The economics of successfully running a small retail business operation involves an efficient cash management system, seamless and error-free payment processing, precise bookkeeping and excellent inventory management.

1. A Guide to Choose The Right Point Of Sale Solution For Your Store
The economics of successfully running a small retail business operation involves an
efficient cash management system, seamless and error-free payment processing,
precise bookkeeping and excellent inventory management.
Today’s advanced point of sale
systems can do all these and
much more automatically,
accurately and efficiently.
It is natural for some retailers to
get attracted towards electronic
cash register (ECR) for its low
upfront cost, but the return on
investment for the modern POS
systems is much more in the long run. Technology has given retailers smart, sleek
and highly efficient POS systems which can do several of the mundane functions
automatically in a matter of time with absolutely low human involvement thus
saving significant amount of time and money.
If you want to spend less hours in a week and work smarter, then you should go for
an efficient POS system for your store.
Defining POS system
POS system is just like your personal computer having two parts – software and
hardware. Software will decide the applications your POS can perform. For

2. example, if you own a retail store, you’ll want your POS software be able to assist
you in tracking inventory with respect to date, colour, size and style, sales support,
customer management, sales record and analytics and much more.
POS Software
While selecting POS software, it’s important to analyze your business functions and
your needs before deciding the functionalities you want to incorporate in the point
of sale system.
Modern POS systems are capable of managing your entire business independently.
Apart from providing an exhaustive analytical insight into your business, they
provide real time data about inventory and stock, workers’ costs, customer
footfalls, high demand products, efficiency of store executives, loyalty programs
and customer relationship management (CRM). Will the cash registers do all these
functions?
Today, merchants need not have to invest on POS peripherals and software. They
just have to use a small tablet or smart phones to connect their business using
“cloud” POS system. Cloud POS solutions help retailers store critical data on a
remote server which can be accessed in real time provided you have secured
internet connection at your workplace. Though you won’t store your data in your
server situated at the backend of the store, you can save space, money and risk of
losing data due to nature phenomenon like sudden power outage, flood, theft,
virus attacks and other technical issues.
Some POS manufacturers and POS vendors provide customers a local server setup
along with an option to push the data to a cloud server thereby giving the best of
both the worlds.

3. POS Hardware
Selecting the POS hardware components is very important as they should be in
compatible with the POS software. POS hardware provides retailers a user interface
along with the required tools to perform the functions of the software. However,
you can’t use any kind of printer or barcode scanner for your POS system as POS
software must be in compatible with the hardware certified by the POS Company
concerned.
For example, let’s imagine that you have an extra receipt printer of Epson brand in
your store collecting dust. You feel that instead of buying a new printer, you want
to use the one you already have. But your software vendor confirms that your POS
system will only work with Star Micronics printer and not any other printer brand.
So, you can’t assemble pieces of hardware in random and expect that your POS
system would support. Software is made to communicate in a very distinct way
with the hardware which is configured in a particular way. It is like trying your iPad
charger with Samsung phone. Will it work?
To ease this difficulty, point of sale suppliers recommend a variety of POS hardware
bundles such as touch screen monitor, receipt printer, customer display, cash
drawer, barcode scanner, MSR and other related peripherals. Depending upon your
needs and type of business, you may also need weighing scales, payment devices
for contactless transactions, kiosks and mobile wallet payment facility.
So, choose the right POS system to enhance your business.