Following these simple steps will help retailers reduce the opportunity for and incidence of employee theft.

1. Track sales by employees. Use the Point of Sale software to require employee codes to be entered or employee cards to be scanned for every sale.
2. Encourage eftpos transactions. The less cash you handle the lower the opportunity for fraud.
3. Track odd behaviour. Cancelled sales, opening the cash drawer, deleting sales – these are all things you can stop or better control using your Point of Sale software. The tighter the rules the less wriggle room available for people to abuse the business.
4. Require change given to be entered. This enhances structure at the sales counter and this shows the business respects operational rules.
5. Set rules on discounts. Use the software to manage business rules on who can process discounts.
6. Balance the register.  Set a limit of what is an acceptable under or over amount for the end of shift processing.  Require employees to be accountable.  The tougher you manage this the more responsibility people take on to ensure that there are no mistakes.

Creating and adhering to structure around cash handling processes is crucial.  Employees who want / need to steal will have less opportunity if you take the steps outlined above.  Good Point of Sale software like that from Tower Systems is your best friend in helping you cut the cost of employee theft.

I have been working several retailers with challenges in their businesses and through this have noticed a change in shopper buying this year.  While the first reason to consider could be the lack of the federal government’s stimulus package this year, I suspect it is more to do with the day Christmas falls.

This year, with Christmas Day on a Friday, sales data suggest that shoppers used the ‘extra’ day in the week for good last minute shopping.  In two stores I have already seen data for, that ‘extra’ day was key in driving a better Christmas than last year - if only by a whisker.

While more data will be available over the next few days, it is fascinating to see what an ‘extra’ day can mean leading up to Christmas Day.

Using the marketing tools of our Point of Sale software, retailers are able to easily extract mobile phone numbers from the customer database based on purchase history.  This database can be used by marketing services for mobile phone marketing of the business.

We have customers using permission-based text marketing as well as text servicing in a number of ways to increase sales.

Retailers selling special interest items are excellent prospects for the text marketing facilities we offer, especially if they record their customer’s interests and their sales patterns.  Text marketing enables them to notify their customers of opportunities - an important service when catering to those with special interests.

Text messages serve as instant messages.  They can include deals, promotions, coupons, and more.  They are green alternative to traditional forms of communication such as print advertising and flyers.

In addition to providing the marketing tools software, we will gladly help our customers in how to best setup these facilities and to execute campaigns.  We can draw on the experience of our broader customer community.  This additional business support is free and another example of the Tower Advantage^TM.

Email marketing is easy with our Point of Sale software.  Retailers are able to generate email lists based on customer history with the business.  This facilitates target emails around seasons, products or other criteria.

We have retailers enjoying considerable success today with email marketing thanks to the flexibility of our marketing tools nd their attention togetting the right customer data into the system.

We have published an advice sheet which explains how to quickly extract the email data from customer records managed by our software and how to use this for an email campaign. We can also provide advice on privacy obligations to ensure that our customers do not fall foul of the spam regulations.

Existing customers who have had a good experience are more likely to shop with you again.  Email marketing is a great, low-cost, way of communicating with existing customers, especially if you have a special deal to communicate.

We will gladly help retailers using our software to handle the technical, operational and marketing aspects of email marketing.

We are seeing coffee pop up in a variety of retail businesses.  It is a growing add-on product to retailers such as newsagents, bike shops and jewellers - all marketplaces in which we serve.

We have developed a strategy for handling coffee and related service product sales and have therefore been able to help our retail partners moving into this space.

It is interesting watching the embrace of coffee.  It usually starts tentatively.  If it takes off, it can take over the business.  We have seen this happen.  Indeed, it is terrific to see innovation lead to significant realignment of the business.  We are fortunate to be close to this and part of the process.

Being a software provider gives us excellent opportunities to watch businesses evolve up close.  The learnings are wonderful and enjoyable.

Further to my post earlier this week, below is another example of touch screen buttons we have setup to make selling easier.  These touch buttons are for instant scratch tickets for our newsagent cutsomers in New South Wales.

While we would prefer to to make it easy for our customers to scan the scratch tickets, these touch buttons are just as fast.

Tower Systems helps retail customers of ours who are facing tough times.  Our help includes consideration on support fees, business turnaround help, free training and other help designed to relieve the financial burden for the business.

To protect against an abuse of our offer, we have a process for considering an application for accessing these benefits.  The process starts with a call to our General Manager or our Managing Direector.  We handle the query confidentially from there.

Many of our client relationships are long standing and our businesses deeply connected.  It is only natural, therefore, that we help our friends out as we are able.

While we have seen an increase in the use of our assistance this year, it is not up as much as had expected based on the doom and gloom in the press.

While banks are making accessing funding a challenge for many small businesses, the brokers we use are able to organise competitive funding for the purchase of our retail management solution.  This is in part due to long term trusted relationships and our track record for helping our small business retail extract an excellent returns from the investment in our technology solution.

Building a case to support funding is something we are glad to help with.  We can provide case studies showing the benefits others have gained by using our software and following the principles we cover in training.  We can also provide a package of business management reports which the business can provide to the lending institution to show the performance of the business.

We understand what lenders want to gain confidence that the investment adds value ot the business.  This is why we are able to confidently support funding applications for the purchase of our system.

Helping our customers access lease finance is another way we help our retailer business partners.

We are writing good business with people opening new retail businesses.  Gift shops and newsagencies are the most popular new businesses we are signing on as customers for our point of sale software.  This past month has been especially busy with signing new retail locations.

While the media outlets report tough trading conditions, we are working with entrepreneurial business people who are investing in growth - in new shopping centres and new high street situations.

It’s a good feeling - working with people at the start of a new business venture.  We enjoy the opportunity immensly.

The benefit of a greenfield location is the opportunity of getting things right from the outset, before the business opens.  This is true especially when it comes to data structure.  We have good advice we provide new clients with in terms of structuring their data to be of most use to them in guiding business decisions.

Our eziPass mobile phone recharge and phonecard vending software continues to attract new users thanks to positive word of mouth from our user community.

Hundreds of newsagents use eziPass every day to sell products from within their point of sale software - there is no need for additional or separate hardware.  This integrated solution, the first of its kind delivered to newsagents, has proved a boon for newsagents in retaining and growing mobile phone top-up and phonecard sales.

eziPass continues to help us win new newsagent business as we are able to offer a robust and revenue generating solution. The product mix continues to evolve - further expanding the benefits to newsagents and the partner suppliers.

Our Bike Shop software is enjoying tremendous success with three new locations in the last week - this is on the back of excellent numbers for April through June.   July is usually a quiet month.  Not so this year.

Our bike shop software is industry specific.  It connects with suppliers, is EDI compliant (electronic invoices) and offers a range of facilities bike shop owners look for from the counter to the workshop.

Our bike shop software also connects with customers through our SMS messaging facilities.  The software will send SMS messages to advise when a special order is ready for collection, a lay-by is due for payment or for other triggers selected by our users.  Bike shop owners love these facilities.

The learnings about retail management have been considerable from the bike marketplace and applicable to our other retail marketplaces.  Particularly in the area of customer contact.  Bike shop owners have a connection with their customers which is unique in retail.  Many are riders themselves and their customers are friends or colleagues.  This connection has driven us to enhance our customer contact facilities.  These enhancements have been useful in other marketplaces.

Our in-house creative team has created more new marketing collateral to help drive mobile phone recharge sales for retailers using our eziPass software to manage selling mobile phone top-up, phonecards and a range of other voucher based products.

The artwork for the poster is available free to our customers for local printing.  We have some stock of A3 posters available which we will mail (free) first come first served.  We will send this in response to an email request.

The Recharge Your Mobile Phone Here poster is another example of Tower Systems going beyond providing software and helping our customers more proactively use the software to the success they achieve with it.

More newsagents are taking on the prepaid Visa produce we offer exclusively through our point of sale software - and making good money.

The Canvas card is one of the prepaid Visa cards supported exclusively through our software.  It is reloadable, easy to sell and easy for customers to use.  Newsagents make $2.75 commission for every reload, pay only for what is sold, no upfront cost to stock, get recognised as a Visa Prepaid retailer, get listed on the prepaid Visa websites.  Most important of all, there are no long term contracts.

The value of being listed on the website was recognised by one of our customers, Mandy from Austin Knox: The Visa Prepaid Cards have brought in new customers who found our store via the CANVAS card website.

With retail tenancies in shopping centres costing between $500 and $1,500 per square metre for the independent retailers we serve – jewellers, newsagents, gift shops and bike retailers – managing the return on floor space is crucial. Our software helps retailers track this return - by department and category. This is achieved by measurement of space allocated and entering this into the software. Our point of sale software does the rest, easily reporting on return on floor space over any period of time selected.

Our reporting helps retailers easily watch the categories which are challenged as well as track the impact of changes made in the business.

Smart reporting like this, on floor space, is another way the Tower Systems retail management software focuses on the outcomes which are important to retailers.

The value of a retail business is determined by what it makes.  Tower Systems’ reporting facilities help business owners make better decisions, maximise return and thereby achieve a better exit price.  It all comes down to business performance and this is only as good as the decisions made … hence the importance of good reporting.

We have developed artwork for new gift cards for one group of users of our s0ftware.  While our users can create a gift voucher using our software, these beautiful gift cards take the ‘gift’ to a new level.  Professionally produced to credit card specification, they compare favourably with the quality you would expect to see at David Jones or Myer.

We have twelve designs in this suite and ideas for more.  The photo does not do the artwork for each card justice … yes, we are very proud.

The cards work directly and exclusively with our software.  On the reverse of each card is a unique barcode connecting it back to the value of the gift loaded.

Loving customers is crucial in retail.  Good retail employees love to love customers.  Our software helps our retail partners love customers in a range of ways:

• Fast and accurate selling at the point of sale.
• Remembering important customer details.
• Tracking and rewarding loyalty.
• Easy handling of special offers.
• Helping sales staff know what they need to know at the counter.

Like all good retail management software, we provide these facilities without barriers.  That is, we keep our approach technology jargon free and easily accessible - so that retailers are able to focus on what they do best and not worry too much about how it all happens.

Later this year we will release facilities in our software which will help our retail partners love their customers in new ways. We are on a mission of love here…

Today is a usual Saturday for our help desk team.  We have experts in our Head Office, fielding calls from users of our POS software.  Half the calls will be to do with our software and half the calls will be to do with general computer issues.  We cheerfully handle both.

Our Saturday office-based service is in addition to our after hours team.

Calling for support on a Saturday is something we recommend to those considering our software.  It is important to know the quality and timeliness of weekend support.  Some companies with which we compete do not offer Saturday help desk coverage.  We do because we understand the importance to small business owners of timely and professional customer service.

We have kept this innovation announcement under wraps but now we are into our user meeting series we can share what we have been telling our customers confidentially for the last ten days. In a week or so we will release an update to our software which provides a range of innovations around Google Maps.

Using our software, our users will be able to view where customers are drawn from - on a Google Map.  Retailers can see how far their marketing reaches and how far word of mouth reaches - in a few moments in their computer without having to hire market research experts.  how great is that!  Independent retailers will be able to make some excellent business decisions based on this excellent view of their business.

From the customer screen, our users will be able to hit a button and see where a customer is located, on a Google Map. When we preview this we hear excitement from our customers - this is real innovation available at the retail counter!

There is plenty more innovation around this, all designed to give our customers smart ways to better understand their customers without having to spend any more money.  We are releasing our Google maps interface facilities in our next update without additional cost to our Tower Advantage ^TM customers.

The swivel base eftpos pin pad we recommend for our point of sale software customers using the Tyro broadband eftpos service is popular.  Retailers and customers like its features.  The feedback we have received is excellent. We use this swivel base pin pad in several of our own retail shops and so have our own personal experience from which to draw.  It sits in the same location on the counter and is easily turned to a customer for PIN entry and back to the staff for processing.

I like this pinpad it for several reasons

• It is secure for our customers.  PIN numbers are entered discretely.
• The swivel base makes use easier for retailer and customer.
• Less movement means less cable and other damage.
• It is directly integrated with the point of sale software - meaning fewer keystrokes.

These points are important to streamlining the counter, especially since more transactions are being paid for through eftpos.  The easier, faster and more accurate we can make eftpos processing the better.

We have heard from several retailers over the last week that they are experiencing an increase in eftpos transactions..  In two cases, the value of eftpos transactions has doubled this year compared to last year.  The increase can be tracked to ease of processing. By making eftpos processing easier and negotiating lower rates for our customers we have made it a more appealing payment method compared to the labour intensive and risk prone cash.  While I also think that the economy is playing a role here, support from retail business owners (as a result of ease of use) is a crucial factor.

With further enhancements anticipated in this area I can only see eftpos transactions growing further.

The prepaid Visa products available exclusively through Tower Systems - from our eziPass and point of sale software solutions.  The prepaid Visa products are driving some good success stories, especially in lower socio-economic areas. Customers can get a working Visa card without the need for bank approval. This allows them to shop in most stores which take Visa – the only exception right now being Coles and Woolworths from what we understand.  The Canvas card is the most popular prepaid Visa product we have.

Thanks to clever work by our software development team, the prepaid Visa is accessible directly from our software. There is no sign up or stock cost and marketing collateral is provided free of charge.

There are several types of customers purchasing these prepaid Visa cards: businesses for employee use, families for their children and as gift cards without the need to direct the purchase to a particular store.

In our won stores these prepaid Visa cards are working well, extending the basket – customers purchase other items with them.

Managing lay-by transactions in retail is getting easier thanks to considerable work by our skilled software development team. With generous and open guidance from our retail user community we have built more streamlined, outcome focused, lay-by facilities which are sure to suit just about any retailer.

The new lay-by facilities will be released next month and delivered free of charge to users under our Tower Advantage ^TM program.  They replace the lay-by facilities we have offered for years.

The key focus of our work on lay-bys is to introduce new managament facilities which make it easier for retail staff to handle customer queries about lay-by accounts and to manage the overall lay-by portfolio.

Our retail customers are telling us that lay-by sales are increasing significantly this year.  The new facilities we are releasing are arriving at the right time to help our customers efficiently manage the lay-by opportunity for their businesses and for their customers.

Click here to download a print ready copy of the poster the Tower Systems creating team has developed for our retail partners to use to promote consideration of spending the federal government’s stimulus package locally.  Click on the image for a larger copy on your screen.

If there is other material our creative team can develop to help connect your business connection with the stimulus package please let us know.

We are grateful to have the resources and creative capacity to help our customer community in this way.  As retailers ourselves, we understand and appreciate the value some suppliers bring to a relationship by going the extra mile.

Feel free to share the poster around. 

Speed at the counter is crucial for retailers. Good POS software developers understand this and ensure that their software transacts sales quickly with a focus on efficient workflow. When comparing our software with another package for a prospect earlier this week we completed the sale in 25% of the time they took. This was a simple sale – a couple of items, one scanned and another selected from the stock file. Using the other system required considerable mouse selections – they offered too many options at the counter, most of which will not be used. We offer the options too but with our software it is easy to ignore them whereas with our competitor you have to navigate an obstacle course.

As retailers ourselves we understand the importance of efficient processing at the counter. We continue to look for ways to refine how we process sales – to improve consistency and speed.

The screen shot is from the point of sale screen for our newsagency software. We have different screens for each marketplace in which we trade.

This buggy by renowned Argentinean artist Guillermo Forchino sells for around $300.  It it one of many beautiful and comic pieces by him.  Our customers selling this and other similarly-priced gift and jewellery lines cannot price these in the usual way.  They need a price ticket which reflects the quality and value of the item.  We have such high-end price tickets in our suite of pricing options - this comes from serving in a variety of different yet curiously complimentary marketplaces.  At the very high end, we have silver and gold price tickets which can connect to the product without sticking to the surface.  The price tickets themselves are of a quality which respects the product and shows a care by the retailer for the item.

Our software supports a range of price ticket options from the low cost sticker type to the high end butterfly slimline type which we would suggest for the Forchino piece.  This flexibility is reflected elsewhere in our software.  It demonstrates how we can evolve with our customers.