Making the most of POS – how to become a master of reports
Most retailers use some form of electronic point-of-sale system to help manage their transactions.
What you use will depend mainly on the size and type of business you have, but if you employ a POS system purely to process your transactions, you’re missing out on some great tools for your business.
One of the most valuable tools to get familiar with is reporting. All EPOS systems will offer some type of daily printout, but if your system supports it, getting into the nitty gritty of your data is an excellent way to help you understand your business better and plan to boost your profits.
We take a closer look at reporting and how it can help you to strengthen your retail business.
Making the most of POS – how to become a master of reports
Types of reports
Your POS system keeps track of the data input from all areas of your business. This massive amount of information becomes most useful once it’s collated into report format, where you can view, clarify, and compare information, to help you understand at a glance what’s going on in your business. Some of the most common areas for reporting are:
Transaction reports
- Payment methods
- Refunds
- Transactions by cashier
Sales reports
- General daily, weekly, monthly or yearly sales totals.
- Detailed product or department sales.
- Returns or discounts
Supplier reports
- Account information
- Purchase totals
Stock reports
- Department totals
- Stock Movement
- Margins
Customer reports
- Loyalty program data
- Purchase history
- Demographics
Scheduled reports
Scheduled reporting allows you to choose your favourite and most useful reports, and set them to be emailed to specific people or places at regular intervals.
Scheduling your reports provides you with several benefits:
Automate
You’ll have reports you need to see regularly; daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. Scheduling allows these reports to be automatically generated and sent, so that you receive a reminder to check them, and you never miss out on any important data; for example, your daily sales figures.
Compare
Reports that are generated at the same intervals allow for accurate comparisons. For example, if your sales are unexpectedly lower this month, you’ll be immediately alerted when comparing to previous months.
Plan
Regular, scheduled reporting offers patterns, which you can use to plan your future strategy better. If profits are down this week, you can delve deeper into your data to find out why. Maybe you are affected by school holidays, or festival days. Once you have the information to hand, you can prepare better for next time.
Customised reports
Every store is unique, and so the reports you require might be quite different to your neighbours store.
Good EPOS systems will enable you to customise your reports, so you can see exact information that you require to operate your own business.
If you are able to set the exact parameters that you want from your reports, your data will be far more functional, and therefore more useful for planning and business development.
This feature could come in useful when you are designing a campaign or promotion, for example, or thinking about adding a new product line.
Customisable reporting gives you greater flexibility and control; you only generate exactly what you want to see and eliminate the ‘noise’.
Metrics
Clear and detailed reporting provides insight for your business. Use your POS reporting tools to find patterns, analyse your data, and create targets. Some examples include:
Inventory
| Monitor your stock levels | Maintain optimum stock levels, reduce costly overstocking |
| Manage product margins | Increase/reduce retail pricing, re-negotiate purchasing prices |
| Find your best sellers & slow movers | Boost popular items, cancel slow moving lines |
Staff
| Monitor performance | Set targets, performance indicators and rewards |
| Manage roster | Know your busy times and departments, and staff accordingly |
Customers
| Metrics and demographics | Plan your products ranges and store strategy |
| Purchase patterns | Understand your customer for better campaigns &promotions |
Financial
| Monitor finances | View areas of profit and losses for better planning |
| Drill down reporting | Delve deep into your data to target problems or costly issues |
Mastering reports
Take some time to get to know your EPOS system and it’s capabilities. Your vendor will be able to provide you with detailed information about your system’s reporting suite; what it has and how it works.
It might be the case that it offers some beneficial report or specific feature that you are not currently using, because you’ve never spotted it. If it could save you time, or assist with better long term planning, it will be time well spent!
Taking a few minutes getting to know your reporting suite better can save you many hours in the long term. Make sure you are making the most of those important reporting features, and let your system do the work for you.
Who are we?
Retail Solutions is a market-leading EPOS provider with over 25 years of business experience. Our leading sectors are convenience stores, supermarkets, forecourts, pharmacies and coffee shops.
We are dedicated to providing your store with the most up to date and reliable point of sale hardware, along with software management tools to help you manage your business effectively.
Our self-checkout partners are NCR, who are global leaders in self-checkout technology.
Want to know more?
Take a look at our EPOS solutions for retail here: https://retailsolutions.ie/
About the author:
Susan McGuire is originally from London, United Kingdom, and has now lived in Galway, Ireland, for 15 years. She has been with Retail Solutions for 7 of those, and during that time has enjoyed various roles within the areas of Maintenance, Finance, & Marketing. You can follow her on LinkedIn!
