accounting software – Point Of Sale Software – free article courtesy of ArticleCity.com
Point Of Sale Software
by: John Cantrell
If you have a business that takes cash from your customers at the front desk then you must have a good and robust point of sale software package, or POS as it is sometimes called.
The reasons are quite simple.
1. Many products today have bar code labels attached to them. This means that the product can be fed into the sales invoice via a bar code scanner. There are several advantages in doing this.
As the product is scanned into the point of sale software, or p.o.s., the product is immediately recognised by the software. The sales person is not fumbling around trying to find the correct product code, the correct product is charged for because the sales person isn’t given the opportunity of picking the wrong product from a price list.
2. You have a computerised reporting system that tells you exactly what has been sold and for how much and the cash in the money drawer can be easily reconciled to this.
3. Your stock control is handled automatically for you. You know at a glance exactly which products you are low on and need to order as well as which products are not selling very well.
4. There is less chance with a point of sale system that your staff can give special prices to their friends, or in fact wether they charge at all, thus reducing theft of stock. There are employees that see petty stock theft as a perk to increase their take home pay. In fact there are even those that seem to think it is their right.
5. With a sales docket that most point of sale systems will produce your customer has a professional looking receipt for the transaction and, thereby, improving your business image.
6. Point of Sale software ( P.O.S. ) will keep track of any tax implications involved in the sale which will decrease your workload in doing manual calculations.
When choosing a point of sale system you need to be very careful of several factors -
* Is the P.O.S. suitable for your industry
* Is it easy to use or will you have to give new staff extensive and costly training
* Does it track and keep record of all sales history so that you can view your daily transactions or is it merely a reciept producing mechanism
* Does it have a back office accounting system that it links up to or will you have to amny post the results on a daily basis
* Does it have the facility to use a bar code scanner and will it open a cash drawer at the appropriate time. It is important that access to the cash drawer is secure and that it cannot be opened at any time without the opening being recorded
* Does it record different types of payment such as cash, various credit cards types, account customer payments and so on. This is important so that when you are balancing the cash at the end of the day you must now what value of sales was paid for by non cash means
* Is it necessary for your Point of Sale system to be able to process account customer payments. Therefore having extra money of one form or another in the cash drawer without the appropriate sale
There are some other security issues that also need to be considered when choosing a POS software system one of the main ones being – after a sale has been made and the customer has left the premises is it possible for the sales person to manipulate the sale to make it look like a lesser value sale and by doing so pocketing some of your money
There is always a temptation for some employees to help themselves to a little extra cash on the side if it is easy to do with the owners of the business relying on trust and honesty coupled with little control over how much has been sold and what goods.
I have seen staff members who have been employed for long periods of time sabotage or resist new point of sale systems when they are being installed. In some cases they have become fairly hostile about the whole thing. You can only guess why, and it’s not just because they are resitant to change.
Point of sale software should be able to trigger a cash drawer when the sale is made as well as produce a detailed reciept for the customer. In some countries it is required by law that these receipts also give details of the tax that has been charged.
About The Author
John Cantrell
I have been involved in all aspects of the accounting software industry for over 20 years. I run several websites that specialize in various subjects including www.diyaccounts.com.au that gives advice on all aspects of accounting software from choosing, setting up and using it. Amongst other sites that I run are www.sense-now.com that helps newbies understand what internet business will probably work for them and what won’t. www.oumas.com.au is all about arts, crafts, hobbies, wine and beer making.
CRM or Customer resource management is in great demand today and has become a talk-topic of market. Customer resource management generally focuses on management of the customer resource such as mails, online finds, accounts, transactions etc. and makes it very easy for customers to perform all their operations without sacrificing their jobs and money. CRM are used in the combination with marketing automation software that helps in making all these functionalities easy and possible so that there is no need to struggle to find perfect business solutions.
CRM software is considered as an essential piece of the equipment for all types of companies and organizations that want to achieve maximum return on marketing, and to fully capitalize their sales prospects and leads. CRM software also helps in cultivating ongoing and lifetime relationships with the current and well established customers. It also helps in integrating all the data about sales leads, associated companies, current customers, and employees all over various departments. CRM software enables all enterprises to handle sales, marketing, and customer services as single package.
CRM software not only helps in retention or handling of all existing customers, but also helps in maintaining prospects, sales leads, and new orders. CRM software is just not a type of option, but it is a necessary and acts as an integral part of modern business that wants to maximize their revenue and want to continue growth of their business.
These days, CRM is no longer considered as an option for the business but it is treated as a vital part of an organization.
Some of the important CRM software is given below:
SugarCRM: SugarCRM or Sugar Open Source software enables all the sales, support and marketing organizations to manage the customer interactions efficiently and more profitably. It can be used by both small as well as large companies worldwide. This software is platform agnostic, and is treated as least complex, most cost efficient and most portable, CRM or customer relationship management solution. It has been built natively on the platform of LAMP that includes Linux, MySQL, Apache, and PHP stack. The Sugar Open Source software can be deployed very easily in virtually any kind of environment.
This type of CRM is cost-effective and mature endeavor, and is better than traditional and proprietary applications that are very expensive to rent and buy. Whenever a commercial grade type of CRM application is build that is based on combined ideas and other resources from the CRM developers all over the globe, then one can produce a better and more revolutionary type of product than any other kind of proprietary software. The business model of SugarCRM open source software is more efficient as compared to the classic approach that is used in building of the proprietary CRM software. SugarCRM open source software can be downloading and installed for free.
Sales force software: this software is treated as one of the pioneer software that is used as a kind of the service model for distributing business software. Her access to business software is provided through subscription basis. It is best known for providing Customer Relationship Management products, and delivers businesses over internet using SaaS model. Sales force is broken down into some modules like Sales, support, Service, Partner Relationship Management, content, Marketing, Ideas and Analytics.
All the applications here are built using the Apex that is a proprietary and Java-like programming language and Visual force that is an XML-like syntax used for building user interfaces HTML, flex, or AJAX.
Microsoft Dynamic CRM: Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps in providing web-enabled management solutions for customer relationship to perform the task of automating day to day tasks for customer service, sales, field service, marketing professionals, and call centre. It helps in strengthening customer loyalty, empowering sales, marketing and managing customer service teams. Microsoft Dynamics CRM mainly comes in 4 main versions used for installation, these are: Work Group edition, professional edition, enterprise edition, and service provider edition.
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