Sometimes it is the simple reports in our POS software which our customers like the most. Take the Monthly Taking Report . This lists sales by department for the full previous twelve months, all on one page. We have customers who love this report for the year long view it provides. They tell us that it helps them spot sales trends, easily compare periods and balance the business across departments.

The takings report suite was the first we developed for Point of Sale in the last 1980s. It’s good to see it still being useful today.

Sign up now for our 2010 AFL tipping competition.  It’s free and there are cash prizes.  We don’t use the data - this is purely for fun.   The competition is open to anyone.

Click on the icon on our website.  The password is tower.

We are hosting a face to face user meeting in Perth this Thursday at 11am at the offices of WANA/NGBB, 13 Kitchener Ave, Burswood.  Rohan Genn our Customer Service Manager will flying in from Melbourne and run the meeting along with our WA based team members.

This user meeting is an excellent opportunity for Perth region customers to learn more about our software and get questions answered from one of our experts.

Access to the user meeting is free.  This is another benefit from the Tower Advantage ^TM program.

Click here to book.

Through the e-commerce facilities on our website, Tower Systems customers can easily purchase a magnetic swipe reader necessary for selling iTunes cards using our popular eziPass software.  Retailers swipe iTunes cards through the reader to activate them at the point of purchase.  We made the software change for selling iTunes cards available for no cost to our customers.  iTunes cards have the potential to significantly improve the value of a sale given the respect for the brand and the ease with which they can be added to a basket at the counter.

While not all batches of iTunes cards require a magnetic swipe reader, some do, hence the advice to be prepared.

eziPass is the most popular computer based electronic voucher vending platform among Australian newsagents.  With more than 1,000 live sites, newsagents have voted their support for this Tower Systems exclusive initiative.

We have tested and laoded a new stock file for the BrownTrout calendar range to our website.  as with all stock files we load, this has been thoroughly tested to ensure that it loadsusing our software without incident.

We are producing the first of a new series of videos for our retail customers this week. They will go beyond the usual training offered by software companies and cover business building opportunities using our software.

Designed for retail business owners and managers, the new training video series will provide useful content for our customers and other retailers keen to grow their businesses.  The first of the videos should be available from our website early next week.

Too often, software companies and retailers miss opportunities to unlock real value from Point of Sale software and the data it manages.  Our new videos aim to present our commitment to help our business partners way beyond the software.

Our four free online training workshops for users of our Point of Sale software this week are:

• Point of Sale - Tuesday, Mar 16 @ 11am.  This is a good introduction to our Point of Sale screen and everything you can do from it.
• Repairs – Mar 16 @ 2pm.  Seeour new repairs software and let us know what you think.
• Importing stock files – Mar 18 @ 11am.  How to import stock files from suppliers and navigate questions you sometimes have.
• Officesmart – Mar 18 @ 2pm.  Officesmart is the newsagent owneddiscount / volume stationery strategy from GNS.  This training session will outline how to use our software to manage Officesmart and make the most of the opportunity.

To book for any of these sessions, please go to our website.

Tower Systems yesterday launched its AFL tipping competition for 2010, continuing a tradition of many years standing.  The competition is open to anyone.  Click on the icon on our website.

Cash prizes are on offer:  First $250.00; Second $100.00; Third $50.00.  Entry is FREE.  Come and have some fun.

We have scheduled two online training sessions for newsagent suppliers. In these sessions we will introduce our Point of Sale software, outline the facilities, explain how to reportand extract data and take questions. These will be excellent sessions for supplier representatives wanting to help newsagents understand more about their businesses.  Click on the following links to book for either session.

• Session 1, March 16, 11am.
• Session 2, March 17, 11am.

Access is free.  All you need is a computer with broadband access and a phone for a toll free call.

We have now run several online user meetings. These covered the same content as we are presenting in our 20+ face to face meetings around the country.

The online sessions are helping us bring more people into user meeting participation. They are also helping us connect customers who would not usually speak with each other.

Based on positive feedback, we will schedule more of these online user meetings once the current series of face to face sessions come to an end. We shoudl be in a position to anounce dates next week.

Rohan Genn our Customer Service Manager is running our Albury User meeting tomorrow. This is a terrific opportunity for our users to get some great training, an insight into the latest version of our software and to speak with a senior member of our team.

The details are:

• 11th March 2010
• 11:00am
• Quality Hotel on Olive, 579 Olive Street, ALBURY NSW 2640

Anyone is welcome to attend.

With our head office in Melbourne closed today for Labour Day, we have switched calls through our phone system to our Brisbane office.  This allows us to maintain full service and ensure that our customers receive fast and professional service for our customers.

8PM UPDATE: The feedback from customers to providing live and office based support through a public holiday today has been wonderful.  We are grateful to have the resources and infrastructure to enable us to shift the help desk as we did today without any extra cost to our customers.  This is the Tower Advantage ^TM in action.

We are hosting a meeting of our users in the Geelong region this Wednesday at 2pm at the Mercure Hotel – Cnr Geringhap & Meyers Streets. This is another in our 20+ locations for this round of user meetings.  Click here to book.

We will outline the features of the latest software update, provide useful training and take plenty of questions. We have always has a soft spot for the Geelong area since it is the first region where we gained good traction in the 1980s.  We have maintained this thanks to customer loyalty and, we think, good service.

If you’re in the Geelong region and interested to know more about what we do you would be most welcome to come along on Wednesday.  We’d be glad to see you.

It is hard work running these user meetings around the country but most beneficial to our customers and to ourselves as we get to network and share ideas.

We are offering another four free online workshops in our retail management software this week:

• Security - Tuesday, Mar 9 @ 11am.  Learn how to protect your business.
• New staff training – Mar 9 @ 2pm.  Ideal for new staff using our software for the first time.
• Business reporting – Mar 11 @ 11am.  Find our how to produce reports which help your decision making.
• Home delivery management – Mar 11 @ 2pm.  Discover how to better manage home deliveries.

All can be booked online at our website.  Click here to go to the booking page.

We are helping newsagents using our Point of Sale software to drive better ink deals by including this ad on receipts. Our customers have control over when the ad prints thanks to helpful tools in the software.  Including this ad, or any ad, on receipts is easy with our POS software. We have created a pack of professionally designed ads for use by our customers. This is a free service we offer to help newsagents using Tower Systems to drive better outcomes from their business.

We had announced we were not offering our usual full service Saturday support today because of the long weekend in Victoria (Labour Day).  We had a change of heart yesterday and decided to offer this as well as our usual network of after hours numbers.  This decision was made hby our help desk team - they are committed to delivering the best support possible for our customers.

We are meeting with retailers using our Point of Sale software in Canberra next week. Tuesday, March 9 at 11am at the Southern Cross Club in Woden. This is another stop in our national user meeting tour. The Canberra meeting should be well attended give the number of retailers using our software in the region.

I’ll be at the meeting along with our Software Development Manager.

Catalogues are crucial to driving new traffic into newsagency businesses. Back to School, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Ink … there are many catalogue opportunities each year for newsagents to use to attract new customers.

Tower Systems offers a structured approach to suppliers and newsagents for handling catalogue business. This helps both sides get the most of the opportunities. from electronic files to marketing opportunities to performance tracking to reordering, our Point of Sale software helps key newsagency channel stakeholders - newsagents, wholesales and suppliers - to leverage each catalogue to its full potential.

We are currently working with several suppliers on new initiatives to strengthen the offer around catalogues for the Tower newsagent community. New smart tools have an opportunity to live the commercial benefits driven by catalogues.

We see our investment in helping develop smarter catalogue initiatives as valuable in helping newsagents get more from their businesses.

We are hosting two important user meetings today in Newcastle and Gosford.  We will be presenting the latest information on our Point of Sale software for newsagents.  Here are the details:

• Newcastle: 10am.  Boulevard on Beaumont, 131 Beaumont Street, HAMILTON NSW
• Gosford: 3pm.  Quality Inn The Willows, 512 Pacific Highway, GOSFORD NSW

Even though bookings are excellent, we’d be glad to welcome any last minute attendees.

These meetings are part of our current national tour of twenty locations around the country where we are educating our retail customers, getting plenty of new ideas and networking with our customers.

Twenty more of our retail customers signed up with Tyro broaadband eftpos last month.  This continues the excellent growth we are seeing in the use of Tyro for eftpos payment among our retail partners.

Our Tyro implementation sees eftpos transactions processed faster, with fewer mistakes and with better customer and retailer documentation.

We are seeing an encouraging number of new newsagencies open for business in our own sales data. In January and February this year we have sold point of sale software systems to newsagents opening new businesses, often for the first time.

The growth in new locations counters concerns in some quarters that the newsagency channel is shrinking. While that may be the case, there are now outlets opening in new centres and extensions of existing centres.

We are glad to be helping new newsagents get their foot in the door and establish new newsagency presences in the community. Given our history in the channel and that we own newsagencies ourselves, we are glad to pass on advice and supplier contacts.

Retailers using Tower Systems’ Point of sale software are welcome to participate in four live and interactive online training sessions this week:

• General Q&A - Tuesday, Mar 2 @ 11am
• Stocktaking - Tuesday, Mar 2 @ 2pm
• Mastering Catalogues - Thursday, FMar 4 @ 11am
• Magazine Management - Tuesday, Mar 4 @ 2pm

Each session runs for up to an hour and is offered at no cost to Tower Advantage ^TM customers.

Earlier this year we offered our Marketing Tools software free to existing customers using our Point of Sale software for a limited period of time. We advertised it only through this blog. Plenty took up the offer.

I made the offer as a thank you to our customers, particularly those engaging in our online activities.

We are starting to hear from people using the Marketing Tools and the benefits they are achieving. This is one note I received overnight from a happy customer.

Thank you Tower Systems. The marketing software is helping us market our business better than ever. We just sent out our first emails.  We are using our customer database and we are getting a response in sales. So thank you for this free gift. It is not often we in small business get a leg up. You have made us feel good.

It is not the first time we have given away valuable software and it will not be the last. We understand our role in helping our retail partners and adding value where we are able. The free Marketing Tools software did that. It is proof of our actions speaking louder than our words.

Every dollar added to the bottom line of a retail business is multiplied when it comes time to sell. We are glad to make our retailers more valuable.

We have published advice reminding our 1,600 newsagent customers how to hande the price changes for the Sydney Morning Herald this week.  Advice sheet N10.4 at our website coveres everything you need to know.

Our gift card design and manufacturing service is getting plenty of attention from retailers using our Point of Sale software.  They like that we can easily help them leverage the gift card facilities in our software to provide them with something to sell on the occasion that they do not have the item a customer wants to buy as a gift.

We have a suite of off the shelf gift card artwork ready and also develop fresh artwork is required from scratch.

While designing and manufacturing gift cards may not seem a natural fit for a software company to some, to us it makes sense if we are to truly serve the needs of our customers.

We understand that software alone does not provide the solution in some cases.  By going the extra mile and delivering a complete gift card solution, including implementation training, we are helping our customers make the most from their investment.