Forgotten Point of Sale System Features - Grand Totals

Restaurant point of sale systems have loads of features that POS salespeople love to talk about. Some are glamorous, others are flashy and some are unique to their product. When showing off these new and fancy features too often these salespeople forget about the basics and why cash registers were invented in the first place.

Preventing theft. That is the purpose of a cash register. Ringing up items and safely storing cash if the fundamental philosophy that created a now multi-billion dollar industry known as the Point of Sale Industry.

Why then are so many point of sale companies, software manufacturers and POS salespeople forgetting about the fundamental principles that are still valid in today’s business environment? The answer eludes and frustrates me because valuable profits are being lost by not utilizing these basic and important features.

Reporting Grand Totals

Would you buy a car without an odometer? Then why would you buy a point of sale system without a grand total? The principles are the same. They track how far you go and subtracting yesterdays total from today’s total tells you how far you went today.

Point of sale systems today have gotten away from this extremely important feature that securely reports on the total sales of your business. Cash registers still have this feature as a standard feature. But even with this feature too many people do not know the importance of the feature and how valuable it can be in stopping theft and letting management know when there is something wrong with your business.

Not too many years ago I was helping a fast food franchisee open a new location. We were going over the system, mostly reminding him of the features of the system, which he already had installed in several other locations. I mentioned the grand total and he questioned me on what that was.

I explained that this number was just like a car odometer and tracked every dollar sold and kept incrementing after every sale. Take today’s number and subtract it from yesterday’s number and you knew exactly how many dollars in sales you had.

To add to this number, the point of sale system he had also had a reset counter that showed how many times the system had been closed since first installed. Each day’s report should be incremented by 1, thus they should always be sequentially numbered.

With this knowledge in hand we returned to his office and began a quick audit of one of his problem stores. We quickly found that the daily close count showed missing reports. We also checked the grand totals and found missing sales.

What was happening was the closing store manager was running the end-of-day report between 10:00 pm and 11:00 pm and then running another close at midnight, the time when the store was supposed to close. The closing manager was pocketing the sales rung between the first and last closing reports and turning in the first closing report as the daily sales report.

Had it not been for the grand totals we would never have caught this thief. The closing manager even went as far as to change the time on the register to keep the elusion complete. It was those little used grand totals that eventually caught up with him.

The sad thing is, most point of sale systems have gotten away from the grand totals. Not only are they not even offered, if you ask about them you will probably hear excuses why they aren’t important.

Grand totals are important. Without them the scenario just explained above could be repeated every night on a point of sale system without these totals and you would never know it. When I say never, I mean never. You would eventually go out of business because your closing managers would be taking all the profits and leaving you with all the expenses.

Don’t settle for less than you deserve. Demand the security that your point of sale system should provide. You wouldn’t buy a car without an odometer. Don’t buy a point of sale system without grand totals.

Jerry D. Wilson has over 25 years of point of sale experience helping business owners stop employee theft and increase profits. Please visit DirecTouch POS and DirectRetail POS for more information on other features that are important to your point of sale needs.

Checkout the Benefits of Retail Management/POS Software

What is Retail Management/POS?

POS software originally referred to software applications designed to speed up sales till/checkout processes. Since its origins, however, POS software has evolved to include so many more features that it is now more commonly referred to as Retail Management Systems (RMS).

These days, a good RMS can be expected to offer the following functions:

- POS
- Inventory control
- Automatic purchase order creation
- Automatic price updates
- Barcode scanning
- Accounts receivable + payable
- General ledger
- Payroll
- Customer tracking & follow-up
- E-commerce + website shopping cart integration
- Shop management
- EDI (electronic ordering)
 

To help you understand what a good RMS can do for your business, here’s TRG’s guide to the main benefits.

1. Increased profits

Obviously, there’s little point investing in dedicated retail software if you’re not going to see a return on your investment, and good RMS software has numerous profit-boosting capabilities.

• Fewer pricing errors
Leaving your staff to price items can lead to pricing errors which cost you money. RMS allows you to set and control the price of every item in your store, minimising such errors. It will also calculate the REAL cost of any discounts you choose to make, e.g. how many more items you need to sell if you reduce the price by 5%.

• Control price points
Every item has a “magic” price point which maximises profits, but finding out what that price point is can take hours of research. RMS can analyse your sales records and tell you the ideal price for each item, i.e. the highest you can go while still selling as much as you can. Why sell at $2.49 when you can sell just as many at $2.99?

• Reduce dead inventory and maximise turnover
Do you really know what sells and what doesn’t? You might have a vague idea but RMS can tell you exactly which items are flying off the shelves and which are piling up in your stockroom, enabling you to phase out unpopular lines and focus on those which sell quickly, thus improving your cashflow.

• Reduce employee theft
Individual log-ons combined with daily profit margin, inventory control and voided/cancelled/deleted sales reports mean any thefts canbe spotted immediately. And by letting your employees know about the full capabilities of your POS software, they’ll be less likely to try and steal from you.

• Critical information
If a line suddenly stops selling (or suddenly starts!) it might take you a while to notice. But your RMS software will tell you immediately so you can adjust pricing to maximise profit or minimise loss.

• Electronic cheque verification
Bad cheques are still a big problem for retailers. But linking your POS system to an online electronic cheque verification service can help you minimise the damage done by bad cheques. Cheque verification services have been shown to enable retailers increase their collection rate on bad cheques to as much as 80%!

• Better rates from suppliers
By tracking any disparity between sales volume and profit margin, RMS can help identify which supplier deals you should be renegotiating! Showing a supplier how much of his product you’re selling is an essential tool in helping you get better deals.

2. Improve your marketing

It is cheaper to get business from existing customers than to go out and look for new ones, but are you doing all you can to get your customers to come back to your store again and again? Good RMS software can help you with this.

• Sales letters to customers
Following up a sale with a thank-you letter, information about related products or special offers/personal discounts is a great way to get repeat businesses. Detailed purchase records combined with professional, stylish letter generation can help you keep in touch with your customers and have them coming back for more.

• Automated mailings
Regular mailings (by post or e-mail) enable you to conduct drip/nurture marketing, a proven technique in retail. Using customer segmentation you can make sure you target the right customers with the right products and offers.

• Reports
Monitoring different types of marketing campaign and resulting sales can tell you what’s working and what isn’t, enabling you to establish what types of campaign work for which products.

• CRM compatibility
If you already have a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, your RMS software can interface with it and enable you to store detailed sales information for every customer. CRM + POS = essential market information more effective marketing.

3. Manage your inventory

Quick stock turnover = better cashflow, and RMS software can help you identify what’s moving, and what isn’t.

• Top sellers + dead inventory
Knowing what’s selling is essential to any retail business, and RMS can tell you what your top sellers are. Not only does this help you stay on top of pricing, but it also ensures you never run out of popular lines by automatically sending purchase orders to your suppliers when stocks start running low.

Equally, having lots of dead stock can tie up your cash and take up valuable stockroom space. RMS identifies slow or non-selling lines, helping you to take remedial action.

• Seasonal sellers
Some products sell especially well at particular times of year. RMS can provide you with detailed monthly or weekly sales breakdowns, identifying patterns and enabling you to time product orders and promotions.

4. Reduce accounting work

Bookkeeping is a time-consuming process and takes up valuable time you could be devoting to selling. RMS software cuts down the amount of accounting work you have to do by automating most of your processes.

• Process automation
RMS can automate tasks such as calculating monthly sales tax, printing monthly statements, entering sales transactions into Accounts receivable, posting receipts to journals, and posting transactions into general ledger software.

• Track debtors and creditors
By keeping close tabs on who owes you money and who you owe money to (and when it’s due), RMS helps you improve your cash flow management and ensures that your customers pay you on time, and that you keep your suppliers happy by meeting their deadlines.

• Maintain a clear audit trail
Everyone dreads end of year accounting and reconciliation, but RMS can take away this particular headache by keeping a clear audit trail throughout the financial year.

5. Make your customers happy

Happy customers mean more sales, and RMS software can help create a POS experience that will make your customer service special and memorable.

• Speed up the checkout process
A good RMS system will offer bar code checking, touch screens and instant credit card authorisation, meaning your customers have minimal waiting time at your checkouts and you get to sell more goods.

• Individual credit/discounts
With full customer data available at the touch of a button, personal discounts or credit can be applied immediately, meaning fewer misunderstandings or problems at the checkout.

• Fast order delivery
Some larger items need to be delivered to the customer’s home. Electronic POS can send details of the order to your warehouse before the customer has even left the store, enabling rapid delivery and a happy customer!

• Paper-free refunds
Mishandling a complaint or request for a refund is the easiest way to lose a customer, but how many refunds do you refuse simply because the customer has lost their receipt? As your RMS software stores a record of all purchases, you can call up electronic receipts and make sure that anyone who is entitled to a refund gets one, receipt or no receipt.

• Professional paperwork
RMS software produces crisp, clean, readable receipts, invoices and delivery notices that make you look professional and avoid any misunderstandings with your customers.

TRG International is proud to offer RetailPro, the global leader in Retail Management Systems. Used by over 55,000 retailers in more than 70 countries, it offers full retail/POS functionality, and combined with our experienced installation and technical support teams, it’s the perfect choice for Vietnamese retailers.

Tim Russell is Marketing Director at TRG International, one of Vietnam's leading providers of IT business solutions and services. Originally from the UK, he has been in Vietnam since 2003. Prior to coming to Vietnam he spent over a decade in the tourism industry in both operations and marketing, before moving into IT where he helped set up a company providing reservations software for tour operators and travel agents. He lives in Ho Chi Minh City with wife Nhung and daughter Emilie.