Our POS software sales team is local and ready to listen
O
Is your shop ready for a hack?
I
POS software made for local independent pet shops
P
Ask a pet owner where they get advice and plenty will name their local pet shop. Not a big-box store. Not a website.
That’s because the local shop knows them. It knows the family down the road has a new puppy that isn’t settling on its food. It knows which customer keeps a bearded dragon and what the enclosure needs. It remembers when the dog is due for worming.
Big pet businesses sell a lot of product. We’d argue local pet shops matter more to local pets. And we think they deserve software built for the way they work, not a generic system they have to work around.
A pet shop is not a simple shop
Think about a normal day. Birdseed sold by the kilo. A collar in a particular size and colour. A live fish. A dog in for a groom. A conversation about changing a cat’s diet.
Most POS software handles the barcode scan at the counter and not much else. The rest ends up on paper, or in the owner’s head.
We built Tower Systems for pet shops to deal with all of it. Bulk food and treats sell by weight, in whole or part quantities. Collars, apparel and bedding are tracked by colour, size and style. You can record the history and care of live animals, and track high-value items by serial number.
The customer side is where a local shop really wins. You can record microchip numbers. You can recall customers when worming, or a similar product, is due. You can print care notes on the receipt, like how to move a puppy onto a new food. And you can market to people based on what they’ve actually bought, so your offers make sense to them.
Promotions work the way a local shop needs them to. Buy-one-get-one deals. Coffee-card style loyalty. Bundles too, such as a tank, filter and starter food at one price. Bundles lift the spend per visit, and they’re harder to price-check item by item online.
If you run a grooming salon or a DIY dog wash, you can track that work in the same system as your retail sales and let owners know when their pet is ready to collect. Repairs and servicing are tracked at no extra cost, whether it’s an aquarium pump or a set of clippers that needs sharpening. Recurring billing is there if you need it.
Then there’s the admin. Supplier invoices import automatically. The built-in AI tools write product descriptions for your online store and help you make sense of your reports. The software connects with Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and BigCommerce, plus Xero, Tanda and Deputy. You pick your own EFTPOS provider, and we don’t take a cut of your sales.
The people behind it
Our help desk is in Australia and New Zealand. When you call, you get a person who knows independent retail, not someone reading a script.
You also decide when to install updates. We release them regularly, often with improvements customers asked for, but they go in when it suits you. Not in the middle of a busy Saturday.
If you run an independent pet shop, we’d like to show you how it works. Bring your own situations to a demo: a bulk food sale, a grooming job, a worming reminder. If you’re switching from other software, send us your data first and we’ll confirm whether we can bring it across.
You can read more about Tower Systems for pet shops, call 1300 662 957 (0800 444 367 in New Zealand) or email sales@towersystems.com.au.
Contacting a human is easy.
Retailers: You choose when to update your POS software
R
At Tower Systems we give local specialty retailers agency. We think you should decide when to install a software update. We don’t push it onto your counter on our schedule.
We release updates regularly. Many of them include improvements our customers asked for. When an update is ready, it’s up to you when it goes in.
It sounds like a small thing. Independent retailers tell us it isn’t.
Why forced updates hurt independent retailers
Plenty of software companies update on their own schedule. The update arrives whether you are ready or not.
For a small retailer, timing matters. Nobody wants a change to their POS in the week before Christmas, in the middle of a stocktake or on a busy Saturday morning. A new screen layout or a changed workflow can slow the counter at exactly the wrong moment.
You know your business. You know when it’s quiet, when your experienced staff are rostered on and when you have time to learn something new. That knowledge should decide when an update goes in.
What goes into our updates
Our updates are shaped by the people who use the software. Through our Software Ideas platform, customers suggest improvements and every customer can vote on them. Those suggestions guide what we build.
So an update from Tower Systems usually includes something a retailer like you asked for. It might be a faster way to process a supplier invoice. It might be a new report or a tweak to a screen you use a hundred times a day.
We want you to have these improvements. We just think you should choose when they arrive.
Why we do it this way
I’ve run retail businesses and built software for them for more than 40 years. Independent retailers are business owners. They make hundreds of decisions every week about stock, staff, pricing and the shop floor. I think it’s odd for a software company to take one of those decisions away from them.
Giving you control over update timing is a matter of respect. It’s your business and your counter. It should be your call.
Independent retailers tell us they value this. Some update the day a release is available. Others wait for a quiet Monday. Both are fine with us. If you’d like help, our local help desk team can talk you through what’s in an update before you install it.
Ask before you choose
If you’re comparing POS software, ask each company one question: who decides when updates are installed? The answer tells you a lot about how they see their customers.
To talk with us about Tower Systems:
Australia: 1300 662 957
New Zealand: 0800 444 367
Email: sales@towersystems.com.au
Contacting a human is easy.
Software Is Only Part of the Story: How Tower Systems Helps Retailers Get More From It
S
Buying point of sale software is the easy part. Getting real value from it every day is where the work starts.
Retailers ask practical questions once the software is installed. Who do I call when I am stuck? Can a new casual learn it on their first shift? What can it do beyond ringing up a sale? Does anyone listen when I suggest an improvement?
Tower Systems answers yes to each of these. The company has served independent specialty retailers in Australia and New Zealand for more than 40 years. Its approach rests on one idea: software works best when real people stand behind it.
Yes, you can talk to a human
At Tower Systems, a question gets a person. Support is delivered by a local team that understands specialty retail. The same is true in sales and in leadership. Customers can reach the people who make decisions about the business.
This matters on a busy Saturday when something needs sorting fast. It also matters for the bigger questions, like how to set up a new department or report on a slow category.
Retail is personal.
For quick answers at any hour, Tower Systems also offers an AI help desk. It launched more than three years ago and answers in plain language. Customers say it saves them time. It sits alongside the human team, not in place of it.
New staff can get up to speed quickly
Staff turnover is a fact of life in retail. Every new team member needs to serve customers confidently, and soon.
Tower Systems builds software for specific retail channels, not for every business type. That focus keeps screens and workflows relevant to the shop floor. New staff learn the tasks they actually need, without wading through features meant for someone else.
When a question comes up mid-shift, help is close at hand. Staff can ask the AI help desk in plain English or call the support team.
More than a cash register
A cash register records a sale. Good retail software helps run the business. Tower Systems customers use the software in three broad ways.
- Saving time. Automating routine tasks such as receiving stock, reordering and end-of-day processes frees hours for serving customers.
- Making more money. Sales and stock reports show what is working and what is not. Retailers can back winning lines, clear slow stock and use loyalty tools to bring shoppers back.
- Managing better. Clear numbers on margin, stock holding and staff activity support better decisions.
The AI tools in the software have found keen supporters among Tower’s most experienced retailers. Customers in their 60s, 70s and 80s report time savings of up to 8 hours a week.
Tower Systems also keeps costs predictable. It does not charge fees based on a retailer’s sales. It is payments provider agnostic, so retailers choose their own payment provider and control that pricing.
Your suggestions shape the software
Retailers know their shops best. Tower Systems built its Software Ideas platform to put that knowledge to work.
Any customer can suggest an improvement. Other customers then vote on it. The process is open, so everyone can see what has been suggested and how much support it has.
Those suggestions and votes guide what Tower Systems develops next. Customers see their ideas reflected in software updates, which keeps the product grounded in how specialty retailers actually work.
A community, not just a customer list
Tower Systems serves only independent specialty retailers in Australia and New Zealand. It does not chase franchises or chains. That focus shapes everything, from the features it builds to the people who answer the phone.
The result is software backed by people who understand independent retail and want their customers to succeed.
Contacting a human is easy:
- Australia: 1300 662 957
- New Zealand: 0800 444 367
- Email: sales@towersystems.com.au
What’s the total cost of ownership of your POS software?
W
What’s the difference between vertical market software and bespoke software for your business?
W
What Don’t You Know About Your Shop? A question for indie retailers
W
Advice for retailers: How to work out which part of your shop floor makes the most money
A
Retail space usually costs between 11% and 15% of revenue, depending on the type of shop. For most retailers that makes it the biggest cost after stock and labour, yet plenty of shops have not looked hard at how that space earns its keep in years.
This is not advice you will get from your accountant, and you will not find it in your profit and loss. It is a practical exercise, done with paper and pen, that gives you a fresh view of your own business. Retailers who do it are almost always surprised by something.
We share this advice today to help local small business retailers look at the space use in their shop from a profit contribution perspective. Retailers we have done this with have made changes that have led to them making more money. It’s all about profitable space usage.
Here is the method we recommend.
- Take a blank sheet of paper, ideally A3, and roughly sketch the layout of your shop. Mark in display units, wall shelving, the counter, everywhere you have products.
- Include your back room if you hold stock there. That space costs you rent too.
- Colour-shade the layout by department.
- List the departments down the side of the floor plan.
- Estimate the percentage of total space each department uses and write it next to each department on your list. Rough is fine. This does not need to be accurate to two decimal places.
- Using your POS software, report on the gross profit dollars earned by each department over the last year. If your system cannot do this directly, calculate it from sales figures using the average gross profit percentage for each department. In our software, this is a standard report.
- Work out each department’s percentage of total gross profit and write it next to the space percentage on your floor plan.
- Circle the best performers in green and the worst in red. A strong department earns a significantly higher share of gross profit than the share of space it occupies. A weak one occupies more space than its profit contribution justifies.
Now stand back and look at the marked-up plan. Space and profit side by side, department by department. This is your shop as a landlord would see it if every department paid its own rent.
What you do next depends on what the page shows you. The work usually leads to one or more of these actions: moving a department to a better or worse position in the shop, giving a strong department more space, shrinking a weak one, improving a department’s margin through better buying, or working to lift sales in a department whose gross profit dollars are below its potential.
Be careful before shrinking a department solely on these numbers. Some low-margin departments drive traffic that shops the rest of the store. Newsagents know this well. The exercise is not a set of orders, it is information you did not have before, and it is up to you to weigh it against what you know about why customers walk in.
Once you have done the shop, you can go deeper: pick one department and run the same analysis by category within it. That is often where the most actionable findings sit.
Do this once a year, or ahead of any refit. Shops evolve, and space allocation tends to reflect the business you used to run rather than the one you run now. This exercise is one way to keep the floor working for today’s shop.
The gross profit reporting this relies on is standard in our POS software, by department and by category. If you would like to see it with your own shop in mind, book a demo at towersystems.com.au/pos-software-free-demo.html or call 1300 662 957 (AU), 0800 444 367 (NZ).
Who our POS software is for, and who it is not for
W
We say no to prospective customers more often than you might expect from a software company.
If your business is a franchise, a big chain, or a cafe or restaurant that happens to sell some retail on the side, we are not the right fit and we will tell you so. A bad match costs everyone, us included.
We’re not rude about this, just practical. We know what we are good at, and what we are not made for.
Our software is made for independent, owner-operated specialty retailers in Australia and New Zealand whose trading is more complicated than a generic till can handle. Maybe you run a workshop and need to track repair jobs. Maybe you sell items with serial numbers, or by weight or length, or you carry age-restricted lines, or you want to remember a customer’s anniversary so you can invite them back at the right moment.
A generic POS system scans a barcode and takes a payment. If that is all your shop needs, cheaper options exist and one of them will probably do. It is when the barcode scan is the easy part of the sale that our software makes sense.
We serve 20 specialty retail channels. Jewellers, bike shops, garden centres, newsagents, pet stores, toy shops, fishing and outdoors businesses, produce and farm supply, firearms dealers and more. Each version is built with retailers in that trade, which is where the useful detail comes from. A haberdashery can sell lace by the centimetre. A garden centre prints watering advice on the receipt, which matters in a business where a paper price tag fails the moment it rains. A jeweller tracks a repair from booking to pickup and gets a reminder out ahead of a customer’s anniversary.
Size of business matters less than people assume.
A first-year micro business starts on our Startup tier and an established multistore operator runs unlimited terminals on a higher tier. The common thread among the businesses we serve best is an owner who makes the buying decision and cares personally how the shop runs.
A few things about how we do business, since they come up in almost every sales conversation. We do not take a cut of your sales, on any tier. You choose your own EFTPOS provider. Monthly rental can be cancelled at any time. Our pricing is on our website for anyone to see, and you do not have to hand over an email address or phone number to see it. We find retailers appreciate that more than any feature.
Every call to our help desk is answered by our own people in Australia and New Zealand, and new customers get one-on-one training tailored to their shop. The features in our three major software updates a year come through our software ideas platform, where customers suggest and vote. Nobody buys their way to the top of our roadmap.
We have also been building AI into the software in-house since 2022, before anyone else in Australian specialty retail POS. Retailers use it most for importing supplier invoices from almost any PDF. It also writes product descriptions for web stores and gives plain-English answers about what the sales data is saying. These tools are on our Advanced and Ultimate tiers.
If this sounds like your business, book a demo, online or in your shop, and bring your hard questions. If we are not right for you, we will say so.
Pricing: towersystems.com.au/pricing.html. Book a demo: towersystems.com.au/pos-software-free-demo.html. Or call 1300 662 957 (AU), 0800 444 367 (NZ).
What local small business retailers have been telling us lately
W
Anyone can write nice things about their own software. We do it in our marketing. So, from time to time we like to hand the microphone to the retailers using it, because their words carry more weight than ours.
This feedback arrived in June from Tara and Cody, who run a rural supplies store in Queensland and recently started using the AI invoice import:
“The time savings, 8 hours a week, for our small business have been incredible! While it doesn’t process every single invoice, it handles the majority of them and has made a huge difference to our day-to-day operations.”
Eight hours a week is a full working day back. And they are right that it does not catch every invoice. We would rather people know that going in than be surprised later.
Switching POS software worries plenty of retailers, understandably. Mel at McLaren Vale Garden Centre made the move in May and told us the transition “has been smooth with plenty of training and support when needed”. The Bookshop Pahiatua in New Zealand went further:
“This is the easiest POS system I have ever used, anything I asked of it it can do! Their online help is amazing and so are the team if you can’t resolve the issue thru the chat.”
Then there are the customers who have grown old with us, in the best sense. Kerrilyn Page bought a traditional newsagency in Mount Morgan back in 2006. Her shop, Wattle Bee Next, looks nothing like it did then:
“With the help of the team at Tower Systems we have diversified to a modern non-traditional store. Tower Systems have been integral in this process.”
We see this a lot. A shop starts in one category and, over years, becomes something else entirely. Software should keep up with that. Too often it is the thing holding a shop back.
Reading back through years of this feedback, the help desk comes up more than anything else. Sheryl Muscat wrote that our team “never make us feel like we have wasted their time and they always seem to come up with a solution”. Jeremy Maitland, director of We Know Pets, put it in commercial terms:
“A piece of software is only as good as the backup that is provided and Tower are first rate in this area. Since installing the Retailer software we have exceeded our growth targets.”
For the record, everyone answering our help desk is based in Australia or New Zealand.
Some of our favourite feedback is the shortest. “We love this system” (John, West Side Newsagency, Port Augusta). “Who knew POS software could be this easy” (Rod, Goolwa Time and Jewellery). “The reports are fantastic” (Leanne, Shepherd Avenue Deli, Port Lincoln).
If you are weighing up POS software, feedback like this is useful but it is not the whole picture. Come and ask us your hard questions at a demo. Call 1300 662 957 (AU) or 0800 444 367 (NZ), or email sales@towersystems.com.au.
Are you using your POS software as a glorified cash register?
A
Your POS software can most likely do so much more than track sales
Too many small business retailers use their POS software to less than half its potential. We see smart software treated as a glorified cash register, tracking sales and not much else.
This is a waste of money.
What frustrates us is that the easiest financial wins in retail are usually sitting inside software the retailer has already paid for.
Dead stock is the obvious one. Stock that is not selling is money parked on shelves. Your software knows where it is hiding. Quit it, reinvest in what sells.
Employee theft is harder to talk about, but the data does not care about awkwardness. Good POS software shows patterns you would never spot on the shop floor. Retailers are regularly surprised by what it reveals. Not in a good way.
Some suppliers make you money. Some cost you money. Supplier performance reports settle that question with facts rather than a rep’s charm.
Every hour spent typing invoices into a computer is an hour wasted. Electronic invoicing gets rid of that work entirely.
Stockouts might be the most expensive problem of the lot. You cannot sell what is not on the shelf. Your software can flag the gaps before customers walk out, and it can agentically create the orders to fill them.
Comparing trading periods, year on year and season on season, shows what is really changing in your business. You decide from evidence rather than gut feel.
Any one of these is worth real money. Do several and you can turbocharge the financial performance of the business.
So why the glorified cash register? We do wonder. Tiredness is part of it. A big part, actually. Running a shop is exhausting, and learning more about software can feel like one job too many. We also think plenty of retailers simply do not believe these benefits are achievable in a shop like theirs. They are. We see it every week.
At Tower Systems we help retailers gain these wins through locally delivered software support that starts with a conversation about your business. You have already paid for the software. Let us help you get paid back.
As the retailer you have to decide how you use the assets in your business. It’s likely that your POS software, regardless of the software you use, can do far more than you currently achieve with it. Challenge yourself to make more money from it.
Yes, there is software made for specialty toy and game shops
Y
So what’s best: loyalty points or a cash discount?
S
If you’re thinking about building your own POS software, watch this first
I
All software has bugs, it’s how software companies deal with them that matters
A
Why some retail staff steal and how to detect it
W
What actually goes into a Tower Systems software update
W
We’re deep into building our next update right now, which seemed like a good reason to explain what that actually involves. It isn’t someone sitting down and writing new code for a few days. It’s a process, and most of it happens before a line of code changes.
We start with what customers tell us
Every update begins with a review: ideas submitted through Software Ideas, feedback from customers directly, and what our own support team hears on the phones every day. We look at what’s urgent and what will genuinely benefit customers, not just what’s easiest to build.
This step takes longer than people expect. We test what we’re told against the software itself before we act on it, because a suggestion that sounds right in a phone call doesn’t always hold up once you’re inside the actual system. Thoroughness costs time here, and we spend it.
Planning it properly
Once we know what we’re building, we scope it: what the change actually involves, and what else in the software it touches. A newsagency’s software talks to a lot of different parts of itself, magazines, lottery, gifts, loyalty, so a change in one place can affect something you weren’t expecting elsewhere. Understanding that before we start building saves everyone trouble later.
Building it, then testing it, and testing it again
This is the part most people picture when they think of software development, and it’s the smallest piece of the whole process, by far. After the build comes testing. Then more testing. Then testing again. It’s repetitive by design.
We document it before we release it
Once the change is solid, we write it up properly, so it can be explained clearly to customers rather than dropped into an update with no context. Good software isn’t just software that works. It’s software people understand how to use.
Beta testing, in real shops
Before anything goes to every customer, it goes to a small group of engaged customers in live, trading shops. Real stock, real customers, real Saturdays. That’s a different test than anything we can run in-house, and it catches things our own testing sometimes doesn’t.
Only then do we release it
All of that has to happen before an update reaches your till. It’s slower than just shipping code, but it’s why updates tend to work the way they’re supposed to when they land.
We’re in the middle of this right now, building the next one. It’s the same process every time, because it’s the one that works.
If you’re considering switching to Tower, here’s what happens to your data
I
The question comes up in almost every conversation with a retailer thinking about switching software: what happens to everything I’ve already got in my current system?
In most cases, you can bring it across. Not all of it, and not automatically, but the parts that matter most usually make the move.
What we can convert
Stock is the file we convert most often: SKU, barcode, description, buy and sell prices, GST status, tags and variants where they apply. If you can export it from your current system in a form we can read, usually a spreadsheet, we can generally load it.
Customer sales history and loyalty balances are a different story. Every POS system stores that data differently, which makes an accurate conversion hard to guarantee. We’ll do our best with loyalty balances. Sales history, usually not. Outstanding account-customer balances do transfer. Laybys don’t, particularly from older software, so plan on those not coming across.
How it actually works
We assess your data first, free of charge, before you commit to anything. That way you know what will convert cleanly before you decide whether to switch at all.
The conversion itself is a paid, fixed-price service. You’ll know the cost upfront. It’s typically done in about half a day, with no downtime, and it’s ready by your go-live.
Should you bring your old data across at all?
Not necessarily. If it’s clean and reliable, bring it. If it’s messy, out of date, or full of dead stock lines nobody’s looked at in years, a fresh start in the new system can be the better move. Carrying old problems into new software doesn’t fix them. Only you know how good your current data really is.
One more thing worth knowing: we don’t log into your current software and export the data ourselves. You, or your current provider, need to export it. It’s your data, and getting it out sits within your relationship with them. If your current software won’t let you export it easily, that’s worth noticing. Some providers make it difficult on purpose, as a way to keep you. If that’s happening to you, it’s as much a reason to leave as anything else.
Getting started
If you want to talk through what a conversion would look like for your business before deciding anything, we run obligation-free discussions over Microsoft Teams at a time that suits you. If it turns out we’re not the right fit, we’ll say so.
Call 1300 662 957 in Australia or 0800 444 367 in New Zealand, or email sales@towersystems.com.au.
Advice for retailers: The numbers that warn you before the bank balance does
A
By the time the bank balance looks wrong, the trouble started weeks back. Money in the account is a lagging number. It tells you what already happened, not what’s about to. Run a shop on the bank balance alone and you’re forever finding out too late to do much.
The early warnings live in the trade, not the account. They turn up small, and they turn up first, if you know where to look.
We have been asked for help by many small business retailers where this is the case. We’;re not accountants or business consultants but day to day we do get into discussions with retailers and we help where we can, drawing on our experience in retail from years back and the support we offer today with our POS software.
One is basket size easing off. People still coming in, still buying, just spending a bit less each time. The day’s total holds for a while because the traffic covers it, right up until it doesn’t. Spot the slip while it’s small and you’ve got room to move.
Another creeps in through how often people come back. A regular who was in twice a week is now in once. Weekly becomes fortnightly. No single customer tells you anything, and that’s the trap, because the ones drifting off are the ones you stop noticing. Put them all together and it’s a trend you needed to see a month ago.
Then a category goes quiet while the busy parts of the shop cover for it. The overall figure looks fine. Underneath, something you lean on is fading, and you won’t feel it in the takings until it’s well down the track.
The catch is that finding any of this means running reports, lining up one period against another, and knowing what you’re hunting for in the first place. Most retailers haven’t got the time. Plenty were never shown how. So the warnings just sit in the data until they finally show up as a number too big to miss.
That’s the gap the Insights Dashboard closes.
It’s a business intelligence dashboard, free to every Tower Systems customer. It uses smart AI tools and a good deal of built-in retail know-how to watch your trade as it happens and tell you what’s worth knowing, the good and the bad. You don’t run a report. You don’t go digging. The insights are curated as the day goes on, kept fresh, and sitting there when you look.
So the slipping basket, the lengthening gaps between visits, the category drifting off the boil, it all surfaces on its own, while there’s still time to act. You get to spend your attention on the decision instead of the digging.
For a small shop that’s what business intelligence ought to be. Not one more report to find an hour for. Something keeping watch on the trade and tapping you on the shoulder while the warning is still early enough to use.
The retailers who get ahead aren’t drowning in data. They just catch the right thing at the right time. The Insights Dashboard puts that in reach of any retailer, free, and built into the software you’re already running.
…
The right POS system or website for any retail business depends on the specific needs of the business. Tower offers POS software and websites made specifically for local small business retailers in a selection of retail channels. To see if we might help you…, request a free, no-obligation demo today. Â
Call 1300 662 957 in Australia or 0800 444 367 in New Zealand. Or, email sales@towersystems.com.au.Â
POS software advice: It’s EOFY. A few things worth doing today.
P
End of financial year is here. It always seems to sneak up, and then it’s a scramble. An hour today saves you a fortnight of it later.
First up though, take a moment, breathe. You made it through another financial year!
Run your stock listing. You want an accurate, properly valued picture of what’s on the shelves as at today. Your accountant will want it too, and pulling it together now is far easier than reconstructing it in August. If you’ve got time for a stocktake, even across just your bigger categories, do it.
Take a special backup. Capture your year-end position and keep that one separate from your daily backups. Our latest software does this for you, so if you’re on it, that box is ticked. Still worth a glance to confirm it ran.
Then there’s dead stock. Today is a good day to be honest about what isn’t selling. Stock that’s sat untouched for months isn’t an asset, it’s a shelf you’re paying for. Mark it down, bundle it, run a clearance, or send it back if your supplier takes returns. Shifting it helps your closing figure and gives you cash and room for the new year. Your POS reporting will tell you exactly what’s been dragging.
While you’re at it: reconcile your supplier accounts, chase up any laybys and outstanding customer accounts, and have a look at your best and worst sellers for the year so it feeds your buying. Tidy your loyalty data too. And if you can still get your accountant on the phone today, take the call now rather than after the books close.
One note. We are not accountants. Treat the tax side of this as a reason to ring yours, not advice from me.
Do the basics today and 1 July starts clean.
…
The right POS system or website for any retail business depends on the specific needs of the business. Tower offers POS software and websites made specifically for local small business retailers in a selection of retail channels. To see if we might help you…, request a free, no-obligation demo today. Â
Call 1300 662 957 in Australia or 0800 444 367 in New Zealand. Or, email sales@towersystems.com.au.Â
Free POS software training from Tower Systems. Still free, still regular.
F
Most POS software companies sell you the software and leave you to work it out. Tower Systems doesn’t. We run free training for our customers, on a regular schedule, and we have done for years.
Training long after you have started using POS software is valuable. We know and this is why we continue to offer free training to our customers.
This isn’t a one-off or a sweetener to close a sale. It’s an ongoing part of being a Tower Systems customer. Sessions run often enough that you can pick the topic you need, when you need it, rather than waiting for an annual roadshow.
The part people value most is the Q&A. You’re not watching a recording. There’s a real person running the session, and you can ask your own question about your own shop and get an answer on the spot. That’s rare. A lot of companies charge for it, or don’t offer it at all.
The training suits everyone. New staff finding their feet on the counter. Owners who want to use a part of the software they’ve never touched. People who’ve used Tower for years and want to sharpen up on the features added since they last looked.
Here’s what’s coming up.
- Getting more from your sales reporting
- Stock control that actually saves you money
- Running a stocktake without closing the doors
- Managing repairs and the jobs that come with them
- Tracking the KPIs that tell you how the shop is really going
- Loyalty and customer marketing built into your POS
- New features you may have missed in recent updates
Topics rotate, so if the one you want isn’t listed this round, it’ll come around again. You can also tell us what you’d like covered. A lot of our sessions started life as a customer request.
It costs you nothing. It’s there because retailers who understand their software run better businesses, and that’s good for everyone. The shops that get the most out of Tower are almost always the ones that turn up to a session or two a year.
Hey indie retailers: Winter doesn’t have to be quiet
H
Winter is hard on local independent retail. The footpath empties, people rug up at home, and the daily count drops. Many retailers wait it out. You don’t have to.
A small shop can try things a chain would never sign off on. Six weeks of paperwork for them, a Tuesday afternoon decision for you. Winter is when that’s worth using.
From us this Sunday, here are six ideas to get you thinking about the season differently.
- Make your shop warm and welcoming. Put the kettle on. Hot coffee, tea, hot chocolate. Run a slow cooker with a good vegetable soup going all day. Warm cookies or muffins. Comforting music. You could project a film onto a back wall, just for something different. Give people somewhere to stand a wet umbrella and dry off. Be the shop locals talk about loving in winter.
- Host a winter event. Pick an evening, lock the door to the public, put on something just for your regulars. After hours, relaxed, a bit of fun. Warm cider or mulled wine does the job.
- Take the shop to people who can’t get out. Ring the local retirement villages and nursing homes. Pack up a selection of stock and take it on the road. The cold keeps plenty of good customers at home, so go to them.
- Offer free delivery. If the road trip isn’t for you, run a delivery service instead. Someone stuck inside still wants their fix. Be the retailer who bothers.
- Run a summer sale in the dead of winter. Pick the coldest week and throw a blow-out. Call it a Sizzling Sale. Warm people up with the prices.
- Put on an art show. Display art, photos and things your own shoppers have made. It brightens the place, and people come back to see their work on the wall.
A couple more worth a thought. If you’re somewhere genuinely cold, an extra outer door keeps the warmth in. They do it all over Europe and the US. And the July school holidays land right in the middle of all this, so a small winter activity for kids can pull a whole family in.
None of this is about discounting your way through a quiet season. It’s about making the place somewhere people want to be when it’s grey outside. That’s the kind of thing a big business won’t get around to. You can.
These are tips from our crew of retail experienced professionals.
Here at Tower Systems we’re not your average software company.
Saturday trading is its own thing
S
Saturday is not a weekday. Anyone who has worked a counter knows that. The flow is different, the basket is different, and people ask for different things.
Most shops are open today. Yours probably is. Trouble is, being open all day doesn’t tell you much about how the day actually traded and how it compared to other Saturdays.
Here’s a fair question. Can your POS software show you how today stacks up against your recent Saturdays? Not the last few days. The last few Saturdays, because Saturdays are different.
A Tuesday won’t tell you anything useful about a Saturday. The two days don’t trade the same way, so comparing them is a waste of time. Put a Saturday up against other Saturdays and you can see what’s really going on.
Tower Systems POS software does exactly that. It compares a single day of the week against itself over time. Line up today against your recent Saturdays in a few clicks and you’ll spot things. Maybe the morning carries the day and the afternoon drops off. Maybe a category sells on a Saturday that barely moves midweek. Those are the openings you miss when every day blurs into one number.
It’s this type of granular insight that can show you opportunities into which you can lean. We created the single day performance comparison because retailers had the need. This was back when Saturdays were completely different to the weekday for certain types of retailers.
It’s specialist insights like this that can really matter in local small business retail. They are insights that generic software tend to not cover because, well, they are generic after all.
One more thing about today. Our help desk is open. Real people, working this Saturday, ready to help retailers who are trading right now. Local support for local retailers. Some software companies don’t bother on a weekend. We do.
So, having said all that and rambled a bit, have a good Saturday. Trade well. Make it could. And, leverage your data for today and see how it compared to other Saturdays.
We’re working too. Give us a call.
The Sunday Reset: How Independent Retailers Use Quiet Days to Get Ahead
T
Sundays tend to be slower in most independent retail stores. Foot traffic is lighter. The urgency that dominates a busy Saturday is largely absent.
That quieter rhythm is worth something if you use it deliberately.
The idea is simple. Before the week ends, identify one thing the business needs that has not been done. Not restocking or cleaning. Something that actually moves the business forward. Then use Sunday to get it done.
It might be reviewing last month’s sales data and spotting a slow-moving category. Rearranging a display that has not been performing. Updating product descriptions. Checking supplier invoices. Having a conversation with a staff member you have been putting off.
This is what we did back when we owned shops, and it worked a treat for our businesses.
Why the slower pace helps
When the shop is busy, your attention goes to the next customer, the next transaction, the next small problem. There is no space to step back and look at things clearly.
A quieter day changes that. You notice things you missed during the week. You think differently about what the business needs rather than what is immediately in front of you.
One task completed each Sunday adds up to more than fifty improvements across the year. Most of them small. The cumulative effect is not.
Keep a list during the week
The Sunday reset works best when you are not starting from scratch each time. Keep a running list during the week. Every time you notice something that needs attention but cannot be addressed right now, write it down.
By Sunday you have a ready-made agenda. A note in your phone, a whiteboard in the back office, a simple document — the format does not matter. The habit does.
Use the time to look at your data
One of the most useful things you can do on a quiet Sunday is spend thirty minutes with your business reports. Which products moved well this week? Is basket spend trending up or down? Are there categories underperforming that you have not had time to look at properly?
This kind of review is difficult on a busy trading day. Sunday gives you the time and the headspace to do it properly, and to act on what you find.
Tower Systems builds POS software for independent retailers across Australia, including newsagencies, gift shops, and garden centres. Our reporting tools are designed to give you clear, readable information without requiring hours of analysis.
If you want to see what your business data can tell you, contact the Tower Systems team for a straightforward conversation.
Recent Comments