After you’ve selected a new POS system, the work isn’t over. It’s time to prepare for the install, so are you ready?

Here are some things to consider:

Set realistic goals: Your business will be the only one that suffers if you go live before everyone is prepared. Give yourself and your staff enough time to be trained thoroughly on the system. A proper amount of training, even if it means an extra day before you start ringing sales, can save a lot of frustration in the long run.

Be ready: It’s a buzzkill to have the technicians arrive and find that the install space is either inappropriate or improperly prepared. Before the install team arrives, make sure you are ready and the equipment has a functional spot in your store or restaurant. POS terminals need to be kept away from excessive heat, moisture and—if the system has a cooling fan for ventilation—allow space for airflow.

Power protection is important: Murphy’s Law dictates that if the system is going to suffer a power-related issue, it will happen during peak hours, the holiday season or right before a big event. Most surge protectors are only designed to protect your equipment from catastrophic events like lightening strikes. Make sure that your power protection device is designed to protect against smaller attacks as well, such as surges, swells, spikes and line noise.

There are so many benefits to eCommerce: a new customer base, 24/7 shopping and the fact that your customers don’t even need to leave their house to get the products they love.

Despite all the benefits, retailers need to be aware of the potential for fraud. In 2012, the total U.S. online revenue losses reached $3.5 billion due to fraudulent activity. Small online retailers are especially at risk because they are less likely to have the proper protections in place.

You can help protect your business from fraud by making sure you choose the right eCommerce platform. pcAmerica uses an eCommerce solution powered by NitroSell to assist retail stores in capturing some of this growing marketshare. Internet orders are downloaded to Cash Register Express in near real time and fulfilled in-store.

pcAmerica encourages all of its clients, regardless of their choice for eCommerce interface, to ask for the credit card security code printed on the front or back of the card during checkout. Although it’s better to have as few clicks and steps necessary to complete checkout, this step can help weed out fraudulent activity. Having your system prompt a user to enter their 3 or 4 digit security code helps ensure that the user has the physical card in their hand and is not a stolen number.

It seems like a no-brainer, but make sure your site is secure. According to KISSmetrics, this means checking to see if all of the checkout URLs stay in “https” during checkout (the “s” stands for secure). Update your passwords on a regular basis and make sure they contain a mix of letters and numbers.

For more information about how you can make sure your eCommerce operation is protected, please call your pcAmerica sales representative at 1-800-722-6374.

Apple™ is known for not only manufacturing the world’s most technologically advanced devices, but for leveraging those devices in their retail stores to engage customers. The company’s brick-and-mortar retail stores broke revenue records in Q1, increased their revenue by 9 percent and reaching the $7 million mark – due in large part to mobile payments.

The record numbers

More than 114 consumers visited an Apple retail store this past October, November and December – which translates to nearly 21,000 per store per week, raking in an average of $16.7 million in revenue per store. Apple’s total revenue for Q1 was $57.6 billion, which was a 6 percent rise year over year and a record number for both the company and the technology industry.

“No technology company has ever generated that much revenue in a single quarter,” SVP, CFO Peter Oppenheimer said of the record sales.

The reason behind them

Apple retail stores’ surge in brick-and-mortar sales was due to record-breaking iPhone® and iPad® sales. The company’s Touch ID software has revolutionized the way their customers make in-store purchases. The software, which is standard on the latest iPhone, allows users to authenticate purchases on their iOS device with their thumbprint to ensure the security of their device and the verification of their payment.

When discussing the company’s Q1 earnings, CEO Tim Cook said that mobile payments is an area that Apple has been “intrigued with” and that interest was their reasoning behind leveraging the Touch ID software.

“You can tell by looking at the demographics of our customers and the amount of commerce that goes through iOS devices versus the competition that (mobile payments are) a big opportunity on the platform,” Cook said.

Having garnered nearly $5 billion in revenue from iTunes purchases in Q1, the company is more than familiar with allowing iOS users to make purchases on their devices. Now, with the Touch ID software, Apple has the ability to turn the 400 million iPhones sold worldwide into mobile POS units – always in consumers’ pockets, ready to be used for seamless online and in-store retail purchases.

So as Apple makes its way into the mobile payment space, they are working toward creating a seamless omnichannel shopping experience that allows their customers to make convenient purchases in their preferred media. 

To gain insight into the customer habits of your restaurant or retail business, you can build a customer data base using your point of sale (POS) system. POS reporting features allow you to learn more about your customers to create more targeted marketing campaigns, spend less on customer retention and develop a strong sense of customer loyalty.

Learning more about your customers can help you in the following aspects:

1. Budget

Marketing is all about finding the smartest way to spend your advertising budget. Customer retention is similar to employee retention in that it is less expensive to keep an existing customer than to gain a new one. However, by learning more about your customers it can become cost-effective to do both. For example, you can use your POS software reporting features to determine the value of your existing customers and, therefore, determine how much you are willing to spend to earn a new customer.

2. Customer loyalty

Launching a customer loyalty program is a great way to build a customer database. When a customer signs up for your program, you can require that they offer information like their name, age, location and email address. You can store that information in your system and then use your POS to track their transaction using their card.

3. Marketing

One of the biggest advantages of building a customer data base is the ability to create more targeted marketing campaigns. The more you know about your customers, the more successful your advertising will be.

Using your POS system, you can track the way they respond (via sales) to each of your advertising and promotional efforts and therefore gain insight into your most profitable marketing ventures. You can also discover how much of your business comes from new vs. repeat customers.

You can also segment your customer database by location or demographics to create promotions for specific areas or age groups, etc. For example, you can target your younger customer base with prom season promotions. The locations and groups that garner the best response will be the most profitable segments of your customer base. These same ideas can be applied to email marketing, if that is part of your marketing efforts.

Stop taking shots in the dark – use your POS system to build a customer database and learn more about your customers, allowing you to make better business decisions.

As of January 1, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will classify automatic gratuities as non-tip wages that are subject to tax withholdings. Because of this ruling, restaurants are rethinking including automatic gratuities on certain bills – or seeking easier ways to document wages and calculate payroll.

As per the IRS’ Topic 761 (Withholding and Reporting), service charges added to a bill by the employer that the customer must pay – often called automatic gratuities – will constitute non-tip wages. These include large party charges, bottle service charges and mandated delivery charges. Non-tip wages are subject to social security tax, Medicare tax and federal income tax withholding. Therefore, restaurants cannot use automatic gratuities when computing the credit available to their employees.

What this means for your restaurant

Payroll: Using automatic gratuities makes more work for restaurant managers, as it complicates payroll calculations. Restaurants that use these “non-tip wages” will be required to adjust the gross salary earned during each pay period to include these automatic gratuities.

Taxes: And as employee wages increase – as a result of adjusted gross salaries – their taxes increase as does their employers’ tax liability. Employees who receive a large amount of automatic gratuities will have higher social security contributions, for example. Employees are likely to be unhappy about this.

Satisfaction: Automatic gratuities can cause problems for both customers and employees, making them dissatisfied with their experience or job. Customers may not find it fair that they have to pay an added amount on their bill, especially if the service did not meet their expectations. And employees could be frustrated with the fact that they have to wait until their next paycheck to collect their earnings.

How to keep in compliance

There are a two ways to remain compliant with IRS standards:

1. Stop charging automatic gratuities of any kind.
2. Automatically include automatic gratuities in payroll calculations using an advanced restaurant POS system.

These two solutions can solve the problem without wasting additional time or money on payroll or reporting. Tracking “non-tip” wages manually is not an option for smart restaurants, as it will decrease productivity and increase unnecessary costs.

Bonus tip: Restaurant receipts can include suggested tip amounts (15% or 20% of the total bill) to motivate customers to leave a desirable amount, rather than demanding it.

Whichever you choose, communicate these changes with your restaurant staff. Make sure they understand that the restaurant is enforcing these changes to keep in compliance with the IRS and not to effect employee pay.

After you have purchased a new system – or in the years leading up to your next upgrade – it is extremely important to follow the necessary steps to ensure that you are getting as much value out of it as possible. After all, it is the center of all of your daily tasks and transactions. And in the mean time, why not gain business benefits such as improved productivity and increased products?

Here are four tips to getting the most bang for your buck:

1.       Save reports you use often

When you’re a restaurant or retail manager, every minute of your time is precious. Instead of taking the time to regularly create new reports, save a set of “go-to” reports you will need to view each day or week to save time.

2.       Keep hardware up-to-date

When your POS system is old or out of date, it disrupts your workflow and slows down your operations. And POS technology is constantly improving. To keep current and running smoothly, create an upgrade schedule to ensure that your system maintains the recommended requirements for the best performance.

Your vendor can make recommendations for maintenance packages or upgrades, as well as alert you as new add-on software modules or POS peripherals become available.

3.       Keep keyboards and screens organized

To keep the checkout process running quickly and smoothly, make sure employees can easily access popular and promotional items. Clean out any old or unused pay screen options to cut down on confusion during checkout. This will provide value in a few ways:

• Training new employees will be easier and quicker, saving you both time and money on labor, as well as eliminating future mistakes.
• Employees can check out customers with one touch of a button, as opposed to flipping through several screens or trying several different buttons before finding the right one.

4.       Implement a mobile POS solution

Mobile POS gives retail and restaurant employees the ability to make more sales in more places. They can bust lines, split checks and process credit card payments on the go.

This added functionality allows them to:

• Streamline service and increase customer throughput
• Take advantage of upselling and cross-selling opportunities
• Improve customer service by reduce wait times

And you won’t have to worry about it interfering with your existing POS system – mobile orders can be instantly and seamlessly synchronized.

Happy saving!

Over the past few months, there have been a series of attacks on US retailers – most notably Target and Neiman Marcus – that were linked to malware in retail point of sale (POS) systems.

Customers expressed extreme concern when Target recently revealed that hackers had stolen 70 million of the retail company’s customer names, mailing address, phone numbers, email address and payment card data – a number much higher than the 40 million the company initially reported in December. Neiman Marcus’ customer database was also hacked in December, but did not reveal how many customers the breach affected.

Although experts have not confirmed that the two security breaches are linked, people have speculated that they could have been performed by the same hackers because they occurred around the same time. According to Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel, the company is still investigating these hacks.

“What we do know is that there was malware installed on our point of sale registers. That much we have established,” Steinhafel said in an interview with CNBC. “We have removed that malware so that we could provide a safe and secure shopping environment.”

According to Reuters, there has also been speculation that several other retailers were hit by hacks during the holidays. Although they have not come forward yet, at least three other well-known US retailers experienced security breaches that were performed using similar methods as those at Target. Sources say the security breaches occurred in outlets and malls.

Although Target has not revealed how the hackers breached its security system, Reuters sources suspect a sophisticated class of malware – known as RAM scrapers – designed to steal payment data from POS systems.

The loss of payment card data in these attacks inspired calls for companies to review their compliance with the Payment Card Industry data security standards, which require encryption of sensitive payment data when it is transmitted, received or stored. However, RAM scrapers are built to bypass the encryption methods encouraged by these standards. Payment data is decrypted in the POS system RAM for processing, which is where the “scraper” strikes.

To block these malware attacks, the US-CERT recommends:

1. Use strong passwords to access POS devices
2. Keep POS software up to date
3. Use firewalls to isolate the POS production network from other networks or the Internet
4. Use antivirus tools
5. Limit access to the Internet from the production network
6. Disable all remote access to POS systems

Amazon.com is developing a Kindle-based point of sale (POS) service for brick-and-mortar retailers to be released as soon as this summer.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon plans to give Kindles and credit card readers to merchants, as well as offer them website development and analysis tools. The company will also utilize technology gained in last year’s acquisition of GoPago, a startup that offered checkout systems linked to a smartphone app.

The Wall Street Journal reported that, to gain interest in their Kindle solution, Amazon has considered allowing merchants to offer promotions or discounts through their site in its local daily deals offers. The company is also considering creating a “mobile wallet” that would store card information to make payments even quicker and easier.

In addition to competing with POS systems, Amazon is developing peer-to-peer (P2P) payment solution that bypasses banks and other payment networks, making them a direct competitor of PayPal and eBay. The P2P payment system will most likely include both mobile and cloud-based components.

The company said the P2P solution is part of a bigger strategy to build “products and services which will delight billions of customers as they buy and sell things in the real world.”

It seems that manufacturers and vendors of state-of-the-art POS systems are not to worry, though. According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon is likely to direct their efforts toward smaller retailers because many of the largest physical retailers use complicated checkout systems that may be difficult or costly to give up.

It’s important that your POS system keeps your restaurant or retail store running smoothly, rather than disrupting your operations and displeasing your employees. Your system should not make the checkout process a difficult one or the training process a long one.

Here are three signs that your POS system is unreliable, and that it’s time to consider investing in a new one:

1. The checkout process can take several minutes and/or customers have complained about slow service.

Thirty seconds may not seem like a long time, but it can feel like forever during the checkout process. The customer should not have to wait thirty seconds or more for their debit or credit card to process or for their receipt to print. A slow checkout leads to slow-moving lines, which reflect poorly on your restaurant or retail store’s customer service skills, not to mention employee-customer relationships. Customers and employees alike can become frustrated with a slow checkout process, especially in fast-paced environments.

2. You training process can be lengthy and/or employees often have to ask for help with system errors.

Your touch screen interfaces should be easy for your employees use in both the training and checkout processes.  An organized, intuitive interface allows employees to do their job quickly and correctly, with minimal disruption to the flow of customers. Buttons should be easy to touch and select, without too much resistance or lag. For example, employees should not have to press hard on the interface to ring up an item and the screen should not lag for several seconds before registering a selection. Another clear sign is a screen that frequently freezes.

3. You often experience technical difficulties and/or payment processing errors.

When technical difficulties or errors occur, lines move much more slowly and customers can easily become frustrated or angry — especially when their debit or credit card is involved. Your customers should never have to worry whether or not their purchase went through or their credit card information is secure. For example, if credit cards are often declined, must be swiped several times to process correctly or card numbers must be manually entered, then your POS system is not reliable.

After Cyber Monday 2013, Baynote conducted its fourth Annual Holiday Online Shopping Survey. The survey, which was conducted among 1,000 respondents, revealed that shoppers want a streamlined shopping experience, clear and easy to navigate websites and the ability to integrate their in-store and online experiences (ie: buy online and return in-store or search a store’s inventory online and then buy in-store).

The possibilities of omni-channel retailing are practically limitless, so what should retailers be focusing on? The results of the survey, which were published by Multi-Merchant Channel, are clear.

• 62% of shoppers used their Smartphone to compare prices while shopping in store
• 60% of shoppers purchased the product online from Amazon or another competitor while in-store if the store refused to price match
• 61% used a mobile coupon during in-store checkout
• 74% took advantage of free shipping and online coupon codes
• 33% rated an easy-to-use online shopping cart as “very” or “extremely” important

For more information about how you can more effectively implement an omni-channel approach in your store, please contact your pcAmerica representative at 1-800-722-6374.