Why you need to start utilizing POS reports today!
Why you need to start utilizing POS reports today
In the fast-moving world of business retailing, your point of sale system is your oyster. The device that enables you to manage and operate your store daily, and whose absence would only make it harder for you to build something successful and sustainable.
Modern day POS systems have been the answer to build upon this process, which has been clearly illustrated through the feature of POS reporting. These reports offer retailers real-time data about various aspects of business, including sales data, inventory stock levels, employee sales performance and more.
More importantly however, is that POS reports are an excellent way of understanding what exactly are the strengths of a business, and what are the areas that need improving. They provide a convenient point of reference to owners so that they can make more educated business decisions, and best of all they are easily accessible on the POS system itself.
In this blog, we’ll go through some of the key reporting functions that POS systems utilize and how they can best help you become a smarter retailer.
Charting your sales
As a function, sales reporting takes all your sales data and puts them into easy to read charts and tables. Whilst this is standard practice for most POS solutions, as a retailer you need to be looking for a system that allows you to customize reports and find specific store details whenever you require them.
This means going beyond just simple sales totals for the day, but having options to search through the sales history of things like gift cards, lay-by orders, and ‘on-account’ transcations. Furthermore, being able to specify a product and finding out exactly how well it has sold (or hasn’t) is a great way of determining how best to proceed with that product moving forward. Should it be featured more prominently in-store, or should it quietly be discontinued because it hasn’t been a hit with the customers?
These are the types of answers that POS reporting can provide and its use is paramount in being able to pin-point exactly what’s working within a store. Find a POS system that caters to your needs, and whose reporting is completely customizable to your specifications.
Hike Tip: Hike POS affords retailers the option to view sales reports from a variety of different payment methods and the ability to analyze data by day, week, month or a custom data-range as per their choosing.
Tracking your stock levels
Your inventory is one of the key components of your business and keeping track of it isn’t just a tacit acknowledgement of your products but rather an actual financial decision. Poor inventory management can result in anything from inaccuracies to shrinkage of your products, ultimately hurting your bottom line and impacting your cash flow. It makes sense to then avoid such errors at all costs, which is why investing in a POS system that has robust inventory reporting is the perfect way to alleviate any and all such problems.
Generally speaking, inventory reports are used to determine the latest stock-levels of a product. Being a more frugal retailer however, might mean that you take your inventory reports and compare it with another report, such as sales, to discover various trends that are appearing in your store. This could be seen through the popularity of certain brands or during the seasonal time-frame in which a customer is shopping for a specific item.
It enables you then to set sales prices and margins, as well as increase (or decrease) re-order points for when stock gets low, maximizing the value you get out of your best-selling products. With items that don’t sell well, an inventory report will easily be able to put a spotlight on it, making it easier for you to decide to discontinue the product altogether and/or introduce new products in its stead.
Hike Tip: Hike POS makes it easy for retailers to make such business decisions with inventory reporting that is done in real-time. All stock levels are updated as they occur, and can be viewed from your iPad POS from anywhere, anytime.
Staff sales performance
The success of your retail store can largely be dependent on how well your staff are performing, making it essential for a manager to know exactly how that is.
In utilizing a potent POS system, charts that track sales of an employee will be readily available providing exact details to a staff member’s transactions at the register. This doesn’t just restrict itself to one user either, as point-of-sale solutions have made an emphasis of keeping retailers informed of who all their best sellers are. Retailers can even look to setting individual sales targets and competitions between staff to create a more productive, and enthusiastic work environment.
A point-of-sale system like Hike, records all sales transactions under the user’s login ID, which can also be useful if calculating performance based payments and reviewing transaction histories. Take advantage of a POS that showcases your employee’s sales records to find out who your best staff are, and who needs improvement.
Find out more about your customers
Your customers are the lifeblood of your business and learning more about how they shop in your store can go a long way in securing their engagement with the business, long-term. To that end, a Customer Reporting function in your POS can make it easy to ascertain who your most ardent customers are as well as indicate things like their spending costs and the products that they are buying.
Moreover, if a customer has loyalty points to be used, gift-cards that are active or have credit balances with the store, then this is also information a retailer will be able to access.
These metrics all add up and aid greatly in pursuing better business decisions. Make an emphasis of using a POS, like Hike, that gives you advanced reporting statistics in a matter of seconds.
POS reporting: Try Hike
Choosing a POS system that is right for you and your business, deserves stringent deliberation with various factors to consider. POS reporting is just one component, but it’s certainly a significant one. Having a reporting function that is intuitive to your needs is crucial in being able to progress and scale your business further.
That’s why we at Hike, have created a platform that gives your reports a customizable spin that makes it feel as personable as it should be. Indeed, whilst the prospect of navigating through all your reporting data may seem daunting, the process is quite the opposite on Hike. With an easy to use interface and smart solution, Hike gives retailers real-time reporting to help navigate every avenue of their business.
Whether you want to apply filters to create customized reports or assign monitoring triggers for scenarios that you’ve created, all while receiving instant notifications when they are triggered, then Hike is the point-of-sale solution for you.