Retail management software isn’t a new invention, but you might be wondering if it’s worth your time. Let’s look at who can benefit from retail management software.
Software tools and apps play a much larger role in the success of small businesses than they did even five years ago. Experienced entrepreneurs know the advantages that technology gives to them. There’s no better way to streamline operations, grow revenue, and manage day-to-day business.

But if you’re a first-time store owner or a little reluctant to trust technology, retail management software and its benefits might be foreign to you. But that doesn’t have to be the case.

What is Retail Management Software?
It should come as no surprise that retail management software is exactly what it sounds like: software for managing the operations and business processes of a retail store. In fact, you might have even heard of it before, just under another name. It’s common to call retail management software point of sale (POS) software or a POS system.

This popular category of software features dozens of vendors, and there’s often significant overlap in terms of capabilities. Of course, feature lists will vary between vendors, but there’s a common set of tools that almost all offer. Looking at these tools is the best way to understand the benefits you can expect and decide whether or not a POS or a retail management solution is right for your business.

Key Benefits of Retail Management Software
There are several major categories of tools that most retail management software vendors will offer. Let’s take a look at each of them to help you better understand the value they can drive for your business.

A More Efficient Checkout with Register Tools
This is what most merchants will think of first when they hear “point of sale.” It’s the software and hardware that function as a replacement for a traditional cash register. In the past, a POS register would run on either a desktop computer, a large proprietary touchscreen device or some combination of the two. Today’s modern POS systems have evolved significantly to now run on iPad and Android tablets.

The main benefits you can expect from using a modern POS register versus a traditional electronic register, or even a traditional POS system, are faster transactions, greater accuracy, and better overall ease of use.

A modern POS can deliver these benefits because they have colorful and easy to use interfaces that simplify the transaction process for both the cashier and the customer. Usually, there are multiple ways to add an item to an order (on-screen buttons, searching, barcode scanner) versus manually looking up the price or item code and typing it in. Modern retail management software is also compatible with the latest and greatest payments hardware, which ensures your customers can pay with their preferred method.

A Streamlined Inventory Management Process with Inventory Control Tools
Any retail management software or point of sale software worth its salt is going to feature robust inventory management tools. As you might guess, these tools help you track, organize, and generally manage your inventory. What does that mean in practice?

Whether you sell a few dozen products or a few thousand, staying on top of your inventory (quantity, performance, cost, etc.) is critical to keeping your cash flow in-check and your business on track. Inventory management tools help simplify this process by:

Automatically updating quantities when items are sold.
Alerting you to reorder items when you’re running low on stock.
Tracking costs and profit margins on a per item basis so you can stay profitable.
Keeping you informed with real-time inventory data at the click of a button.

Not only do these tools benefit your business by helping you complete essential inventory management tasks, but they also help you complete them far more efficiently. The alternative to built-in inventory management tools is trying to manage inventory through some combination of spreadsheets, pen and paper, or some other manual process. Instead of spending hours on inventory management each week, what about minutes? Think about what you could do with all of that extra time.

By: RYAN GILMORE