It’s no surprise that many business owners are ditching their old POS terminals in favor of the trendy new iPad variant; iPad POS units are less expensive, less bulky, and much simpler to use and maintain. Not only that, but these gadgets offer some very interesting features which used to be only available in high-end POS systems that small businesses simply couldn’t afford. Case in point: advanced sales data and reports.
This is a key benefit that is not being written about just enough. The potential is huge, and any business owner can use it to make decisions that will improve the bottom line. Does that sound interesting? This article will deliver the gist of the matter, to help you make the right choices for your business.
What makes these sales tracking features so superior?
Simply put, the sales data you can get from a tablet POS is fully digital and wholly versatile. You can export your sales data to a spreadsheet and tinker about with the information looking for any patterns that may be useful. You can easily retrieve a list of your best customers to make them a special offer. You can overview your inventory at a glance to see which items are in stock and which are running low. Those are just some typical uses, and many more will easily come to you while reviewing the data going through your iPad POS.
As far as reporting goes, it absolutely blows conventional point of sales machines out of the water. It’s much easier to review the data, not to mention it’s manageable to export it to other programs or computers, if you want doing so. You can get real-time access to your sales reports even when you’re away from your store. Set up alerts to let you know when specific items are low in stock. Visualize your data in the way you want it, without having to spend hours reading instruction manuals. Tablet computers are by definition very accessible and intuitive â the same benefits carry over to the POS variants.
Where is your sales data stored? Is it safe?
Courtesy of advanced encryption, your data will be just as safe as it would be in a conventional point of sale machine. Sure enough, it will be easier to analyze but only to you, and only through the security codes and passwords you set up.
Further, the actual sales data is stored both locally in your tablet and on-line over the Cloud. This means you get instant backups of all your sales reports, and everything keeps working regardless of whether there is an Internet connection available.
This level of detail and functionality will be useful no matter if you’re running a small family business operating a single store, or even if you (or when you) expand to different stores - all the data will be interconnected, making it so much easier to keep track of your inventory and make the right decisions across the board.
If you’d never considered this benefit of switching to an iPad POS, you should know it’s actually one of the trump cards that many business owners have been using to get things done faster, better and with superior competitive advantage.
Francois Bondiguel is from Vend, mobile pos, inventory, and customer loyalty software that helps over 8,000 retailers manage and grow their business. Connect with Vend on Google+ and LinkedIn.
