The POS Software Blog

The POS Software Blog

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

Tagnewsagency

Running your shop when you’re not in it

October 19, 2026
3 Min read
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Most independent retailers want to be on the shop floor. Life doesn’t always allow it. A holiday, a sick day, a trip to see family, a second job. There are plenty of reasons you can be away from the shop.

Here’s something we hear often from customers. Time away is when they see the business most clearly. Standing behind the counter, you see the next customer and the next delivery. Step back, and you see the patterns.

Remote management is normal in small business retail

Managing remotely is common in our part of retail. Some owners hold down a job elsewhere while the shop builds. Others own two, three or more shops and can only be in one place at a time.

How you manage remotely is your call. So is whether you group several shops together for a single view of the numbers. Some owners want everything combined. Others prefer to keep each shop separate.

We’ve built Tower Systems to be as flexible as possible here. The setup you start with can change as your needs change. Add a shop, step back from the counter, or bring in a manager, and the software adapts with you.

Our software also runs in-store or in the cloud. You choose what suits the way you work.

The numbers come to you

You don’t need to be in the shop to know how the day went. Business intelligence reports and management functions are available wherever you log in.

Some of it happens without you lifting a finger. When a staff member closes the register and runs the end-of-shift procedure, the day’s sales and key figures are emailed to you straight away.

If the cash or EFTPOS balance is out, you know that evening. Not at the end of the month, when it’s harder to track down.

Alerts when something doesn’t look right

The software also watches for unusual activity in-store. If a staff member discounts a big-ticket item too heavily, or cancels more sales than usual, you get to find out without having to jump through hoops.

You can log in, look at the transaction and deal with it quickly. Small problems are much easier to fix before they become habits.

Admin on your own time

Remote access also means you can fit software work around your day.

If you’re on the counter most of the week, or short a staff member, stock maintenance and other admin can wait until you’re off the floor. Electronic invoices that suppliers send overnight can be processed over breakfast at home.

That leaves shop time for the work that grows sales: displays, customers and your team.

One approach for every kind of specialist shop

We see owners of bookshops, gift shops, garden centres, bike shops, jewellers and rural supply stores manage this way. The approach is the same across all of them. You can step away from the floor and still know what’s happening.

Built for every kind of specialist retailer

Bookshop, gift shop, farm supply business, bike shop, garden centre or jewellery store, the approach is the same. You can step away from the floor and still know exactly what is happening while you are not there.

Talk to us

If you’d like to see how remote management would work for your shop, or across several shops, talk to us. We’ll show you the options and help you choose the setup that suits you now, knowing it can change later.

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

Contacting a human is easy.

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Tower Systems is an alternative for Computerlink POS software customers

August 21, 2026
2 Min read
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Our Tower Systems newsagency POS software is a viable, fresh, and regularly evolving alternative to the Computerlink newsagency software.

With more newsagency customers than all other newsagency software combined, Tower Systems is resourced to serve this retail channel in Australia, especially in this period of change.

We are grateful to have been able to welcome a bunch of Computerlink POS software customers to the Tower Systems POS software community.

When a Computerlink POS software customer switches to Tower Systems, we do our very best too help them settle in well, without pressure, and with their data across for seamless business operation. Our onboarding experts have in-store newsagency experience, which we know is a big help as newsagency businesses continue to have unique operational needs.

While the Computerlink POS software community is primarily made up of newsagents as we understand it, we have discovered some other business customers, which we can serve too.

The software available to Tower Systems customers today is our latest release. This is advanced POS software with excellent facilities, including access to time-saving and money-making AI tools that retailers tell us are a genuine game changer for them.

This latest POS software release from us has been out now for a few weeks.

We understand it can be challenging considering switching software. From us, there is no pressure to do this. If someone enquires, we will answer their questions and provide them with information. We won’t push to close a deal. We will leave it with them as we think it’s a decision they need to make when they are ready and only then. We are confident in what we offer and in our longevity to be here when a business that we could serve needs us and wants us.

Here is some advice we have for anyone considering switching software:

  • No two software companies are the same.
  • No two software programs are the same.
  • No two help desks are the same.
  • Learning new software takes time. For a while, switching will feel like a mistake.
  • Only switch if you want to.
  • If you do switch, be all-in, learn, engage and use.

If you are a Cmputerlink POS software customer looking for alternative software, we’re at sales@towersystems.com.au or 1300 662 957.

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Newsagents made us the industry standard, not the other way around

July 17, 2026
3 Min read
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More newsagents have chosen Tower Systems than any other POS software. We didn’t set that label ourselves. Newsagents did, one shop at a time, by choosing us over everything else on offer.

We don’t take that lightly, and we don’t think it happened by accident.

We know the shop floor because we’ve stood on it

We’re the only POS company in this space that has owned and run its own newsagencies. Our founder bought their first shop in 1996 and built our software off the back of what that business actually needed, not what looked good in a sales pitch. That’s still true of every update we ship, even though our company today does not own a newsagency.

Newsagencies aren’t standing still, and neither is the software

The traditional core of a newsagency, magazines, papers, lottery, is a smaller part of the business than it used to be, and it keeps shrinking. The newsagents doing well are the ones shifting shelf space and attention toward gifts, cards, stationery and collectables. Software built for a magazine-and-lottery counter doesn’t help with that shift. Software built by people who’ve made that shift themselves does.

That’s where features like our loyalty tools earn their keep. You can market to a customer based on what they’ve bought, which means turning a regular lottery shopper into someone who browses the gift wall, or a magazine reader into someone who tries the stationery range. That’s not a feature for its own sake. It’s the whole point of the software.

The parts that just need to work, working

A newsagency runs on integrations most other retail software doesn’t bother with. We link directly to The Lott through XchangeIT, so lottery sales are captured without manual entry. Magazine arrivals and returns run through XchangeIT too, so your stock and your credits stay accurate without someone doing it by hand. Greeting card suppliers load in as electronic invoices in seconds instead of an afternoon of data entry.

Beyond the newsagency-specific stuff, the software connects to Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce if you sell online, to Xero for your books, and to EFTPOS with every major bank. If you pass on card fees, the system calculates the surcharge for you. We don’t charge a fee per transaction, ever.

AI tools built into the day-to-day

The AI tools built into the software write product descriptions for new gift lines, help you compare prices, and turn a stack of sales data into something you can act on, which categories are growing, which need attention, without you having to dig for it.

None of this makes us the biggest software company. It makes us the one most newsagents chose. If you want to see why, we’re happy to show you.

Book a free demo, or call 1300 662 957 in Australia and 0800 444 367 in New Zealand.

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How independent retailers can offset the 2026 cost increases

July 13, 2026
2 Min read
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Award wages rose 4.75% from 1 July. Rents are tracking 4–5% higher at most renewals. From 1 October, the RBA surcharge ban means processing fees that were passed to customers now need to be absorbed or built into prices.

Together, that is around 1.5% added to the cost base of a typical independent retailer. On a 5–6% net margin, it is worth taking seriously.

None of these are negotiable. But there are five places to look for recovery, and Tower Systems customers already have the tools backed by implementation advice with a foundation in practical management in local small business retail.

Pricing on the products you control

Plenty of supplier-set prices are fixed in different retail businesses. Stationery, gifts, homewares and general merchandise are not. Many retailers have not reviewed margins on these categories in over a year. The stock manager tool in the Tower software updates pricing across a whole category in one pass — worth doing before October. It’s fast, easy and safe.

Invoice processing

Many stores spend 5–10 hours a week entering invoices by hand. AI invoice arrivals imports them directly, cuts that to near zero, and removes the keying errors that come with manual entry. Those hours go back to the counter. Cut mistakes and save time with the AI invoice import tools.

Dead stock

Stock sitting unsold for six months typically ties up 10–15% of inventory value. It occupies shelf space and earns nothing. The dead stock report finds it. Moving it out — clearance, supplier return, bundling — puts that capital back to work.

Stockouts

Sales lost to unavailable stock are invisible in most reporting. The insights dashboard makes them visible, with a dollar figure attached. Fixing the reorder triggers stops the leakage.

Theft detection

Theft accounts for around 5–7% of turnover across independent retail. The volume tends to be customer theft; the larger individual losses tend to be internal. The audit and early detection tools find discrepancies well before a stocktake would. Too many small business retailers ignore theft, at their cost!

Pricing, processing time, inventory, loss — none of these require new investment. They require looking.

Tower Systems customers can reach the support team by phone, email or live chat. New enquiries: towersystems.com.au or 1300 662 957.

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The Lincraft story and what small business retailers can learn

June 23, 2026
3 Min read
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The Lincraft closure made news last week. Eighty years, every store, gone. It’s the kind of story that sits with you if you’ve been in retail long enough to remember when chains like that felt permanent.

We know it hit small business retailers because of conversations we have had since the news broke.

It’s not the whole retail story, though.

The independent retailer who had their best April in three years won’t make the news. Neither will the gift shop owner who spotted a new category gaining ground and moved on it before the season. These things are happening. We see them in the data.

The difference between retailers finding growth and those feeling stuck usually isn’t location or foot traffic or product range. It’s whether they’re looking at their data. Good data, understood and acted on, is the foundation underneath every independent retail success story we see.

Your POS data knows things you don’t. It knows which supplier is quietly underperforming while a newer one gains ground. Which category is lifting your average sale value. Which days your margin is strongest. What your best customers are buying that your average customers aren’t.

The Tower AI tools are built to surface exactly that — the things not sitting in front of you. Not the obvious wins you already know about. The patterns buried in twelve months of transaction data that you won’t catch on a busy Tuesday. A product that’s been growing 15% month on month and still hasn’t made your reorder list. A margin opportunity in a category you’ve been pricing conservatively out of habit rather than intention.

A chain waits for a report from head office. You can act on your data this week, before the next order goes in. That gap is real and it matters.

The pressures Lincraft cited are real too. Changing consumer behaviour, rising costs, overseas competition — none of that is going away. But the response isn’t to carry the weight of the industry headlines. It’s to look inside your own business and find what’s working.

Green shoots don’t announce themselves. They show up as a slow climb in basket size, a category quietly outperforming its shelf space, a customer type coming back more often than they used to. Your data has already found them.

If you haven’t spent time in the Tower reporting and AI insights tools recently, start there. Not with a big strategic review. Just one question: what’s growing in my business right now that I haven’t noticed yet?

The answer is probably already there.

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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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What Customers Say About Tower Systems Website Development

June 8, 2026
3 Min read
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Getting a website built can feel daunting. For many small business retailers, it sits on the to-do list for months — sometimes years. There’s always a reason to delay: too busy, too expensive, too complicated, not sure where to start. These are words from retailers who finally took the step.

Sharon sums up what we hear most often: “We put off building our website for longer than we should have. Once we finally took the step, Christina and the Tower team made it so easy — we only wish we’d done it sooner.”

That phrase — we only wish we’d done it sooner — comes up a lot. The fear of the process tends to be worse than the process itself.

Nicole from Charlton’s Fishing went further: “I unreservedly recommend Christina. Her work is top-tier. She has gone above and beyond making our website the amazing product it is. She made our complex website seem easy, answered our questions without making me feel silly. I cannot speak highly enough of her.”

Feeling comfortable asking questions matters. A lot of business owners come to this process without technical knowledge. They shouldn’t have to pretend otherwise.

Sophie from Bluey’s Hunting & Fishing had a more involved project and described how the team handled it: “The development of the website for our business was a huge step for us, and Christina and the Tower team made this process quite straightforward despite it being such a complex one. They took the time to teach us as much as they could about the ongoing management of the website, and we have been really happy with the final product. Since our website launched, we have continued to learn a lot about how to evolve and develop the website to continue to meet our customer needs.”

That last part is worth noting. A website isn’t finished on launch day. The retailers who get the most from theirs keep learning and adapting it over time. Tower Systems builds that capability into the handover.

Rod from Bingara Newsagency offers a different perspective: “As an 81-year-old, Christina was able to set me up with great patience and skill. Nine months later, while we are not breaking records, we have a functioning online presence.” Honest and practical — which is exactly what a website should be for a local retailer starting out online.

Phil from newsXpress Silver Sands kept it brief: “Christina is very calm, patient, and professional. She needed to be with a luddite like me.”

Five different retailers, five different businesses, one consistent thread: the support made the difference.

If your website has been sitting on the list too long, talk to us. The Tower Systems team has helped retailers across Australia get online without the stress. It’s worth the conversation.

We develop websites here in Australia, 100% using our own team.

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