In retail, a guaranteed sale is the best kind of sale. Whether it’s a monthly subscription box, a service fee, or a repeat consumables order, recurring revenue provides stability for your business.
Managing repeat orders manually can be a headache. Chasing payments, remembering to generate invoices – it takes time.
That is why we are excited to highlight the Recurring Invoices facility in our Tower Systems POS software. We built this working with customers who already offered recurring billing services in their businesses. It’s been made for small business retail, specialty retail.
This module allows you to “set and forget” regular transactions, turning your Point of Sale into an automated revenue generator.
What can you use Recurring Billing for?
Here are a few ways our customers can use our recurring billing facilities:
Subscription boxes: Run a monthly curated hamper or beauty box? Automate the billing.
Pet supplies: Offer a “subscribe and save” service for heavy bags of pet food to ensure your customers never run out (and never shop elsewhere). We know from our work with pet stores that shopper purchasing is predictable.
Services: Bill automatically for pool cleaning, garden maintenance, or software subscriptions – thinks that are done, services that you provide, on a regular or cyclical basis.
Storage fees: Perfect for businesses that store items for customers, such as firearms storage or tool storage.
Key Features that Save time
1. Flexible schedules. You are in control of the frequency. You can set invoices to trigger Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly. You can set them to run indefinitely (“Ongoing”) or set a specific End Date for fixed-term contracts.
2. Smart pricing options. This is one of the smartest features of the module. When setting up an invoice, you can choose between two pricing methods:
Set price: Great for fixed service fees (e.g., $50/month).
Retail price: If you are selling a product (like dog food) and the retail price goes up in your system, the Recurring Invoice will automatically update to the new price for the next billing cycle. You don’t have to manually edit dozens of customer accounts when prices change.
3. Automated communication. With the correct settings (Retailer 3.4.3+), you don’t even need to print and mail the receipt. The system can be configured to email the invoice automatically to the customer the moment the charge is processed.
4. Inventory awareness Worried about selling stock you don’t have? You can toggle settings to check your “Quantity on Hand.” You can choose to process the invoice regardless of stock levels, or have the system halt the invoice and notify you if the item is out of stock.
How it works
Once activated, the system works in the background. Within 30 minutes of your chosen “Invoice Generation Time,” Retailer checks for due accounts and processes them.
If your shop is closed or the computer is off on the due date, don’t worry. The system is smart enough to retroactively generate the invoice the next time you turn the computer on, ensuring you never miss a payment.
Getting started
Setting this up is easy. The Recurring Invoices module is likely already waiting for you in your software.
Go to Customers -> Recurring Invoices.
Click New Recurring Invoice.
Select your customer, set the schedule, scan your items, and click Save.
Note: For Newsagencies handling newspapers and magazines, we recommend using the specific “Customer Orders” facility rather than Recurring Invoices.
The recurring revenue facilities in our POS software came out of a request from customers. We developed the facilities after thorough consultation and are grateful to customers for engaging with testing, to ensure that what we delivered was a real and useful solution. That’s how we evolve our software – working closely with our customers.
We are grateful to all who contributed to our recurring billing solution.
If you’re a Tower Systems customer and want to start building a subscription model for your business, check the Help menu in your software for “Recurring Invoices” to ensure the module is ticked in your registration, or contact Tower Support for assistance in getting started!
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The right POS system for any retail business depends on the specific needs of the retail business. Tower offers specialty retail business software made for local small business retailers. To see if we might help you…, request a free, no-obligation demo today.
Call 1300 662 957 in Australia or 0800 444 367 in New Zealand. Or, email sales@towersystems.com.au.
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