Can your POS Software handle Gift Cards?  Gift Cards are being used more and more instead of discounting.  Not only will the cards bring the customer back, they usually will spend more than the value of the card.  Another good reason, if you need it, is that 40% of gift cards are never redeemed and that is like finding money on the floor.  You can read more in this article By Jenn Abelson of the Boston Globe. read more...

Most receipt printers like the terrific Epson TM 88 series are fast and reliable, but did you also know receipts can protect your business from fraud and promote branding?

All pos systems print the receipt number on the receipt.  This helps in verifying returns by recalling the actual transaction of returned items at the price at which they were sold.  Not only can you verify the actual selling price printed on the receipt with what is stored in the the pos software, but it also increases customer satisfaction by accurately refunded their purchase.

The TM 88 will also let you upload a logo to the printer so your  receipts reflect your company brand.  A creative use of this feature would be to upload additional  images such as coupons to reward your customers for shopping in your store.  It is a lot easier and more econonmical to market to existing customers than customers you haven't yet acquired.  If your receipt printer does not support this feature, check with your software vendor to see if the software supports these features, and on what printers the feature is supported on.

If you have your payment card processing running through your point of sale system at your business, make sure the software provider has passed all the testing to keep your business compliant. We have spent tons of time and money making sure our product meets or beats all the standards set-up and you can be comfortable knowing you are compliant if you use ProphetLine. The passwords and encryption process are getting a little more complicated as characterize by the Dilbert cartoon below.

The following is a brief explanation taken from Wikipedia. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is a worldwide information security standard assembled by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). The standard was created to help organizations that process card payments prevent credit card fraud through increased controls around data and its exposure to compromise. The standard applies to all organizations which hold, process, or pass cardholder information from any card branded with the logo of one of the card brands.

We have all heard the question ‘is the glass half full or half empty’, right? The answer has been debated for centuries if not longer, but does it really matter? Some would say it does and projects your beliefs or your outlook on life (half empty and you look at life from a more pessimistic point of view). When it really starts to matter is when you are trying to solve issues. Being in the Point of Sale Software business for almost 12 years now, I have heard many causes of ‘it’s the software’s fault we are not getting more business’. While poorly written software can disrupt business it is rarely all ‘the software’s fault’. Business success is much more than just ringing up sales and moving customers through a line. It is much more about the experience of the customer. How big is a deal is the customers experience – did you know that XP in Windows XP is short for eXPerience? Microsoft knows, at least in naming, that the experience can make or break an application.

Case in point 1. I just returned from a trip to Antigua. The white sand beaches were amazing, the food was wonderful, the resort (all inclusive) was nothing short of impressive. How could anyone have any issues in a place like this? Well, let me tell you. Our luggage didn’t quite make the trip all the way with us. Now this was not the resorts fault, but American Airlines. The resorts answer, ‘you will need to check with the airlines and it might get here tonight or tomorrow’. While this is valid, the resort could have said something like ‘what can we do till your luggage gets here? Do you need a toothbrush, robe, etc?’. The luggage arrived the next day and things were better. The next customer service issue came with getting a robe to the room. I called, the concierge said it would be there shortly and when I called back 4 hours later (after a swim in the ocean, I didn’t wait 4 hours just for the robe), they said oh, we will get that right over. This time it only took 30 minutes. Where is the customer service at this point? Now you might be saying ‘they are on Caribbean time’ and yes, I expect things in the Caribbean to be a bit slower, but this was too far to even call it ‘Caribbean time’.

Case in point 2. I went to the gift shop for a snickers candy bar (sometimes you just have to have a snickers). I had bought the last one on the shelf the night before. The clerk looked at me when I asked if they had any more and then looked puzzled. She looked at the shelf and stated ‘I don’t know’. She then picked up the phone and called the other gift shop (small remote shop about 100 yards away) and checked with them. They had them, so I walked over and made my purchase. Again being in the POS Software business for a while, I wondered if their software had the ability to look up the quantity on hand at the remote location. I know it was a centralized system as the data was summarized from the different places I had ordered items and billed them to the room. This lead me to believe they could have easily looked the item up in their POS Software and answered the question without ever calling the other location. The call could have still be made if the stock quantity showed a low amount of stock which would go back to the customer service side ‘let me double check as the computer says they have a couple, but I want to verify before you walk over there’.

POS Software is not enough to keep your business afloat in today’s economy. Know you customers and show them you understand they are having a tougher time as well and make them feel you care enough to take time with them. Know your Retail Software so you can better assist your customers in decisions and or yourself in knowing your stock quantities, turn rates, profits, aging, etc. Business success is not about how little or how much you spend on your POS Software, but more about how wisely you invest and how wisely you use your investment.

At ProphetLine, we understand your need for value added features. We include features in our Point of Sale Software that many other charge thousands of dollars extra just to enable such as a Retail Stock Ledger, Open to Buy, Customer Marketing, Inventory Matrix, Order Tracking, Push Selling, Touch Screen, etc. We want to help you grow your business by empowering you with the knowledge needed to use your Retail Software to the fullest and assist you in better customer service because you know your stock, margins, and have more time for your customers.

Google Labs is one of my favorite hang outs. If you haven’t been there, you might want to take a look by going to Google Labs. One of the newer things they are working on is ‘Audio Indexing’. What is Audio Indexing you might ask. Well, imagine being able to search Youtube (www.youtube.com in case you don’t know), but rather searching the video titles, tags, or comments, you can search based on the comments spoken IN the video. This is Audio Indexing. Give it a try – go to labs.google.com/gaudi (this will default to a search of ‘economy’ within videos).

What does this have to do with Point of Sale (POS)Software? Absolutely nothing, but since you asked, I will give a plug. ProphetLine POS Software allows you to search your data to find trends, do intelligent purchasing (unlike the government), Open-to-Buy, Comparative reporting and much much more in a way that is as easy as Google searches Audio. If you need to get a better handle on your cash flow and manage your business rather than letting your business manage you, give us a call at 800-875-6592 x310.