A point of sale (POS) system is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes. It helps you process sales transactions quickly and efficiently, and provides valuable insights into your sales, inventory, and customer data. This blog will guide you through the key features of a POS terminal. It will also demonstrate leveraging features to streamline and expand your business effectively.
Setting Up the Point of Sale System
For those who suffer from poor internet connection but want the luxury of cloud-based software management and data storage, there are alternative solutions like NCC’s Reflection POS, which utilizes a hybrid-cloud headquarters. With RHQ, the POS system can run independently from the cloud when the internet goes down, keeping all sales data stored locally until the POS can communicate and send information to the cloud.
Once you’ve decided which POS software solution is right for your business, you’ll need a reseller to help with the installation process. The right partner can quickly get your business up and running with the necessary software and hardware components.
Your point of sale system should be set up with basic configurations and settings during the setup and installation process. This includes items such as tax rates, store information, payment methods, and day parts/meal periods. During this stage, you’ll also want to integrate with other business systems you may own, such as inventory management, customer relationship management, and accounting software.
Managing Products and Inventory
Depending on your business type and choice of reseller, setting up your menus and inventory can be an easy lift. One of the critical features of a point of sale system is the ability to manage products and inventory. To add a new product to the system, enter the product information, including the name, description, price, and other relevant details.
Adding new products from your office or the POS terminal should be a breeze. Accessing new menu item settings and altering size restrictions and pricing should be a task any capable manager can handle.
To keep your inventory up to date, you’ll need to update product information, such as prices and descriptions, regularly. With updated product information, your POS can assist in tracking inventory levels and generating reports on sales and inventory status. For restaurants, you can enter the amount of a specific item and as you sell the item, the system will automatically count down. As a result, your servers never have to tell customers they are out of the item they just ordered. Restaurants can also set recipes that account for inventory numbers and track ingredient amounts allocated to each recipe every time the item is rung in.
Processing Transactions
Your POS terminal is where all that hard work turns into cash. This is why it’s essential to ensure you pick the right POS software for your restaurant. Your software should be intuitive to reduce training and retraining time and costs. Your staff should be able to accept a wide array of payment methods, such as cash, credit/debit cards, and gift cards. In addition to ringing up purchases or placing orders, your staff should be able to swiftly handle discounts, returns, and voids.
Discounts: Can be pre-entered by management for seasonal or other promotions, or staff can enter percent and dollar amount discounts through your POS payment menu.
Returns: Easily access same-day check number lookups. Staff can quickly recall the check to process the refund.
Voids: Screens can be customized to access void buttons easily. Restaurant owners can also assign different security levels with codes so managers can monitor voids.
Reporting and Analytics
Analyzing sales data to identify trends and make informed business decisions is necessary to grow your business. Generating reports with Reflection POS from NCC is so easy it will become second nature for managers to pull important information. To generate sales reports from the POS terminal, navigate to the manager menu, or if working from a back office, transition the POS to utility mode.
Your point of sale system should make it easy to customize your reports with options to turn on specific sections and settings or remove excess sections. Managers get the information they need without having to sift through data. After choosing your preferred reporting method, exporting tables and results from Reflection POS is straightforward. The data can be easily added to other business systems or printed for manual review purposes.
To ensure that your POS terminal continues to function smoothly, following best practices for maintenance is essential. Maintenance includes regularly updating the system software. This will allow you to take advantage of new features and security updates and backing up critical data regularly.
A point of sale system is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes. It can help you streamline sales transactions, manage products and inventory, and generate valuable sales and inventory reports. If you are ready to take your business to the next level and take advantage of all its features, it’s time to consider NCC. Find an NCC reseller near you and get started today!
