You don’t have to wait until January 1 to make a New Year’s resolution that will change the ways your physical or online store can succeed. Make preparations now to bring just one special tool into your operations, and you will soon be reaping the rewards.
What is that tool? It’s your point of sale system, the collection of software and hardware that you use to take payments.
If you haven’t already fully embraced its full set of inventory management features, make 2025 the year to shine for your products at all stages of their journey, from delivery into your warehouse until long after they leave in the hands or electronic shopping carts of your customers.
Tracking.
The ability to monitor the status of your inventory in real time at all touchpoints is perhaps the most essential feature of a POS system. You start by entering every piece of merchandise into your product database via a barcode scanner as soon as it arrives.
It can then be tracked as it remains on your shelves until it is purchased, with details of the transaction flowing seamlessly back into your POS’s database for later retrieval.
Real-time inventory tracking also extends to furnishing details about stock levels across all store locations. You can easily monitor similar variations of merchandise types, enabling you to keep accurate inventory counts, and make intelligent predictions about how to tweak future purchases.
Precision in inventory decisions.
One of the biggest nightmares that every business owner wants to avoid is running out of popular products, a scenario that inevitably leads to disappointed customers and shopping cart abandonment.
With your POS system constantly updating counts and product availability in real time, you can drastically reduce the likelihood that this situation will occur.
That’s not all your system can do. You can configure it to notify you as soon as stock counts fall below a pre-set benchmark that you have identified.
With that information in hand, you can be proactive about ordering, helping to ensure that you always have the items that customers are demanding.
Robust analytics.
Inevitably, there will be some products that fail to move as well as you may have expected. Your system has onboard analytics tools that can review your sales data, providing you with illustrations of trends for the variables you select.
Use your POS to learn not only which employees are your highest producers but also who is struggling.
Find out what times of the day and week are your busiest, and make intelligent guesses based on your system’s findings about how your store or website layout may be impacting the speed at which individual pieces of merchandise are selling. It’s as if you have the most accurate fortune teller in the world on your own personal staff.
Cost management.
Your POS also integrates seamlessly with your accounting software, leading to efficient inventory management for your business from the standpoint of your bottom line. Consequently, you can easily calculate and keep track of your expenses, calculating profits and losses.
With this information, you have the details you need to make sales forecasts that maximize your resources. Not only can your expenses remain in line with projections, but also you can continue to meet the trends and customer demands that will enable you to remain competitive in a cutthroat local and global marketplace.
Streamline supplier communications.
Maintaining constructive and accurate dialogues with your suppliers is crucial if you want to keep products flowing smoothly from them to you and ultimately to your customers.
Instead of passively waiting for them to get in touch should a problem arise, your POS’s inventory management tools can manage supplier information and keep track of purchase orders and invoices as well as delivery estimates.
The system can make your invoicing processes flow smoothly at every stage. You can offer multiple ways for vendors to pay and can configure your POS to send out reminder and payment confirmation notices that lead to less confusion and more positive interactions with you or one of your representatives when warranted.
If you had boundless financial resources at your disposal, you might hire a business wunderkind to help you make the most of every aspect of your operations. Until that happens, your point of sale system has the capability to turn inventory management for your business into one of its greatest superpowers.
Talk to your payment processing provider if you want to find out how to maximize the tools that are already included in your current set-up, or explore upgrade possibilities. Whatever you decide to do, optimizing your POS can change 2025 in numerous positive ways for your company.
