’s a lot riding on those products, so you need to know exactly what you’ve got in store, what else is on the way and, perhaps most importantly, who wants your goods or services and how much they’re willing to pay for them.
You can’t keep all that precious information in your head. Using separate software for inventory, sales, accounting, and tax commitments can mix up the true sales picture. So, it may be time to consider upgrading to a Point-of-Sale (POS) system with inventory management as a primary feature.
But before learning about the importance of POS system for your inventory management, you need to first understand what POS system is.
What is a POS System?
Point of sale (POS) system is the spot where your customer makes the payment for goods or services that your company offers.
POS systems are systems that enable the business transaction between the client and the company. POS system is a computerized network that consists of the main computer linked with several checkout terminals and supported by different hardware features starting from barcode scanners and ending with card payment terminals.
How does a POS system work?
A POS system allows your business to accept payments from customers and keep track of sales. It sounds simple enough, but the setup can work in different ways, depending on whether you sell online, have a physical storefront, or both. A point-of-sale system used to refer to the cash register at a store. However, today, modern POS systems are entirely digital, which means you can check out a customer wherever you are. All you need is a POS app and an internet-enabled device, like a tablet or phone.
So what does a POS system do? Usually, it works like this:
- A customer decides to buy your product or service. If you have a physical store, they may ask a sales associate to ring them up. That associate could use a bar code scanner to look up the item’s price. Some POS systems also allow you to visually scan items using the camera on your device. For online stores, this step happens when a customer finishes adding items to their cart and clicks the checkout button.
- Your POS system calculates the price of the item, including any sales tax, and then updates the inventory count to show that the item is sold.
- Your customer pays. To finish their purchase, your customer will have to use their credit card, tap card, debit card, loyalty points, gift card, or cash to make the payment go through. Depending on the type of payment they choose, your customer’s bank then has to authorize the transaction.
- The point-of-sale transaction is finalized. This is the moment when you officially make a sale. The payment goes through, a digital or printed receipt is created, and you ship or hand your customer the items they bought.
POS for Inventory Management
Every aspect of your business is connected, and it all has an impact on net revenue. The goal of POS system is to recognize this reality and capture the intertwined nature of business elements within a single software platform.
A POS system with inventory management at its center makes sure you’ve got an up-to-the-minute understanding of what you’re holding, what’s been ordered, what’s just been sold. It also makes sure of what hasn’t moved, and how much it costs you to sell each item in terms of staff, premises, and marketing costs, among many other variables.
The system sits in the middle of your physical and digital world. It acts as a register and a point of customer information in your shop, and as a one-stop software solution for all your accounting and sales information. You can access the digital side of things from any internet-connected device, and you and your team can access every feature of the instore display with the ease of a touch-and-tap iPad.
Advantages of using POS systems for inventory management
Here are some advantages of using POS systems for inventory management:
- Track inventory
A POS system enables a business owner to track inventory, whether they have one store or three. The POS terminals at each location are tied into the accounting and inventory systems of the business. This means you don’t have to be on-site at each store to see what’s on the shelves.
- Automate purchase orders
POS software with built-in inventory management can automate the purchase-ordering process by alerting you when inventory falls below a set threshold. More advanced tools do the ordering for you.
- Identify trends
A significant benefit of using a POS system is the reporting tools that show you which items are moving and which items are languishing. Moreover, you can filter this data by week, month and year, which helps you identify sales trends. With this information, you can adjust your purchase ordering to have hot items in stock when your customers want them.
- Expand your inventory
If your inventory management is optimized, it’s easier to handle more products. It means you can increase the number of SKUs in your inventory. Having more items to sell improves your potential to increase sales.
- Improve cash flow
The last thing you want is inventory sitting on shelves. A POS system reduces excess inventory situations by tracking what sells and what doesn’t. Stocking the right products – and the right amount of them – lowers your costs and boosts your cash flow.
Major features to look for in inventory POS software
Here are a few things you should look for in quality inventory POS software:
- Ease of use
Some POS and inventory systems are incredibly in-depth, with the ability to store information on thousands of items. But that doesn’t do you a lot of good if the interface is complicated, and you constantly work to remember how to get to exactly what you’re looking for. You could also waste valuable hours training every new employee on a complicated system.
- Basic features
It’s never a bad idea to do a quick run-through of what features a system’s inventory management includes and that those features offer a plan you’ve selected and not in an advanced plan that is only available if you shell out more money.
- Easy integration
This is one of the benefits of an all-in-one system. So, if you’re using an outside inventory program, it may not sync up seamlessly with your POS or perhaps with your accounting software. Make sure that whatever inventory software you’re using will run smoothly with any potential add-ons that you’re using elsewhere with your POS system.
- Multistore functionality
If your business is large enough to be operating out of more than one location, you’ll want your inventory management to run fluidly between stores. Most good inventory software should have you covered here. Be sure that you can keep an eye on your inventory at all locations and check for features such as the ability to set up transfers and delivery of stock from one location to the other.
Elmasys Inventory Management System
Elmasys inventory management system has integrated a POS system that is the ultimate choice for your business. It has many advantages, such as;
- Intuitive and adaptable system to work fast with computer mouse, touch and hot keys. It automatically works with cash registers, non-cash payment systems (card), POS printers, automated scales and automatic cash registers.
- Automatically works with Elmasys Cloud option. In cases of internet connection issues, it works without interruptions.
- Calculates the amount of money in the cash register. In addition, it has an option for shift changes.
- Discount opportunity both for each product and for the total pay.
- Discount card option.
- Possibility to use in retail and wholesale market.
- Automatically works with scanners.
- A user login opportunity.
- Powerful reports.
You can sign up for a free trial of ElmaSys Inventory right now to see if it’s the right inventory management software for you.
In conclusion, to find out if ElmaSys is a good fit for your business, click here for a demo.
