It’s that time of the year!

No, I am not talking about New Year’s resolutions – I am talking about getting your inventory done and putting in some best practices to keep your investment in inventory efficient year round.

I will be posting 5 blogs that will get you ready for your annual inventory counts – the first 3 will be to break down the activities you do to prepare for the counts and the last 2 will be on the best practices that you can implement to keep inventory managed year round. You may have already had a chance to read about how to do ABC Cycle Counts by Justin McCollom from our Major Market Team, which discusses the importance of having good inventory management to support your Online Ordering/eCommerce sites. My approach over the next 3 posts is to take you through a more granular list based process. So don’t forget to subscribe to new blog posts over on the right panel.

So let’s get into the tasks – this is really meant to be a checklist that you can share with your team, and since many of you reading this will be retailcloud customers, I will occasionally refer to specific processes within the CAS Portal.

What to do on Day 1

Backoffice To Do List

1. Begin by making sure all pending adjustments and transfers are committed and finished. This is the single most overlooked step and it can derail the most carefully thought out counting plan.

2. Make sure all Point of Sale machines that have been operating in offline mode are connected so that their totals can be pushed to the cloud and sales and inventory data updated. Don’t forget the handheld devices that may have been used for a road show, pop-up, line busting or additional devices during the holiday season.

3. Check all of your recent Invoices, make sure that there was an inventory receiving done for each of them. On any that were not received yet, go ahead and do them and don’t forget to add any shipping costs so the system can accurately calculate your cost of goods sold. While any missing receivings will be corrected in your counts, they will be feeding false data into the system that can impact your reorder alerts in nGauge as well as your margin and markdown analytics that help in pricing strategies.

Almost done!

4. Finally run a report of all of your negative inventory counts – determine if these negatives are due to missing receivings or mislabeled products.  If, because the receivings were missing then investigate that and correct if possible (as I mentioned in Step 3 the inventory count will eventually adjust this but it’s best to correct the errors if possible). If, because of mislabeled product, you will either need to relabel the product using the LabelIt or the Barcode Printing software or link the skus into a new Master SKU

From the back of the house perspective you have accomplished a lot today, and built a foundation of success for your full inventory count.

Front of the House Activities

Start organizing the inventory in the store so that it will be easy to count, have your team prepare a floor map by Department or Category of where the product is and to begin to place it.  If your store is not organized and ready to be counted, then this is a good place to start getting it prepped for inventory and gather like items together. 

While organizing, take some time and look out for damaged items, these should be inspected and discounted or adjusted out of inventory as needed.  Good luck, please share your feedback and don’t forget to subscribe so you can see the next post – if you don’t want to subscribe, you can join us on Facebook or Twitter.

Change is the only permanent thing that brings along improvement, though quite hard to accept for most people. However, it is inevitable especially when you clearly know it will be beneficial to you and especially your business. When starting a small business, you require POS software that will improve your customer service. The customer is king, and therefore we need to keep them happy. The point of sale system your small business can help you improve your customer service in the following ways:

POS software provides a detailed real-time account of sales for all customers.

This will allow you, as the business owner, to analyze which customers purchase what products and in what quantities. This helps you to be able to offer discounts to their clients. Also, you can access customer trends or history and reports of their transactions,

Give your customers what they want

The primary component of excellent customer service is giving the customer the product that they want.  It is important to know the reorder level in your small business to avoid stock outs. The POS software will always notify you when you hit the reorder level. It will also help you to see the products that are fast movers to avoid the dead stock, which are a waste of time, space, and money. With a cloud-based system, you can run numerous reports that highlight the top selling items. This will help you to make wise decisions, which will keep your customers happy.

The point of sale for small businesses improves levels of efficiency

POS software allows you to spend less time on paperwork, sales record keeping, accounting, and inventory management, as well as managing such programs as marketing and special advertising. This helps you focus more on your customers. It ensures that you have enough time to handle your customer complaints and concerns efficiently and as quickly as possible.

Improved speed

A long queue is not exactly what your clients want. The sight of 5-6 people waiting to check out is enough to make a customer run for the door. A reliable POS software will minimize the time customers spend at the register and will eliminate human error by employees. Small business owners can organize menu items on their computers based on the category and make ‘hot keys’. Slow transactions or inventory errors will no longer be an issue. POS software providers now offer integrated barcode scanning which increases speed and efficiency. This method eliminates manual entry and gives fast transactions. This keeps your customers happy as you generate more profits.

Flexible payment options

It is important for small businesses to have several flexible payment methods. The days of carrying huge sums of cash have since expired. Luckily, the point of sale for small businesses has made it easier than ever, for business owners to accept just about any payment method. These include; checks, cash, credit card, gift cards EMV chip cards and apple pay. Customers will be happy with all these payment methods and will always come to your business.

A point of sale system is the lifeline of small business operations. A Point of Sale system used to be a very expensive and serious undertaking for a business to get this sort of system. But today that has changed thanks to advances in technology almost everyone can acquire and set up their POS systems very quickly. Today, small businesses don’t have to depend on the stand alone terminals to handle point of sale transactions. There is software in the market that can turn your computer or tablet into a point of sale terminal and it is easy and most of this software is free. Remember that having a good point of sale system means that you can get better insights into your business, and it can also help you keep track of what your customers prefer which in turn will help you boost sales magnificently. The best POS system should be affordable and easy to use. It should be integrated such that it can do more than just accept payments and process sales.

A good POS system must have an inventory management system or an inventory program. This will help you take a good look at your stock anytime you need it without having to go to the store. It should record how much of the stock is in the store and depending on the sales data; it should be able to estimate the period which that stock will last. Anytime the stock runs low, the point of sales system should alert you that you need to acquire more stock as soon as possible. The inventory management system should be up to date all the time to avoid issues of failure. Remember if an inventory management system fails, there is a risk of your retail business going out of stock without your knowledge. For the small business retailer, the inventory management system is not complicated and it is very easy to keep up with at all times.

Your retail business should always be safe stock wise if you are using a point of sale management system. The inventory program should look at the historical data of sales and use it to predict when a low stock condition might hit your retail business. It should also be able to create orders for replenishment on low stock conditions. Remember the point of sale might not be so complex as to send an order to the supplier directly. However, it will print out an order request for you asking you to order more stock before a particular time.

A retail business is best run by a point of sale management system. Don’t let your business run on the traditional stand-alone terminals. A POS system is a tool that will increase your sales revenue. Also based on the kind of system it is and how integrated the system is, it should be able to help you market the business increasing the number of customers.