A POS system is no longer just a cash register. Point of sales solutions are constantly evolving to help businesses achieve greater success. In the last couple of years, we have seen an influx in simple POS competitors and many of our newer clients have come to us following a bad experience where the system wasn’t right for them.
A simple POS system built for a 2021 business should at least be able to:
- Add inventory when purchasing
- Reduce inventory when selling
- Have a manual input system for changes during stocktake.
An Acumen POS system goes above and beyond these functions.
The Acumen Difference: More than POS
An Acumen POS system can complete all of the basic functions, but we go a step further to assist businesses in inventory and cost management.
Inventory
Inventory management is not just selling your final product but sourcing products, storing raw materials and on-selling additional services. This can get quite complex when a store has multiple departments or a business has multiple sites (factories and franchises included). Acumen is here to help you, our systems allow you to:
- Specify and Display Inventory: You can see exactly how much of a product you have in stock and where it is.
- Purchase Bulk and Sell Unique: The Acumen POS allows you to specify the units in which each Product is purchased as well as sold. For example, purchase by the box and sell individually or purchase by the roll and sell by the meter. We also allow you to toggle between these units when displaying your current inventory levels.
- Display Default Unit Type by Location: The Acumen POS allows you to specify a default unit for each inventory location. Your warehouse may want to default to display inventory levels as cartons/boxes, while your retail locations default to display inventory levels as single units.
- Input Minimum Orders: If a supplier has a minimum order spend or you want to save on purchasing, you can add that condition to the product, so you are buying products in bulk and not individually.
- Bundle Products into a Single Code: You can have a table and chairs special combo which you receive as a single product, but the inventory level of each of the “table” and “chairs” will be adjusted accordingly. You can then manage the inventory of these components, while also viewing how many “table and chair” combinations you have available based on the inventory levels of the components. At POS, you can sell the tables and chairs individually, or sell the table and chairs collection bundled together as a single product.
- Add Services to POS: Sometimes it’s not a product you are selling but a service. With Acumen, you can class services within inventory so you don’t have -273 freight products available.
Product Types
There are various types of Product you can set up in the Acumen POS system.
- A Standard product is the base simple product, it can be purchased, sold, and inventory is tracked.
- A Service product can be purchased, sold, but inventory is not tracked. e.g. Freight
- A Consumable item can be purchased, but not sold. e.g. Office supplies.
- A Kit product is a collection of Standard products. e.g. 1 Table and 6 Chairs.
- A Factory product is a product that you manufacture. It can be sold, but not be purchased. It also contains a collection of Material products that are used to manufacture the item (as well as labour costs if required) and must be manufactured. Inventory is automatically managed once an item is manufactured to reduce the inventory of the Material products.
- A Material product can be purchased but not sold, and inventory is tracked. It is simply a component of a manufactured item.
Additional Product Types
The Acumen POS contains various other types of product handling that offer different behaviour and features including rental, serial numbered, and various combinations of those already listed above.
Cost Management
Sometimes cost management isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Your POS system should let you specify the base cost of a simple product, but just like inventory, sometimes costing can be complex. You want the lowest cost, and we make sure you’re getting it. After all, accurate costs mean accurate profit reporting.
- Discounts: Quantity discounts can be specified per Product in the Acumen POS system. 5% if you order 10 or more? 7% if you order 50 or more? We’ve got it covered.
- Individual Costs: If you have multiple suppliers of the same product, you can specify the costs per supplier so you have an accurate record of your costs.
- Date Based Promotional Costs: If a product is at a reduced rate for a period of time you can input this at the product level.
- Rebated Costs: Acumen allows you to maintain a Purchase price, used when placing the Order with your supplier, and also a Rebated Cost, that is used to obtain accurate profit reporting on your sales.
Questions to Ask When Considering POS for your Business
- Are these products available at POS in their purchase unit?
- Do you display available inventory levels as units or boxes?
- Do you purchase them in a box and sell them individually?
- Is there a minimum number of boxes you need to order in a single order?
- Maybe you purchase the table and chairs from your supplier, but also sell the items individually?
- Are there volume discounts available from the supplier?
- Have multiple suppliers for the same Product?
- Is the product available at a reduced rate for a period of time?
- Does the supplier offer a rebate on your purchases?
- Do you want to maintain your current mark-up and adjust the sell price of a Product when the cost changes?
- Do you need to preview this new sell price so you can make necessary adjustments and print shelf labels before applying the change?
- Have an excel spreadsheet of costs you want to import rather than enter them manually?
This is not a comprehensive list but if you answered yes to even one of these questions, you need to investigate complex POS systems like Acumen. At Acumen, if you need complex, we do complex, and we’re here to help you get it right the first time so that “it just works” at POS. Give us a call today.
