What is a POS system?
A POS system is designed to do a few basic things: accept payments, provide sales analytics, manage inventory, and collect customer data. However as time goes on, POS systems are becoming more advanced, and much more useful than businesses first thought.
They now go far beyond these essential operations. Now you can increase sales with loyalty programs, streamline your business processes, and synchronize your in-store sales activity with your ecommerce sales.
The aim of any POS system is to make life easier and optimize your workflow. Retail-tailored Operating Systems like Brightpearl, with its integrated POS solution, take it a step further and offer useful features such as real-time data, gift cards, offline mode, flexible fulfillment options, refunds and returns management, and advanced product search.
Best POS systems for fast-growing omnichannel retailers
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Brightpearl
Brightpearl POS systems are chosen by many organizations worldwide. This software isn’t a standalone POS, it’s an integrated element of Brightpearl’s overall digital operations platform. That platform also features warehouse and inventory management, order management, workflow automation, retail accounting, CRM, analytics tools, and much more. In short, everything you need in one smart, user-friendly system.
There are many benefits to having an all-in-one retail solution. To start, all data is centralized into one system, which keeps everything in one place and avoids confusion across your multichannel stores. In addition to this, it enables real-time visibility on business performance, so you can make quick adjustments as and when they’re needed. A system like this allows you to have control over your whole business, which can be challenging for large organizations.
Other POS system features that retailers love include:
Advanced fulfillment
If an item is out of stock in the store, fulfill the item from another from external warehouses to the local store or mark items to be back ordered.
Flexible discounts
Apply either a line discount to a single product, a discount across all products in the same order, or a custom price to a specific customer.
Easy refunds and offering sales credits for returns
Either refund from a completed order or refund by adding a product into a new basket, and marking it as a product to be refunded.
Award and redeem loyalty points
Reward customers with incentives and offers for their repeat purchases. Customers enrolled in loyalty programs can earn and redeem loyalty points for purchases.
Flexible transaction options
Link a sale to an existing customer or a new customer. Email a receipt to recipients without having to add them as customers. Undo a cash payment when it was mistakenly processed. Pause transactions and retrieve them later.
Offline functionality
When there is no internet, products, inventory, and sales are stored locally and synced when back online.
Brightpearl also offers many purpose-built integrations so you can customize your retail tech stack to better suit your business’s needs.
Not only this, but Brightpearl also has an open API, giving you more flexibility to customize your tech stack.
What do merchants have to say about Brightpearl POS?
Let’s take a look at what some businesses have to say about their experiences using Brightpearl POS.
Paper & Tea
“Brightpearl has had a very positive influence on the business. The fact that the POS is integrated with the back office and everything is all in one place, allows us to oversee how the business is doing day-to-day. I can’t tell you how essential it is, we built the business with Brightpearl as a core element.”
Alex Monroe
“With Brightpearl POS, the most important thing for us is that we can spend less time looking at the screen and more time looking at our customers. We can have a conversation with them, show them the jewelry and get them involved with what we do”
Cabbages & Roses
“Stock management was basically impossible; we’d have to manually decrement stock every day. We’d take a look at the closing balance from the night before, go through the sales and then calculate the new stock levels – and it was almost always wrong! It was virtually impossible to manage. We did a lot of things manually for the first nine months before we found Brightpearl.”
Leader Stores
“Before Brightpearl, we were physically having to check what stock we had in the warehouse and sometimes things simply didn’t add up. Pricing was also a tedious task – to update prices across all of our sales channels meant someone having to go in and manually update each channel one by one. It just wasn’t an efficient process.”
Best POS systems for small businesses and retailers
We’ve established that Brightpearl is way out in front when it comes to fast-growing omnichannel businesses. But what is the best POS system for retailers on a smaller budget?
What is the best POS system?
As we’ve seen, there are plenty of POS solutions to choose from, and your choice will depend on your type of business and what you need the software to do. While smaller retailers may get by with the basic functionality of a lower-cost option, you’re going to need something more robust as you grow.
That’s why Brightpearl is the best POS system for retail overall. Because it’s an all-in-one platform, your data syncs instantly across channels and locations—giving you a real-time view of stock availability and sales from wherever you are. The POS system has advanced features like the ability to fulfill from other locations, place backorders, or save a sale for later.
It’s easy to set up a loyalty program, give flexible discounts, and process refunds or credits. And Brightpearl gives you a raft of connected features for retail operations, including inventory management, retail accounting, analytics, and CRM.
How POS systems have changed over the years
When we think of POS systems, we typically think of all the hardware that comes with it: tills, cash registers, scanners, and so on. With the astronomical growth of online shopping, though, modern POS systems are now very different.
As well as providing hardware for physical stores, POS systems are used for online transactions. They can synchronize offline and online activity to create an accurate overview of a whole business in real-time. This is most useful for businesses with both offline and online stores. Without such a conduit between the physical and digital, information and data can be misconstrued, and businesses may end up missing out on key data and inventory updates.
Mobile POS systems are also widely used, particularly for smaller businesses that don’t require a lot of hardware to take payments; such as cafes. The widespread use of POS systems means many stores across the globe are streamlining their business processes and improving productivity.
Reasons businesses need a POS system
1. Reduce human error
POS systems take a lot of pressure away from employees and retail managers. They can analyze sales activity and automate many processes.
What’s more, they can also minimize the risk of human errors. Certain tasks that were previously done by your staff can now be done via the POS system, such as taking orders manually. Payment processing like this can be subject to human error. These mistakes are harmful to customer satisfaction, resulting in bad customer reviews, which are costly to the company. According to Brightpearl’s Rise of The Review Culture report, retailers spend on average $10,000 each year dealing with negative reviews.
That’s one reason why POS systems are great for business, because it means that your business is no longer being exposed to potentially harmful errors. Plus, POS systems can also be a deterrent for theft because it keeps check of incoming and outgoing cash.
2. Improves customer experience
One of the most important parts of a retail business is keeping customers happy. It’s not enough to have great products – you also need to provide great service. A POS system is a vital part of this. By having updated inventory levels available, staff can quickly check the availability of products and let customers know.
This is particularly helpful for multi-location businesses. It may be that they don’t have the item in stock at one location, but can either send the customer to another location or order it for them. Rather than customers feeling frustrated or unable to find a product, they’ll leave satisfied, either with the product or information on when/where it will be available.
A POS system can help in other ways, too. Information, such as order history, can be fed into a CRM (customer relationship management) system. You can use this to provide a more personalized service, especially for marketing emails or future communications.
This data has another use, too. You can see which products are the most popular, which can help with inventory planning. A POS system and an automated inventory management system go hand-in-hand. Employees can even reorder items straight from the shop floor via a computer or tablet.
A POS system remembers data from thousands of customer inquiries, whether it’s from in-store or online shopping. In future, if customers encounter any problems, issues can be resolved much faster thanks to the data gathered from previous customers.
3. Provides an omnichannel experience
When selling on multiple channels, especially online and offline, it’s important to offer customers an omnichannel experience. This means you need all your sales channels to talk to each other.
For instance, if a customer finds a product through the web store, they may want to see it physically before making a purchase. In fact, it’s reported that 80% of buyers will make the trip to a physical location if they see an item is immediately available. For sales like this, you’ll need to sync your online and offline inventory in real time. Or if a product is not available in store, you’ll need to tell the customer if the product can be found and fulfilled through other channels. Another great option is to offer BOPIS service or in-store returns for items bought online
With 80% of shoppers deciding to not make a purchase due to bad customer experience, it’s important to make the experience as seamless as possible for them.
4. Provides analytics and real-time data
Another reason why businesses need a POS system is to gain insight into customer activity through analytics. Using the best POS system for retail will allow you to gather data from your business over time, which can then be utilized to your advantage.
This data can bring about changes to business processes. For example, if you notice more customers are purchasing at the end of the month, you can introduce discounts at the beginning of the month to make sales more consistent.
In addition to this, once you have collected more data, you’re also able to have better control over inventory. The POS system will give an overview of best-selling items and most popular seasonal items. Therefore, you can order more accurate amounts of stock for online and in-store, because you’ve been able to predict future trends and customer behavior.
5. Payments are secure
For customers, knowing that card payments are secure is very important—whether buying online or off. With so many scams on the internet and elsewhere, it’s vital that you can assure your customers their money is absolutely safe when they make a purchase with you.
A good POS system will process payments effectively and securely, which means credit card processing should always be safe. It should also never store sensitive data such as customers’ debit card details.
By using a POS system, your business can save time and money. That’s because a POS system can help your business become more efficient in many areas, such as sales and processing orders. Intuitive POS systems can automate tasks that may otherwise take up an employee’s time, boosting productivity and benefiting the customer.
6. Allows you to remotely manage the business
When you operate physical stores as well as online stores, it can become difficult to manage your business remotely. A POS system can help with this, because it stores information and data and lets you access it at any time.
Cloud-based POS systems are particularly useful for managers who are working remotely. Managers can access store information from anywhere, whenever they need it. Some POS systems even come with a mobile phone app to make communication even easier.
Adopting a cloud-based system will also mean you’re ahead of the curve, as many businesses start to switch to this way of working. Software updates are also automatic, allowing you to access the latest features every time you log in.
7. Increases business efficiency
A good POS system can improve the functionality of your business. It can eradicate the need for paperwork, saving more money and time. It also enables you to more efficiently manage bills and orders, as well as produce sales figures for each day. Thanks to barcode scanners and card readers, it can speed up processes that may otherwise take employees hours each day.
Essential POS features to look out for
1. High level of security
Whether you have physical stores and online stores, or just an online store, making sure you invest in top tier security is crucial. Having a POS system with a high level of security is important for both you and your customers. When choosing a POS system, ensure the software is compliant with the latest industry standards and regulations.
For example, accessing your Brightpearl system requires an account ID, username, and password. Additionally, the back-office Brightpearl administration area is over a TLS encrypted connection, and you can set up your account so that it can only be accessed from approved IP addresses.
2. Integrated accounting
One of the latest features of a POS system is integrated accounting. Nowadays, POS systems can integrate with various third-party apps to improve your user experience. Apps like Xero and QuickBooks are ideal for this. Consider a POS system that can seamlessly integrate with these apps if you want to minimize manual bookkeeping tasks and data entry, without needing additional accounting software.
3. Ecommerce capabilities
If your business has both a physical and online presence, you need a POS system that can bring the two together. It needs to be able to communicate with your online sales channels. When comparing these systems, you should also consider what devices they work with. For example, does your POS system need to be compatible with iOS and Android devices, or just one?
4. Payment integrations
Different customers have different preferences for how they pay. A POS system needs to be capable of handling these options, integrating with a variety of payment providers. It’s no longer enough to support only standard debit and credit cards. Instead, a good POS system should support options like iZettle, and Google Pay.
5. Customer loyalty programs
When choosing a POS System, ensure that it has customer-focused features. Gift cards and loyalty programs are great for improving customer satisfaction, so you should opt for a system that can deliver this. This is an example of Brightpearl’s POS system interface, showcasing offers and promotions that are available at a store.
6. Gift Cards
Sometimes, customers want to buy a gift but aren’t sure what to get. Rather than losing out on a potential sale, offering gift cards can ensure they spend money with you. A good retail POS system needs to have the capability to sell and redeem gift cards.
7. Advanced fulfillment options
We noted earlier that one way to improve the customer experience is to help them find the product they want, even if it’s at another location. Advanced fulfilment options allow merchants to check inventory across all stores and warehouses, rather than limiting it to their own site. This decreases the chances of lost sales, as stock can be ordered either to a physical location or the customers home.
8. Access real-time data
You can take the guesswork out of sales activity with a retail POS system. Choose a system that lets you access real-time data whenever you want. It can also allow you to track daily, weekly, and monthly sales. This data can be useful for customer behavior analysis as well as for future performance reviews.
9. Maximum flexibility
You don’t want to be tied in to a POS system that doesn’t work for your business. So, invest in a system that gives you maximum flexibility. That means monthly subscriptions that you can opt out of, a variety of third-party apps to choose from, and essential POS hardware that you can buy upfront.
Flexibility is also about the options you have during a sale. Imagine you’re half way through a transaction, only to find out the customer has left their credit card in their car. If there’s a large queue, you’ll want to serve the next customer. However, this can mean deleting the transaction and starting all over again! Instead, a good POS system should allow you to be flexible, letting you pause and retrieve it later.
You’ll also want flexible discount options – the ability to discount depending on customer type, to add a custom amount off, or to accept vouchers. Having different ways of providing discounts is a great way to encourage customers into making purchases.
When you have a POS system that allows you this flexibility, it saves you from having to swap it for a newer model in the future. Also, ensure it has regular system updates so it always features the latest information and technology.
How to choose a POS system for your business
Ask yourself the following questions:
1. Is it able to integrate with your existing software?
Businesses can be very particular about the software they use, and rightly so. Once employees are used to a certain system, it can be hard to adapt to a new one. So, by using point of sale software that can easily integrate with your existing tools, you’re making the process much easier. For the business, your employees, and ultimately your customers. What’s more, you’re centralizing all your information, saving time and money in the long-run.
2. Does it accept most payment methods?
From credit cards to mobile payments with Apple Pay, people like to pay in various ways. For some businesses that also operate in-store, this also includes cash. Therefore, you need a system that will accept most payment methods. It can also help if the system is compatible with both Android and iOS because some customers like to pay with Google Pay as well as Apple Pay.
3. Do you need a mPOS (Mobile Point of Sale)?
Not every business requires a mPOS, but if you do, pick a POS system that can offer this. There are several POS systems that can be accessed from an iPad or iPhone, which can be useful when you’re working remotely. This payment processor can sometimes be more applicable to smaller businesses, but many enterprise retailers use mPOS systems for stock checks and online ordering for customers in-store, if an item is out of stock. You can also take contactless card payments through an mPOS.
4. Does it have reliable hardware?
When you invest in a POS system you want the hardware to last, especially if you’ve made an up-front investment in the equipment. So, before rushing into buying a POS system, check whether the hardware options on offer are suited to your needs. For example, if the POS system is only available on iPad but you use multiple devices across your company, it may not be a good choice for you because your options are then limited. Ensure the hardware is going to work for your business’s functions.
5. Does it offer good customer support?
Even if you’re using a great POS solution, there’s bound to come a time when you need to contact the company for support. Choose a POS system that offers at least 24/7 email support, and phone support during key business opening hours. If you encounter a problem while a customer is waiting, but your POS system support isn’t available, this could leave your customer feeling frustrated and impact the rest of your day’s sales until you can get the problem fixed.
6. Does it combine offline with online?
Not every POS system is able to handle online sales as well as offline transactions. Some are only used in-store which can be great for smaller businesses who just require an iPad and internet connection. But if you’re a multichannel business, then you need to ensure your POS system is up to the task. This system will need to monitor stock levels, allow you to manage your inventory, and provide detailed customer analytics across the board.
Point Of Sale technology is essential for omnichannel retailers today
Many businesses have made the move online while maintaining their physical stores. This means that more than ever, a system that can unify the business is crucial. Inventory needs to be synchronized across all stores and channels to ensure stock levels remain balanced. This prevents over and under-selling, resulting in happy customers.
Sales visibility is also another reason why point of sale technology has become essential for retailers. You can check your real-time sales, as well as sales activity throughout the day. This enables you to keep track of your business performance and make data-driven decisions.
On top of all this, it allows staff to offer omnichannel customer experience. When customers enter a store and can’t find the item they like in their size, they can now head to a sales assistant and order it from another online or offline store where the stock is available. With an advanced POS, you can also offer BOPIS (Buy Online Pick Up In Store) and flexible returns services.
Brightpearl gives you all of the above, and much more besides—that’s why it’s the best choice for a retail operations platform, with the best POS system as part of the deal.