Next Free & Unbiased Point of Sale Workshop

Wow - so February sure flew by! Here are the details on my next point of sale workshop. As a reminder, these workshops are free and are not sales presentations (I can't sell you anything anyway!).  Given the upcoming liability shift date for EMV, I will be devoting part of the workshop to EMV specifics. The workshop will also cover the following:

• Differences between point of sale systems designed to run on computers versus point of sale systems designed to run on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets
• How to budget for a point of sale system
• What to avoid or common "gotchas' when selecting a point of sale system for your business or organization
• How to select the best vendor to work with
• How to use a weighted point spreadsheet to make your final decision

All of this takes place in a free and unbiased environment! The workshop will be at the Boise, ID location of the Idaho Small Business Development center on Tuesday March 31st 2015 from 2pm to 4pm.

Here is a link to more details and registration information:

https://business.idahosbdc.org/workshop.aspx?ekey=40350042

Are you  in the US and in need of no cost retail point of sale advice?  I'm happy to help and can be reached on my cell at 208-340-5632 (I am on Mountain Time) or via email at kevinantosh@gmail.com. There is also a contact form to the right that can be used to reach me.

Weighted Factor Method of Selecting the Best Point of Sale System

Due to numerous requests - I am working on getting a video and blog post uploaded that explains how to use a basic spreadsheet and factors/points to compare and choose the best POS solution for your business based on what features and functions are most important to you and your business or organization.

I hope to have this up by Sunday, February 8th, 2015.

The whole process is a lot easier that I make it sound and is not general to one type of business or geared towards any one solution.

Thoughts on News from NRF Big Show 2015

So I have been sorting through all the news that came out of the NRF Big Show for 2015 and there sure was a lot of news (Oracle entering an agreement to acquire MICROS) and cool new products and applications related to point of sale systems, data mining, social media marketing, electronic signage, and related hardware. However, just about everything that I have read so far applies mainly to larger chains.

While larger chain retail stores and restaurants are attractive from a revenue standpoint, my experience has been that there are more single location independently owned retail stores, museums, restaurants, bars, food trucks, and concession stands in the US by number. I'm talking about the typical "mom and pop" business with one to five locations that generate $250,000 to $800,000 in annual gross sales per location.

Looking at my database of over 4000 businesses (which I never share with anyone unless they ask me to),  90% are "mom and pop" businesses while the rest are chains with 16-300 locations. The 90% still need affordable point of sale systems that do everything that a point of sale system designed for a chain can do. 

Since these businesses have the same technology needs as the larger chains but don't have the revenue to justify spending $20,000+ on point of sale systems and related technology, I'm concerned that this segment of the market is becoming under-served to the point that the only point of sale systems on the market will not provide everything that these business owners need (or worse, come with requirements that take away precious revenue).

10 years ago over 10 different point of sale systems existed that had total costs well under $6,000 and provided everything that a single location (or small chain) business needed. Now, a business owner is hard pressed to find anything under $10,000 that doesn't come with contracts or similar that takes revenue away. Even more concerning is the lack of interest many local-based point of sale dealers/partners have expressed to me in serving the "mom and pop" segment of the market.

While mobile solutions like Bindo Point of Sale and NCR Silver are great - they don't yet offer full functionality for businesses that have more complex technology needs like locally hosted databases, jobber parts, backording, or employee scheduling.

Hopefully I missed the news specific to point of sale solutions for "mom and pop" businesses!

Obviously anyone with news or information about point sale solutions that meets the needs of these "mom and pop" businesses is welcomed to contact me and I will be happy to post information about your solution.  Your businesses must be located in the United State or Canada and have an existing active customer base.

Point of Sale Buying Tip: What to Include to Calculate True Cost of Ownership

Whether you define TCO as "True Cost of Ownership" or "Total Cost of Ownership", it is important to factor in all costs over time to ascertain how much a point of sale system will cost you over an average five to seven year period.  A lot of times it is easiest to create a spreadsheet so you can compare costs for various point of sale solutions in a "side by side" layout.

If you are considering a "pay as you use" system or leasing. then you can multiply the payments out. In the case of a "pay as you use" system, I'd recommend multiplying the monthly payment by 72 as 5 - 7 years is how long a typical point of sale system will last.

Here is an actual example - only the names have been changed to protect the innocent:

Store with one point of sale system as a “register” & one point of sale system in the office as a “manger”	System A – Windows Outright Purchase	System B – Tablet Purchase Hardware but pay monthly fee for software & support	System C – Windows Lease everything for 5 years (and own outright at the end of 5 years)
Software	$2,860.00	$9,288.00
Hardware & Peripherals	$2,689.00	$2,350.00
Training	$1,200.00	N/C for initial overview
Installation Labor	$1,980.00	N/C – self install
Paper and Labels	$179.00	$179.00
Accessories (UPS, etc)	$200.00	$200.00
Supplies years 2-6	$895.00 ($179/yr)	$895.00 ($179/yr)	$895.00 ($179/yr)
Equipment failure/yrs 2-6	$2,500.00 ($500/yr)	$2,500.00 ($500/yr)	$2,500.00 ($500/yr)
Annual Support years 2-6	$2,750.00 ($550/yr)	Included	$2,750.00 ($550/yr)
Software Upgrades yrs 2-6	$1,160.00 ($232/yr)	Included	$1,160.00 ($232/yr)
TCO (over 6 years)	$16,413.00	$15,412.00	Will depend on interest %

A video explanation of the above chart can be found at the bottom of this post.

Obviously there are many variables but system A and system B represent the most popular windows based and tablet based retail point of sale systems on the market today.

TCO information does not include merchant services fees as these fees vary greatly from merchant to merchant.

You can draw your own conclusions related to how similar the long term costs are between a windows point of sale system that you purchase and a tablet based point of sale system that you pay an ongoing monthly fee to use.

Confused as heck now or in need of some unbiased point of sale advice? Then visit my contact page for various ways to reach me.

Here is the video explaining the chart:

Point of Sale Buying Tip: What are "Workarounds"?

If you have ever taken on the task of shopping for a computer or tablet/smartphone point of sale system for your business or organization, you may have asked if the system can perform a specific function and the response was "no but there is a 'workaround'".

If you already have a point of sale system, you may have been told the same thing if you asked about something that you want the system to do for you.  So what the heck is a "workaround"?

Workarounds are creative ways to make your point of sale system do something that it was not officially designed to do. The most common requests are feature/function related like the following:

• Gift Registries
• Special Orders
• Return to Vendor/Return to Manufacture
• Food Waste
• Transfers Between Locations
• Consignment Sales
• Bar Tabs
• Order Sequencing

There are plenty more that I have been asked about over the last 15 years but the above are the most common.

Here are some things to keep in mind if you receive a workaround related answer to a "can the system do XYZ?" question:

1. Have the technician or sales rep show you how the workaround would function in a liver version of the point of sale system.
2. Make sure that the workaround does not effect other aspects of the system.
1. ie - causing inaccurate reports
2. ie - you can use the layaway function for a gift registry but what happens if you also need to use the layaway function for actual layaways?
3. Make sure the workaround does not negatively effect any financial data

I hope that helps! Please visit my contact page for information on how to reach me.

Yes - I Help Food Services Related Businesses as Well

I've made some minor changes to this blog site and my YouTube channel to remove most of the references to being just retail and museum specific. This change was prompted due to the fact that I have been receiving an equal number of calls and emails from retail and food service related businesses. I will work on creating more news and information specific to food service businesses as well as retail stores and museums (like what the heck is going on with Aldelo?!?!).

In the meantime, if you are in need of some free impartial point of sale advice, are located in the US, and have (or will open) one of the following types of businesses listed below, see the various ways to contact me to the right.

• Specialty Retail
• Retail Chains of 2-75 locations
• Museums of all sizes
• Quick Serve Restaurants
• Sit Down/Table Serve Restaurants
• Counter Serve Restaurants
• Company Employee Stores
• Cafeterias
• Concession Stands
• Venues
• Food Trucks
• Kiosk, seasonal, or 'pop-up' businesses
• Retail and Restaurant Franchises
• So...just about anyone who isn't a large scale chain like Sears, Home Depot, or Denny's.