What You Need in Today's Point of Sale Equipment for a Convenience Store

Your point of sale or POS equipment may not seem very important since it doesn't actually draw in customers to your convenience store, but it can help you conduct business more easily every day. It can also save you time and even increase sales overall. If you're in the market for a new POS system, note a few things to consider in today's equipment for a convenience store that can help your business in a variety of ways.

Receipt, or not 

Offering your customers a receipt is good even for convenience stores, as customers often pay with their debit or credit cards and may forget to enter their purchases in their checkbooks without that receipt. However, for your own POS system, consider if you need a receipt with each sale. Convenience stores that sell small and cheap items like soda or donuts may find that the majority of their customers actually don't want a receipt when they're offered the option of not having one. In turn, being able to switch off the receipt printer or print out a receipt only when requested can save you quite a bit of money on paper and ink over the years. It can also reduce the risk of a receipt roll being jammed in your register, causing delays at the counter.

Handheld scanners

Your POS system should always include a handheld scanner, even for a convenience store. Customers with items that cannot fit under or over a scanner on a counter can then easily be scanned with the handheld devices, making shopping easier on customers and your cashiers as well. This can also be good for clumsy items that shouldn't be put on a counter to be scanned, such as drippy bags of ice or propane tanks and the like.

Sales reminders

Your cashiers might increase sales if they mention certain items to customers when they're at the register, but they may easily forget to do this every day. A POS system might have an alert that you can program yourself; this might include telling the cashiers what to say or what to offer, or even having a button on the screen that cashiers need to push to note that they asked customers if they wanted certain items along with their purchases. In turn, you may find that customers have more impulse buys and items are more readily sold at the register when cashiers have this personal reminder in front of them.