A point of sale (POS) system can be said to be a good friend to every merchant and retail business owner who has been joining the game for quite a period of time. However, if you are a newcomer and feel kind of dizzy wandering around countless POS features for retailers, this article is for you.
In today’s article, we will reveal 10 essential POS features for retailers that we find meaningful to your businesses.
Overview
Compatible with different platforms
There are many types of POS systems for retailers out there. Desktop POS, mobile POS, and self-service kiosk, each of them has its own advantages that fit certain types of business. Therefore, it is fruitful for retailers to have a POS system that is compatible with as many types as possible.
Additionally, having compatibility with different e-commerce platforms is also one of the features of an outstanding POS system. Magento, Shopify, or Bigcommerce, the more platforms that your POS is compatible with, the more integration you can have for your business.
Buy Online & Pick-up In-Store
In order to create an omnichannel shopping experience for customers, a POS system that allows buyers to buy online and pick-up in-store, so-called Click & Collect feature in POS, is a must. It helps customers shorten their shopping time. Especially during this COVID-19 pandemic, this feature has become even more meaningful.
Other options including refund and exchange also need to be easy and flexible, such as buy online and refund or exchange in-store. All is for a seamless shopping journey.
Custom sales
Custom sales become handy when an item is temporarily unavailable in your store. In such cases, with the custom sales feature, the item still can be purchased. With an advanced POS system, you can simply create a custom product and add it to the cart. The POS will let shopkeepers check out as a guest, so the whole process is still under the store assistant’s control.
►►►► Please visit our products: Woocommerce POS, Mobile POS, White label POS, Reseller POS, POS System for Retail and Vape Store POS
This POS feature is also useful for retailers selling DIY or customized products.
Multiple Tax Levels
If you are operating or planning to operate a business that involves different tax levels, synchronizing tax settings with your platform’s settings is necessary, yet complicated. The good news is, the multiple tax level feature in POS will help you deal with that. All you need to do is now simplified in a few bullet points:
- Decide on the rate for each tax
- Create a single multi-line tax by combining different taxes
- Assign a tax to one or multiple stores
- Assign a tax to a specific product
- Adjust or exclude a tax before each transaction (optional)
Support Various Payment Methods
It can be really annoying for your customers to realize that their go-to payment method is not available at the very end stage of their shopping. To avoid letting customers down for such an unworthy reason, find yourself a POS system that supports many payment methods.
Furthermore, you also need to take the security and transparency of online transactions into consideration as a critical factor to ensure your business’s safety. Thus, retailers need to look for a POS provider that partners with secure, transparent, and commonly used payment gateways such as PayPal, iZettle, Authorize.Net, etc.
Split Tenders and Layaway
Even better, allowing split tender and layaway feature in POS (also known as partial payment) definitely helps a POS system for retailers win customers’ hearts.
Split tender refers to the transaction including more than one payment form. For example, your customers might use a gift card to pay for their shopping. And when the total amount exceeds the value of the gift card, they will pay the remaining by cash or credit card.
Layaway is when customers place a deposit on an item and receive it only after the full payment is made.
Shipping
Just like payment, customers have their personal preference for shipping methods. Fulfill that, then you will become their personal preference. For retailers and store operators like you, having a POS system facilitates many shipping methods and makes it easy to choose or change the shipping address is crucial.
Some shipping methods backed by a POS are:
- Store Shipping
- Retail Store Pick Up: you can select the outlet that your customers wish to ship their order from
- Others can also be supported
Real-Time Synchronization
Since a POS combines multiple stores, real-time synchronization is particularly needed. Everything needs to work in sync. Just like, when an order is placed, the stock level will be immediately deducted from the warehouse assigned to that store. And the stock level shown on your online platforms should also change, in real-time. As a result, selling an already-out-of-stock product can be avoided.
Multi Stores and Multi Warehouses
This feature in POS is for your successful multi-store management. If you have multiple stores and multiple warehouses, and each warehouse is supplying for more than one store, or vice versa, it would become really complicated.
This POS feature allows retailers to create warehouses and assign warehouses to each store (both online and offline). Furthermore, the staff at every store can check the product availability of the other stores since every data is synchronized. This helps in the case when an item is out-of-stock at a store, and customers ask about the availability of it in the other stores.
Comprehensive reports
This is one of the a-must POS features for retailers as reporting is vital and critical for business owners to keep track of their business performance, which supports decision making. Particularly, since a POS system is supposed to manage many stores, it should have a good capability of providing comprehensive reports with data gathered from both online and offline stores. The reports should be about registers, staff members, payment methods, etc. It also should be easy to follow and well-arranged to view.
Final words
We hope that through this article, we were able to ease your dizziness looking at numerous POS features. And if now another dizziness has come to you as you don’t know where to start and which POS provider to choose, we will be your assistant!
ConnectPOS takes its pride in being able to provide one of the most cutting-edge and feature-rich POS systems for retailers with all of the mentioned vital features. Want to see more of our POS feature list? Contact us, or book a free demo for further assistance!