Time is money.
It might be a bit clichéd at this point, but this old adage still holds true in the world of business. Small or new businesses in particular tend to need more time in the day because they often have minimal staff or a low budget to help them accomplish their goals, which means that every minute counts. It might feel impossible to get it all done sometimes, but one time-saving measure that works for every kind of business is updating to a POS system.
If you’re not familiar, a POS (Point Of Sale) system is everything needed to complete a sales transaction and all the software and hardware included in that process. So, barcode scanners, touch screen key prompts for products, promotional discount keys, computers or iPads to ring everything up, and backroom servers or cloud-based technology needed to store information, just to name a few.
POS systems can either be fairly generic or incredibly tailored to your specific business and your unique needs.
If you haven’t embraced a POS system yet you might think that your way of using a manual cash register, paper receipts, or hand-typed logs works just fine, but…
you are likely wasting an astonishingly amount of time every single day…
…using these methods, which means you’re also wasting money.
POS systems are faster to operate than a traditional manual cash register with the added bonus of tracking sales in real time as well as keeping inventory up-to-date as soon as an item is sold. This also means that employees can use the systems to automatically check if an item is located somewhere in the store or at another location instead of scouring the backroom and wasting valuable time that they could be on the floor.
Another great way that a proper system will save you time is by incorporating it into handheld devices like iPads that are equipped with credit card readers. Restaurants are a particularly fantastic place to use mobile systems like this so servers can enter orders tableside, which will save time waiting behind others at terminals with the added benefit of reducing ordering mistakes.
The reports the systems give you can inform you of your best- and worst-selling products, best- to worst-performing employees, as well as streamlining all of your bookkeeping, payroll, and taxes without the risk of human error.
Many business owners are wary of using POS systems because the amount of tasks that they can do might make you think that they will be complicated to use, but modern systems can be incredibly simple and intuitive, even for a tech novice.
The more that these tasks are streamlined, the more time is freed up for employees and managers to focus on accomplishing the bigger goals that will really benefit the business.
So if you’re ready to speed up your service and save time on:
• Sales transactions
• Inventory management
• Payroll
• Taxes
• Overall customer wait times, and much more, then contact the professionals here at HBS and we’ll work together to build your perfect POS system and put some valuable time back in your day.
