Selling, managing and tracking gift vouchers in a retail business is simple, safe and easy using the POS software developed and supported by Tower Systems.
Gift vouchers can be issued by the POS software easily, quickly and accurately. There is no need for a printed card or note. Alternatively, a business can create the gift vouchers externally from the POS software yet have all of them easily tracked and managed.
Loaded with whatever amount suits a customer and fits within the rules of a business, gift vouchers are a wonderful solution for a retail business to offer where a customer likes a shop but does not know what to buy. From the moment a gift voucher is loaded with a value it is tracked by the POS software. The amount loaded is managed as a liability of the business, as is required by accounting standards.
Tower Systems has managed gift vouchers in its POS software for decades. The gift voucher facilities in the software have evolved as the needs of small business retailers have evolved. The company has ensured that its offering in this space is fit for purpose for today’s retail environment, to enable its customers to be competitive in this space.
Gift voucher setup in the POS software is easy. Thanks to not requiring pre printed cards, a business can test the appetite of its customers for gift vouchers by having computer generated vouchers. This trial can help guide whether a business should invest ini professional design and production of vouchers, which is also a service that Tower Systems offers through its in-house graphic design tools and services.
We see gift vouchers successfully used in small business retail in the channels of garden centres, bike shops, jewellers, gift shops, homewares shops, book shops, newsagencies, pet shops, toy shops and even firearms shops as well as many other types of retail business situations. We are grateful for the opportunity to work with gift retailers to help them build customer appeal.
Gift vouchers are a vital tools for small business retailers to offer, to help broaden the appeal of a shop beyond what it may have available for customers to purchase today. Tower Systems makes them financially and operationally appealing to small business retailers through its smart POS software.
Secret audit tools in POS software are critical in small business retail for they provide insights into behind the scenes activity in a business that could be harmful to the business. By tracking activities including keystrokes designed to manipulate business data, good POS software is able to help a retail business compare bad behaviour including fraud.
The Tower Systems small business POS software has terrific audit tools that can only be accessed with the most secure password managed by the software, a password only given by the comp0any to business owners.
Using the smart audit tools, we have been able to help retailers to track employee fraud, supplier fraud, customer fraud and what could have been expensive but unintentional mistakes.
The Audie tools and the secret mirror data they have access to represent a valuable asset to any indie retailer as they make the POS software operational smart for and protective of that business.
This area of data curation and management is not often talked abut because it can be construed as a negative given the connection with bad things happening in a business. The reality is that knowing the tools are there creates a positive situation, a comfort, a peace of mind as the POS software is offering a set of eyes and ears watching over the business and providing the business access to insights to help reduce the negative.
The Tower Systems small business POS software provides to indie retailers audit tools that are exemplary in their service of ethical business operation. This is especially useful inn businesses that are run with owners and even senior managers not in a location full time.
So, in addition to accurately and quickly transacting retail sales, the Tower Systems POS software offers retail business owners access to tools through which they can review data that sheds light on behaviour that could compromise the business. This is what a good audit is about.
Our POS software audit tools have been used in legal cases and by business financial auditors and forensic accountants to track potential misbehaviour. the resulting data can be a body of evidence in criminal or commercial legal action. It is data on which expert evidence can be offered as to actions taken in a business that cold be the matter of such a case.
Our hope is that the audit tools in our POS software do not find misbehaviour and that simply having the tools in a business is the most value achieved. However, should they be needed and should they uncover misbehaviour, the audit tools stand strong and tall for the business and those who own it.
A free workshop for small business retailers: How to find new customers by selling online direct from POS software for your specific type of business using Shopify and Magento.
Click on your preferred city below to book. Each workshop (except for online) will be in an easy to get to capital city location.
Join us for a free workshop where we will explore Shopify and Magento direct connected POS software for specialty retailers: jewellers, garden centres, produce, toy, firearms, fishing, outdoors, newsagents, pet, gift, book, bike and adult.
At the interactive and engaging workshops we will focus on new online insights for 2020 and beyond that are relevant to indie small business retailers.
Hear from current case studies what other indie retailers are doing.
Find out how to use online to drive in-store shopping.
Learn how click and collect actually works.
Find out about the different buy now pay later options for online sales.
See how stock data including images flow easily from the POS to online.
Each workshop will be live and interactive and relevant to your type of business. It could save you thousands in web developer fees. This will not be a sales pitch. We will share what we know having done this work ourselves for the retail businesses we own in the homewares, pop culture, collectible, plush, gift and games segments of retail.
We live everyday the challenges of pricing, marketing, shipping and more and we will share out learnings.
We will cover hot topics including: SEO, shipping options, free shipping, the role of social in online sales, returns, bundles, branding and a plan b for your web strategy.
We are local. Tower Systems serves 3,500+ specialty businesses – with awesome and locally made POS software and websites. We make what we sell. We use it ourselves too, in our own retail and online businesses.
With these free to access POS software workshops and all we do, goal is to help you enjoy a more successful and valuable business.
The Tower Systems Pet Shop Software helps pet retailers serve customers through recording pet microchip details. This is part of a list of pet shop specific facilities in the Tower Systems POS software for pet stores.
Local pet stores are unique loc al service businesses, with tough big business competitors and an ever-growing online challenge. Tower Systems helps local indie businesses confront the challenges.
The Tower Systems Pet Shop Software is locally designed, developed and supported specifically for pet products retailers. We only sell to independent local pet businesses. We believe in small business!
Our Pet Shop Software is loaded with facilities developed specifically for pet stores. These are facilities you will not see in regular, often cheaper, POS software. The facilities continue to evolve, too, based on suggestions from people like you.
The microchip tracking tools can track by pet by customer with customers being able to have as many pets recorded as they wish. This means the pet shop can become a data repository for pet owners, offering wonderful peace of mind.
The software can also track working dates and other dates important in the healthy life of a pet. Pet workers love this tracking and that their local pet shop can provide the service as part of a whole of pet life engagement by the business for its customers and the pets of its customers.
Tower Systems is proud to deliver these tools and more in its specialty POS software designed specifically for independent pet stores in Australia, New Zealand and beyond. This is what specialisation is all about – helping indie retailers to play to their strengths of local professional service and advice. Our software helps every day in the delivery of this.
Our awesome and regularly evolving Pet Shop Software also offers:
Marketing based on pet birthdays and other anniversaries.
Group discounts, where members of a local group loyal to you save money.
Easy loading of electronic invoices from your suppliers.
Linking to a website for online sales.
Linking to Xero to cut bookkeeping and external accounting costs.
Rewarding loyal shoppers with points and / or cash off their next purchase.
Tower Systems is proud to serve 3,500+ retailers nationally.
This POS software connected Shopify site is one of many created by the company for retailers, to help them achieve terrific online revenue.
What makes the My ornaments off interesting is the handling of pre orders two months prior to good arriving in Australia. This enabled the business to book substantial revenue and bank payment months ahead of the goods being shipped and even longer ahead of goods being paid for.
This business model of prepayment of purchases, in a pre order situation, is valuable to any retailer keen to evolve their model and achieve cash flow benefits for what will be highly sought after items with limited release numbers.
Managing this through POS software connected Shopify helps the business maximise cash management and streamline packing and shipping once the goods arrive.
The seamless link between Shopify and the Tower Systems POS software helps save time, reduce mistakes, streamline business operations and discover new shoppers. Indeed, it is the reaching of new shoppers not within the local pool of shoppers for the business where the Shopify integration becomes really valuable in that a business shipping to another state helps expand the shopper reach.
As a Shopify partner, Tower Systems is positioned to deliver to indie retailers wonderful Shopify connected POS software solutions, helping these retailers leverage in-store and online for maximum benefit.
This pre order solution helps retailers sell what they do not have but will have once stock arrives. This is a smart solution that is good for nimble and flexible small business retailers.
Here is part of what we deliver to our POS software connected Shopify customers:
A pre-development over the phone Q&A meeting.
Shopify link. This is a facility in the Retailer software to link with Shopify.
Live Shopify site as per the facilities and functionality outlined in this document – see below, including pre development consultation.
Up to 2 hours of hand-over training.
Three months of phone-based assistance (but not software changes) following delivery.
A comprehensive handover document that provides support, written training and guidance on your next steps. This is the same for all our Shopify site customers. i.e. it is not document written especially for you.
Produce business software from Tower Systems offers a best practice solution to these local and often regional and rural businesses as they serve the needs of local farmers and residents in the produce, feedstock and related areas.
Businesses using our produce business software love the channel specific benefits including:
Time saving invoicing and account management – manage accounts in a way tailored to your You can easily account for freight, produce picking slips, manage accounts, feed data to Xero and MYOB and do more.
Sell accurately by measure – by whole numbers or
Sell by weight.
Special orders. Bring product in for a specific customer and have them notified automatically by email or text when the goods are in and ready.
Business differentiating loyalty. Stand out from the crowd. Have customers coming back to youfor this.
Trade pricing profiles. You can set pricing rules based on types of customers.
Pre-orders – We make it easy for you to pre-sell a delivery so that when the stock arrives you can manage distribution and billing efficiently.
Bagging up feed – Easily manage bagging up a bulk feed delivery into smaller, saleable lots, while keeping accurate stock on hand data.
Making your own feed mix. We help you track managing bulk quantity ingredients and mixing these into saleable packs of your own brand of seed mix. What an awesome point of difference for your business!Differentiate with informative receipts. These can include care, use and safety information based on what customers buy.
Be accurate with all-weather product labels.
Differentiate with bundles. Selling items bundled together makes price comparison hard.
Market to customers based on past purchases.
Save time by importing electronic invoices.
Sell more with a direct connect to buy now pay later services.
Cut mistakes with integrated EFTPOS.
Cut accounting and bookkeeping fees with integration to Xero and others.
Easily sell online with a direct to Shopify / Magento or WooCommerce link from your POS software.
With many produce businesses and farm supply businesses already using the Tower Systems POS software, we have a wonderful pool of businesses from which to learn as we further enhance our software as part of our perpetual renewal program. Our work with business owners, managers and their suppliers sees us continue to evolve our product business software solution.
Tower Systems offers Retailer Roam as an easy to setup and run POS software solution for pop-up retail shops situations.
With Pop-up retail becoming more prevalent, having a sweet POS software solution to help owners and managers of pop-up retail stores makes sense.
From selling to store management, the Retailer Roam pop-pop retail solution from Tower Systems offers an easy to setup, easy to use and easy to fund pop-pop retail management solution. Pop-up retail is easier thanks to this solution from Tower Systems.
Running in the cloud with easy to use redundancy built in should the internet be down, Retailer Roam works in a variety of situations and for a variety of businesses. It is safe, secure and accessible.
Retailer Roan is another cloud based POS solution from the web team at Tower Systems where cloud based POS Solutions have been delivered for indie retailers for years.
Retailer Roam is a tablet app-based POS extension to the Tower Systems Retailer POS software. The app runs on Apple iPad and Android based tablets. It can run connected over WiFi or any other network. It can also run disconnected, syncing when connected again to a network at a later time.
Retailer Roam is designed to help retailers better manage buy times without the need to install considerable hardware as well as to transact business away from the counter, from an outpost or from a vehicle some distance from the shop.
Pop-up retail needs to be easy, fast, safe and secure. Retailer Roam from Tower Systems is all of these things. It is a wonderful solution for indie retailers looking to expand their retail business reach into the pop-up retail space.
If you are considering a pop-up retail store, consider Retailer Roam from Tower Systems and enjoy the flexibility of selling anywhere, anytime and with safety, security and speed as benefits at your fingertips.
Tower Systems is a small business focussed POS software company serving in excess of 3,500 indie retailers in several niche retail channels.
We make and support what we sell, including Retailer Roam. For pop-up, online and fixed location high street retail.
Tower Systems also owns newsXpress, a marketing group for newsagents who want to transform their businesses and grow them into something meaningful to today and beyond. Here are details of an offer from newsXpress…
We give newsagents hopeby providing options for finding new customers, by helping to farewell out of date practicesand by providing access to better marginproducts. We help newsagents enjoy their businessesmore and make them more valuable. This is what we do at newsXpress every day … because,we believe in local small business retail. We are not locked into the shingle of the past. On the horizon, we see a bright future. Mark Fletcher, CEO, newsXpress Pty Ltd
Every day, we invest in the future of locally owned newsXpress businesses. We run as a community co-operative. There has never been a profit distribution. We are 100% focussed on helping our members be the best, most successful and happiest of retailers.
You can join us as a full-service full-benefits member. Or, you can try us out first…\
TRY NEWSXPRESS BEFORE YOU BUY OFFER.
BEYOND TRADITION, WE CAN HELP YOU FIND SUNSHINE.
We have some newsagents keen to join newsXpress but concerned about the five-year contract and the requirement that 75% of card space is allocated to Hallmark.
For a limited time and a limited number of newsagency businesses, we offer access to a valuable package of newsXpress services on a fixed one-year term trial basis.
As a friend of newsXpress you can trial newsXpress services without long-term obligation.
For a monthly fee of $295.00 (inc.GST) for twelve months only or a one-off up-front fee of $1,750.00 (inc. GST) we would welcome you as a friend of newsXpress for one year. This does not mean you would be a member of the group. There is no agreement to sign, no requirement to rebrand, no card company requirement.
Here is what you would get access to as a friend of newsXpress:
In-store visits from a skilled Retail Development Manager, who will provide fresh-eyes advice on your business and suggest optional changes you could make.
Access to centrally billed suppliers offering discounts off and extended terms.
Access to our weekly newsXpress email, with management and marketing advice.
Access to our knowledge base, an online resource with 200+ articles of advice.
Access to our head office team of retail experts for tactical and strategic advice.
Access to newsXpress regional member meetings.
Access to the newsXpress conferences.
Here is some of what full newsXpress members have access to:
Online sales through product branded websites, delivering net new revenue.
Your own free website branded to your business, selling products your products.
newsXpress preferential pricing from Hallmark and allpreferred suppliers.
A private Facebook group – motivation and encouragement, a safe place to talk.
Access to the private team member Facebook page for your staff.
Financial management counselling service. We offer a deep dive into the business, develop a budget and help with resetting the business physically and financially.
A secure .newsxpress.com.au email address.
At the end of the year you would either join newsXpress orcontinue to run your business without access to anything newsXpress offers.
If at any time in the year you want to switch and become a full newsXpress member, we’d apply the portion of the pre-paid one-year amount toward newsXpress member fees.
There is one catch to our offer: You need to be engaged. You need to work with us on growing your business, making it more efficient and more relevantto today.
If you are tired, we will help motivate you. If you are out of cash. We will make low / no cost suggestions. We will not force you do anything.
Become a friend of newsXpress and let is help you.
Our head office team… newsXpress has twelve full time employees working on behalf of members – merchandise experts, marketing professionals, retail advisors.
Our leadership team… is there for you, on anymatter, offering an ear, a hug, advice or representation, on any matter. We will help as much as we are able.
We are grateful to garden centres for their support of our Aussie made and supported software for local garden centres, which helps them better serve their local communities.
The facilities in the specialty garden centre software from Tower Systems described here are a small part of a beautiful suite of software designed here in Australia for Australian garden centres.
There is more to this software than marketing. An asset of your business is that you are a local expert on all things garden related. You can share your expert local knowledge through notes on receipts. These are automatically included on each receipt, along with care instructions for plants purchased in a transaction.
Automatically, receipts, invoices and delivery dockets can include locally relevant information you provide. This free information pitches your business as different to an online shop or a big business that is less focussed on personal service.
Another way we help maximise sales is with an instant loyalty reward. This is particularly useful where you see shoppers once a year or quite infrequently. Using rules that you control, a receipt can include a voucher offering a specific amount off the next purchase if that purchase is made in a timeframe you set.
Fishing and outdoors businesses are unique. They need unique software. Everyday Point of Sale software will not maximise your specialisation.
Using our software developed specifically for Australian Fishing and Outdoor businesses, you can leverage what is unique about your type of business.
Here are three of the ways you can use our specialty software to leverage specialisation. Today, you might sell a rod, reel and other items as single items. Using our software, you can package these into a combo pack. This has benefits:
Shoppers perceive a combo pack as a good deal. Also, it is harder for them to price compare.
Someone purchasing a pack may purchase more items than intended.
You can create and undo packs at will, maintaining accurate stock data.
An asset of your business is that you are a local expert on fishing. You can promote your expert local knowledge is through local notes on receipts.
Automatically, receipts can include information about local fishing conditions and local opportunities. This free information pitches your business as different to an online shop or a big business that is less focussed on personal service.
It is a holiday today in beautiful Melbourne on account of it being the day before the AFL Grand Final. While most of the companies y is closed, our help desk is open and helloing customers with queries.
Credit cards cost retailers money. Some more so than others. Indeed, some cards can cost a retailer three times as much as the lowest cost card. This is a real cost to business, a cost that retailers are seeking to m mitigate, especially in situations where they are unable to adequately cover the cost due to the fixed price nature of what they sell.
This challenge is especially real in small business retail, where economy of scale is not available and where leverage to push down other overhead costs is not an option.
Here at our POS software company, we have helped retailers for years to have options for charging a surcharge automatically through the software, tracked, managed and collected to help the businesses defray these cards costs.
While the charging of a surcharge is contentious, credit card fees are a real cost of business that is hidden, and that is why big businesses like it we think, because they have negotiating power to keep costs low and therefore not need to recover the card costs they are hit with by banks.
In charging a surcharge, small business retailers are being transparent about real costs and showing customers how they can help businesses to transact on a more equitable footing.
Tower Systems makes it easy. manageable and changeable for indie retailers to charge a credit card use surcharge, which is in line with ACCC requirements, through the software with transparency and tracking through the business and into Xero, MYOB and more through POS software integrations.
Whether you charge a surcharge or not is 100% up to you. For what it’s worth, we do not in the shops we own because they are in competitive Westfield centres and we’d rather not be that business that charges a surcharge.
Tower Systems serves indie specialty retailers with POS software designed specifically for those niche businesses, software tuned to their needs and that help businesses manage more efficiently and safely in a rapidly changing retail environment.
What we offer in the area of a credit card surcharge facility is a small part of a bigger and more valuable offering for indie retailers.
Tower Systems is a skilled POS software company that also develops awesome Shopify sites connected to its POS software for indie retailers in niche retail channels like: jewellers, garden centres, produce, toy, firearms, fishing, outdoors, newsagents, pet, gift, book, bike and adult.
Included in our fixed price Shopify work is:
A pre-development over the phone Q&A meeting.
Shopify link.This is a facility in the Retailer software to link with Shopify.
Live Shopify site as per the facilities and functionality outlined in this document – see below, including pre development consultation.
Up to 2 hours of hand-over training.
Three months of phone-based assistance (but not software changes) following delivery.
A comprehensive handover document that provides support, written training and guidance on your next steps. This is the same for all our Shopify site customers. i.e. it is not document written especially for you.
However, what we do is far more comprehensive than this. We work hard to deliver beautiful websites that serve the needs of our customers. This work includes:
Template / theme selection. We will step you through template / theme options included in the price and with you and choose one for the site. We will then make the selection for you and set this up. Note: there are some themes (not developed by us) that you can purchase outside our package price for more specialist options. These can cost up to $400.00 extra.
Overall design to be applied to the template selected to customise the look and feel of the site. The design process is not priced to be a back and forth process. We would consult prior to doing the customisation. We will listen to your brief and provide a design. Minor adjustments can be made within the quote but any diversion from the original brief would add to the cost.
A functioning live website for your businessthat works and can be accessed from different devices – computer, phone, tablet – with auto detect of the device so the site looks good. With the website to be based on Shopify with the following:
Homepage. Including text, images, button. With you providing g us with the text you want.
Home page links to any business accounts you have for: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.
A home page feed of your business blog if you have one and it is published through Shopify that allows data feeds.
Admin page for your management of the site. This is not seen by the public. There is a range of settings you can control for proper management of the site.
About page. Where your business is described. You will provide the text for this.
Privacy Policy page listing a good privacy policy we have developed – that you can modify.
Terms and conditions page listing terms and conditions we have developed – that you can modify.
Contact us page showing location on a map and making contact easy.
Up to two additional pages where you provide exact text and images for those static pages. By static, we mean information only pages.
A shopping cart facility for managing the products you sell. This is the guts of the site, the most important part. This specifically includes facilities you would use to manually load products or import products and product images direct from Retailer.
The setup of auto-loading of products into the site via a live link to the Tower Systems Retailer software. You need to have this data in Retailer already.
Interfacing to one or both payment gateways: Stripe and Paypal.
Interfacing to buy now pay later payments methods you wish. You will need to create accounts for each.
Defined to Google and Bing so search engines know about the site.
This list is not complete. We do much more in service of our retail business customers who want to get live and selling online with Shopify.
A free workshop for small business retailers: How to find new customers by selling online direct from POS software for your specific type of business using Shopify and Magento.
Join us for a free workshop where we will explore Shopify and Magento direct connected POS software for specialty retailers: jewellers, garden centres, produce, toy, firearms, fishing, outdoors, newsagents, pet, gift, book, bike and adult.
At the interactive and engaging workshops we will focus on new online insights for 2020 and beyond that are relevant to indie small business retailers.
Hear from current case studies what other indie retailers are doing.
Find out how to use online to drive in-store shopping.
Learn how click and collect actually works.
Find out about the different buy now pay later options for online sales.
See how stock data including images flow easily from the POS to online.
Each workshop will be live and interactive and relevant to your type of business. It could save you thousands in web developer fees. This will not be a sales pitch. We will share what we know having done this work ourselves for the retail businesses we own in the homewares, pop culture, collectible, plush, gift and games segments of retail.
We live everyday the challenges of pricing, marketing, shipping and more and we will share out learnings.
We will cover hot topics including: SEO, shipping options, free shipping, the role of social in online sales, returns, bundles, branding and a plan b for your web strategy.
Click on your preferred city below to book. Each workshop (except for online) will be in an easy to get to capital city location.
We are local. Tower Systems serves 3,500+ specialty businesses – with POS software and websites. We make what we sell. We use it ourselves too, in our own retail and online businesses.
With these workshops and all we do, goal is to help you enjoy a more successful and valuable business.
While it was RUOK? Day last week, the mental health challenge for businesses owners and, indeed, the whole community is a 365 day a year challenge.
Recent Bureau of Statistics figures reinforce why this is a 365 day a year challenge:
As an employer of many 15-34 year olds, the stat for suicide is horrifying. The broader suicide rate in Australia is horrifying.
We have written a few times here about mental health. Not as an expert, because we are not experts. Rather, our interest is as an employer and as someone who craves for a healthier and happier country.
We share here today a revised version of information we have shared here before on this topic, and in particular about the mental health of newsagents and those in our businesses.
Despite all the ads on TV, despite the work of R U OK?, despite the work of agencies like Beyondblue, despite the stories in the media, mental health, especially mental health within the small business community, and especially the newsagency community, is not talked about.
The challenge is that we cannot always see unhealthiness. If someone is physically unhealthy, we can usually see it, but not mental unhealthiness. For sure there are occasional signs like behavioural outbursts that don’t make sense but you can’e be sure and often you don’t want to ask for fear of making it worse.
In small business retail and in our channel there are challenges that can make things worse: bullying landlords, overbearing suppliers, demanding customers, relentless competitors. These and other factors can make someone see the road ahead through clouded eyes. For some of those on the other side, however, how they handle a situation could be driven by how the small business has dealt with it up to then.
We are all for personal accountability and often say we need to own our own situation – we sign our leases, we sign magazine contracts, we go into business. However, we do these things expecting fairness. Too often there are people on the other side of a commercial relationship who do not act with fairness.
Social media is a factor with mental health as it gives everyone a megaphone and the ability to publish an opinion without thinking it through. In schools social media is a big focus in mental health awareness, especially around bullying.
It is hard to know the mental health of anyone. That person smiling at you or joking with you could be in a dark place in their mind. This is why it is important we talk and ask colleagues how they are doing and why we all need to help when we think help could be what is needed.
In the workplace, we think being open with each other so that everyone has a shared and open experience. If there are business performance issues, rather than keeping them secret, talking about them could help ease tension: a problem shared and all that…
There are wonderful resources from government departments available. For example, The Victorian Government has a page online on this topic, which includes good practical advice:
Make time to exercise each day: For example, a simple daily lunch time walk can help maintain a positive outlook.
Practice mindfulness: Mindfulness means being aware of your reactions/feelings/thoughts as you have them. This helps you choose how to manage matters as they arise. Mindfulness is a great tool to help lower stress and anxiety levels.
Adopt work/life boundaries: Don’t let work overtake your life. Set some boundaries to ensure you have time for both work and a social life. You might decide not to discuss work from 5pm Friday night to 8am Monday morning because weekends are for family time only.
Connect with others: Find someone worthy of your stories – a confidant or mentor you can talk to about your business experiences. Make sure this person is supportive, a good listener and someone whose opinion you value.
This website also lists indicators:
Physical signs: For example, a constant knot in your stomach, tense neck and shoulders, feeling nauseous, heart palpitations or chest pains.
Changes in behaviour: For example, being unable to sleep, crying regularly, feeling moody or often irritable, increase or loss of appetite.
Unclear thinking: For example, not being able to make decisions, not understanding directions, not being able to focus, being inattentive.
Feeling sad or anxious regularly: We all have bad days – they’re a normal part of life. This flag needs attention if you begin to notice feeling like this regularly.
Disconnecting from others: This may include not joining in social activities, choosing to spend time away from family and friends or stopping hobbies/sporting activities.
Feeling overwhelmed: It is difficult to find solutions to problems, and in some instances it feels like they are insurmountable. Problem solving becomes difficult
And it lists useful resources:
Business In Mind: Business In Mind is an online resource specifically designed to support business owners who may be experiencing mental health challenges.
Beyond Blue: beyondblue provides information and support to help everyone in Australia achieve their best possible mental health, whatever their age and wherever they live.
The Ripple Effect: A resource for rural communities that addresses suicide in rural areas.(Ph: 03 5551 8587)
Sane provides online information, support and connection for every Australian affected by complex mental illness through its website, peer-to-peer forums and helpline. SANE also has a range of factsheets on managing mental health in the workplace. (Ph: 1800 18 7263)
Our approach to mental health as business owners has to be continuous, on-going. It can’t be a one day of the year focus or a stunt. It has to be part of how we run our businesses, everyday.
In our experience, talking is key – offering an environment where people can talk, where they know it is safe to talk, where they are encouraged to talk and where active listening happens. While it is not always perfect and does not always achieve what is hoped for, it is documented as being valuable.
While RUOK? Day today is important for awareness, that awareness and engagement need to be year-long.
All users of the Tower Systems POS software have access to free training. Long after the software is installed, this free training is available for people to learn more about our POS software and how to leverage the software for the benefit of the retail business.
POS software training is critical to make good use of tools the software. Some of the best learning can be done years after a business started using the software. This is why we make access to POS software training free for our indie retail customers.
We run several online training sessions each week across a wide range of subjects. These are an excellent way for you and your staff to learn in detail about specific areas of the software. Each of these sessions is genuinely interactive and offers a free-flowing Q&A session at the end where any topic can be canvassed.
To participate in an online meeting all you need access to is a computer with a broadband internet connection and a phone to receive a call so you can hear the audio. Each session runs for approximately 45-60 minutes depending on questions. Being in front of our POS software is not critical for the training.
We also host face to face meetings where further training can be accessed. These meetings are free. The face to face meetings are yearly in capital cities and regional centres across Australia. These are in addition to our weekly online live sessions. We also attend more than twelve industry trade shows offering face-to-face meeting opportunities with users.
Free and easy access to POS software training is critical for small business retailers and those who work in their businesses. It provides for unlocking genuine value from the POS software.
Tower Systems is proud to be able to offer this training and to have done so for many years. It is one thing to talk about it and another entirely to actually do it. This is what we are committed to, doing – we really do believe that actions speak louder than words.
Tower Systems serves specialty small business and independent retailers with specialty POS software.
The Tower Systems Bike shop POS software continues to evolve to meet chan ing needs of indie bike retailers. It is nimble, powerful and evolving to serve the future of bike retail in-store and online.
Here are some of the benefits of the Tower Systems Bike shop POS software:
Save time with electronic invoices from bike suppliers.
Easily and directly and safely sell online with a direct to Shopify / Magento or WooCommerce link from your POS software – including image flow.
Like from the POS software to Bike Chaser and Bike Exchange.
Offer personal customer service by tracking service and other dates by bike. Service like an auto text message when a bike is ready to be collected.
Use tags to get a fresh perspective, side-view, on stock performance.
Leverage you. If you believe your knowledge is a differentiator, offer it through structured opportunities in the software. This helps you stand out from other places people could shop with.
Genuinely differentiating loyalty. Stand out from the crowd. Have customers coming back to you for this.
Sell more with a direct connect and integrated with the POS buy now pay later services.
Drive a deeper basket from one-time-only visiting shoppers.
Offer differentiating personal bike care by tracking serial numbers and by service recommendations based on history of the bike.
Easily handle special customer orders. Bring product in for a specific customer and have them notified by email or text when the goods are in.
Trade and club pricing profiles. Set pricing rules based on customer type.
Make money from pre-orders – Easily pre-sell a delivery so that when the stock arrives you can manage distribution and billing efficiently.
Differentiate with informative receipts. These can include product care, use and safety information based on what customers buy. This can be specific to cycling situations in the local area.
Differentiate with bundles. Selling items bundled together makes price comparison hard.
Track who sold what.
Say goodbye to LayBy (if you want) – with buy now pay later options.
Market to customers based on past purchases.
Cut mistakes with integrated EFTPOS.
Cut accounting and bookkeeping fees with integration to Xero and others.
These are just some of the many benefits of the Bike shop POS software from Tower Systems.
Retailer Roam is a beautiful piece of new software from Tower Systems that facilitates small business retailers selling from anywhere at any time.
Roam is an App that can run on any iOS or Android device. It is POS software on the road. Hence, the name Roam. Retailers really can sell anywhere. From a pop-up store, market stall, school, a truck – anywhere on the go at any time. It is easy, fast and secure, and it can trade even without an internet connection.
Retailer Roam is next generation POS software, bringing facilities engaged and transforming retailers want to their businesses, helping them reach new customers, helping them sell places that are hard to sell at today. Retailer Roam helps small business retailers transform how they sell and through this to find new shoppers for their businesses.
It is fresh software unique and made in Australia by Tower Systems as an extension to our specialty retail small business suite.
Retailer Roam is ideal for retail businesses in these retail segments: jewellers, garden centres, produce, toy, firearms, fishing, outdoors, newsagents, pet, gift, book, bike and adult.
Retailer Roam is portable POS software with all small business retailers expect from portability yet with access to the power of wonderful data held in systems in the back office of these retail businesses. It brings to life out in the field, away from the shop, tools through which the retailer can find new shoppers and win new business.
Retailer Roam in a game changer for small business retailers looking to innovate how and where they sell products for their business. It places into the palm of retail employees on the shop floor the ability to sell to and serve customers that help ease the counter log-jam, that helps provide assistance and service to customers in the store but away from the counter.
It is fast, flexible and evolving. Retailer Roam today will evolve as more use it and provide feedback to guide further enhancement. This iterative approach to development is loved by small business retailers who like a say in the evolution of the POS software they use in their businesses.
With tight margins, tough competition, higher labour costs and higher tenancy costs, it is no wonder more retailers are charging a fee for some, maybe all, card use by customers.
Some cards, the premium cards, are especially expensive for retailers to take. These cards typically offer their customers benefits, which are paid for through higher fees for the participating retailers.
More and more retailers are applying a surcharge automatically to each card paid transaction to help defray the costs of taking the cards.
Retailers using the POS software from Tower Systems have the tools in their software today to auto charge a surcharge for card use.
Our view as a software company is to serve the needs of our customers. They asked us some time ago for the auto surcharge facility and we delivered – giving our customers the flexibility to charge if they wished. There is no pressure from us, no requirement, no mandate. Rather, we have delivered through the software tools that make charging a credit card surcharge through the POS software easy.
We are grateful to our customers for their guidance as the the flexibility needed to serve their credit card surcharge needs, to ensure that the POS software levies the charge how and when they want, in a way that does not disrupt or challenge the sales counter experience.
Setting up any surcharge in the POS software, as opposed too on asn EFTPOS terminal, allows the sale total, including the surcharge, to appear on your Retailer receipts as well as your EFTPOS merchant copies. This is a better outcome for the business as well as for the shoppers.
Tower Systems customers have flexibility and ease of implementation, to enable them to use this in a way that minimises the risk or challenge for any retail business. It offers transparency, tracking and management oversight to enable a business to assess the use of and income from the surcharge and to also determine the positive or negative impact of the credit card surcharge on the broader business.
Credit card surcharges by retailers are common as they look at the costs in their businesses. By charging customers based on a cost of a specific service they can guide customers to make other decisions, which may cost less.
A free workshop for small business retailers: How to find new customers by selling online direct from POS software for your specific type of business using Shopify and Magento.
Join us for a free workshop where we will explore Shopify and Magento direct connected POS software for specialty retailers: jewellers, garden centres, produce, toy, firearms, fishing, outdoors, newsagents, pet, gift, book, bike and adult.
At the interactive and engaging workshops we will focus on new online insights for 2020 and beyond that are relevant to indie small business retailers.
Hear from current case studies what other indie retailers are doing.
Find out how to use online to drive in-store shopping.
Learn how click and collect actually works.
Find out about the different buy now pay later options for online sales.
See how stock data including images flow easily from the POS to online.
Each workshop will be live and interactive and relevant to your type of business. It could save you thousands in web developer fees. This will not be a sales pitch. We will share what we know having done this work ourselves for the retail businesses we own in the homewares, pop culture, collectible, plush, gift and games segments of retail.
We live everyday the challenges of pricing, marketing, shipping and more and we will share out learnings.
We will cover hot topics including: SEO, shipping options, free shipping, the role of social in online sales, returns, bundles, branding and a plan b for your web strategy.
Click on your preferred city below to book. Each workshop (except for online) will be in an easy to get to capital city location.
We are local. Tower Systems serves 3,500+ specialty businesses – with POS software and websites. We make what we sell. We use it ourselves too, in our own retail and online businesses.
With these workshops and all we do, goal is to help you enjoy a more successful and valuable business.
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