Point of Sales System
Point-of-sale (POS) is the place where a retail transaction is completed. It is the point at which a customer makes a payment to the merchant in exchange for goods or services. At the point of sale the retailer would calculate the amount owed by the customer and provide options for the customer to make payment. The merchant will also normally issue a receipt for the transaction.
A Nascent Point of Sale System (Nascent POS) includes everything you'll need to get started with POS in your business. Depending on your needs and the type of business you have, we have systems specifically designed for retail, restaurant, bar, grocery, salon, and iPad based applications. Each system is made to provide the most efficient and productive POS experience for you and your customers.
Features to consider in a POS system include the following:
- Ease of use: Look for software with a user-friendly graphical interface with touch screen support.
- Sort and Search Items: Simplify searches by sorting items into categories, and tag items for common traits like in-store location, season, material, sale status, or anything else you want!
- Entry of sales information: Nascent POS system allows you to enter inventory codes either manually or automatically via a bar-code scanner. Once the inventory code is entered, the systems call up the standard or sales price, compute the price at multiple quantities and provide a running total. Nascent POS system make it easy to enter sales manually when needed by letting you search for inventory codes based on a partial merchandise number, description, manufacturing code or vendor.
- Pricing: POS systems generally offer a variety of ways to keep track of pricing, including add-on amounts, percentage of cost, margin percentage and custom formulas. For example, if you provide volume discounts, you can set up multiple prices for each item.
- Updating product information: Once a sale is entered, these systems automatically update inventory and accounts receivable records.
- Security: In retail, it's important to keep tight control over cash receipts to prevent theft. Nascent POS systems provide audit trails so you can trace any problems.
- Taxes: Nascent POS systems can support numerous tax rates-useful if you run a mail order business and need to deal with taxes for more than one state.
Perhaps the most valuable way POS systems help you gain better control of your business is through their reporting features. You can slice and dice sales data in a variety of ways to determine what products are selling best at what time, and to figure out everything from the optimal ways to arrange shelves and displays to what promotions are working best and when to change seasonal promotions.
Reporting capabilities available in POS programs include sales, costs, and profits by individual inventory items, by salesperson, or by category for the day, month and year to date. Special reports can include sales for each hour of the day for any time period. You can also create multiple formats for invoices, accounting statements and price tags. Additional reports include day-end cash reconciliation work sheets and inventory management.
Every business is unique; you may find that none of the off-the-shelf systems meets your requirements. Industry-specific POS packages are available for Sweet Mart, Grocery Store, beauty and nail salons, video rental stores, dry cleaners and more. In addition, some POS system manufacturers will tailor their software to your needs.