Thought Leadership
Studying The Science of Retail Since 1979
Upgrading to Windows 11? Read This First.
If you use any Windows 10 computer these days you and your staff may have recently noticed that the existing Windows 10 version you’re running has been recommending upgrading to Windows 11 in various windows update screens and pop-ups. If you want to update your personal devices that do not need to connect to your business systems, and your software and peripherals are all compatible, feel free to take advantage of the free upgrade if it’s offered for your machine. After all, the sooner you get familiar with it’s new features the better. BUT there are several reasons why you should NOT try to deploy it in your business right now – especially on anything running or connected to your POS system. Hardware Compatibility Issues To start, and likely going to be the most disappointing revelation regarding the new operating system, Microsoft has set a pretty high bar for the compatibility of Windows 11, requiring hardware to have the Secure Boot trusted platform chip and TPM 2.0 in the motherboard bios to function properly. It also requires two or more CPU cores, 4 gigabytes of RAM, 64 gigabytes of storage, and a DirectX compatible GPU. Many PCs simply say in the Windows update area whether or not the machine is capable of running Windows 11. That restriction aside, even if Windows 11 is able to successfully install on a machine, you may want to think twice before installing it on the mission critical POS system in your grocery, retail store or restaurant. Most POS technicians have not worked with Windows 11 enough yet to properly predict and advise as to whether or not you will like the experience once you have completed the upgrade. Peripheral Driver Compatibility Issues Even if your POS system hardware was designed and manufactured recently enough to support the new operating system, your POS peripherals like receipt printers, cash drawers, touch screens, scanners, and pole displays may not. Vertical market hardware providers like POS peripheral manufacturers are concerned about supporting the most recent stable version of an operating system, and so they tend to lag the market when developing and releasing new drivers while they wait for OS software developers to work out the bugs first. We often don’t see those drivers get released until after the first service pack from Microsoft or the operating system has proven itself over a year or two. Even Microsoft isn’t sure if everything you have will be compatible, and they warn you as the installation process begins, “Some features are not available in Windows 11. Certain app and features may have additional requirements. Check device specifications.” In the coming months, POS technicians will be testing new and existing peripherals with Windows 11 and will be documenting the necessary installation requirements, steps to properly install, and FAQs for common challenges, so stay tuned. POS Software Compatibility Once you have figured out whether or not all the hardware will support it, it is still necessary to confirm that your point of sale software will also be compatible with the new operating system. The truth is, many POS software products are not yet, and may not be for a while. POS software is complex and leverages features and functionality that just isn’t required for domestic and personal computer devices. Point of sale systems make use of redundancy systems, timers, graphics, user interfaces, and database technologies that often require very specific proprietary software that is designed to tap into capabilities in the operating and network systems. These often need to be updated or re-written by software developers and tested thoroughly prior to release. Once ready, they need to be tested in the field in live sites and thousands of transactions run through them to confirm their reliability, because in the world of POS few things are more important than stability. Challenges and oversights need to be patched and tested again, and once satisfied, only then can they be released. Unfortunately, this process takes time. Our advice? Be patient and wait until Windows 11 versions of your POS are announced for general release, no matter how tempting it may be right now to click that update button. Relax – There’s No Rush The good news is, Windows 11 is not necessary right now, so there is no need to rush the upgrade, and risk causing problems with your mission critical business and point of sale systems. Windows 10 will be supported by Microsoft until the end of 2025 (October 14, 2025). At that point, Windows 10, originally released July 29, 2015, will be over a decade old, which is only a few months less than Windows 7 was when it was retired. From the date of writing this article (February 25, 2022), you have 1326 days, or over 3 and a half years before it becomes an issue. You have plenty of time to prepare. Can I prevent Windows 10 from Upgrading? Yes. In Windows Settings you can select “Stay on Windows 10 for now” and it will stop pestering you – for now. If you are concerned about the update or that your staff may try to upgrade when you’re not looking just while trying to “help”, give our technicians a call and we can offer some solutions to protect your machines from updating. That being said, it’s important to communicate with your team and make sure they are aware that you do not want them to take it upon themselves to take those actions, because Microsoft can and does change their software regularly, so what we apply today may not still work months from now. As the sunset date on Windows 10 draws ever closer, Microsoft may employ additional new strategies and notifications in their update system to get people to upgrade to the new version. For more information about Windows 11, you can visit the official Microsoft Windows 11 page. Should you have any questions or require assistance, please call technical support.
Windows 7 End Of Life
Windows 7 EOL And What It Means For Your Point of Sale It is widely distributed public information that after a good 10 year run, Microsoft has scheduled the Windows 7 end of life (EOL) on January 14th, 2020. In fact, many of you may already be receiving notifications on your computers from Microsoft informing you that the “end is nigh” and providing a link to the Microsoft Windows 7 EOL page for more information. Although most people are aware of it, not everyone is one hundred percent sure what that means for them or what they should to do about it. Here at Armagh we thought we would compile our understanding and provide it in an organized way for merchants looking to better understand the ramifications it will have for their point of sale systems and their stores. Will My Windows 7 POS Terminal Stop Working After January 14th, 2020? Here’s what Windows 7 EOL means in a nutshell: After January 14th, 2020, Windows 7 will stop receiving feature updates, bug fixes, and security updates. So no, your Windows 7 machine will not immediately stop working on January 15th. However, the lack of security updates are a concern. A direct quote from their website reads: Why Do Windows Security Updates Matter on My Cash Register? Once again, the Microsoft Windows 7 EOL site reads: Windows security updates are very important for any computers and computer-based point of sale terminals (your cash registers) connected to your network and the internet that maintain data you wish to protect, such as sales data, accounting data, gift card data, credit card and debit card data, employee data, or customer data. It is at all times the responsibility of the merchant to understand and maintain their security, and software updates are included in that obligation. How Do I Know If I Am Running Windows 7? You can find the operating system version you’re running in the “System Properties” of each machine. If you are unsure how to find this on ANY computer (yes, we mean any – security is important to us and we’re happy to help our merchants even if it isn’t a cash register), Armagh clients may contact Armagh Technical Support, and they will help you figure this out whether or not you have a support contract. How Do I Solve This? In this section we will identify three practical strategies to manage this upcoming challenge. Option 1: Upgrade The Operating System On more recently purchased POS equipment it is sometimes possible to upgrade a Windows 7 operating system (OS) to Windows 10. This could be the least expensive option for many merchants, IF the hardware is compatible with Windows 10, AND they have the time, patience, and opportunity to make upgrading viable. Some older POS hardware was built and designed before Windows 10 even existed, and so it’s not always possible. Even if it is “possible” it’s often not desirable, as the user experience is so slow or error prone, that it is unbearable for the merchant. Therefore, it’s important to understand the risks of upgrading operating systems on older hardware. Simply put, the results can’t be guaranteed, and Windows 10 licenses and labour are often not refundable if the end-performance is not what was expected. Even if the POS terminal is fully functional after an operating system upgrade, sometimes peripherals like receipt printers, scanners, rear displays, card swipes, payment devices, and cash drawers don’t operate properly, or their drivers are not fully compatible. With thousands of terminals to manage, ranging across a decade of installations, in diverse retail, restaurant, and grocery operations all across the country, used in dozens of different ways, it isn’t possible or reasonable to expect that a technician has had the time or opportunity to test every combination and permutation of a product 7 years in-market and discontinued for 4 years. Furthermore, downtime during the upgrade process is sometimes unavoidable. Back office database servers are often very difficult and costly to upgrade as the upgrade process can take several hours of backup, conversion, and testing, and many merchants are unwilling to invest that much money into old hardware if they will only upgrade 1 or 2 years down the road anyway. Option 2: Hardware Refreshment (Replacement) Although this is more costly up-front, it has the highest satisfaction level long term. Because it’s a full replacement with new equipment, everything works on a bench in the lab before it’s even brought to the merchant’s store, and technicians are in and out in no time at all. Within an hour an old terminal is replaced and a new terminal with double the RAM and 5-10 times the horsepower is fully functional in its place. As a result, there is little or no downtime on a system refresh. The benefits of new hardware are instantly noticeable, and the productivity improvements are worthwhile as both administrative tasks and customer service throughput are impacted immediately in a positive way. Armagh has a variety of current Windows 10 compatible point of sale hardware options available. Speak with your Armagh Account Manager to determine which of the many POS hardware configurations are right for your grocery, retail or restaurant operation. Option 3: Extended Support Updates Microsoft recently announced that they would be offering up to three years of extended support updates for Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 7 Professional operating systems on a paid-for basis with a new program called Extended Security Updates (ESU). Unlike previous after-life support options for Windows, the Windows 7 ESU updates will be available for purchase by any size merchant one in 1, 2 or 3 year blocks. The cost doubles each year it’s extended – let’s face it, Microsoft wants people off Windows 7. This can be a good solution for merchants needing to properly time their POS refresh investment or for people looking to remain in security compliance with PCI long enough to permanently replace equipment. If Microsoft Extended Support sounds great… Read More
Integrated Credit And Debit: Why Merchants Should Insist On It
One Feature Can Streamline The POS, Reduce Shrinkage and Theft, and Improve Manageability With Minimal Effort Have you noticed as you shop that nearly every multi-unit retail store operator or restaurant chain has integrated credit and debit? Ever wonder why? It’s because they’ve already done the math. They know that integrated credit and debit processing improves the transaction experience for both the customer and cashier, and reduces cost at the front end. In an era where everyone in business is talking about artificial intelligence and automation, integrated credit and debit is an automation tool for your store that requires zero effort and pays for itself on every single transaction. Here are the reasons why you should integrate credit and debit technology with your POS system. Streamline The POS Transaction Take a good look at your point of purchase. If it looks like a yard sale and or the transactions are clunky and slow, the bad news is, that’s how it looks to your consumers as well. In the retail and restaurant trade, image and wait times are important, and the cash register checkout is usually the first and last thing they either “endure” or “enjoy” when they enter your store. This impacts the trust that your customer has with your retail store or restaurant. One of the fastest and easiest ways to make your front-end POS experience more professional is to automate the credit and debit transactions with the POS. Integrated transactions speed up and make the payment process uniformly the same each and every time, no matter how experienced the cashier is. Because the transactions are faster and easier, it’s not only easier to train customers to pay, it’s easier to train cashiers to efficiently cash-out your customers! Control Human Error The opposite of integrated credit and debit is separate credit and debit, right? That means after your cashier rings everything up in the cash register, they must then also enter the transaction total after tax manually into the payment device. To err is human, and that portion of human entry is prone to mistakes, especially during the attention “trough” of 2 o’clock to 4 o’clock in the afternoon. These are called, “Transposition Errors”. The act of copying the total from the cash register to the credit and debit machine is where the loss of revenue and customer trust happens regularly. These are honest mistakes to be sure, but that’s irrelevant to your profitability. The credit and debit machine has a fixed decimal entry system, so if you miss one digit, you miss either a tens or a hundreds column, and those mistakes can accumulate and cost your business thousands of dollars a year. Under-keying just one digit could incorrectly result in $ 45.16 doing a transaction on someone’s credit card for $ 4.51 for example. That’s a loss of $40.65 on a single customer, plus the product that they walked out the door with for four bucks! The total loss in this example is now $60-80 bucks! On the flipside, if they over-key the transaction (in other words they accidentally enter too many digits) the fixed decimal system takes too much money from your client. For example, that same $ 45.16 transaction when manually keyed into a credit and debit machine could end up costing your customer $ 451.60! How much trust do you think you’ll gain with your customer when your staff over charge them at the point of sale? Improve Reporting and Accountability Integrated credit and debit transactions are automatically connected to receipt numbers, and receipt numbers are connected to credit card authorization numbers. All of them are tied to times and dates, cashier names, cash register numbers, customer loyalty information, payment type, and even the products on the receipt. All of which can be cross referenced in the reporting system in the point of sale. All of which is possible in a PCI compliant way, without sacrificing card data security, because when done right, no payment card data (the data required to complete a transaction) is present in the point of sale. Just the circumstantial evidence required to prove the transaction information and provide proper customer service. When a transaction error happens how easy is it to track down what happened and who did it? If it involves a ladder to get at cardboard boxes, files, and a couple employees sifting through small pieces of paper for a couple of hours, you have already failed. Integrating credit and debit into the point of sale system eliminate this circus and makes things much easier to track down when necessary. Reduce Labour Cost Let’s face it, your lifestyle matters. You have a family and you have a life of your own. Spending hours on end in the store either at the crack of dawn or in the middle of the night trying to make heads or tails of mismatched transactions doing employee cash-outs or reconciliations is not a path to a better standard of living, nor will it do much for your sanity. With improved reporting and accountability, managers and cashiers benefit enormously from improved management capability. When credit and debit (and even gift card) is integrated, Visa, Mastercard and Debit transactions are penny accurate. Once you understand this, you realize that you’re not having to micromanage the cash-out process or add up every slip when doing reconciliation. Instead, it’s more of a review process, and you’re looking for process discrepancies rather than trying to hunt around for your money. Once you understand how it works, you’re paying more attention to the thing that matters – cash. Cash is a negotiable tender, which means it’s often miscounted, counterfeited, lost, stolen, it’s dirty, and must be deposited. Once you understand the control and management ease of electronic tenders, you realize that today, Cash is no longer King. Prevent Fraud & Theft Separate credit and debit terminals allow your staff to accept electronic payments, sure, and they’ll even give you a report. They do NOT however, require them… Read More
POS Systems And Risk Management
Is your POS prepared for the perfect storm? The #TorontoFlood last night seemed to have caught everyone by surprise. Especially folks in West Toronto! Power was knocked out to over 1 million customers and a major communications hub at 151 Front Street was under water affecting phone systems and internet causing a variety of communications problems all over Southern Ontario. To add insult to injury, an outage of banking debit services seems to have been related to the flooding of communications systems in Toronto, which affected thousands of merchants across the Province. As most of our POS clients are using integrated credit and debit with their point of sale systems, they immediately started calling Armagh to report that their POS transactions weren’t going through. Naturally, they couldn’t get through due to telephone outages, and the problem snowballed from there. In conversations with customers this morning, I have been reminding them that they need to be prepared with backup solutions in the event that their systems fail. In this case, their systems did NOT fail – it was the infrastructure that those systems rely on that failed. In either case, they need to be prepared. System failures, for any reason, and as rare they may be are inevitable. For retail store and restaurant owners, the events in Toronto are an important reminder of how critical these systems are to the way we live our lives and operate our businesses. Another important lesson is how interconnected these systems are to our operations and to each other. Who would have thought that a single minor flooding incident on a street three cities away could directly affect your POS systems? This begs the question, are you ready for a major systems outage? This question reminds me of an article I read that quoted a 2005 study that surveyed 1200 businesses and reported that 33% of businesses had no continuity plan in place (in my experience it’s far more than that), and that 93% of businesses that lose their critical systems data for 10 days or more declare bankruptcy within a year of the event. The topic of risk management and continuity planning looms large over most business managers and seems like it’s an impossible project to tackle – causing most managers to stick their head in the sand – but it doesn’t have to be. It just requires planning – as I have always said, failure to plan is planning to fail. An evaluation of risk and disaster recovery for mission critical systems like POS systems – basically revolves around three major areas: 1. Critical System and Vulnerability Identification The way to avoid an unforeseen disaster is to foresee it. Retail store and restaurant owners need to determine the most important systems – such as the point of sale system, phone system, network and internet connectivity, and determine their vulnerabilities. Electrical power could go out, internet may go down, power surges may damage critical systems, hardware may fail, and phone lines may stop working. 2. Prevention Planning Once you know where your weaknesses are, how can you prevent them from being realized? Is your plan proactive or reactive? When disaster does strike, will you be ready to mitigate the damage to your business? Do you have battery backups on your POS system that work? Surge protectors that haven’t already been damaged by surges? When your DSL internet goes down, do you have a cellular internet failover setup so you can keep pumping the transactions through even if Bell or Rogers is down? Failing that, do you know where your credit card slips and credit card imprinter is if you have to go manual? Does your main system have RAID hard drive protection? Do you have a backup of your critical POS databases, documents, and files? What if the building burned down? Do you have an offsite backup of your data? Are your people informed and trained on what to do in the event of a systems failure? If all else fails, are you prepared with the right business insurance? Will your insurance cover the sort of failures you foresee? Do you have business interruption insurance that will cover income loss in the event that a major disaster caused the business to lose income? 3. Recovery Planning So you have the prevention and backups in place. Great. Do you know what to do with them? Have you tested them? Will they work when you need them? Do you have all the necessary file locations and passwords prepared and procedures documented so that anyone, specifically your managers and service providers could easily follow those instructions and get your POS back up and running with minimal downtime? Better yet, will your team be able to do it on their own? Remember, in a real disaster your service providers may be overwhelmed with the sheer volume of calls and requests for service. As important as we like to think we are, I’m pretty certain we’re not the hydro or telephone company’s only customer – it might take a while for them to get to you. If this process sounds like it could cost you time and money to complete, you’re right, it can. If you’re wondering if it’s worth it, well, that depends on how much money you can afford to lose if a major disaster was to befall your company and affect your major systems. Sometimes this backup and recovery stuff can be expensive, so how much time should you spend on it and how much money should you spend? The practical answer is that your disaster prevention, backup and recovery systems should be proportional to the amount of loss you would be likely to incur in the event that a major systems failure were to occur. How much tolerance for failure do you have? Can you imagine running your store or restaurant without your information systems? What if your point of sale system was down? What if you couldn’t process a credit card? What if… Read More
POS Penny Pinching – The Death Of The Canadian Penny
How The Elimination Of The Canadian Penny Will Affect You At The Point Of Sale Today marks the death of the Canadian penny. Soon to be eliminated at the POS. Born in 1876, at the ripe old age of 137 years old, the iconic Canadian penny with its maple leaves and Queen’s Head has been euthanized by the Canadian government and will eventually fade out of our national identity. Not enough to even buy penny-candy anymore but occasionally worth more than an American penny, we say goodbye to the familiar copper coin. Why? Manufacturing the penny is too expensive apparently. Each penny costs the government 1.6 cents to produce. It is estimated that the government will save approximately $11 million per year in not producing pennies. This may seem like a lot of money on its own, but when compared to a $300 billion annual budget, $11 million seems like a drop in the bucket. When you factor in what it will cost the government to collect and recycle the pennies, they are only expected to net about $4 million a year in savings over the next 6 years. By any definition this is definitely a long-term cost cutting measure that will have little or no impact on the national budget, tax payers or consumers. That’s all fine and dandy, but how will it affect you, the merchant, at the POS? Retail and restaurant merchants have been suspicious – and rightly so – of some of the information being reported in the press about how much will be saved and how easy it will be for them to make the change. The government and the media alike just don’t seem to be able to comprehend the evolving challenge of customer service and POS transactions – very little of their coverage of the issue seems to be relevant to the perspective of the retailer or restaurant owner. So here is what you need to know about the end of the Canadian penny and how it will impact you – the Canadian Merchant. Pennies will be around for a while. The Royal Canadian Mint will stop distributing pennies – stop sending them to Canadian banks – today – on February 4th, 2013. That sounds ominous, but there are 35 billion pennies in circulation. Even if banks start vacuuming them up out of circulation immediately and ship them directly to the Canadian Mint to be destroyed, it’s going to be some time before they don’t exist at the POS. I’m also not certain what the banks will do with the pennies when they receive them. Although the Canadian Mint will not issue pennies to the banks, banks are not required to redeem pennies with the Mint. Merchants are worried that they will go to the bank after February 4th and not be able to get pennies. Bank tellers that I have asked have not known what will happen after February 4th, and I have not seen any documentation of the plans of the 5 major banks regarding the penny, nor is there any requirement in the legislation requiring banks to turn them in to the government. I think that if the banks have the pennies they will issue them. On February 5th I’m going to go to the bank to buy a roll of pennies and we’ll find out. Stay tuned. Should we accept pennies at the POS after February 4th? Absolutely. The penny will be legal tender in Canada indefinitely – a fancy word meaning, forever. Canadians should be very familiar with the government eliminating currency from circulation. Back in 1989 we eliminated the Canadian one dollar bill, and then again in 1996 we eliminated the two dollar bill. It’s now 2013 and we can still can take those bills to the bank and redeem them for a looney or a twoney. Have no fear, the Canadian penny will always be worth a penny at the POS in Canada – period. Should we give out pennies at the POS after February 4th? If you have them to give – sure. Why not? They are and will continue to be legal tender. Your customers can take them to the bank and turn them in for 1 penny worth of value. As long as you can get them and give them, you can use them at the POS. What do we do when there’s no penny to use at the POS? The Canadian government has proposed that retail and restaurant operations should be rounding off to the nearest nickel in a fair, consistent and transparent way at the POS. This leaves lots of room for interpretation. What has been the general consensus is that retail and restaurant operations will round to the nearest nickel – if the transaction ends in 1, 2, 6 or 7 they will round down, and if the transaction ends in 3, 4, 8, or 9 they will round up. You should also round refunds in the same manner. Do we round off all transactions at the POS? No. Only the change due on cash POS transactions is subject to rounding. The penny is and will remain the smallest denomination in currency in Canada; there just won’t be any cash pennies anymore. That means that all transactions paid by cheques, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Gift Cards and Debit will not need to be rounded. If you’re rounding off electronic payments and cheques – you’re doing it wrong. Should I round off all my prices to the nearest nickel? No. I have heard of people doing this, and it is unlikely to be a good strategy. When tax is calculated on a transaction at the POS the result is random depending on how many items you have in the transaction. Are there some businesses that can modify their pricing to avoid losing pennies? I have no doubt that there are, but those businesses need to consider the ramifications of customer perception of a price change made in concert with the… Read More
Is Your POS Ready For Black Friday?
The Link between POS Throughput and Sales It’s Black Friday tomorrow! Now I know, Black Friday is the huge shopping day after Thanksgiving in the US (and seems to be gaining popularity here in Canada), but it’s so much more. That retailers and restaurant owners often don’t understand the greater importance of this day is more than a little surprising. Whether it is Canadian or American, the symbolism of Black Friday for retailers and restaurant owners needs to be clearly understood. In addition to being a big shopping day for brick and mortar stores and online retailers alike, Black Friday is the date that accountants say retailers stop being in the “red” for the year and begin making a profit – or are in the “black”. That retailers operate for 11 months of the year at a financial loss is a mind blowing concept that many people have a hard time coming to grips with. Black is Good Black Friday seems like such an ominous term. Too bad it can’t be Green Friday… it sounds nicer, and more like money… but we Canadians don’t have green money… Oh well. Black Friday it is and we should be glad for it. If nothing else it’s a date on the calendar which seems to give us permission to pull out the garland, play carols over the loudspeakers, and start those Christmas promotions rolling. It gets customers excited about the Christmas season, even if they’re not quite ready yet. So it’s a calendar date you should mark every year as an important reminder of your need for POS Readiness. What is POS Readiness, you ask? Have you taken the required steps to review your POS and make any necessary improvements and do the proactive maintenance on your point of sale system to ensure your Christmas season hums along profitably? Let me put it another way: If your profit for the year is earned over the next 4 weeks, it means that customers are going to spend more money over the next 4 weeks than they have all year. Ideally, you want them to spend a lot of that cash with you. Are you ready to take advantage of it? Remember, failing to plan is planning to fail. Do NOT Make Customers Wait I can’t stand waiting to spend my money. In fact, I won’t. I have too much to do, too little time to do it, and zero tolerance for wasting time being made to wait for a retailer. If I walk into your store or restaurant and see a line-up I may turn around at the door. If I don’t turn around and end up in your checkout line, during my idle time waiting I start thinking about what is not being done while I’m waiting or what I have to do next. Make me wait too much longer, and if I don’t really need or want the item you’re selling me, or I think I can pick it up more conveniently somewhere else, I’m gone. This is death for a retailer. If I happen to find it at the next place easier, faster, and it’s cheaper or better, I’m probably gone forever. I’m not alone in this behavior. A recent retail time survey done by Great Clips, a Hair Salon chain, recently determined that your customers are not willing to wait long either – 5-10 minutes or less is considered reasonable by 94% of respondents. Any longer than that and they think your business is poorly run, or worse, that you don’t care about their business. Long wait times was ranked 2nd by those surveyed as the thing that annoyed them most – it was a close second behind “rude staff” which was ranked number one. Study Your Lines Take an honest assessment of your lines – if you haven’t opened your retail store or restaurant yet, look at the lines in the stores of your peers, and by lines, I mean the line-ups at the point-of-sale terminals or cash registers. Are they long? Are they too long? Get a stopwatch out if you have to. Do customers have to wait longer than 5 minutes to spend their money with you? To solve this you need to take a good hard look at your point-of-sale system. Do you have enough POS terminals to serve your customers at the busiest times of your year? In my experience the answer is no. That’s because most retailers tend to say the same thing when investing in point-of-sale, “We’re not that busy Monday to Friday, we really just need it for Saturdays,” or my seasonal favorite, “We’re only open from this date to that date, we really don’t need it during the rest of the year.” If there was ever a formula for retail or hospitality failure, that most assuredly is it. Most people buy their cash registers for the first 11 months of the year – and they think they can coast on what’s “satisfactory” for the most crucial periods of sales. You can’t. Not if you want your business to thrive over the long-term and have a loyal customer following. Let me put it another way. If you wanted to move a pile of something from the front of your store to the back of your store, would you get it there faster and easier if I gave you one wheelbarrow or two? Now think of your POS system – your cash register – as your financial wheelbarrow, and you need it to carry the money of your customers from their pocket to your pocket. It’s mission critical – you can’t do it effectively or efficiently without it. It’s one of the simplest principles in retail – the more POS you have, the more money you make. You will find that more POS terminals increase your non-Christmas sales too. Why? If you’re a restaurant your table turns happen faster due to the increased efficiency and redundancy, so your customers are more likely… Read More