In this post, we want to share an update on some great new features just released in our Feb-2021 Product Release, and to take a moment to thank you for being a member of the SalesVu community  Please let us know your feedback on any of the features we listed below, or how we can help out with any of them.

New Reports and features help maximize salon and spa efficiency

If you own an appointment-based business, we’re sure you’ll agree the efficiency of your salon business is critical to your success. It’s challenging to run a successful salon or spa without placing focus on optimizing your resources to achieve maximum potential. Tracking metrics like the average number of clients each stylist sees in a day can identify opportunities to accommodate more clients per day. Similar insights apply to optimizing the utilization of physical space.

Two new reports help you measure and improve resource utilization. A third new report focuses on client retention–the bread and butter of any established business.

Store Utilization • Monitor service hours booked

This report shows the number of hours booked within a specific period of time. This information can help assess how close you are to operating at full capacity at each of your locations.  You can view the report by date range, or you can filter the results by Store, by Employee, or for a Custom Time Period.

To maximize efficiency, you can measure Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) such as how much of your salon’s booking potential is being realized.  A simple calculation like “Total Treatment Hours Available / Total Hours Sold.” would tell you what capacity was achieved compared to a goal or potential. You can then build a plan to move the metric closer to where you want as you make operational adjustments. 

Stylist Utilization • Track the number of clients a stylist services

Similar to store utilization, this report shows the number of clients each stylist serviced within a specific period. Once again, results can be filtered by Custom Date Range, or you can quickly view results for selecting Today, This Week or This Month. You may also filter by Store or by Employee.

For salons or spas, services performed by your staff are your primary source of revenue. So, understanding how many clients your stylists see in a given period is a critical fist step toward focusing on how to increase revenue. We hope this report will help.

Client Retention • Track New or Existing Client Retention

This report looks at how many first-time clients (clients with one visit) returned for a second visit within a given timeframe. The data can be shown for 30, 60 or 90 days. The report also shows returning customers (clients whose order history includes two or more visits.)

 

All this is about turning one-time clients into regulars. Studies have shown that repeat or loyal clients not only spend more, they’re also easier to sell to and refer friend more often. One report even found that repeat clients spend 120% more annually compared to new buyers.

Tip: SalesVu’s CRM and Loyalty programs can bolster your customer retention efforts, enabling you to target each segment with the right offers, perks and messaging to move them toward becoming repeat and loyal customer. Ask our sales team how they can help get these capabilities setup for your account.

Booking Accuracy • Select a stylist when booking appointments

When booking an appointment, the employee column will no longer have a default value. The service provider must be selected manually helping to ensure the right individual is selected for the service.

This change prevents scenarios where staff members sometimes book appointments with the incorrect staff member chosen rather than intentionally picking the actual service provider as a part of the process.

Booking Capacity •  Managing to maximum capacity settings

Due to COVID, some businesses are permitted only a certain number of guests at a time. This feature helps such businesses manage the to the requirement.

An example: A merchant creates a 1-hour time slot (12 PM-1 PM) and limits the capacity for that hour to ‘10’ guests. A customer books a reservation and sets the guest count to ‘3’. The system shows availability for 7 additional guests. A second customer then books a reservation for the same time slot and selects 2 guests. The system indicates 5’spots remain available.

Welcome • iZettle is now a payment processing option

If you want to use Welcome and iZettle, you’re in luck! They now work together seamlessly.

Learn more about using SalesVu with iZettle here.
See more SalesVu integrations here.

OrderUp • “Enter table number” • This text is now customizable

On our OrderUp app, there is an instruction shown to customers: “Enter your name and table number” That is good, except for some businesses that do not have table numbers. You can now customize the text accordingly.

Incoming • Modifier ‘modifications’ for faster, easier,  accurate orders

We made some changes to make modifiers easier and quicker to read on the Incoming app. They now display as a list rather than in sentence form,. The modifiers also appear ordered consistently. 

This makes orders more straightforward to read in a busy kitchen, with fewer errors, allowing faster service. It can also help with training staff on how to make an item.  A sandwich could be made in the order it is displayed on the Incoming app.

Orders • Delivery • An option for a specific drop-off location

A new setting enables merchants to ask for specific drop-off instructions. When the setting is enabled, customers can enter relevant drop-off instructions such as their preferred drop-off location.

Some examples might be: “Leave it on my front step,” “Please leave at the Front Desk.”

Web Portal • Persistent Filters •  Remembering your selected filters

Now, when opening or editing a Product from a filtered list view, we’ll now remember your selected filters when you click into a Product view, and return back to the listing.

For example, if your are editing a Product after having filtered down the list to view only a particular Vendor, when you complete your task, and return to the list view, your filters will be remembered. Previously, you would have to setup your filters again.

POS • Usability • Show full product description

On the POS app,  some product names were longer than usual and the app was not able display the full name of the product. This change is to address those cases by showing the full product name on the screen.

Sometimes products have similar names and the particular attributes of a product are described only in the last few characters of the product name, making it difficult for a store clerk to be sure that the correct item was selected. 

 

New Features Have Arrived

Based on your feedback, we have been working to help you increase sales, reduce costs, serve customers and manage operations better. We hope you find these additional features helpful.  Please contact us if you have any questions, or need help to take advantage of the new capabilities.

PICKUP & DELIVERY

Auto-assign table number or location via QR Code Scan

A small improvement has been made to the initial version of our contactless order and pay solution. Users are no longer required to input their table number after scanning a QR code located on their table. Once the code is scanned, the table number or location is automatically assigned to the order.

As a reminder, guests can view menus, place orders, and pay on their own devices without handling menus or payment devices—and without the assistance of waitstaff. Give your guests peace of mind as they order & pay from their own device, reducing perceived risk from server interactions or by handling a paper menu.

Holiday Hours for Pickup and Delivery

There is a new option to input holiday hours into the system. On holidays many business have either abbreviated hours or other exceptions to normal business
hours. Once holiday hours are setup, they will be reflected in the available hours for pick up or delivery orders.

Deliver My Order To My Seat Please

Guests attending an events at performance halls or multiplex venues can now order concessions from their mobile devices, and have their order delivered directly to their seat.

Open a Tab


Customers will now have the option of opening a tab using their stored credit card or by adding a card and then complete the checkout via the branded app.

INVENTORY

Inventory Management Areas

As well as aisle and shelf data, Inventory Management now allows you to define storage areas such as first-floor storage or basement storage.

 

REPORTS

Consolidated Weekly Report for All Locations

Merchants with lots of locations can now schedule and receive a consolidated weekly
sales report vs. separate reports for each location.

 

CUSTOMERS

Segment Customers by Location

For multi-location businesses such as franchises, individual sites are often run in a particular geography. When a location is having an event such as a grand opening or a winter, there is no need to invite customers from other states or countries. You can now manage customers by location and send marketing emails to just a single location’s customers. 

 

APPOINTMENTS

Prebook Appointments
 
For a salon or spa business, booking a new appointment is common when clients finish their engagement and checkout of the facility. For example, pet grooming businesses often perform services on a recurring basis. Now, personnel can rebook quickly and easily with a new Prebook button. With a new report coming in the pipeline, managers can monitor key metrics such the % of visits which include bookings for a customer’s next appointment.

Stay tuned. Additional new features and product improvements are just around the corner! Let us know what ideas you have to improve SalesVu.

 

 

SALESVU POS PRODUCT ENHANCEMENTS TO
CLOSEOUT  Q4’2020

Here is a summary of the latest SalesVu product features and improvements we launched recently based on your feedback. Please let us know your thoughts on these as well as other features you might want to see in upcoming releases.

PICKUP & DELIVERY

√    ASAP order-ahead option for Pickup & Delivery

We continue to make pickup and delivery as easy as possible for your customers and for you. Of course, online ordering takes away the need to call a restaurant and place an order during a busy lunch or dinner rush.

For some time now, we have had schedule-ahead pickup and prepay features available.
In our October release, we added Curbside Pickup as a new option, in addition to in-store pickup. When ordering ahead, customers choose a preferred pickup day and time for pickup.

We’ve now added an ASAP option. The feature is live for E-commerce as well as on Android apps. It can also be added to your iOS branded app once submitted and approved via the Apple App store.

Let us know if you’d like us to turn this option on for your site.

√    Chowly Delivery Integration | Ready for Beta Customers

We have implemented an integration with the delivery service, Chowly. We are ready for beta testers to begin using the service integration with SalesVu beginning in January.

If you are interested in being an early adopter of this delivery service, please contact our service or sales team.

√    QR Code Contactless Order & Payment | Coming in January

Diners want to be safe when they enjoy their favorite venues again. 

Now they can. QR-code ordering and payment enables a fully contactless dining experience.

• Restaurants and cafes place a table tent on each table.
• Diners scan a QR code with a smartphone and place their order.
• Checks remain open until diners are ready to call it a night.
• Diners pay from their smartphones without the need for a server.
• A receipt is provided via email or SMS.

If you are interested in putting this capability to work in your business, please reach out and let us know. We’ll be happy to get you set up beginning next month. Let our support team or your sales representative know, and we’ll get busy getting you up and running.

APPOINTMENTS

√    See Customer Notes at Time of Booking | Appointment Calendar

You can see customer notes taken when an appointment was scheduled. These could be special requests or essential preferences communicated by your client that you need to know when you provide the service. This can make all the difference between delivering a great experience and one which leaves your customer feeling unheard and angry..

√    Type-ahead search bar  | Appointment Calendar

Sometimes you just need to find what you’re looking for fast, especially when booking an appointment with a client in front of you or on the phone.
Some of our customers have long lists of products or services. They can now locate the service they want to book with a type-ahead search bar now available in the web portal. The search acts as a real-time filter as you type, helping you find the right thing in real-time. That means less stress for you and your staff and less wait time for your clients.

Coming soon to the Welcome app.

REPORTS

√   Add Employee Name in Close Out Report

Do you ever want to know who submitted a particular Close Out Report? You might like to know. Now you can see who it was. Well, not much more explanation is needed for this one. This small enhancement makes sense, so we added the information to this report.

RECEIPTS & CHECKOUT

√   Add QR Codes to Receipts as a Flexible CTA

Add QR codes to your receipts with flexible options on what happens. next. For example, you can ask your customers for feedback on their purchase experience, sign them up for a monthly newsletter, or enroll them in your loyalty program.

It’s easily setup and a great way to help customers provide valuable feedback or keep them coming back with engagement programs easily accessed. This feature will be available very soon in the POS app.

WEBSITE BUILDER

√   Show images for modifiers | Website builder sites

Depending on the type of products you sell online, they might differ significantly in size, shape, color, and so on. Now you can show customers what they are buying with modifier images you can add via Website Builder.

GIFT CARDS & COUPONS

√   Sell digital gift cards from E-commerce and generate a card number automatically

You can now sell digital gift cards online and have the card number generated automatically.

This feature will be in the POS app shortly.

√   Start Date added for Coupon Codes supports One-Day-only Coupons

You can enable a start and an end date associated with coupon codes. One way to make use of this could be to enable a coupon good for 24 hours. You can create a campaign that uses a Coupon Code to support a 48-hour weekend sale and more. Time-sensitive offers times tend to perform better than open-end ones, research and experience have shown.

INVENTORY

√    Get product expiration date notifications 

If you have perishable products in your inventory, you’d want to know about products nearing their expiration dates. Right? Now you can set up email alerts for products nearing expiration and also set the cadence of reminder notifications.

This feature will be available very soon in the POS app.

We wish you all a wonderful holiday season, and an a superb year in 2021.

 

If you have been frustrated by trying to get everything done this year to manage and grow your business, you’re not alone. COVID19 has certainly made this one of the most challenging years in our collective memory.

Today we share a number of improvements that we hope will help. Based on your feedback, we have been working to help our customers increase sales, save time and money, and manage operations more easily. We hope you find these additional features helpful.  

Please contact us if you have any questions, or need help to take advantage of the new capabilities.  We are, as always, ready to assist.

PICKUP & DELIVERY

COVID19 has forced many dining rooms to temporarily freeze operations while restaurant patrons, grocery shoppers, and retail customers are opting to order online and pick up in-store or curbside.

 √  Curbside Pickup

Connect online orders with the new curbside pickup option and provide customers a  COVID-safe and seamless order-to-pick up experience. This option will help keep orders and revenues flowing, while providing customers with a safe way of enjoying their favorite meal or products.

Curbside pickup can be added to delivery preferences.  Customers will be notified of when their order will be ready for pickup. When customers arrive they simply click the “I’m here” button and indicate their location so a server can easily deliver the order to their car.

 

√  Forms for Local Delivery

“I love filling out forms.“

– No One Ever

No one likes filling out forms. What’s worse is when the forms contain unnecessary fields. Some users will abandon their purchase when they feel it’s too cumbersome to complete.

For businesses such as grocers, who deliver orders locally, form fields such as city, state, and country can be set to auto-populate with default values. This result is less friction for users placing orders and, ultimately, more delivery orders submitted.

APPOINTMENTS

It is undoubtedly a good idea for appointment-based businesses to know anytime there’s an option to book more appointments. One of those opportunities occurs when customers decide to cancel an appointment. When they do, you and your team want to know about it as soon as possible. Now you can know immediately. SalesVu will send email notifications when clients cancel appointments so you can rebook with a walk-in or with someone on your waiting list. This should help to increase bookings and revenue.

GIFT CARDS

For multi-location businesses, such as franchises, individual sites are managed as separate entities. Accounting for Electronic Gift Cards is a part of the picture. Now merchants can easily link Electronic Gift Cards to a particular store or location. Gift Cards can now be viewed or exported by location.

INTEGRATIONS

For users of Zoho Books, integrating SalesVu and Zoho Books streamlines business data management and ensures complete consistency across systems. The SalesVu extension enables you to easily sync orders, payments, tax, and product data from multiple sales channels directly into Zoho Books. No matter your industry––restaurant, bar, retail, subscription, or service–this extension will reduce your back office workload. 

To learn how to connect up Zoho Books, click here

If your organization uses Tessitura CRM, you can now extend retail sales to the web. Many of our Arts & Culture customers are looking to bring Gift Shops Online or offer pre-show concessions online ordering for pickup at on location or delivery to in-venue seating. We are pleased to announce that our integration with our Arts & Culture CRM partner Tessitura, is now extended to include online transactions enabling customers to connect with their favorite museums and concert halls as COVID continues to impact the ability to offer onsite shows or visits. 

√  Look up and automatically apply member discounts in your retail shop, café, concessions, and now online!

√  Accept Tessitura-issued gift certificates for in-person + online transactions

√  All in-person and online transaction data stored in Tessitura

Learn about our Tessitura integrations here 

MORE IMPROVEMENTS

√  Grow Online Orders with targeted marketing campaigns, send offers, or drive engagement via a new rule: customers who previously purchased online.  

Time Savers 

√  The OrderUp app now automatically syncs menu changes without manual intervention on the device. 

√  You can now Invoice multiple customers in one action with bulk invoicing. You can also import and export discounts or vendor details via bulk actions.  

Managing Vendors & Inventory is easier with newly added fields:

√  A new Vendor Item Number can be applied to each line item; vendor records now include a primary contact name and multiple phone numbers per vendor. 

√  For those businesses that require greater precision on inventory costs, we have added the ability to track inventory costs to 4 decimal point granularity. You can also now account for negative inventory costs.

√  On the Profitability Report you can view the Total Cost of Goods for items sold  vs. for all items in inventory. 

Set which employees may issue refunds by enabling or disabling employee permissions.

Usability enhancements include improvements to responsive design for mobile devices, certain screens were made more touch-friendly, sorting by customer name when printing labels, viewing custom fields in Orders Reports are some additional improvements delivered in October.

Expect more usability enhancements in the coming weeks and months. Let us know if there is a usability issue slowing you down that you’d like us to address.

Winery owners and operators have a great many things to monitor and manage, from vineyard conditions and production costs to marketing, sales, and distribution. Many of these logistical challenges can be made easier with the right point of sale (POS) software tools. One of the most important of these challenges is inventory management.  What can inventory management software do for your winery?
Monitor depletion tracking in real time.

Always know what you have on hand and what you don’t, to avoid outages (resulting in disappointed customers). Ensure, for example, that you have enough of the merlot that is next month’s wine club selection to fill all subscriptions. You should be able to track both finished products and ingredients used in production, as well as monitor costs and profits. With cloud-based inventory management software, you can check your inventory figures at any time and manage discrepancies between reported and actual inventory. You can set up alerts to notify you when stock levels reach a certain threshold, and you can even send reorders to your vendors directly from the inventory program.
Connect and manage all of your channels.

Today’s marketplace is omnichannel, and you need a single, centralized inventory management solution that coordinates data for all types of sales, including wholesale, retail, license, and export. It should integrate with your POS system to track in-house sales on the tasting room floor, online orders from your website or mobile ordering app, wine club subscriptions, and phone orders for large catered events such as weddings or reunions. Integration of online payments should be uncomplicated as well. If you have multiple locations, you should be able to view inventory for an individual location or all of them, and be able to transfer inventory easily between them.
Track the production history of each bottle.

Using inventory management software will help you eliminate the hassle (and potential for human error) of juggling complex spreadsheets. There are solutions that provide batch traceability and allow you to track each bottle through the entire process from grape to glass. You can also view profitability reports, gauging how well a particular category or individual product performed during a specified time period. And you can track total cost of goods sold and compile histories of product prices.
Create an audit trail. 

In the event of an excise tax audit by the U.S. Treasury’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, you’ll want a complete paper trail. The inventory management module of your POS system automatically and accurately records all of your transactions, ensuring regulatory compliance and reliable accounting data.
SalesVu offers a suite of POS apps and cloud-based services that will help your winery grow, including inventory management. And SalesVu products are backed by always-available customer support. Contact SalesVu for more information or to set up your free account and start experiencing the difference the right tools can make for your business.

If you operate an entertainment venue or manage an arts and culture organization, chances are you’re already familiar with Tessitura, the widely-used, industry-specific customer relationship management (CRM) platform. But if your point of sale (POS) solution isn’t integrated with your CRM program, you’re missing valuable benefits. Here’s why CRM integration is a must-have when you’re choosing a POS solution.

1. View customer purchase history in one place.

When your CRM and POS System are working together, all of your customer information is available in a single, consolidated database rather than two separate ones that require extra work to coordinate. The unification saves you time by eliminating the need to manually enter data from one source into the other, and it provides several benefits.

• Staff members can access a customer’s purchase history during a transaction to assist with upselling, check for deals, or see if organization membership needs to be renewed.
• Ticket sellers and front of house staff will be able to identify significant donors and other VIP customers and acknowledge them accordingly.
• The shared information can also be used to create specifically targeted marketing campaigns and personalized communications — ensuring that customers see offers that are most relevant to them, which increases their overall satisfaction and fosters loyalty and repeat business.

 

2. Find customers in your CRM database.

CRM integration with your POS system makes it easy to look up customers from your database. You should be able to search using any of several pieces of data, including customer name, phone number, e-mail address, or membership number. Or, for even faster service, simply scan the customer’s membership card. Recognizing your customers and offering personalized service goes a long way toward strengthening the relationship and encouraging continued patronage. And upselling suggestions based on purchase history are a great way to increase ticket size and revenue.

3. Apply customer membership discounts.

Once you’ve looked up customers in your CRM database, you can easily (even automatically) apply any appropriate membership discounts or loyalty program reward points toward purchases in concessions or gift shops. And if membership needs to be renewed, it can easily be done as part of the transaction, thereby maintaining both the customer relationship and the stream of revenue from memberships. Both are particularly important to arts and culture organizations.

4. Redeem existing gift certificates.

Customers can purchase gift certificates and gift cards through the Tessitura platform. CRM integration with the free POS solutions available from SalesVu (including OrderUp self-service kiosks) enables easy redemption of Tessitura gift certificates. To use a certificate, simply scan it at checkout or enter the number manually. Customers appreciate the convenience, increasing their satisfaction and loyalty.

‘Our initial attraction to SalesVu was its mobility and scalability. As a major presenting arts organization, we have an ever-changing range of needs across our venues, events and festivals and we were searching for one system that would allow us to capture both concessions and merchandise sales with an easy to learn interface for part-time/seasonal employees. The Tessitura integration will give us the ability to see a more complete picture of patrons’ spending with us and more easily fulfill membership perks. Being able to process Tessitura gift certificates will allow a gift certificate to be used for anything in our venues, not just tickets’.– Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
SalesVu currently offers the only integrated POS solution that accepts Tessitura gift certificates and cards. To find out more about the advantages of integrating SalesVu iPad POS and Tessitura, contact SalesVu today.

Over the last few years, self-order kiosks have shown a steady upswing in popularity at all types of restaurants, from fast-casual to full table service. But other industries can benefit from the advantages as well. In particular, theaters, playhouses and other entertainment venues can increase customer satisfaction and improve bottom lines by adopting self-service. Here’s why.

1. Line-Busting, Especially at Intermissions

Theaters need to keep people moving through both ticketing and concessions lines, so people can make it to their seats before the show begins. If it looks like there will be a long wait to get their refreshments, they may well decide to skip it — and since the majority of a cinema’s profits comes not from ticket sales but from concessions, you can’t afford that scenario.

Similarly, arts and cultural performances — from ballets and operas to plays and stand-up comedy shows — have only brief intermission periods for patrons to take restroom breaks and purchase food and drink. Self-order kiosks keep the lines moving so you can serve as many patrons as possible during those breaks, and they won’t miss any of the performance. Orders can be placed and paid for more quickly, and staff members can focus on efficient fulfillment rather than order placement.

2. Fast and Accurate Service

Self-order kiosks increase speed of service because employees are concentrating on order preparation instead of having to input the order and process the payment first. Cinemas can even combine ticket and concessions sales into a single transaction to save even more time. And self-service is also more accurate, since customers are entering their own specifications (so there’s no miscommunication, especially in a crowded, noisy lobby), and they can verify their orders before sending. Avoiding mix-ups reduces food waste and increases customer satisfaction — so they’re more likely to repeat the experience.

3. Increased Concessions Revenue and Ticket Sizes

Perhaps the biggest way for self-order kiosks to provide a healthy return on investment is by increasing concessions revenue. Self-service encourages customers to order more food and drink with automatic upselling suggestions (“Would you like to make it a combo?”) and enticing visual images. Impulse buying and add-ons increase, thereby raising overall order sizes — and profits. The Washington Post reported in 2015 that at Cinemark movie theaters, self-service kiosks had helped per-person concession spending to increase for 32 straight quarters.

OrderUp is a SalesVu POS System that turns an iPad into a self-order kiosk. You can create a free account and download the app today to start enjoying the benefits of self-service. Contact SalesVu to get started or to reach their 24/7 customer support with any questions about how to put these advantages to work for you.