These apps will help run your retail business with ease

By on 31st October 2016


Running a successful retail operation can be a balancing act.  From ensuring you have enough stock to meet demand, yet not so much that storage costs are inefficient or too many unsold goods must be written off. To having enough staff on at the right times.

Keeping track of all of these details can get even more complicated. Especially when you consider about half of small businesses track inventory manually.  But with the right software, these tasks can be managed more effectively.

While most retailers understand the value of technology to increase speed and operational efficiency, many time-poor small business owners don’t know which are the right tools to choose.

Point of sale software is a great place to start

Manually tracking inventory not only takes a lot of time, but can be mistake prone too. However smart POS software can sync with your inventory management. So when you make a sale, your inventory will be updated automatically.  And if it’s cloud software you should be able to check in on on your stock levels, to get real-time insights from any device. So you’ll always know what you have in stock.

Good systems will also allow you to set up automatic ordering, for example when inventory drops below a pre-set level. It can also provide charts on the ebbs and flows of your inventory throughout the year – to help you predict how much you need and when.

Check out Vend. It’s one of the most popular retails tools in our App Marketplace and can help make POS and inventory management a breeze. Other popular POS apps include Square andShopify.

Make staff scheduling a breeze

Staff scheduling can suck up a lot of time –  as can tracking how many hours staff have worked and figuring out what they should get paid. Using the right apps can save hours of scheduling headaches, but can also  automatically track time and work out pay.

This is where an app like Deputy can help.  It even allows for staff clock on and off and check their schedules, all from their mobiles.

Bringing it all together

When these systems all talk to each other – it can mean huge efficiency gains . Stock, payroll and sales entries no longer have to be manually added into your accounting software – they can be be synced automatically. It means you can spend more time working on activities that grow your  business – and let the software do the heavy lifting when it comes to data entry.

This video  explains how Vend, Deputy and Xero all work together to streamline retails operations.

Head to the retail section of Xero’s App Marketplace for other time-saving tools to help you run your retail business beautifully.

Reference from Xero: https://www.xero.com/blog/2016

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