Running a retail business is hectic without a Complete Point of Sale System in Kenya. Owners have a lot to worry about, from accounting and payroll to ordering and inventory management. Managing every little detail can quickly become overwhelming and affect your overall business performance. And with thousands of small businesses in Kenya, it’s crucial to keep up with the competition. But there’s one item that can make a huge difference: a complete POS system in Kenya.
The most robust and powerful POS systems in Kenya come with a variety of tools and features to make your business run more smoothly and effectively. So what are those point of sale tools, and how can they improve your business? Check out this definitive list of what makes a complete POS system.
1. Process Sales
At the most basic level, a point of sale system processes your sales, though this has become more complicated in recent years. The cashier rings up the sale by either scanning the item or manually entering a product code. The product’s price shows up on the POS screen and is added to the bill. Once all items are tallied, the customer must make the proper payment.
Payments can come in various forms. Cash transactions are simply added to the drawer. But, of course, the much more common form of payment is by Mobile Money like Mpesa or Credit card. Your POS must accept all modern forms of payment, including all Mobile Money and Credit Cards. Not only do customers expect the convenience of offering each, but these payment methods are more reliable and secure, too.
Finally, sales processing must also include ease of returns, refunds, and exchanges. Setting a return policy must allow for smooth transactions and convenience for both your customers and your staff. Your point of sale is crucial for facilitating this.
2. Manage Inventory with a Complete POS System
While the sales are the front end of things, your POS system must also manage everything behind the scenes. Your inventory is the most important aspect of this.
Powerful inventory management can help your business on a number of levels:
- Vendor relations
- Automated reordering
- Stock notifications
- Real-time updates
- Mobile and Cloud remote access
- Product imports
- Label and tag printing
- Multi-store database
- Scanned counting and receiving
- Mobile data entry
Together, these inventory features can vastly improve your store’s operations. Running out of stock frustrates your shoppers and carrying too many leaves you cramped for space and cash. Optimizing your inventory and order levels is one of the most important places to start growing your business.
3. Create Reports
Once your payments and inventory are in order, you’ll be ready to start processing detailed sales and product reports.
With a complete point of sale system, you’ll get in-depth reports and analytics on your store’s performance. This means that you’ll have a wealth of insight into your business just a few clicks away – using a Mobile Cloud POS in Kenya like PawaPOS. And each of these reports can be made custom to your preferences.
- Compare sales between certain time frames.
- Measure in-store foot traffic and conversion rates.
- Break down profit margins by product.
- Analyze the overall success of a promotion or sale.
- Detail product return and refund rates.
- Grade individual products by revenue and profit (ABC retail analysis)
- Determine inventory turnover.
- Generate individual employee reports.
With PAWAPOS Mobile Cloud POS in Kenya, you can do much more. Such reports are easy to generate and interpret, allowing you or your managers to analyze store performance quickly. This is critically important to measure the success of any change that you make to your business.
If you run a new promotion, order a new product, rearrange your shelves, etc., it’s important to know what kind of impact it had on your store. This way, you can continue to make adjustments and optimize your operations.
4. Run Promotions and Sales
For any retail store, a major part of your retail marketing strategy will be your sales and promotions. They are great ways to reward regular shoppers, as well as attract new customers.
But any promotion, whether it’s one product or store-wide, should be carefully tracked and monitored. A promotion that seems to go too well probably is. Too often, retailers run a big sale only to discover that they lost way more money than anticipated. For small businesses, such a mistake can be crippling to business and lead to cash flow problems and even store closure.
Your point of sale must first make this process simple. Changes in pricing can be done in bulk, and it’s easy to create product bundles, time-sensitive discounts, store-wide promotions, and more. These changes are reflected in the point of sale for each transaction and also shown in the back-end so that all sales reports are accurate.
Second, promotion reporting must show you exactly how each marketing campaign performs. It’s important to break down overall revenue and margins for each product so that you can determine the success of each campaign. POS product reports make this easy to read so that you can make adjustments to promotion before it’s too late.
5. Software Integrations
Lastly, third-party software integrations are crucial. You need your point of sale to be as versatile as possible. And integrating with other software is essential. There are a few key areas to inquire about when shopping for your point of sale:
eCommerce – Most retailers have embraced the multichannel retail selling experience with both online and brick-and-mortar stores. Therefore, it’s important that every sale be reflected in a single inventory system. Trying to manage multiple streams of sales with separate inventory and sales tracking is a nightmare.
Accounting – As mentioned above, an accounting integration will save you a whole lot of trouble with taxes at the end of the year.
Loyalty and CRM – While many points of sale come with a simple point-based loyalty system, it’s important to have options for more robust systems. In these cases, an integration with a third-party is critical. Check out more here.
PAWAPOS’s Complete Mobile Cloud POS System
PAWAPOS Mobile Cloud POS in Kenya comes with everything you need to run a successful store. Whether you have a liquor store, specialty retail, gift shop, QSR, or general retail, PAWAPOS has you covered.
Unique POS software features have been designed for all of our verticals, so if you see your store type on our website, we have each of the point of sale tools needed to make it a great fit for your store. There is a 100% money back guarantee, and one of our product specialists will walk you through a demo of each feature so you can learn the product well prior to making a purchase. Check us out!