A point of sale (POS) system can be a big investment, both time and money-wise. When is time to make that investment? Let’s start from the ground up… What exactly is a POS system? Point of Sale systems are packages of software and hardware that run the selling process in a business. Think bar code scanners, inventory, layaway.
Ok, but when is it time to invest in one of these systems?
- Inventory Overload: Taking inventory cannot be done by hand. You just have too much stuff to count.
- Buy the Right Items: Do you know what your best sellers are? Why not stock more of those items? If you don’t know what’s selling well, you aren’t stocking your store correctly.
- Theft: If you don’t know what you have, you don’t know what’s been stolen. If you have NO clue if things have been stolen, assume they have. Taking inventory and seeing what’s missing will answer your theft question… and you’ll be able to CLAIM that number!
- Marketing: Do you know who your best and worst customers are? Want to send mailings/email promotions to them? Ever thought of a customer loyalty program that can be tracked by a computer? You can with many POS systems.
- Employee Automation: Are your employees “clocking in” with a pen and paper? Stop inaccurate hours with a time clock on your POS system. Employees simply sign in and out on the computer. Payroll can happen right from there too. Piece o cake.
- Layaway: Do you have piles of items in the back room with sticky notes declaring who they’re for and how much is owed? This can often be a disaster. Automate your layaway process with POS, you can take deposits and payments from the computer and keep track of aging items.
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Amherst accountant James Kincaid prepares more financial statements for small-business clients now than he did two years ago.
The uptick, he says, stems from stricter lending practices. Many banks and other financial institutions want details – lots of them – before agreeing to extend financing packages to small businesses.
“It means more hours and more work, which frankly for accountants isn’t a bad thing,” said Kincaid, partner at Lougen Valenti Bookbinder & Weintraub LLP. “But it’s a huge effort for business owners.”
Banks that once accepted tax returns as proof of companies’ stability may now require full-blown financial statements, which means business owners must provide key details to accountants who, in turn, create the statements.
James Segarra, managing partner at Tronconi Segarra & Associates LLP, said he views the additional work as “helping clients become better prepared to borrow money” needed to run businesses.
“Lines (of credit) aren’t being pulled, but banks do want to see more information,” he said. “It’s a totally different system of keeping records. I don’t fault the banks, but these can be onerous things to comply with.”
Read full article…
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Nothing brings the week to a close like Dog Friday. VP Ross Jones has his delightful Yellow Lab Gibby in for a visit today. What a gentleman!
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Sage has a mobile strategy and it’s pretty great - Here’s a peek at the Accpac interface, due for release when Accpac v6 comes out this December.
Mobile phones like the iPhone allow you to run web sites in the same manner you run native applications. So you can add an icon to the phone’s home page and then run your web based application.
Sage is working on the “Accpac Mobile Desktop” to launch various data portlets This lets a user see various dashboards in real time from their phone.
Let’s take a tour…
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Notice the Accpac icon on the lower left side of the homescreen.
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When you select the Accpac icon you then go to a set of menus for Accpac. Notice that even though this is a web page, it looks just like any other iPhone application.
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The menus have nice animated transitions, so when you select them they slide to the side. Clicking on Payables yields this screen.
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Then if we click on Aged Payables we get to our regular Aged Payables snapshot that we normally see in the new portal/desktop.
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Actually it looks a little better in landscape
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Posted by: Sonja Fridell
Tags:
crm
1. Things are falling through the cracks and you’re losing sales
2. Your client list is a mess and marketing to them is no easy task
3. You’re generating leads, but not converting them into sales
4. Duplication of effort: Multiple salespeople are touching the same account
5. The right information is not accessible at the right time
6. Little or no ability to forecast and plan
7. Your current system is becoming obsolete: You can only use spreadsheets for so long
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Oh The Choices!
QuickBooks holds 89% of the small business accounting market in the U.S. But we can’t forget about Sage’s small business product, Peachtree. They both have their strengths and weaknesses, so let’s dive right in…
Peachtree strengths:
- Stronger inventory management
- Job costing capabilities
- Over 140 customizable reports
- Work flow management
- Scalability/multi-user performance
- Through GAP checks for duplicates and suspicious activity
- Can accommodate up to 40 users, 10 more than QB
QuickBooks Strengths:
- Attractive and very easy adoption
- Accountant Copy Capabilities
- Multi-Currency
- E-Store/E-Commerce Integration
- Online SaaS option (QuickBooks Online)
- Very nice Point of Sale option
- More third party add ons
Conclusions: QuickBooks is great for service-oriented businesses; inventory control is where it falls short. Peachtree has the market on that. QuickBooks only works in average costing; Peachtree can manage inventory by LIFO, FIFO, serialized and average costing. Pricing for both products is very close. QuickBooks is overall more attractive and easier to use, and they have a Mac version. QB also has an online version that is VERY affordable, but limited and more appropriate for home finances. Both products are dependable and excellent.
Click here more information on choosing the right accounting software
And here for a quote on Peachtree OR QuickBooks
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That’s right; a new way to stay up on the latest Saleslogix news. The Saleslogix podcast is geared towards developers, but avid users will find value in it too. Each podcast includes commentary on upcoming release news, discussion of new videos added to the Developer’s subscription, responses to current threads on the newsgroups, and an update of what’s new in Sage Learning Services.
Check it out on iTunes, it’s free!
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World, meet Jimmie BrainSell. A superhero taking on business pains from around the world. Sales people all over the world are restricted by sub-par technology and less than ideal operations. Have no fear… Jimmie BrainSell is here!
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Being ever so timely, SugarCRM announced their iPad application at SugarCon this past April. As a devoted Apple fanatic, I have to say, this adds a major cool-factor to Sugar.
The app is fully customizable and it looks pretty ridiculous.
Some big highlights…
Quick view display: shows the most urgent opportunities, important contacts, and upcoming meetings.
Customizable modules screen:Users can drag-and-drop their favorite SugarCRM modules to easily organize the application according to their needs.
Data synchronization:Keep contacts and other information synced between the iPad and the cloud.
Easy drill-down: Quickly access important customer information that is most relevant while on-the-road.
The iPad is awesome, but let’s not forget it’s little brother, iPhone, which is outfitted with similar functionality.
Sugar’s CEO Larry Augustine spoke about the new release at Sugarcon…
“We’re pleased to announce a native application of Sugar on the iPad,” noted Larry Augustin, CEO, SugarCRM. “The ultra-portability and groundbreaking iPad user experience that is made possible for us as a web-based business by Appcelerator fits perfectly with the extensible SugarCRM architecture that can scale across multiple platforms. We believe that our mobile workforce customers will benefit greatly from the enhanced capabilities that this new platform offers.”
Overall, it looks like a very handy little piece of technology.
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