What is ERP POS Software?
Generally, a Point of Sale software is used in a retail environment. The POS system is a modern and more efficient method of recording sales and keeping track of the monetary value that has been received for the sales done in a business.
The Sales Procedures in a Business
To understand where the POS software is used, we need to first understand the procedures that are run in a business and then where the POS software fits in with these procedures.
In a shop business environment, the customer would select the product or products stocked in the business and then bring them to the employee of the business that would exchange the product for a monetary amount as per the shops displayed or the negotiated price. An efficiently run business would record the sale of the stock item and the received monetary value. Therefore, systemising their sales procedure.
The purposed requirements for the business for this procedure would be to
- Record the sales of each stock item to adjust the stock levels.
- Check the profitability of the sales for the day or period.
- Reorder low stock.
- Accumulate the transacted tendered values (Cash, Card and others) and transfer and update the tenders received into the bank accounts.
- Adjust the stock pricing accordingly to the levels, cost adjustments, customer trends and marketing needs.
- Data that is then captured is used to update the businesses accounting records.
The ERP POS software needs to operate with ease
The POS process needs to be able to easily
- Accept the customers request for a purchase to be entered onto the system with minimal keystrokes.
- Allow for the manager or cashier to check the available levels of stock that the customer is looking for.
- Identify the product in the system and at the correct price.
- Accept the Money (tenders) into the System against the sale.
- Ensure that cashier operates within the confines of his level of work.
- Allow for management override of any allowable price changes or credits that the cashier is limited to do.
- Check sales and takings at any time during the day.
- Cash up at the close of business or shift (session).
Features and benefits of ERP POS software
Easy to use
Compared to a manual method of recording the transactions for sales. With POS software it becomes more efficient to record all transactions. Be it sales or returns. As long as this feature is performed as was explained above in the ease of operation.
Stock information
As the transactions are processed on the POS system, the stock levels are automatically updated. At the time of processing the sale, the POS software can also be used to
- Provide an image of the product.
- Provide optional prices for the product.
- Indicate stock availability.
- Give detailed information about the product itself (as long as the information has been updated into the database).
- Find the stock in the business using bin locations.
Customer Pricing
Having the pricing setup with the use of preselects or specials allows a lot of possibilities
- Pricing can be set up for standard retail customers or a variety of selective customers in groups or individuals. For example, a product can have pricing;
- to automatically be selected from a price list that is pre-set for a group or individual customers.
- To run for a selected time period
- Automatically self-adjust according to the Volume of product sales with discounted prices, such as – get less than 10% on 5 or more items.
- Automatically self-adjust according to the volume of product sales with added extra items fully discounted, such as – buy 5 get 1 free
- Stock items may be sold in single or in packs. Each pack size can then have individual pricing.
Levels of user security
The Cashier or POS operator should be limited for security reasons to only deal with direct standard transactions of sales. The POS software should be set up to allow or disallow certain functions that make it secure to prevent theft or fraud.
These security measures can be many, but here are a few of the important options
- Voids, refunds, returns, credit notes, exchanges
- Payments out of the POS draw for expenses
- Search for products
- Transactional reports
- Cost Prices
- Customer details
- Discounts
- Price overrides
- Signing in or Exiting out of the sales module
- Over tendering on card transactions
Multiple methods of identifying the stock
Products may have identifiers, such as
- unique product descriptions
- stock code
- barcode
- serial number
Selecting either one of these stock identifiers is easily performed using the POS software.
Cash up is accurate and fast
As the transactions are automatically recorded at the time of sale. The data for each tender is logged and summarised. There is no need to add up all the invoices to get to sales totals and the different types of tenders.
The Cash up process is then easy. The Cashier
- Logs off from the POS session.
- Adds up the different tenders (Cash, Cards and others).
- Declares the counted Tenders into the POS software.
The manager then runs the Cash Up Report and the POS Software reports the Overs and Unders of the cash up.
Reports are meaningful
As the transactional data has been processed through the POS system software, reports for every aspect of the POS system may be derived. For example
- Itemised sales reports
- Customer sales report
- Cash up summary reports
- Profitability reports
- Daily turnover reports
- Top seller reports
- Cashier and rep sales reports
- Hourly sales reports
- Returns, credit notes, refunds etc reports
- Discounts, price overrides reports
- Stock level reports
- ….. and many more
What else can be done with ERP POS software?
Depending on the type of business, there may be additional features that can be added just to name a few
- Multiple POS units linked in the same business
- Loyalty Systems
- Customer Quotations
- Lay-bye operations
- Debtor Receipting
- Printing packing slips for Warehouse delivery
- Delivery note printing for Order deliveries
- Web order interface
- Sales order processing
- Linked to a centralised database for single or multiple branch controls
