Too often in small business retail, there is insufficient care for business data. Data is an asset and needs to be cared for as such. Disrespect data and data will not serve you.

This advice is for retailers, it is offered to encourage respect for data so that the business may benefit.

There is no doubt: poor business data = poor business decisions.

If you ever hope to sell your retail business, accurate business data is vital, it will determine the price you achieve for your business.

Don’t be one of those business owners who only cares about accurate business data when you decide to sell as that could be too late.

Here is all you need to do to ensure you have accurate business data.

1. Ensure you have a good department and category structure. This helps ensure the reports are useful. By good we suggest no more than fifteen departments and no more than fifteen categories within each department.
2. Arrive all stock into your POS software. The best way to do this is to receive and import into your software electronic invoices from suppliers. This is done in Invoice Arrivals.

The slower way is to manually enter invoices into your software item by item. This is done in Invoice Arrivals.

If you created an order using the software and this order subsequently arrives, you can receive the order – to save time.

1. Scan all stock you sell at the point of sale. Resist excuses like items are too small or too big or it takes too long or it is impractical. All these excuses can be countered.
2. Scan all stock you return to suppliers. Use the Returns facility.
3. Scan all stock you write off. Use the Write-off Stock facility.

Very simple, right?

Accurate business data is up to you. Not your software company, not your suppliers.

Accurate business data is 100% up to you.

Once you have accurate data, track business performance. Use the accurate data to see trends in your business, to guide better quality business decisions.

It is easy to create accurate business data. The operational and financial benefits are extraordinary.

How Tower Systems can help. Through our personal training, help desk support and knowledge base articles we offer advice, guidance and support on creating more accurate business data.

POS software support can be hard to access in some retail business situations. It could be due to technical, language or other factors.

Here at Tower Systems, our goal is to make POS software support easy to access, genuinely helpful and cost effective for small business retailers.

Our POS software support team is professional, capable and friendly. We offer access through several languages, too, to make the support experience more useful for customers where English is not their first language.

The POS software support team at Tower Systems is all in-house. That is, the company does not outsource POS software support to a cheap labour destination, there is no call centre in India, Pakistan, Indonesia, China, the Phillipines or similar, no the Tower help desk team works for the company 100% and is staffed by full time professionals.

POS software support here at Tower Systems starts with listening as this leads to understanding. get that right and we are more likely to get the customer service experience right. This is at the heard of POS software support engagement that people love.

POS software support is accessible by phone, email, text message, Facebook, Twitter, online chat and more. It is live and available through the company 24/7 given the time zones our retail partners operate through and the needs of the various niche retail channels in which we serve.

In addition to the human based support, all Tower Systems customers have access to our knowledge base. This is a deep well of resources packed with advice on how to use the software. It can be searched through a natural language query and is accessible for our customers 24/7. This easy access to updated and peer-reviewed advice about how to use our POS software makes self serve access to support a dream.

We publish to our knowledge base advice and articles based on what people tell us they want to know. We have made sure that our knowledge base articles are structured in a way that serves the immediate needs of our customers, packing articles with step by step guides into using the POS software.

We take providing POS software support seriously and do our best to provide our customers with engagement to a level and accessibility that best serves their local retail business needs.

Many of us at Tower Systems have today off as we are based in Victoria and it is the Melbourne Cup (it’s a horse race, apparently) holiday. But fear not, our help desk is up and running, support is at hand. Call any of our office numbers if you need help. We are true to our motto … we’re here to help.

People buying a retail business have plenty to learn. Often, those sewing the retail business are not as thorough in their training as they could be. to help address this we offer personal training for those boys ng a business in which our POS software is situated.

We have packaged together two full days of new owner training. This is personal, one-on-one, training, tailored to the needs of that business, using the data from the business, ensuing that the training is relevant and appropriate.

This personal new owner training ensures that the new business owner knows the POS software and how it can be used to drive the business.

When we sell our POS software to a new business we always provide at least 2 days personal training. It makes sense that someone buying a business in which our POS software is already in use taps into at least 2 days of training. That is what this unique package of training  for new business owners is about.

This training is for new business owners. It reflects that our software is already installed and in use in the business … this makes the training different to what we would do for a fresh installation.

Through the training, we help new business owners develop their own business management processes relating to the POS software. We also can audit the prior use of the software and the data managed by the software, to help the new business owner make data-based decisions. We can also review the business practices of team members, to ensure they are focussed on proper use of the software.

This new owner training from Tower Systems is offered at a considerable discount for new business owners – to make it price appealing and thereby encourage them to make a decision that is good for business.

While new owners can learn the software through our knowledge base articles, our help desk services are priced on the basis that those using our software have been trained.

We know for sure that people who are trained love our software more.

We encourage all new business owners to undertake the new owner training package we offer. They will benefit and their business will benefit.

To find out the current cost of our discounted new owner training, please check out online shop.

With the opening up of retail in Victoria as announced by the Victorian Premier this afternoon, we stand ready to help members of our small business retail community to be ready to open up.

Our help for Victorian retailers opening up includes data preparation, training catch-up, back-up checks and business process reviews.

With some shops having been closed for months, catch-up training is helpful.

We are doing this work without distracting from our work for the majority of our retail customers who are open and trading already.

Our office is open and we’re here providing assistance to retailers using our POS software today. This is a usual Saturday for us even though it is AFL Grand Final day.

Yes, that’s right, the delayed AFL Grand Final is set to play tomorrow. Here in Victoria, where we are headquartered, we have a public holiday today to ‘celebrate’. Our office is open, though, serving our customers.

We have announced to our customers a Q&A with our Software Development Manager for next week, on Wednesday.

This is an opportunity for retailers from our POS software customer community to speak directly with our Software Development Manager, to ask questions and provide feedback. It’s rare that software companies make opportunities like this available, but common for us as we embrace opportunities for free-flowing communication.

The session is available for any of our customers, with access details shared through our usual customer communications channels.

This morning we announced a competition for our customers. We are looking for the best POS software screen designs with 6 bottles of awesome Champagne up for grabs. Using out POS software, our customers have excellent control over their POS software screen design. Here is what we announced:

Win a bottle of champagne.

Hey, Retailer 3 users, share your POS screen design to get in the running to win one of 6 bottles of Heidsieck And Co Monopole Gold Top 2010 champagne. We will choose 6 well-designed R3 POS screens as winners, each receiving a bottle.

To enter, post a photo of your POS screen on our private customer Facebook page. Or, email support@towersystems.com.au with the subject – POS Screen competition. We will post it to the private Facebook page for you. Now, if you want to play with your design, this video may help: https://vimeo.com/387825075

We will keep this competition open for a week, until 9am October 19, 2020. We will choose 6 POS screen designs as the winners and send a bottle of this champagne as a price.

Why are we running this competition? Because we are seeing some awesome POS software screen designs, designs that we think could inspire others to create better POS software screens. You have excellent flexibility in the software. We hope seeing the designs inspires you.

Here is what you could win: Heidsieck And Co Monopole Gold Top 2010. Qantas wine experts had this to say: Heidsieck and Co Monopole are one of the oldest Champagne houses in the Champagne region. Gold Top 2010 is balanced and pleasing with hints of roasted and dry fruits, hazelnut, reminiscent of honey with a gingerbread dominance. This is a nice drop.

It’s a public holiday today in Queensland, South Australia, New South Wales and the Australia Capital Territory, we are here, open for business, serving small business retailers through our POS software help desk and more.

All our interstate and New Zealand numbers are up and running.

It’s pouring rain in Melbourne and snowing in Canberra right now. In this kind of weather it’s good being inside, and warm. Oh, and safe, being safe at this point in 2020 is good. In fact, it’s fantastic.

But … we’re focused on what matters to our customers. Today is a business as usual Saturday. We are providing live support for our small business retail POS software customers. Offering help, advice and training.

Like all Saturdays, we’re here, working from home, but here providing the services we promise.

We are hosting another series of live POS software training workshops for our small business retail customers. These sessions are run through our secure commercial Zoom account and are recorded and packaged for easy 24/7 access by thine unable to make the sessions.

Here is the schedule:

• Friday, August 21 @ 10am. XchangeIT data fails. How you can avoid these, save money and stop physical returns. This is a newsagent specific session.
• Monday, August 24, @ 10am. How to identify dead stock – taking a fresh look at this smart report.
• Tuesday, August 25 @ 10am. How to restructure your stock file to drive better value for you. With stock manager, this is easy if you know how. We will show you.
• Wednesday, August 26 @ 10am. Shopify / Woo website sync. What to check if you have an issue.
• Thursday, August 27 @ 10am. How to setup discount vouchers. And how to use them to differentiate your business.

All Tower Systems customers have free access to this training. each session will include Q&A time on any topic.

We had extra people working on our POS software help desk today. It’s a crazy busy time for us, in a good way, as small business retailers are working on their businesses. Add to this plenty of new customers joining our POS software user community and people going live with new websites from us … it makes us busy. So, to manage this we added to our usual Saturday team and it paid off.

We are greatful to our help desk team members who worked today their service was appreciated by our customers and by the rest of the Tower Systems team.

Even on the middle of stage 4 lockdown in Melbourne, our service of small business retailers continued, unimpeded. We are glad to have our customers.

We first shared these resources with our POS software customers in one of our daily update emails.

• Click here for the SafeWork Australia Covid resource page.
• Click here for a No Mask No Entry sign.
• Click here for a range of poster from the federal department of health relating to covid.
• Create your own action plan should your business be designated non essential and required to close for a while.
  • Know how to access the software from home.
  • Have a list of what to take from the shop.
  • Re-check your backup arrangements.
  • Run a trial so you can see what works and what does not work – you want to discover this in advance.