The POS Software Blog

The POS Software Blog

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

Tagcustomer loyalty

Why local toy shops need software made for toy shops

November 1, 2026
4 Min read
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Online keeps taking more of the toy market, and plenty of local toy shops are doing it tough. A parent can order a toy on their phone in under a minute. A box turns up, and that’s the end of the relationship.

A good family-run toy shop gives you more. Someone helps you choose. Someone remembers your kid’s name and what they were into last year. The gift goes home wrapped. If it breaks, someone looks at it instead of telling you to start a return.

It’s personal.

The hard part is delivering that on a flat-out Saturday in December, with a queue at the counter and two staff. Software built for a generic shop won’t help you much there. Software built for a toy shop will.

Made here, supported here

Tower Systems has been making retail software in Australia since 1981, and we’re grateful to serve many local independent toy shops across the country. When you call us, you talk to a real person here, someone who knows the software and knows how a toy shop trades.

We don’t treat a toy shop like a café or a clothing store, because it isn’t one.

Remember birthdays for your customers

Birthdays drive toy retail. Tower can record the occasions your customers care about and remind them when one is coming up. A grandparent who bought a birthday present last March hears from you in February, before they’ve started searching online.

Loyalty for people who only come in twice a year

Most toy shop customers aren’t weekly regulars. They come in for birthdays, Christmas and maybe a school holiday treat. Points programs built for supermarkets mean nothing to them.

Tower has loyalty options for occasional and one-off shoppers, as well as for your regulars. Give an occasional customer a reason to remember you, and they’re more likely to come back to you than to a website.

Age checks at the counter

Some products need an age check. Tower flags them at the point of sale, so a casual staff member on their second shift knows to ask.

Serial numbers and repairs

Remote control cars, electronic toys and ride-ons come back sometimes. Tower tracks serial numbers, so you can find the sale, check the details and sort it out quickly.

If you do repairs, Tower manages those as well. You can log the job, track where it’s up to and tell the customer when it’s ready. Very few online sellers will fix anything.

Bundles instead of discounts

Put the toy together with the accessory that makes it more fun, or the batteries it needs, at a fixed price. The customer gets a better gift with less thinking. You get a bigger sale without marking down half the shop.

Partner with a local school, club or playgroup

This is one of the most effective ways for a toy shop to find new customers.

You partner with a local school, kinder, sports club or playgroup. Members save a percentage when they shop with you, and a percentage of what they spend goes to the group. Tower handles both at the counter.

The group then promotes you to its members, because every sale helps them raise funds. Families who’ve never been in your shop now have a reason to visit. What happens after that is up to your service.

Know what’s actually selling

Tower lets you compare suppliers and categories, and report by brand, licence, age group and more. You can look at your shop the way you actually think about it:

  • Which suppliers make you money, and which tie up cash in slow stock?
  • Which licence is hot, and which one peaked six months ago?
  • Have you got toddlers covered but nothing for tweens?
  • What sells for birthdays, and what only moves at Christmas?

Licensed lines can go from bestseller to dead stock very quickly. Seeing that early saves real money.

Shopify and Xero, connected

Tower connects directly with Shopify and Xero. Your online store and your shop work from the same stock, and your sales flow through to Xero without anyone retyping them.

It comes back to service

Family-run toy shops that do well are known for something: the advice, the wrapping, the repairs, or remembering your kid’s birthday. The software’s job is to make that easy, even when you’re busy.

If you’d like to see how Tower would work in your toy shop, Tim and Justin are happy to take you through it. Call 1300 662 957 (AU), 0800 444 367 (NZ) or email sales@towersystems.com.au.

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POS Software for Game Shops: Helping Local Game Retailers Make the Most of 2026

October 23, 2026
4 Min read
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Games are having a moment. In 2026, game sales are strong across Australia and New Zealand, and local game shops are growing as a result. We have seen this in the latest Circa data prepared for the ATA.

More people are looking for screen-free time with friends and family. Game nights, clubs and tournaments are bringing new players into shops every week. For independent game retailers, it’s a real opportunity.

Making the most of that growth takes more than good stock. You need to know what’s selling, look after your regulars and give new players a reason to come back.

Generic POS software isn’t built for that. Tower Systems software for game shops is. Here’s how it can help your shop grow, starting with the parts of the business that matter most.

Age restricted products

Some games carry age ratings, and some products can’t be sold to younger customers. Getting this wrong is a risk for your business.

Our software lets you flag age restricted products. When one is scanned, staff are prompted to check the customer’s age before the sale goes through. It takes the guesswork out of busy periods and helps protect you and your team.

Special orders for customers

Game shoppers often know exactly what they want, even when you don’t have it in stock. A new expansion. A hard to find title. A pre-order for a release next month.

You can record special orders against the customer, track them through to delivery and let the customer know when their order arrives. Nothing gets lost on a sticky note, and the customer leaves knowing you’ll follow through.

Games bundles

Bundles are a great way to lift the average sale. A base game with an expansion. A starter set with extra dice and sleeves. A gift pack for Christmas.

You can create bundles in your POS, price them to suit and track how they sell. Stock is managed for each item in the bundle, so your inventory stays accurate.

Sales by genre and manufacturer

Knowing what sells is the key to buying well, especially when the category is growing. Our reporting lets you look at game sales by genre and by manufacturer.

Are strategy games growing while party games slow down? Is one publisher earning far more than its share of shelf space? With clear data, you can buy with confidence, adjust your range and have better conversations with your suppliers.

Supporting games clubs

For many game shops, clubs and game nights are the heart of the business. They bring people in the door regularly and build loyalty that online stores can’t match.

You can record club members in your POS, track their visits and purchases, and offer member pricing or rewards. That helps you see the value your club brings and give members a reason to keep coming back, and to buy while they’re there.

Loyalty for infrequent shoppers

Not every customer is a regular. Some visit a few times a year, often for a gift or a new release. With so many new players discovering games, this group is growing.

Our loyalty tools let you reward these shoppers in ways that suit them, not just your most frequent customers. Points, vouchers and targeted offers can bring an occasional shopper back sooner. That’s good for them, and good for your business.

Built for game shops, supported by people

Game shops are growing, and the right tools can help yours grow faster. Tower Systems is a vertical market software company. We build software for specific retail channels, and we work only with independent retailers in Australia and New Zealand.

Our training is personal and tailored to your shop. Our help desk starts with a conversation. When you need help, you can talk to a person who understands how game shops work.

Talk to us

AU: 1300 662 957
NZ: 0800 444 367
Email: sales@towersystems.com.au

Contacting a human is easy.

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Advice for local retailers: What the chains get wrong, and how you turn it into an advantage

July 2, 2026
3 Min read
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The big chains are good at what they do. Buying power, slick fit-outs, ad budgets you’ll never touch. It’s easy to look at all that and feel like the small shop is on the back foot.

You’re not. The things that make a chain efficient are the same things that make it slow. Most of their weaknesses you can use.

Our customers here at Tower Systems are local small business retailers, independent retailers. This issue of big versus small is on our minds because we see too many small business retailers get in their heads about big competitors.

A chain runs on uniformity. Every store the same, every price set by head office, every range decided by someone who has never set foot in your suburb. That’s how you keep a thousand stores consistent. It also means the manager on the floor can’t change a price, can’t bring in a line a local keeps asking for, can’t back a hunch. They send it up and they wait. Usually the answer is no, or it comes too late to matter.

Small business retailers are not bound by the inflexibility of the chains and heavy structure. You can decide something at nine and have it live by ten.

That’s the advantage, and it’s where the right software earns its keep. Flexibility is only worth anything if you can act on it before the moment passes, and that’s the part plenty of small retailers leave sitting on the table.

Pricing is the obvious one. A chain sets a price nationally and leaves it there for months. You can put a special on the slow stock this afternoon, match a price for the shopper standing in front of you, or build a bundle that suits your local trade. Our POS software lets you set that up in a few minutes. The chain physically cannot move that fast, no matter how big it is.

Range is the same story. A chain ranges for the average store in the average suburb, which doesn’t exist. You range for the actual street you’re on. When a local asks for something three times in a week, you bring it in, watch how it sells, and decide whether it earns its place. The numbers are right there in the software. No committee. No national rollout. Just you reading your own shop.

Then there’s the customer. A chain has a loyalty number and a postcode. You know Margaret buys the same card every month for her grandkids and would want a heads-up when the new range lands. Our software remembers what people buy, so you can do something with it. That’s a sale the chain can’t see, from a relationship you already have.

Loyalty is another. You could decide right now to implement our most popular loyalty facility (it’s available free in our software) and you could be live in 5 minutes. Bam!

None of this is about beating the chains at their own game. You won’t, and you don’t need to. Play the game they can’t play instead. They’re built to be the same everywhere. You’re built to be right for one place, and good local software is what lets you move as fast as being small allows.

That’s what local POS software for local retailers actually means. Not a longer feature list. The freedom to back yourself, and the speed to act before the chance is gone.

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Advice for local retailers: Sell what people love. The margin is better and so is the business.

June 19, 2026
2 Min read
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Here is some advice from outside the usual territory of a POS software company. After more than forty years working with local independent retailers, we have seen this pattern too many times to keep it to ourselves.

You will make more money selling what people love than what they need.

The needs are easy to spot in any local shop. Newspapers. Basic stationery. Phone credit. Customers buy these on autopilot and they know what they should cost, which is why the margin is thin. Nobody drives across town for a packet of pens.

What people love is different. A gift that made them laugh. The plush their child will not sleep without. A coin release, trading cards, a greeting card so right for the occasion that price never came up. Emotional purchases hold their margin because there is nothing to compare them against. Customers travel for them. Some will queue.

We watch this play out in the sales data flowing through our software every day, in newsagencies, gift shops, garden centres, jewellers, toy shops. The retailers growing profit are steadily shifting floor space from need to love. The ones standing still are usually the ones defending shelf space for products that stopped earning it years ago.

None of this means abandoning the needs. They bring reliable, habitual traffic, and that traffic is an asset. The trick is what you put in its path. The newspaper customer who leaves with a $30 candle did not come in for a candle. The school supplies shopper was not looking for Squishmallows until they were.

If you are unsure where the love is in your shop, your POS data already knows. Look at what sells at full price. Look at gross profit dollars per square metre by category. Look at what customers ask you to order in, because a special order is a customer telling you what your range is missing.

The software counts the sales. The advice about what to sell comes from decades alongside local retailers, and we share it freely. That is what we mean when we say we are more than a software company.

Sell what people love. Use what they need to introduce them to it.

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Free POS Software Training That Actually Helps You Run a Better Retail Business

May 30, 2026
2 Min read
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Most small business retailers buy POS software, get it set up, and then use about a third of what it can do. Not because they are not capable. Because running a shop is full-on, and there is rarely a quiet moment to sit down and explore.

That is the gap our free training program is designed to close.

We run regular online workshops for Tower Systems customers — short, focused sessions that cover the parts of the software that make a real difference in a retail business. Each one runs 30 to 60 minutes. They are free. You can attend live or watch the recording when it suits you.

Free POS software training helps indie retailers thrive.

We welcome training topic suggestions from our customers. In fact, some of our best sessions have come from customer suggestions!

The topics are not chosen at random. They come from what we see retailers struggling with, and from what separates businesses that thrive from those that tread water.

Loyalty programs are a good example. Most retailers know they have one in the software. Far fewer have it set up in a way that actually drives repeat visits. Our loyalty webinar covers discount vouchers, loyalty points, catalogues, and gift cards — not as a feature tour, but as a practical guide to keeping customers coming back.

Reporting is another. The data is there every day — every sale, every return, every slow-moving product sitting on the shelf. Our reporting session shows you how to read it, what to act on, and how to stop dead stock from quietly draining your cash flow.

We also run sessions on AI tools, stock accuracy, smart ordering, e-commerce integration, quotes and invoices, and more. Each session is built around a specific outcome, not just a list of features.

For retailers who have been using Tower Systems for years, these sessions often surface tools they did not know existed. For newer customers, they accelerate the learning curve considerably.

Good software pays for itself. But only when you know how to use it.

Our next sessions are coming up soon. Check the schedule and register for the ones that match where your business needs attention. It costs nothing and takes less than an hour.

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