How to find a good EPOS system: Top 10 features to look for

An integrated EPOS system can deliver a wealth of benefits to your business to ensure you're operating efficiently and effectively. But you can only reap the benefit of an EPOS system if the solution you choose can deliver all the functionality you need to improve the operations of your trade counter.

Here are the top 10 features of a good EPOS system to look out for:

Haggle features

To increase sales opportunities, your trade counter staff sometimes need the ability to haggle with the customer to close the sale. Without haggle functionality, employees won't know the minimum selling costs for products and may lose money on a sale or are unable to close the sale. Choose an EPOS system with a margin control feature so your employees can confidently close sales.

Special customer pricing

Your existing customers need to know they can receive the same service no matter how they shop with you, which is why having access to special customer pricing is key when processing trade counter orders.

Stock visibility

If your EPOS system isn't fully integrated to give you live, up to date stock levels then it'll create you unwanted stress trying to keep on top of your stock levels and purchasing. Having accurate stock data will help with cash flow, purchasing and customer service, which in turn will influence your bottom line.  

Multi depot control

Stock visibility is key, especially across multi depots. A good EPOS system will show you not only what you have in your warehouse but also what's available at your other stores or warehouse locations so you can effectively transfer and hold stock company wide.

Up-sell & cross-sell opportunities

Much like the haggle functionality, having the ability to up-sell and cross-sell related products will enable your trade counter staff to increase order values and close sales. Your EPOS system should be intuitive and offer like for like products, current promotional deals or products that are often sold together to help your team deliver quality customer service whilst improving the bottom line.

Trade & retail purchases

Your EPOS solution needs to be able to effectively handle both trade and retail custom. Visibility of your customers' accounts, pricing and history is just as important as being able to take one-off cash or card purchases without the hassle of setting up accounts and creating invoices.

Trade counter specific interface

Many integrated EPOS systems don't have a specific trade counter interface and use the same, often complicated, sales order screen as the ERP provides. Deliver rapid and effective order entry and choose an EPOS solution with a user friendly, quick and simple interface.

Visibility of accounts

Accessing customer accounts, their order history and special pricing is key to delivering personalised customer service. Accessing customer accounts from the centralised database also removes the need to duplicate order entry and means tasks can be completed once and managed from the same system to improve productivity and create a seamless order management flow.

Credit check

To keep control of the finances it's important for your sales team to know the behaviours of the customers, but that's impossible to do from just memory. Having a credit check warning on the trade counter EPOS highlights when a customer is on hold, overdue or ok to process so any team member can be confident in the sale they process, and the visibility of the data means all departments are working from the same information.

Reporting

To maximise potential and unlock hidden sales opportunities, accurate data and clear up to date reports are the only way to highlight successes and set goals for improvements. The sales and company reports that you draw from your ERP should be the same as the ones you can review for your trade counter so you can continually optimise and improve your trade counter's performance.