Can you afford not to have a sales application that handles multiple channels and integrates with your accounting systems?

The idea that a point-of-sale system is a glorified cash register is an old one, but is still often the first thing that comes to mind when looking into the idea of setting up a POS in a retail outlet.

Integration (or connectivity) with the accounting system should be taken for granted today but far too often we still have separate systems and the day’s sales are posted into the accounts by the accountant, days or even weeks later. This means that the business owner has little visibility on how well each outlet is actually doing in real time without taking data from several systems.

Another common hurdle is the idea that selling online requires an extensive task to set up and constant effort to keep the site updated. A nightmare scenario is when you sell online, but you then have to get back to the customer with the news that the item is out of stock or the price has gone up. Trying to reconcile card payments with sales from the online system and journal entries in the accounting package is doable with a few transactions a week but you would not want to face it with a successful web-shop.

Having a good POS in the brick and mortar shop that can also be used as a web-shop and integrated with the accounting package is the ideal scenario. All sales points update the same accounts and the same stock records. So you would know (and more importantly the website would know) when you have sold out of a particular item in store and not sell it to someone online at the same time. Price updates, new stock items and replenishments are captured once and for all outlets.

Another factor to consider is whether the POS integrates with various accounting packages or would you be expected to replace the POS when you upgrade the accounting package?

Shopping should be a pleasant experience for the customer whether in the shop or online but that should not mean that selling has to be a miserable experience at the office.

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