How to Grow Your Business Using POS Software Reporting

POS software reporting is a powerful tool for businesses that are looking to grow and gain a critical share of their market. The more you know about your company and how it is performing in various aspects —the more data you have— the more insight you have into what’s working, what isn’t and how you can improve the two sides.

While point of sale reporting presents a treasure trove of potential value, many businesses don’t capitalize. Often, this is because they have a false understanding of what pos reporting is; they conclude that, because of their size, they don’t have data.

The truth is that even small companies are producing tons of data, especially with today’s POS software, which is capable of producing data-rich reports from all different types of activities.

The difficult task then becomes how does a business make sense of all of this information.

With all of the various dimensions of a company (you have to manage inventory, process sales, keep track of employees and so on) creating data all at once, how do you successfully navigate all this information and ultimately draw reasonable, accurate conclusions about what’s working and where possible improvements can be made?

Luckily, if you have one of today’s sophisticated POS systems for small businesses, like eHopper, then you have a number of reporting features that make visualizing and understanding your sales, inventory management and other data much more straightforward.

Growing your business may just be a matter of unlocking all of the features and potential behind your POS software.

Inventory Reports Make It Easier to Manage Inventory Processes

Inventory management is a little like wrangling six toddlers at the same time. Both tasks are nearly impossible without some incredible tools or a whole lot of experience.

Between store transfers, back stock, vendor orders, returns and every other process in the mix, product is going seven different directions all at the same time. And, when you add more store locations, inventory only becomes more complicated and difficult to handle.

With a POS inventory report, you have another tool at your disposal to track where your products are, where they are going and every step they take in between.

Inventory management is not the only key to improving productivity and faster processing of orders, but it can also give way to increased profits by better understanding the types of requests customers are making and how you can upsell them with other, similar products.

eHopper POS Inventory Report Image

Track Orders Progress with Order Reports

Companies are always looking to improve productivity and organization. Time is money, after all. Order reports allow a business to see all of their orders promptly.

If a question about a specific order arises, it is easy to view all relevant info regarding that transaction (order ID, name, dollar amount, type of order, the status, delivery date, who placed the order, etc.).

Not only does this save time and other resources (especially if you have orders across different store locations), but your customers will also find your company’s ability to swiftly process transactions a great bonus to doing business with you.

eHopper POS Order Report Image

Track Daily Performance with Z Reports

Monitoring the performance of a company means measuring how much profit is being produced. Traditional POS systems have long been capable of creating sales reports that detail how much profit is being made.

However, with today’s POS systems for small businesses, these statements go far beyond just dollar signs. This new POS sales report can do much more. You can uncover critical insights into the times when sales peak, which employees are making the most sales, etc.

This allows you to allocate resources better to bolster these fluctuations in sales numbers. You can even track performance of individual registers or zoom out to see location-wide sales.

Conversely, you can use Z reports to look at periods of low sales. Anticipating when sales are going to slow helps prevent over staffing or spreading resources too thin.

This allows your company to grow at a responsible pace without overextending itself.

eHopper POS Z Report Image

Understand Customer Buying Behavior with Product Mix Reports

Examining your overall, daily performance (profits) through Z Reports yields plenty of insights. That said, your POS software can take those insights a step further with product mix reports.

This view of your POS sales data examines individual products being sold during a specific window of time. This close-up view at how your products are being purchased can breed a number of important clues into how your business can improve.

For example, a clothing company may already know that its best-selling product is a blue t-shirt. With a product mix report, this store could further look into what pair of pants is sold most commonly with that shirt.

Alternatively, a restaurant could determine its menu pairings based on what drink-appetizer-entree combination diners are choosing the most.

In either case, these kinds of insight into what’s selling and how it is selling can lead to better store layouts, upsell strategies with higher conversion rates and other growth-promoting tactics.

eHopper POS Product Mix Report Image

Process Store Transfers and Never Lose An Item Again

If you operate multiple store locations, you know the nightmare of misplacing inventory across store locations. Where your system says it is, it isn’t, which produces a needle-in-a-haystack scenario that requires you to look in every store location to track down the product.

Sometimes, you never find it. With better store transfer reporting thanks to a POS inventory report, you can see when items were transferred, who transferred them and when (or if) they were received by the neighboring store.

Additionally, by tracking transfers over a period, you may see patterns developing that will allow you to anticipate where product needs to go ahead of time.

This will improve your ability to distribute inventory appropriately, so all stores have the products that their unique customers are looking for.

eHopper POS Store Transfer Report Image

Tax and Tip Reporting Helps Identify Your Top Employees

Saving time and boosting productivity is all about making tedious processes much simpler. That’s precisely what you can achieve with tax and tip reporting. You can track how much your employees are earning in tips and how much you’ve spent on taxes through different reports.

These kinds of reports are invaluable when tax season rolls around, and you are trying to make sense of all of your finances. Not to mention, seeing who earns the most tips can be used to determine your best (and worst), customer-facing employees.

You can use these insights into employee performance for a number of things, like knowing who to promote and when, identifying employees that need further training, better crafting your staffing schedule to include a mix of high- and low-performing employees and so on.

In short, this kind of reporting can help you optimize your workforce for far better performance.

eHopper POS Tax Report Image

Manage Employee Time and Eliminate Fraud And Losses

Employee fraud is an unfortunate reality that some businesses face with their workforce. While business owners don’t want to micromanage employees like a cruel overseer, they also don’t want to be taken advantage of by incorrect time keeping that pays unscrupulous employees more than they earned.

Thus, time clock reporting can be beneficial. You’ll have an easily viewable report that shows you which employees worked the most hours and even the register they used for those hours.

This will protect you from employee fraud and better ensure that you’re paying individuals what they deserve and that no money is being lost or stolen.

If an issue should arise with a register or end-of-day count, this report gives quick insight into which employee may be responsible for the error.

eHopper POS Time Clock Report Image

Conclusions

One of the most significant tools that businesses are using today to gain a competitive edge and grow within their respective market is data.

Data is always being created and holds a lot of potential value for businesses looking to improve. Smaller companies are always afraid about being muscled out by larger corporations that have the resources to invest in ultra-sophisticated tools.

You don’t need expensive software to begin seeing patterns within your POS inventory reports.

You just need a retail POS software like eHopper that is capable of creating very accessible, easy to follow reports that allow your company to manage inventory better, learn consumer behaviors from POS sales reports and, ultimately, grow.

POS systems for small businesses do more than they ever have before.

Not only are they faster, sleeker and more sophisticated than their more traditional counterparts, but they also produce substantial potential value in the data they collect and supply.

This level of visualization is critical for how you can grow your business with POS software reporting. Traditional POS systems are capable of necessary inventory management and sales reporting.

However, those reports are hard to read, harder to understand and nearly impossible to pull the level of insights that you can derive from an eHopper POS inventory report or sales report. 

Test drive eHopper POS now, risk free!