The POS Software Blog

The POS Software Blog

News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.

Latest stories

Card Surcharges End October 1. Retailers Deserve Control Over What Comes Next.

September 23, 2026
2 Min read
C

From 1 October, the credit card surcharge ends for Australian retailers. Payment costs that were passed on to shoppers will now sit inside the business. For a small retailer, that makes payment processing rates matter more than they ever have.

Tower Systems has been preparing its customers for this shift for months, helping many retailers switch payments providers for better terms ahead of the deadline.

Our advice comes from experience, and a desire to help small business retailers. We want to ensure the transition is smooth, safe and valuable for our customers.

The company can do this for one simple reason: Tower Systems is payments provider agnostic. The software does not lock retailers into one payments company. Retailers choose the provider and the pricing that suits their business, and they remain free to switch when a better deal appears. That control now flows straight to the bottom line. When surcharging ends, every basis point on the merchant rate is money the retailer keeps or loses.

Plenty of POS companies work differently. Some earn a margin from a preferred payments partner. Some take it further and charge a percentage of every sale that passes through their software. It is worth pausing on that model. A software company taking a slice of a retailer’s revenue is, in effect, taxing that retailer’s sales. The busier the shop, the bigger the tax.

Tower Systems does not do this. There is no fee based on revenue. The company’s view is straightforward: a retailer’s revenue is theirs to keep. Software should be paid for as software, not as a silent partner in every transaction.

For retailers reviewing their setup before October 1, two questions are worth asking of any POS provider. Does the software let the business choose any payments provider? And does the software company take any cut of sales, directly or through a payments arrangement? The answers reveal whose interests the software really serves.

Tower Systems develops and supports POS software for local specialty retailers in Australia and New Zealand, serving only indie retailers, not franchises or chains.

More on payments choice at www.towersystems.com.au.

At Tower Systems, we’re here: 1300 662 957 or sales@towersystems.com.au. If you’re in NZ, call 0800 444 367. Contacting a human is easy.

Read onRead later

Cash Flow Is the Quiet Killer in Retail. Good POS Software Helps.

September 22, 2026
2 Min read
C

Ask any small business retailer about their biggest pressure and cash flow lands near the top of the list. Often at the top. You only have to look on social media or Reddit where cash flow in small business retail is an often-discussed topic.

Sales can look fine while cash quietly tightens. Stock ties up money on shelves. Margins drift down without anyone noticing. Rosters creep up. By the time the problem shows in the bank account, it has been building for months.

These are common things we see in small business retail.

This is where POS software can genuinely earn its keep, and it is a core focus of the Tower Systems POS software.

The help is practical. Retailers get easy access to up-to-the-minute performance information, so decisions rest on today’s facts rather than last quarter’s guesswork. Pricing can be adjusted easily to improve gross profit, item by item or across a category. Rostering insights reveal opportunities to reduce labour costs without hurting service. And built-in guidance points to decisions that will improve the financial performance of the business, drawn from what the data actually shows.

None of this requires an accounting degree. That matters. The typical indie retailer is time-poor and wears every hat in the business. Tools that demand hours of analysis do not get used. Tools that surface the answer do.

There is a reason the software works this way. Tower Systems is a vertical market software company. It makes software for specific needs and specific retail channels, not generic software stretched to fit everyone. A vertical focus means the cash flow tools reflect how specialty retail businesses really run: their seasonality, their margin structures, their supplier arrangements. Generic software cannot know those things. Specialist software is built on them.

Tower Systems develops and supports POS software for local specialty retailers in Australia and New Zealand. The focus is only on indie retailers, not franchises or chains, and practical help with cash flow is central to how the company serves them.

Better cash flow rarely comes from one big move. It comes from many small, informed decisions, made sooner. The right software makes those decisions visible.

See how at www.towersystems.com.au.

At Tower Systems, we’re here: 1300 662 957 or sales@towersystems.com.au. If you’re in NZ, call 0800 444 367. Contacting a human is easy.

Read onRead later

Small Business Retailers Understand Human Service: When Did Talking to Your POS Software Company Become So Hard?

September 21, 2026
2 Min read
S

There is a disconnect between some software companies and their customers, and retailers feel it most when something goes wrong.

The pattern is familiar. A retailer needs help, so they visit the software company’s website. There is no phone number, only a form. Or there is a phone number, but it leads to a multi-layered menu that ends with an invitation to leave a message. Or the only channel is email, with a reply promised in one to two business days. Or the call connects to an offshore help desk where the staff, through no fault of their own, do not know much about the software itself.

None of that helps a retailer with a queue at the counter.

Tower Systems takes a different view. Support is personal, and it all starts with a conversation. Retailers who call Tower Systems talk to a human. Not a menu. Not a chatbot standing guard in front of the humans. A person who knows the software, because supporting it is their job.

That accessibility runs deeper than the help desk. Customers of Tower Systems can easily reach a human in support, in sales, and in leadership. Plenty of software companies keep their decision-makers well away from customers. Tower Systems does the opposite, and has for decades. It is a genuine differentiator, and retailers notice.

Why does this matter so much in specialty retail? Because context matters. A generic help desk can reset a password. It takes people who understand a retail channel to help with the question behind the question, the one about the business itself.

Tower Systems develops and supports POS software for local specialty retailers in Australia and New Zealand. The focus is only on indie retailers, not franchises or chains. That focus keeps the company close to the people it serves, close enough to answer the phone.

For any retailer weighing up POS software, here is a simple test: before signing anything, try to get a human from the company on the phone. The result tells you plenty. At Tower Systems, we’re here: 1300 662 957 or sales @towersystems.com.au If you’re in NZ, call 0800 444 367.

Learn more at www.towersystems.com.au.

Read onRead later

If you want more traffic to your website: do these three things

September 18, 2026
3 Min read
I

Here Are Three Things To Fix On Your Retail Website This Week

If your website is not bringing you the traffic you hoped for, the cause is usually not the design. It is more often three small habits, and each one is inside your control.

This advice is based on years of experience helping retailers win more sales online. And, you don’t need to spend a cent with us to leverage this advice.

Start with your product names. Look at a product you sell well in the shop and read how it appears online. If a brand-name plush teddy bear is listed simply as “teddy bear”, you have made it invisible. Nobody types that. Put the brand first, then the detail that matters to the person searching, then the category. Pick your twenty best sellers and rewrite those names today. Fifteen seconds each. That is the highest-return half hour you will spend on your site this month.

Second, write. You already answer questions across the counter every day, and those questions are exactly what shoppers are typing into search. Which plush is safe for a newborn. How to clean a soft toy without ruining it. Why one brand costs more than another. Take one question per post, answer it plainly in a few hundred words, and publish regularly. Do not attempt a monthly epic. Short and consistent beats long and abandoned, and it builds the subject authority that both search engines and AI answer tools now reward.

Third, put yourself on the site. Go to your About Us page and read it as a stranger would. If there is no owner’s name, no photograph, no phone number and no email address, add them. Shoppers who have never bought from you check that page before they trust you with a card number. Yes, someone may ring for a chat. That is local retail. It is also how relationships start.

One thing to stop doing: do not fill your site with generated imagery. If your homepage carousel shows a shop that is not yours and products you have never stocked, shoppers notice, and they leave. Your slightly imperfect photo of your own window display will outperform it every time. You compete on being real. Do not give that away.

Do all three and give it ninety days. You will see the difference in your traffic and in the enquiries you receive.

Tower Systems builds and supports websites for small business retailers, and works with you on what the site actually returns. Start a conversation at sales@towersystems.com.au.

Read onRead later

Retail Advice: Don’t Let Bad Data Kill Your Business

September 17, 2026
2 Min read
R

Your Data Is Making Your Decisions, Whether You Trust It Or Not. And, Bad Data Kills Businesses.

Here is an uncomfortable test. Pick ten items off your shelves at random, check what your system says you hold, and count what is actually there. If more than one or two are wrong, every report you run is telling you a story that is not true.

That situation is more common than most retailers would like to think. We have seen it first-hand.

A recent review of an independent retail business found more than half of its inventory records were inaccurate, either wrong stock on hand counts or descriptions so vague they meant nothing. The business was losing money and the owner could not see why. Nothing in the numbers was reliable enough to point at the problem.

This matters more now than it did five years ago, because you are probably feeding your sales history into AI tools and expecting insight in return. Understand what those tools do with poor records. They do not flag them. They read them confidently and hand you an answer that looks authoritative. A confidently wrong recommendation about what to order for Christmas is far more expensive than no recommendation at all.

The fix is not complicated, and you do not need a consultant to start.

Receive every delivery into the system, on the day it arrives. Sell everything through the register, including the small stuff. Write off damaged and expired stock rather than leaving it on hand. Process supplier returns properly. Give every product a description you would be happy for a customer to read. That is the whole discipline, and it is a habit rather than a project.

If the objection is labour, and it usually is, look at where the keying happens. Nobody should be typing supplier invoices line by line. Tower Systems provides an automatic invoice import facility that brings those invoices straight into your system, along with training and documented processes designed to keep your records accurate at the lowest practical labour cost.

Across many years of working with independent retailers, the most consistent factor in failure has not been rent or competition. It has been numbers nobody trusted, in a business where nobody had time to fix them.

Take the ten-item test this week. If it goes badly, talk to us at sales@towersystems.com.au before it costs you a season.

Read onRead later

Advice For Retailers On How To Assess The Point Of Sale Offer That Knocked On Your Door

September 16, 2026
3 Min read
A

You have probably had the visit, or you will. An overseas point of sale (POS) company, a friendly pitch, free hardware, payments included, one bill and one contact. When you are already working six days a week, simple sounds wonderful. The offer deserves a fair hearing. It also deserves half an hour with a calculator before you sign anything.

It usually sounds too good to be true, all the free stuff and how easy it is.

Things like this are rarely what they seem.

Ask about the payments arrangement first. Bundled offers usually tie you to one payments provider. That removes your ability to shop around or renegotiate later, and EFTPOS rates are where independents most often find real savings. Ask directly whether you can bring your own provider. If the answer is no, that is a cost, even though it will not appear on the quote.

Then ask about the percentage. A clip of every transaction looks trivial on a quiet Tuesday. Run it across your annual turnover and look at the number. Then run it across the turnover you are hoping for in three years. You are being asked to pay more as you succeed, which is worth thinking about carefully.

Now the part most owners skip. List the five things your business does that a general retailer does not. Repairs and valuations if you are a jeweller. Care information and seasonal stock if you are a garden centre. A workshop running alongside the floor if you sell bikes. Selling by weight, by the cube and off the back of a truck if you are in produce. Take that list to the demonstration and make them show you each one working. Not described. Working.

A retailer who recently ran that comparison function by function and cost by cost found Tower Systems came out cheaper on total cost, and better suited to how their business actually traded. We can show you the numbers and let you see for yourself in your specific business.

Understanding total cost of ownership of POS software is important if not wasting money is important top you.

Your specialisation is why customers choose you rather than a chain. Software that cannot see it will slowly push you toward competing on price, and that is the one contest you cannot win. Make the visiting salesperson prove otherwise before you commit.

Tower Systems writes software for specialty retailers across a wide range of trades, and is happy to be measured against any comparison you care to run. Enquiries are welcome at sales@towersystems.com.au.

Read onRead later

The best software for Australian newsagents in 2026: Tower Systems

September 15, 2026
5 Min read
T

It’s a bold claim that the Tower Systems newsagency software is the best software for Australian newsagents in 2026. Let’s get into the case we have for holding this opinion.

AI has fundamentally changed how a modern newsagency runs.

Newsagency software without embedded AI tools is not modern.

Newsagents using Tower Systems are leveraging AI built into their POS software to transform their businesses, in profitability and, just as important, in how enjoyable the business is to run. Hours of paperwork gone. Ordering decisions based on your evidence. Dead stock found and moved. More time on the shop floor with customers, less time in the back office.

Retailer AI, built in since 2022

Retailer AI is a set of AI tools built directly into the Tower Systems software. Development started in-house in 2022 and new tools have been added every year since. This is not a chatbot stuck on the side. The AI is inside the daily workflow of the shop.

Practical examples of what it does:

  • Reads supplier PDF invoices and turns them into ready-to-import electronic invoices, saving hours after every delivery.
  • Watches inventory and sales, prepares a replenishment order and puts it up for approval.
  • Produces plain-English insights on any report, so the numbers are read for you.
  • Runs a shop-floor insights dashboard so counter staff can use quiet time well.
  • Generates product names and descriptions written for meaning and search, not copied from supplier catalogues.
  • Compares local prices to reveal margin and competitive opportunities.
  • Writes publish-ready blog posts for products in the POS.
  • Answers questions about the business through embedded chat, in trials since August 2026.

And much more is coming this year.

The tools use Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude and ChatGPT. Retailers do not need to write prompts. Retailers control and pay AI usage through their own AI account, with no mark-up.

The results are measurable. Retailers using Retailer AI report saving five to ten hours a week. One Victorian newsagency identified more than $10,000 in dead stock through Retailer AI, then acted on it. Saved hours become profit, or they become the Saturday afternoon an owner finally takes off. Both count.

Built for newsagencies, not adapted for them

Tower Systems is specialty retail POS software with a newsagency heritage. The company is based in Hawthorn and has served Australian and New Zealand newsagents for decades. It knows the trade because it operates in it.

Newsagents keep voting with their feet: 31 new newsagent customers so far this year. That is an awesome number to add to an already leading community of newsagent customers.

The trade knowledge shows up in the detail. Magazine arrivals and returns run through XchangeIT automatically. Lottery integrates with The Lott and Lotterywest. Home delivery covers routes and billing. Subagents are managed properly. Magazines put aside for customers are tracked. Greeting card invoices from the major suppliers come in electronically. This is core software, built over decades of serving the trade.

One platform, every part of the shop

A modern newsagency is rarely a newsagency today. Most carry gifts, cards, stationery, collectibles and often apparel. Tower Systems supports every one of those departments in the same system, including colour, size and style tracking for apparel, landed cost pricing, supplier stock file imports and integrated ecommerce that keeps in-store and online inventory in sync.

You get a single view of the whole business.

Australian support, from people who know the trade

Tower Systems support is provided by Australian and New Zealand staff. It is not outsourced. The help desk runs Monday to Friday 7am to 6pm Melbourne time, and Saturday 7:30am to 3pm. There is a 24/7 chatbot trained only on Tower software that resolves most queries on its own, a full online knowledge base, and a private customer Facebook group.

Training is included. One-on-one sessions, live webinars, a video library and written guides are all part of the arrangement.

Simple, honest pricing

Tower Systems uses a straightforward monthly rental model. There are four plans. All plans include GST, no transaction fees, no turnover limits, unlimited products and unlimited customers. AI tools are included on the Advanced and Ultimate plans.

Nobody clips your transactions. Support comes from Hawthorn, not an offshore call centre. And you are never locked into a payments or hardware ecosystem chosen for someone else’s benefit.

Why it matters

A newsagency runs on tight margins and thin time. The right software saves time on invoicing, protects margin on ordering, keeps magazines and lottery running cleanly, and helps grow the gift and collectibles side of the shop. With AI now doing real work inside the platform, the gap between running a newsagency on Tower Systems and running one on anything else is the widest it has been.

See it live. Book a demo or call 1300 662 957 and talk with someone who knows newsagency retail.

Read onRead later

Success Can be Found In Discomfort In Retail

September 15, 2026
2 Min read
S

Most retailers know exactly which report they do not run. It might be the one that would show stock going missing. It might be the performance of the range you changed six months ago, or the supplier you took on because you liked them. Perhaps it is the comparison of what each team member actually puts through the register.

Not looking is entirely understandable. Finding out a decision failed feels personal in a business you built. But the cost does not pause while you avoid it, and it compounds quietly.

Here is a practical way to start. Choose one uncomfortable question this week and answer it properly.

We know many small business retailers who have found success by exploring parts of their business that they know will be uncomfortable for them.

Run your theft (shrinkage) numbers. Compare theoretical stock on hand against a physical count in one high-risk category and see what the gap tells you. Pull the sell-through on the last range change you made and ask honestly whether it earned its shelf space. Look at gross profit by supplier rather than sales by supplier, because a busy supplier and a profitable supplier are not always the same business. Compare average sale and items per sale across your team, not to blame anyone, but to see who might need coaching and who might be worth learning from.

Give yourself twenty minutes and a cup of tea. That is the whole exercise.

What usually follows is undramatic and valuable. A dead line is deleted before you reorder it. A supplier conversation happens a year earlier than it otherwise would. A shift pattern changes. Stock worth thousands moves out of the corner nobody walks past.

Tower Systems point of sale software for local independent retailers is built to surface exactly this kind of thing: whether theft is occurring, whether a product or category has failed rather than merely slowed, whether a supplier is returning what it costs you, and how performance compares across staff and trading periods. Evidence instead of a feeling about how the month went.

Retailers who work this way tend to make each mistake once. That is the difference, and it is available to you without hiring anybody.

If you would like help finding these numbers in your own system, contact us at sales@towersystems.com.au.

Read onRead later

Ten questions produce, stockfeed and farm supply retailers ask

September 14, 2026
2 Min read
T

Over the last fortnight Tower Systems published an answer a day to the questions produce, stockfeed and farm supply retailers ask most often about their systems. Each answer covers what the Tower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses does about it. Every one came from a real conversation in a real store.

They are collected here.

  1. Selling by the kilo, the metre and the half bag. Getting bulk sales accurate, and why it decides whether margin reporting means anything.

  2. Buying raw material and bagging an own blend. Following stock from raw material through mixing to the bag on the floor, and finally knowing what an own brand earns.

  3. Two trucks, six drops. Managing dispatch in a system rather than on a whiteboard, and pricing delivery with the cost known.

  4. Farm accounts on 30-day terms. Statements out on time, ageing visible, and seeing the drift while it is still small.

  5. Chemicals over the counter. Records that can be produced later, and prompts that guide whoever is on the counter.

  6. Labels that survive the yard. Weatherproof labelling, and why readable labels are really about trusting the stock file.

  7. Selling off the truck and at the field day. Taking real sales away from the counter, including where there is no signal.

  8. Keying supplier invoices by hand. Electronic invoice links, what is realistic, and where the hours actually come back.

  9. One stock file for shop and website. Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce, with the Tower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses as the single source of truth.

  10. End of month taking a weekend. Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks, and books that are current enough to make decisions with.

Any produce, stockfeed or farm supply business is welcome to use this material. Pass it to whoever else in the business would find it useful.

And if one of the ten is a live problem right now, let us know, ask us how the Tower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses deals with it. The answer on fit will be honest. Being told early beats being sold something that does not suit the business. If we think we may not be right for you, we will say so.
…

Contact us: sales@towersystems.com.au or 1300 662 957 or research us: www.towersystems.com.au. Locally made. Locally supported.

Read onRead later

End of month takes a weekend. Where does that time go?

September 11, 2026
2 Min read
E

Ask ten independent retailers what they lost last weekend and a few will say the books. We hear this so often, especially in the more complex businesses like rural supply / produce businesses.

The usual pattern is a pile of paperwork, a spreadsheet, and re-entering into accounting software what has already been entered once at the counter and once in the stock file. Sales, invoices, account payments, banking. All of it typed a second time.

It is also where errors arrive, because the second entry is done tired and late. Every time you touch data manually, it’s a mistake opportunity.

Tower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses integrates with Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks. Sales and account activity flow through rather than being re-keyed. Combined with electronic invoices arriving from suppliers, the manual work at both ends of the month reduces sharply.

What retailers usually notice first is not the hours. It is that the numbers agree. When the Tower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses and the accounts draw on the same data, the reconciliation conversation with the bookkeeper or accountant gets shorter and cheaper.

The second thing they notice is timeliness. Books that are current are useful. Books that are six weeks behind are history. Making a call on a range, a supplier or a price rise needs this month’s picture, not the picture from before Easter.

Two practical suggestions.

Talk to whoever does the books before changing anything. They will have a view on chart of accounts and how they want the data to arrive, and that is a much better conversation before setup than after.

And decide what the real goal is. Fewer hours is one. Better information is the bigger one.

No retailer should be spending weekends on data entry. The work is real, but most of it has already been done once.

If end of month is costing you too much time, lets talk as see whether what we offer could help you run a more time efficient and accurate business. We know we are not the right fit for everyone. If we think that based on your needs, we will say so.

…

Contact us: sales@towersystems.com.au or 1300 662 957 or research us: www.towersystems.com.au. Locally made. Locally supported.

Read onRead later

One stock file for the shop and the website. Is that realistic?

September 10, 2026
2 Min read
O

One stock file for the shop and the website. Is that realistic?Yes, and it should be the only arrangement any retailer accepts.

The trap is running two businesses. Stock managed in the shop, stock managed again online, and the two drifting apart. Something sells overnight and the shelf does not know. A price rises in store and the website quietly keeps the old one. Descriptions and images are maintained twice, so eventually they are maintained once and the website goes stale.

Our bTower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce. Product descriptions, pricing and images synchronise from the software to the site. Online sales flow back in, so inventory stays precise and the sale sits in the same reporting as everything else.

The important word is direction. The Tower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses is the single source of truth and the website reflects it. One place to maintain, one stock file, one set of numbers at the end of the month.

For produce and farm supply businesses there are some specific opportunities here.

Bagged feed, animal health and pet lines travel well online with local pickup. Nothing needs to be shipped by the tonne for a website to earn its place.

Account customers can order online against their account rather than by phone, which takes work off the counter without losing the relationship.

And the best customers often want a repeat order to be two clicks, not a conversation.

One caution. A website is a channel, not a strategy. Untidy stock data becomes visible to the world once there is an online store. Getting the stock file right comes first, and it also happens to be the thing that makes everything else in the business work.

Let’s see if we can help you here. Explain your businesses in fully – physical retail, and online – and we will let you know what we can help with.l If, based on your needs, we think we may not be a good fit, we will say so, for sure.

…

Contact us: sales@towersystems.com.au or 1300 662 957 or research us: www.towersystems.com.au. Locally made. Locally supported.

Read onRead later

Keying every supplier invoice by hand. What would it take to stop?

September 9, 2026
2 Min read
K

Ask a produce / farm supply / stockfeed business owner where the week goes and invoice entry is usually on the list. It takes time. The invoices are long, and often complex.

Invoices arrive. Someone checks them against what turned up. Then someone types them in, item by item and cost by cost, so that stock levels and costs are right. In a business carrying thousands of lines across feed, animal health, hardware, fencing and seasonal ranges, that is hours every week. It is also where cost price errors enter the system, and a wrong cost is a wrong margin on every sale until somebody notices.

The Tower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses has electronic invoice importing tools, and Tower Systems works directly with suppliers to establish the links. The invoice arrives as data. Costs update. Stock updates. The team checks rather than types.

That second part deserves underlining. The Tower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses is not a file format handed over with best wishes. Building data links with suppliers is work Tower Systems has done for years across many specialty retail channels. Where a customer needs a link with a supplier who does not yet have one, that is a conversation Tower Systems is willing to have with the supplier.

Now the honest limits, because this is where software companies oversell.

It depends on the supplier. Some are excellent. Some send a PDF and nothing else. Some will build a link if enough of their stockists ask, which is why raising it matters.

It depends on the data. Item codes on both sides need to reconcile. That is setup work, done once.

And it will not cover every invoice that arrives. The target is the largest suppliers by line count, because that is where the hours are.

Even a partial result is significant. Two or three major suppliers linked can return most of a day a week.

The invoices the Tower systems software can import are evolving, as the AI model learns more, and we are regularly training it to be more capable.

For a business keying invoices by hand, send Tower Systems examples if invoices, and we will test them for you. If they don’t work, we will say so.

…

Contact us: sales@towersystems.com.au or 1300 662 957 or research us: www.towersystems.com.au. Locally made. Locally supported.

Read onRead later

Selling off the truck, at the field day, and where there is no signal

September 8, 2026
2 Min read
S

Plenty of selling in the produce / stockfeed / farm supply channel happens away from the counter.

A delivery driver takes an extra order at the gate. A staff member is at a field day for three days. There is a market, a show, a sale day. In each case business is being done a long way from the shop, and often somewhere the mobile signal is poor or absent.

The usual workarounds are a duplicate book, a docket pad, or a note on a phone. All of them create the same job: someone re-enters it later, from someone else’s handwriting, days after the fact. Stock is wrong in the meantime and something always gets missed.

Retailer Roam, part of the Tower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses, processes sales away from the store. Off the truck, at a field day, at a market. It works when an internet connection is unavailable, which matters more in this channel than in most.

With Henty Machinery Field Days running 22 to 24 September, this is timely. For any business exhibiting, taking a real sale — with the stock recorded and the customer captured — is a different outcome to a pile of dockets to process the following week.

Three things change once selling away from the counter runs through the Tower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses.

Stock accuracy holds, because the sale is a sale in the system rather than a note to be entered later.

Customer records grow. A name and a contact captured at a field day is worth something for the rest of the year, particularly for a business building an email list.

And nobody is doing double work. No one spends the Monday after an event keying three days of paper.

If selling happens away from the counter and it currently means paperwork later, send Tower Systems a note on how it works today and ask what the Tower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses would change. The answer on fit will be honest. If it is not a fit, that will be said.
…

Contact us: sales@towersystems.com.au or 1300 662 957 or research us: www.towersystems.com.au. Locally made. Locally supported.

Read onRead later

Product labels fade in the yard. What survives outside?

September 7, 2026
2 Min read
P

Let’s talk about a small problem in produce / stockfeed / garden centre businesses that costs more than it should.

Stock in a produce or farm supply business does not all live indoors. Fencing, posts, troughs, tanks, pallets of bagged feed, landscaping supplies. It sits in the yard through summer and through rain, and the label sits there with it.

Then the label fades. Or it lifts. Or it goes soft and unreadable. Now the item cannot be scanned, so someone at the counter types a price from memory, or walks out to look, or guesses. Multiply that by a busy Saturday.

Tower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses supports weatherproof labelling for stock stored outdoors. Labels that stay legible regardless of the conditions, so the item can still be scanned in six months.

What matters here is not the label. It is what depends on the label being readable.

Scanning is what keeps a stock file accurate. Every keyed price and every guess is a small error in the data, and those errors compound into reports nobody trusts. A retailer who stops trusting the stock file stops using it, and then the software is just a cash register. Scanning is the habit the Tower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses is built to protect.

Accurate scanning also protects margin on exactly the lines where margin is thin. Yard stock is often heavy, bulky, competitively priced and slow to move. It is the last place a price from memory belongs.

A few practical notes. Label size matters outdoors, since bigger survives handling better. Position matters, because sun and water hit some faces harder than others. And bin or shelf labelling is often the better answer for stock that is stacked rather than individually tagged.

It is a ten-minute conversation that removes a daily irritation.

If outdoor stock in your business is hard to scan, give us an example and we will test this for you, to show what a weatherproof label will look like. If we can’t fit on the detail you need, that’s vital to your business, we will say so and let you know our software may not be right for your needs.

…

Contact us: sales@towersystems.com.au or 1300 662 957 or research us: www.towersystems.com.au. Locally made. Locally supported.

Read onRead later

Chemicals over the counter. What do you have to be able to produce?

September 4, 2026
2 Min read
C

This is the post nobody wants to read and every produce and farm supply retailer should.

These businesses sell products that carry obligations. Agricultural and veterinary chemicals, restricted products, items with handling and record requirements. If records are requested — by a regulator, an insurer, or a lawyer after something has gone wrong — the answer needs to be a system, not a memory.

What turns up in stores is a folder. Sometimes a good folder. Often, though, a folder with gaps, kept by one person, and unavailable when that person is away.

Our Tower Systems software for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses includes hazardous material information support, with notifications and documentation. The product carries its own information. The right prompts appear at the point of sale. You can see for yourself if this serves your specific needs based on the materials you sell.

The benefit at the counter is that a casual on a Saturday is guided by the software, depending on how you have it set up. They do not need to know which products carry which requirements, because the system raises it. That is a training benefit as much as a compliance one.

The benefit later is retrieval. A question answered in minutes, from the system, with the detail intact.

Two things are worth saying plainly.

Software does not make a business compliant. The obligations belong to the business, and they vary by product and by state. What good software does is make the right process the easy process, and make the record retrievable.

This is also not only about regulators. Stock control on restricted products matters. So does knowing which customers buy what, and how much, across a season.

If these records live in a folder, it is worth seeing how a system handles it. Send Tower Systems a note on how it is managed today. The response will be honest about whether there is an improvement available. If there is not, that will be said.

It’s important to us that we pitch our software where we are certain it serves the need. We have other businesses we can suggest you look at if we think we are not the right fit based on what you tell us.

…

Contact us: sales@towersystems.com.au or 1300 662 957 or research us: www.towersystems.com.au. Locally made. Locally supported.

Read onRead later

Farm accounts on 30-day terms. How do you stop carrying the district?

September 3, 2026
2 Min read
F

Account trading is normal in this channel. It is also where independent produce and stockfeed businesses quietly get into trouble.

Terms are 30 days. Reality is longer. Seasons are hard, relationships are long, and nobody wants to be the person who chases a fourth-generation customer over an invoice. So the balance drifts, and the business funds it.

The problem is rarely goodwill. It is visibility. If statements go out late, and nobody can see at a glance who has moved from 30 days to 60, the drift stays invisible until it is large.

Our Tower Systems produce / farm supply / stockfeed software manages customer accounts properly. Charges go on the account at the counter. Statements are produced and sent on time. Ageing is visible, so the balance can be read by period rather than as one number. A customer trending the wrong way is easy to spot while the amount is still small.

Some practical points for any produce or stockfeed business reviewing this.

Statements sent on time change behaviour on their own. Many businesses find that consistency alone shortens average collection time, before anyone makes a phone call.

Credit limits are worth setting even where there is no intention of enforcing them hard. A prompt at the counter is easier than a conversation later.

Account trading data is customer data. Who buys what, how often, and in what season. That is useful for far more than collections.

The accounts side also needs to reach the bookkeeping without being keyed twice. The software integrates with Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks, so account activity flows through rather than being re-entered.

Cash flow in this channel is seasonal and always will be. The goal is not to become hard. It is to know exactly where the business stands, early enough to act.

If accounts are running longer than terms, send Tower Systems a note on how statements and follow-up are handled today. The answer on whether the software is a good fit will be honest. If it is not a fit, that will be said plainly.

…

Contact us: sales@towersystems.com.au or 1300 662 957 or research us: www.towersystems.com.au. Locally made. Locally supported.

Read onRead later

Two trucks, six drops. What did that run cost you?

September 2, 2026
2 Min read
T

Delivery is a service most produce and farm supply businesses provide and few measure.

The orders come in through the week. Someone works out what can go on which truck. The run gets written on a whiteboard, or in a notebook, or in a spreadsheet that only one person understands. The truck goes out. The paperwork comes back. And the question of whether that run made money never gets asked, because answering it would take an afternoon.

Meanwhile fuel, wages and the vehicle itself are all costing you, and delivery is often being given away because it always has been.

Dispatch management is included in our produce software. You can manage multiple trucks and multiple deliveries per vehicle. Orders are allocated, the run is built in the system rather than on the wall, and what went where is recorded against the customer.

For businesses running a serious fleet, we integrate with Allotrac, which is a purpose-built dispatch platform. That is the right answer for operators who have outgrown a whiteboard but do not want their POS pretending to be a logistics system.

The reason to care is not tidiness. It is pricing.

Once the run is in the system, you can see which customers are cheap to serve and which are not. You can see the drop that is always out of the way. You can see whether your minimum order for free delivery is set at the right level, or whether it was set in 2019 and never revisited.

Most retailers who do this work end up making one of three changes. They lift the free-delivery threshold. They put a fee on the outlying runs. Or they consolidate a day, which takes a truck off the road for a shift without losing a customer. Any one of those is worth real money over a year.

Delivery is not a favour. It is a service with a cost, and it should be priced with the cost known.

If you deliver and you cannot say what a run costs, tell me how you organise it today and we will tell you honestly whether we can help. If we cannot, we will say so.

…

Contact us: sales@towersystems.com.au or 1300 662 957 or research us: www.towersystems.com.au. Locally made. Locally supported.

Read onRead later

You buy raw material and bag your own blend. Where does the stock go?

September 1, 2026
3 Min read
Y

You buy raw material and bag your own blend. Where does the stock go? This is the question that separates software made for produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses from software adapted to them.

You buy in bulk. Grain, pellets, minerals, chaff, whatever your mix requires. You combine it to your own recipe. You bag it, label it, and sell it under your own name. Somewhere in that process, most systems lose track.

What usually happens is that the raw material is treated as stock and the finished bag is treated as a separate product with no relationship to it. So the raw material never comes down, or it is written off manually, and the finished product appears out of nowhere. The stock on hand for both is wrong. The cost of the finished bag is a guess. And the gross profit on your own brand — often your best margin line — is unknown.

Our locally made and supported produce / stockfeed / farm supply software handles the whole chain. You record the purchase of raw materials. You record the mixing of those materials into your own product. The finished, packaged product exists as its own sellable item, with a cost built from what actually went into it.

The effect is that your own-brand line becomes measurable. You can see what it cost to make, what it sold for, and how it compares to the branded equivalent on the same pallet. Retailers who mix their own product usually suspect it is their strongest margin. Being able to prove it changes how they range and price it.

A few notes from our years of experience serving produce / stockfeed / farm supply businesses.

Recipes change with input prices and season. The software should let you reflect that without rebuilding the product.

Wastage is real. Build it in rather than pretending it does not happen, or your costs will read better than they are.

Batch and pack size matter. If you sell the same blend in 20kg and 40kg, they need to relate back to the same raw material properly.

If you make your own product for your business and your current system cannot follow it from raw material through to the bag on the floor, that is worth a conversation. Send me how your process works today and we will tell you honestly whether we are a fit. If we are not, we will say so.

…

Contact us: sales@towersystems.com.au or 1300 662 957 or research us: www.towersystems.com.au. Locally made. Locally supported.

Read onRead later

Selling by the kilo, the metre and the half bag

August 31, 2026
3 Min read
S

Most retail software assumes a customer buys one of something. Produce and farm supply retail does not work that way.

A customer wants nine kilos out of the bulk bin. Another wants four metres of cable off the roll. A third wants half a bale, because half a bale is what fits in the ute. None of those are a scan of a barcode.

We hear how stores handle this today. Someone works it out on a calculator and types in a dollar amount. Or there is a shortcut key set up years ago with a price that has not been reviewed since. Or the item goes through as one unit and the difference is absorbed. Each of those costs money quietly.

Selling by weight, length and fraction is a core part of our produce software. The item is set up once with its unit of measure and its price per unit. At the counter your team enters the quantity, or takes it from the scale, and the software does the rest. The sale is accurate, the stock on hand drops by the right amount, and the gross profit on the line is right.

That last point is where the value sits. If bulk sales go through as dollar amounts, your reports cannot tell you what you made. Category performance, supplier performance and margin by line all rely on the quantity being real.

There are three practical things worth thinking about in your own produce /stockfeed / farm supply business.

The first is your unit of measure. Decide whether you buy and sell in the same unit, and set the software up to handle the conversion if you do not. A tonne in, kilos out, is common and easily handled.

The second is who is allowed to override a price. Bulk sales are where discounting creeps in. Being able to see who did what, and when, is worth having.

The third is your scales. Where a scale is doing the weighing, the software should be taking the weight rather than your team reading it and typing it. Fewer keystrokes, fewer errors.

None of this is exotic. It is the basic requirement of selling bulky goods, and it is the first thing we show in a demonstration for a produce business, because a system that cannot do it properly will cost you every day it is in place.

If you are selling by weight, length or fraction today, tell me how you handle it now and we will tell you honestly whether we are a better fit. If we are not, we will say so.
…

Contact us: sales@towersystems.com.au or 1300 662 957 or research us: www.towersystems.com.au. Locally made. Locally supported.

Read onRead later
The POS Software Blog

Categories

Categories

Categories

Recent Comments

Monthly Archives