The POS Software Blog

The POS Software Blog

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

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

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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.

Advice for retailers: The numbers that warn you before the bank balance does

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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.

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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.  

Call 1300 662 957 in Australia or 0800 444 367 in New Zealand. Or, email sales@towersystems.com.au. 

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

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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.

Free POS software training from Tower Systems. Still free, still regular.

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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.

Click here to see the full list of sessions.

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