More and more of the small business retailers using our POS software are using the tags facilities in the software for more efficient management of inventory data managed by the software.
Tags in the Tower Systems Retailer software provide an easy way to manage stock. In the powerful stock manager facility you can select all items with a tag and then:
Change price.
Change description.
Change department.
Change category,.
Change supplier.
Add to an an order.
Stock take.
Tags are a terrific tool in your software for managing stock. We encourage you to use them. We can help.
Small and independent retailers often feel helpless when a big national retailer opens up nearby. There is no match for their range, buying power, advertising coverage or even news coverage.
The sheer size of a national competitor is what scares many smaller retailers. This is often enough for them to give up and close the business.
Giving up and running is the easy way out. There is no lesson learned, just an escape from the fear.
The alternative is to find out how to deal with the national retailer.
Here are five tips for small businesses on how to face and deal with a national retailer moving into the area:
Don’t compete. By not talking about the competitor, pricing against them or pitching your business in any way, you separate yourself. While they may have similar products, it is unlikely that they are targeting your specific business so why target them? Focus instead on your own business. Not competing should include not advertising price comparisons, not focusing on the competitor at staff meetings, not expanding your range to sell more of what they sell and not obsessing about them. We were working with an independent retailer recently who decided to offer a product they sold which is also available in a nearby national retailer for 10% less than the sale price in the national retailer. This move gave the independent retailer a margin of 15%. In discussion I discovered that most of the customers who visited the independent retailer were unlikely to shop in the national retailer. So why compete on price? If you know why customers shop with you, you have the opportunity of not giving up margin out of fear.
Run a better business. From the moment you hear about a new national retailer coming to town, look at every aspect of your business for opportunities for improvement. From the back room to the font counter fine tune your processes, employee training, stock buying and the look of the business. Dramatically improve your business from the inside out. This will improve your business health and help you weather challenges which may lie ahead. Too often, independent retailers wait until the national retailer is open to react. This is probably a year or two too late.
Be unique. Look for ways to make your business unique. It could be on product range, operating hours, add-on services or something else. Embrace any opportunity to make your business unique. Even a unique niche range of products can give you traffic a big competitor will not chase. Try and focus on products which require a level of retail skill and knowledge to sell – national retailers have challenges hiring and retaining retail employees with specialist knowledge and skills.
Engage the community. Connect with the community at every possible opportunity. Support local groups, speak at functions, get known as someone and a business who care deeply about the local community. Subtly make the connection that you are fortunate to be able to help because of your local business. Being smaller and independent you are better able to personally engage with the community. You and your team are the business whereas a national chain will always be the corporate. They can throw money around locally, you can throw time, knowledge and more flexible assistance.
Tell your stories. Your retail narrative, your stories, connect you with the local community. Tell these through the people you contact, your own blog, a Facebook page and in the pages of the local newspaper. Tell human stories about your business, the people who work in it and the local stories which connect with it. Your stories could be about local community connection, convenience of shopping, commitment to range, personal customer service, product niche knowledge … there are many different narratives with which an independent retailer can connect. It is important that one you have your narrative you stick to is, that it inhabits your decisions, marketing and public presentation.
By acting early and in advance of a national retailer opening, you better position your business to weather their advertising and PR onslaught. Get in early, build a stronger business and understand that through this the new business in town will not be your competitor.
Thanks to the Tower Systems partnerships with Tyro broadband EFTPOS for retail and Xero and our direct integration with the beautiful Xero accounting software, we are thrilled to support the Tyro Smart Account. This has been outlined to our small business retail customers in this week’s customer email:
Our EFTPOS partner Tyro now offers a fee-free bank account that links to Xero and automates your supplier bill payments? It’s called the Tyro Smart Account, and is available exclusively to Tyro merchants.
If you’re using Tyro and Xero and you’d like to activate your Smart Account (it’s free after all), contact banking@tyro.com. Tyro is also offering complimentary Xero training on batch payments to all merchants who activate. The training is conducted by leading online Xero trainer Jet Convert and is valued at $110.
We are winning good business for our POS software this year from retailers switching from other POS software. While the software is a factor in their decision to switch, customer service is top of mind.
Customers switching love:
Personal service. When they call they talk to a human. And, yes, they can call any of our offices even toll free from NZ. We hear many stories of poor service from other POS software companies where personal contact is discouraged.
Names. Names matter. Were humanise our contact and support by people on our teams using their names, real names.
Access to leadership. Our leadership team is directly accessible to our customers should they wish to escalate any issue. Too often we hear of other POS software companies sidestepping issues or completely ignoring requests to speak too senior management. We take personal service seriously.
Free training weekly. People love our free and easily accessible live online training workshops.
Free one-on-one training. People love that they can schedule top-up training long after the installation is done.
Transparency on updates. People love that they can suggest changes and watch as other customers vote on their change suggestions.
Extensive help desk coverage. People love our long hours and our weekend coverage.
Response time. People love how quickly we respond to their queries.
These are points of difference we have invested in with infrastructure, people and management focus. We are thrilled to win business from other POS software companies because of these services we provide.
This whole package is part of our Tower AdvantageTM.
Here at Tower Systems, through our work with our specialsist retail POS software, we get to see many different retail businesses in in our work and along the way we pick up ideas that work particularly well.
Here is a selection of everyday marketing tips we see working in almost any business. This list was first shared with our customers on the weekend, as part of our weekly email of advice, support and encouragement.
Always have a value-proposition offer just inside the entrance to the business. This should be a double-sided offer, one they see as they enter and as they leave.
Always have an appealing impulse purchase offer at the counter. Change this weekly. Use the opportunity to learn more about what your customers will purchase on impulse.
Always know your top selling item in the store and always place products next to the top selling item thoughtfully, to leverage the eyeballs looking for and at the top selling product.
Run a generous loyalty program where the value is understood. This probably means not using points.
Create stunning window displays people would not expect to see in your type of business.
Offer multi-buy opportunities unlocking savings for people purchasing more than would be usual in a single visit.
Be brief in talking to customers about your products on social media: a single product per post. Two sentences. Short sentences. Make the post appealing beyond you trying to promote your business. Entertain them.
Send customers a card for special occasions, a personal card to reinforce the personal relationship you have with them.
Change the front two metres of your shop weekly, keep it fresh for your customers and your staff.
Unpack and price products on the shop floor and not in the back room or outside of shopper view.
Our goal with this list is to give you ideas you can use right away as well as ideas that will get you thinking of your own ideas.
Go for it. Remember, if you do next week what you did this week you cannot expect any growth. Growth only comes from change.
Interviewing prospective employees is a personal thing in that it is all about you and your business. Get this one thing right and you get plenty of benefits for your business.
The type of people you want for your business can only be determined by you. This is why we say it is personal and why we do not advice a consistent corporate approach across all businesses.
That said, based on our many years working with and helping small business and independent retailers there are some basics to get right before or at the interview:
Make sure prospective candidates are who they say they are. Check photo ID.
Have them bring a Tax File Number – to show they are known to the government.
Have them bring two written references.
Advise them before the interview you may do a police check.
Stalk them on social media to look for possible issues.
Interview two or three candidates. Not too many though as it can take up time when if you vet them right prior to the interview you can have a good short list.
Now, on to the interview. The goal is to encourage conversation as it is from conversation that you can determine if you like the candidate and liking them is key to their future with the business.
Start by asking them what they think of the business and what they would change. The purpose of this is to test to see if they know much about the business and have any interest in it beyond a paycheque.
Ask them why your business. The reality is this question often elicits the answer they think you want rather than the truth. Press them on it.
Ask them about any experience they have that could help them in your business. This is designed to be open ended, encouraging conversation.
Usually, three or four topics in and you should have an idea if they are right for you. If the feeling at this point is they are not right for you, pull the pin on further discussion and than them for their time.
Other topics worth discussing are: how they relax, their dreams for the future, whether they collect anything, what they are passionate about and whether they read magazines. Each of these topics can be open ended – encouraging further conversation.
If you have a candidate you think is right, consider a paid trial of three hours. This is usually useful if you are not sure between two candidates.
It is a thrill to see so many independent small retail businesses thriving through the winter of 2016. We are seeing businesses transforming from what has been traditional for their type of operation into fresh offerings that drive the appeal of the business beyond what has been traditional for them.
We love seeing this not only because of the pleasure of observing success but also because of a role we can play in helping to uncover and leverage good news for small business retailers.
Our commitment is to help our customers beyond the software to help them reach beyond the dreams they have for their businesses.
We are grateful every day for the opportunities that come our way.
Inventory in retail is worthless unless it sells. The longer it sits on the shelf of a retail business the greater the cost of the inventory to the business.
A good basic inventory management principle is: never let a stock item celebrate a birthday. That is, never have an item in the business for more than a year. In fact, we would suggest six months is too long for most items.
Using good POS software you can easily track how long a stock item has been in the business. Stay on top of the age of an item. Work the item to ensure it does not celebrate that birthday. Focus on placement, promotion, adjacency and more to ensure the item is turned within the time necessary for you to achieve a good return for the business.
Ensuring all team members working in the business understand your commitment to never let a stock item celebrate a birthday will help make this happen.
You could take the commitment a step further. Put a sign up in the back room. Make it a discussion point at staff meetings. Encourage anyone to run a report at any time on the age of inventory in the business. Make everyone accountable for the mission.
Tower Systems regularly offers advice to retailers beyond what is usual for a POS software company. The advice demonstrates our commitment to helping beyond the software, to add value to the relationship to benefit the whole of the business.
Launching officially this weekend at the AFTA show that starts tomorrow on the Gold Coast, our software for fishing and outdoor shops is comprehensive in what it offers. It benefits from already being in use in fishing and outdoor businesses, businesses that guide the further development of the software.
Backed by professional installation, training and support service, our software is comprehensive and capable.
We are excited by for the opportunities ahead serving these specialty retail businesses. Included in the software is facilities we have seen as vital to fishing and outdoor shops:
Selling by weight – scale integration.
Catalogue sales.
Shopper discounts based on volume purchases.
Ticket sales.
Text message integration for communicating local area information to customers.
MailChip file import to enable easy emailing.
Age checking.
Use advice included on receipts as appropriate to items purchased.
Special customer orders.
Repairs.
Serial number tracking. Xero integration.
This list is in addition to POS software, inventory management, supplier management and theft integration tools.
We are thrilled to be bringing our fishing shop software to the Gold Coast this weekend for the AFTA trade show.
This software is ideal for bait shops, game fishing shops, recreational fishing shops and other outdoors businesses. It is in use in businesses in this channel, hence our opportunity at the AFTA trade show.
We are there from the show opening this coming Sunday…
Small business retailers using the repairs management software from Tower Systems can rely on the software to streamline operations, reduce paperwork, improve customer service and deliver outcomes that help the businesses grow repairs revenue.
the repairs facilities in our software have been developed in close consultation with customers across a variety of retail channels. Plus, the repairs software is regularly enhanced – too deliver evolving solutions to meet evolving needs.
Tower Systems serve a number of specialist retail channels with repairs management software appropriate to the needs of businesses in those channels. Initially developed in response to the needs of our jeweller customers, these features are now utilised by clients in a number of different retail markets.
Some of the functions our specialist retail software’s repair features are being used for include:
In Jewellers: Jewellery and watch workshop repairs, dated manufacturing.
In Bike Shops: Bicycle and tricycle repairs, warranty returns.
In Garden Centres: Landscaping services management.
In Firearms Stores: Gunsmithy and equipment repairs, warranty returns.
In Pet Shops: Aquarium installations.
Repairs management software is flexible, serving a range of needs outside managing the actual repairs themselves. The flexibility in the software enables it to be used in different businesses for different purposes – from job management, to workshop management and traditional repairs management.
The software tracks the labour and resources used from a billing and inventory management perspective. It also handles allocation of repairs or parts of a repair to venues outside the business (for contracting and supplier exchanges or repairs for warranty issues, for example) and tracks repair staff and couriers used in shipping repairs. Once the repair is ready for pick-up by the customer, the software finalises the billing and advises the customer by SMS or another preferred method. Payments are processed with the usual depth of our retail software’s point of sale functionality – customers can make multiple payments against a repair or a specialist manufacturing, pay through cash, EFTPOS, PayPal or other methods.
Tower Systems streamlines the repairs process, facilitates good communication and helps bring management certainty to the overall repairs process in your business. It helps local independent businesses provide the kind of professional, personal and efficient repairs services that major corporate stores and online-only offerings can only dream of.
Serving a number of specialist retail channels gives Tower Systems the opportunity to provide more comprehensive and flexible repairs/job/manufacturing management software. Our customers continue to provide feedback and influence the development and support of this software feature, from firearms stores to bike shops and more.
The Tower Systems POS software e-commerce strategy is delivering online sales to small business retailers.
Representing a group of small business retailers under a common international brand platform the Tower Systems developed and managed website provides live stock availability to more than 200 retail businesses. This enables shoppers of the sought after brand to find local shops with stock.
Linked live to the independently owned retail businesses, the website provides a national view of stock availability for online purchase as well as in-store purchase.
Online purchases can be shipped or collected in-store.
Transactions are secure, without credit cards being accessed by the website nor are they stores in and POS system in the store.
The small business retailers that are part of the e-commerce strategy love that they are winning retail revenue from online sales without having to develop or maintain and online presence. The solution for their businesses is considerable and low-cost.
This is a best practice approach to online for small retail businesses today as it is fast, easy, accurate and national in its presence.
The Tower Systems desktop and web teams have worked together to deliver a series of websites, the first of which launched in 2015 and more have been added since.
Using the latest web development tools, the solution from Tower Systems helps small business retailers embrace online in a genuinely unique and valuable way.
Trust is important in business. It is especially important in small and local business.
Trust is mission critical for POS software companies.
We say this because our software helps our customers engender trust in their local communities and with their customers. If our software fails, it challenges the trust local shoppers have in local businesses using our software.
Retailers rely on their POS software, they trust their POS software companies to provide software that works and that it is backed with professional assistance when they need … and that it is enhanced too meet the needs of businesses as they evolve.
This is why we say trust is vital in the choice of POS software for any small business.
So, how do you know you can trust a POS software company you are considering? Here is our advice, things to look for in assessing the trustworthiness of any POS software company you are considering:
Talk to the owner. Most businesses will say this is not possible. Challenge them – see how they respond.
Visit their office. This is essential to understand their capacity to serve you.
Look at their website. Do they make it easy to contact them? Are the ottos real? Do the words make sense? Do you trust what they write? Are they on your level?
Talk to their customers.
Ask for access to their training website. See what their customer see.
Ask for access to training videos. See the resources they offer for staff training.
Do a Google search on them and see what comes up.
Do a Google search on their owner and find out more about them.
POS software company relationships are long term so take your time, make sure the business you enter into a relationship with has the capacity, stamina and desire for an equally long term relationship.
POS software company relationships are personal. Ensure the POS software company you are talking to understands this. Too often POS software companies hide behind general email addresses and call centres where you do not know the name of the person you are speaking to. It is vital you know who they are because, yes, it is personal. Being personal is key to trust and trust is vital in this relationship.
The Tower Systems POS software does not store credit card numbers of customers who use cards to pay in shops using our POS software.
The customer presents their card to the Tyro terminal connected to our software the processing of the card details is done 100% by Tyro with no details being shared with our POS software other than payment success or otherwise.
This approach – of us not storing credit card details for retail transactions – is vital in providing peace of mind for retailers and their customers around customer credit card access and fraud mitigation.
Our view is: storing a retail shopper credit card number in POS software is a big mistake. It puts the security of the card number at risk. Customers will not like it.
We suggest retailers not use POS software that stores customer credit card numbers.
Our Tyro and other bank EFTPOS integrations meet the high standards set in Australia and New Zealand for electronic transactions using credit and other banking cards. Our connections are tested and authorised. They are secure.
Tower Systems takes fraud mitigation seriously.
Update: The lone voice of POS Solutions, Bernard the owner of the business, is back from a long vacation and rather than discoing topics to write about for himself, he writes about what we write about it. You can see it today on their site. They don’t name us. They rarely do. Instead, the use terms like: Onesoftwarecompany,Iknowwell. Yes, that’s us. His post is a ramble whereas the facts we have presented here are focussed. The two posts speak to their respective companies.
There was a time when small business retailers could rely on selling their business for a handsome increase on the price they paid thereby providing a good pay day, when businesses sold for a good multiple of net earnings.
No more. Today, the best way to extract value from our businesses is to make every day your pay day, to not rely on your pay day being the day you sell the business.
The challenge is how do you do this?
Retailers need to look at their businesses differently. This starts with the mindset of every day being your pay day. Each decision needs to be considered in this context.
Focusing on profit today will give you a better result today and make your business more valuable tomorrow.
Here are some suggestions for making every day your pay day:
Run with the leanest roster possible. Just about every retail business we review has capacity to lower labour costs.
Have your best people working the floor, helping customers spend more.
Have stunning displays that attract people from outside the shop.
Have compelling displays in-store that encourage people to browse beyond their destination purchase.
Always have impulse offers at high traffic locations.
Charge more every time you can. Loyalty programs such as discount vouchers, bundling into hampers, multi buys such as 2 for 3 and other opportunities enable you to do this by blocking price comparison.
Buy as best you can.
Grab settlement discounts every time you are able.
Promote outside your store using online and social media opportunities.
Leverage adjacency information. Chase a deeper basket – people purchasing more each visit.
Be responsible for the profitability of your business. Don’t blame your suppliers, your landlord, your employees or some other external factor … it all comes down to you – the decisions you make and the actions you take.
If you relentlessly pursue profit with a clear focus you are likely to see profit grow. That’s better than waiting to make money when you sell because that’s less likely to happen in this market.
Doing all this relies on your measuring the performance of your business. The Tower software helps with this. It is easy.
While we never want it to happen and know it is extremely rare, we regularly remind our POS software customers they ought to be prepared to trade manually should they not have access to their POS software for some reason. Here is our advice, which has not changed in many years.
If you lose power, have a major hardware failure or have some other unexpected problem, your computer system on which you rely to record sales may not be available for some time. Here is our advice on how to handle such a situation:
Track all sales. Write down the barcode of every item you sell and the price. When you are back up and running, enter these in. This maintains an accurate stock on hand count. When you are back online, enter the barcodes, ring up the sales.
Yes, that is it. Very simple. Also, very easy to not do and thereby compromise your business data.
To prepare you for this, do the following:
Create a ruled sheet to use. Two columns: barcode, price.
Copy the sheet a few times and setup on a clipboard. With a clipboard made up for each register you have.
Tie a pen to each clipboard.
Place the clipboards in an easily accessible space.
Take out the clipboards and place next to each register in the event of your system being down and you needing to transact.
You are good to go.
Recording sales on scraps of paper is not good business management. It invites error and fraud.
While no one wants your computer system to be down, being prepared for this is important business planning.
Footnote: knowing a competitor as we do, they are likely to point to this post as us identifying a weakness in our software. This would be untrue. This advice is an example of our POS software company providing whole of business advice for any contingency. It is what we do and for which we are appreciated.
A common question we are asked at our POS software company has nothing to do with software. It is from people considering purchasing a retail business. The question is: what should I ask for when looking at buying a retail shop?
The question itself, when asked, indicates how green a prospective purchaser is when it comes to purchasing a business.
Here is a list of data points we suggest retail business purchasers access from the vendor or their representative:
P&L from the accountant for the last two years. i.e. not a spreadsheet created for the purpose.
A good explanation of any add-backs.
Sales data reports, for the last two years, from the POS software in use – to verify the income claim.
Sales data reports from the lottery terminal to verify the income claim.
BAS forms to confirm data in the P&L.
A list of all inventory to include purchase price and date last sold for each item.
A copy of the shop lease.
A copy of any leases the vendor expects you to take on board.
A list of all employees: name, hourly rate, nature of employment, start date, accrued leave.
This is good basic information that will enable any purchaser to undertake reasonable assessment of a business.
A good business will shine through the numbers just as a business with upside achievable by new owners will shine through.
My advice to vendors looking to sell who are concerned about this list is: think about it now and focus on your business so the data listed looks good.
Every day you make decisions in your business that impact many of the data points listed.
This is why we say every day is your pay day. Run a smart, lean and profit focused business and you will have a good pay day today and a good one when you come to sell.
The most appealing businesses are those that are easier to run and are making money.
The time to focus on that is now.
Sure, a purchaser can turn a business around. They should get the rewards if they are expected to do that for your business.
The price you can sell your business for will be based on what it is making now.
Getting the data ready for the sale of the business could, of itself, help you improve how you run your business.
The direct link between our POS software and the Shopify e-commerce solution is valuable for small business retailers keen for a beautiful and easy to operate online business platform. Here is all you need to know on what we have delivered – note, delivered, yes this is live and available now.
The Retailer to Shopify Link uses the cloud-based best-practice Tower Advantage Link platform to connect or link Retailer directly to Shopify. The Tower Advantage Link platform is a subscription-based service that acts as an intermediary between Retailer and the Shopify API.
The link works by using the Shopify API allowing the TALink platform to connect to Shopify and synchronising on a periodic interval or request basis. Below is a outline of what is transferred.
Retailer becomes your master stock database. You flag what stock items you want to appear on your web store. Descriptions and extended descriptions are added as your product names and descriptions in Shopify.
Your Retailer Departments and Categories become Categories and Sub-Categories in Shopify. If you choose to link these, your existing structure will be mirrored and managed in Shopify automatically. If, however, you decide not link your Department and Categories in Shopify, you can allocate Categories manually to products once they are added. Only Departments and Categories that have flaggged as websotre items are added to Shopify.
Retailers Classifications are treated as Attributes in Shopify. If you choose to link these in Shopify your existing Classifications will be mirrored and managed in Shopify automatically. If, however, you do not want this to occur you can manually manage your own Shopify Attributes.
You have control over your webstore pricing from within the Retailer Stock Screen. Bulk updates of the webstore price can be performed in Stock Manager. Once new prices are set, your web store is updated automatically. Quantity of hand is also managed automatically, when your sell or arrive an item into stock these adjustments are sent directly to Shopify. If the quantity on hand of an items drops to 0, the item is marked as out of stock in Shopify.
The images you set against stock items in Retailer are automatically uploaded to your website. If images change, the old one is removed and the new one is added. You can upload as many images, as you like per stock item.
Customers that purchase off your webstore are added as customers in your Retailer database, allowing you to track what they buy and market to them if you desire. Existing customers with an email address will also be added to your web store to facilitate easy sales.
These are downloaded into Retailer. These are imported into our Customer Invoice Maintenance facility allowing you to place orders and print invoices. Once sales are imported it reduces your quantity on hand so you maintain accurate stock control. Sales can be allocated to a specific location or merged added to you main sales data, giving you excellent control over how you report on your webstore sales.
A couple of months ago we announced the launch of the Visual Deck, a cloud based business intelligence platform we developed here at Tower Systems for small business retailers. The visual deck gives small business retailers a visual insight into business performance and from this flows a brighter future based on data evidence from the business itself.
The visual deck is a game changer in the small business POS space as it delivers to small business retailers a set of tools that provide easy access from anywhere to elegant representation of business performance data.
This new platform is a completely new product from the Tower development team. It leveraged data cultivated by the Tower Point of Sale software and makes it available anywhere, in a stimulating visual form and in a way than encourages the discovery of business performance insights.
Introducing the Retailer Visual Deck.
Retail business performance, seen differently.
The Visual Deck is a platform through which you can see the performance of your business, visually. Graphs replace reports, making trends obvious and a path ahead clearer to follow. Graphs that change with time and through which you can dive deeper into what is happening in your business.
Why did we call it the Visual deck? It is visual because, well, your business data is presented in a visual way. It is a deck because it is a platform off of which you can see far and wide. It is a perfect place to see what you cannot see when you are on the ground.
Retailers can access the Visual deck from anywhere, anytime, and through this access their business data in a way not previously accessible ninth small business retail world. You can compare periods, graph using a broad selection of formats, dive deep into the data as well as focus on data points that matter including transactions, revenue, grow profit and more.
Better still, the visual insights can easily be shared with colleagues.
The Retail Visual Deck is a fresh approach to sharing business intelligence and business performance insights with small business retailers. It is mass retailer computing in a small business retailer’s hands. This is the tool join which you can rely to grow your business.
This is 100% Tower Systems innovation.
Having been tested with data from a range of businesses and trialled for months on many different platforms, the Visual deck is ready for small business retailers to engage, to use it to better manage and grow their businesses.
Footnote: If things go as usual, at least on competitor will claim they had this before us and that we copied them. Such a claim is not true. Prior to our launched last week we checked all our competitors in each specialty marketplace in which we live and not one has a product like this.
Lay-By is vital to small business retailers, especially gift shops, jewellers, garden centres, toy shops and homewares shops. Tower systems offers structure support for managing Lay-Bys in its POS software. We help small business retailers meet their regulatory obligations, serving the needs of customers and their businesses with a best practice approach.
We offer written advice, video training, one on one training and more to help small business retailers run professional Lay-By services.
Here is a glimpse into some of the professional Lay-By advice provided to our small business retailer community:
Meeting regulatory requirements is vital. For example, if someone cancels a LayBy you must refund their payments less a termination fee. You can set this fee and advise as part of your terms and conditions.
Our advice guides you through key rules and steps to success with Lay-bys.
WHAT TO LAY-BY. Set a minimum item and or purchase value. We’d suggest $80.00.
DATA REQUIRED. Always ensure you are satisfied you know who your customer is. Require proof of ID from a driver’s licence or similar legal ID document.
DEPOSIT. 20% of the total GST inclusive purchase price.
AGE. Only Lay-by to people 18 and over.
DURATION. Lay-bys should run for between eight and twelve weeks. You could run for longer pre Christmas to get early toy sales.
PAYMENT CYCLE. Require payments to be made weekly or fortnightly.
PAYMENT METHOD. Accept any payment form you choose.
Do not allow someone to take home a single item from a group of items on Lay-by together in one purchase. It’s all or nothing.
Have a LayBy termination policy you are comfortable with. We suggest a 20% termination fee. Alternatively, set a dollar amount to reflect the work. Also, consider setting the LayBy to auto terminate if it extends beyond a period of time you nominate. Note that you could equally choose to have no cancellation given that Lay-by product may not be able to easily re-sold.
Decide what you would consider a breach. This has to be something you stand by. We suggest two missed payments without reasonable excuse or rectification. On breach, cancel and charge the cancellation fee.
We suggest a no-exchange policy.
When a customer Lay-bys, print two dockets – one for them to take immediately and one to be placed with the goods. Have your customer sign both copies, accepting your terms and conditions.
Set aside a clean and secure storage location for Lay-bys in your business where locations are coded for easy finding. Place Lay-by goods into a single clear plastic bag per transaction for clean and safekeeping. Staple to this a copy of the Lay-by docket. Let your customers see you do this so there is no doubt when it comes time to collect the products.
Have one person responsible for Lay-bys to ensure product care, track payments and contact customers.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS. Enter these into your software so they are included on every Lay-by docket. Points 2 through 11 above are a good example of what to include in your terms and conditions.
COMPLETE PAPERWORK. To not over complicate things, rely on your software’s Lay-by docket as your complete paperwork / contract. Get that right and Lay-by management will be easier.
These rules and steps may feel complex. They are necessary for the small number of times something goes wrong and you need to rely on them to help you deal with a situation.
The outage of the Amazon cloud services caused by storms in Sydney recently serves as a reminder of the approach a business takes to moving its IT infrastructure to the cloud. This is especially true for small business retailers where IT investment tends to be in one solution or path rather than multiple paths for redundancy.
The Amazon outage knocked out access to software facilities and data for many businesses according to the news reports. Those unprepared for such an eventuality could only wait for access to be reestablished. This came at a cost to business not only from lost revenue but also from lost productivity for employees located elsewhere, far away from the storms, where the roles of employees entirely depend on access to software and data in the cloud.
The level of protection for a business against the eventuality of the storms in Sydney is up to the business. It is a function of the amount of money they might spend protecting their software and data, providing multiple paths to their software and data. This is what we mean by redundancy. Redundancy is expensive as it is effectively duplication of assets.
The questions for small business retailers is how much are you prepared to spend on such protection? As you spend more, the coast effectiveness of a cloud based solution can become prohibitive compared to the alternative.
Here at Tower Systems we offer the best of both worlds, cloud and non-cloud, from which our retailer partners can choose.
Our customers and run a local desktop solution where they are in full control.
They could also run a local solution with elements of clad based benefits.
They could also run 100% in the cloud, fully hosted and fully shielded from managing the computer and data management infrastructure.
As we are in control of the software and the infrastructure options, our customers can choose from these options or alternatives in between that may better suit their local business needs. This the ultimate flexibility as each business different, each business faces different challenges, is at different stages in the business lifecycle and has different levels of capital available for infrastructure.
Whether cloud is right for a business is a function of many factors. Our job as a software company is to offer the ultimate in flexibility through best practice software, technical hosting and access alternatives, timely support and options around migration paths as appropriate to the needs of the businesses.
Recent Comments