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4 Must-Have Software Features for Specialty Retail Stores

Specialty retail stores have many hoops to jump through in order to stay ahead of the competition—in-store cafés and restaurants, omnichannel operations, a great social media presences—all are important parts of an overall retail strategy to stay competitive and increase profits.

Pulling this strategy off successfully is easier in theory than in practice however. To achieve the results you want, you need to have the right tools to help you. Here are a few software features that can help specialty retail stores get ahead:

Seamless Inventory Management

Nowadays, it’s not enough for specialty retail stores to run an omnichannel operation—they have to do it better than the competition. This is why your inventory management software must be omnichannel-capable, offering full, real-time visibility into your inventory and order fulfillment. Not just with your retail inventory, but your café or lifestyle space as well.

You need to be able to easily transfer inventory from one location to another, and know the inventory count of your products at the source location and at the destination location. You also need to have an in-depth view of profitability, recipe tracking, and the capability to be alerted when thresholds have been reached.

Effective Labor Management

Beyond your inventory, labor is one of the biggest expenses for specialty retail stores. In order to effectively manage it, you need software that can help you optimize your scheduling and forecast your needs.

By identifying periods of heavy and light traffic, such as seasonal influxes around the holidays, and slow hours due to weather conditions or certain times of the day, you can plan the number of staff on-hand more accurately. This prevents you from losing money from overstaffing, while still ensuring you have the right amount of coverage.

Effortless Vendor Management

You likely get your inventory from a variety of vendors. Keeping track of vendor orders—open, closed, and partial—through unreliable manual processes can take up your valuable time and lead to errors. Your POS system should be able to easily track orders and alert you when thresholds reach critical levels. It should make it easy to know when you need to reorder stock, and effortless to send those orders. It can also help you plan effectively for vendor deliveries.

Comprehensive Customer Engagement Tools

Customer loyalty is more important than ever. It is absolutely essential that specialty retail stores offer a loyalty and rewards program that incentivizes shoppers to return time and time again. Not only is this critical for fostering better customer relationships, but it provides the data you need to run more effective promotions and tailor your marketing to your customers.

This data helps you understand what your customers are looking for, what types of communications are most effective, and what steps you should take to boost customer engagement.

As digital technology continues to evolve and the internet provides customers with more and more conveniences, it only becomes harder to meet shifting customer expectations and drive loyalty. Though technology advancements have been a burden to retailers, they have also been a blessing.

Retail technology has kept up with these growing demands, and specialty retail stores can leverage these innovative software solutions to not only keep up, but get ahead.

SalesVu offers a number of free and low-cost apps designed specifically to meet the needs of specialty retail stores and their customers. Interested in learning more? Contact SalesVu today!

 

Posted in Restaurants and Bars, Retail | Tagged , , ,

Brookwood Georgetown uses SalesVu POS system to manage their Cafe and Shop easily!

Located in Georgetown, Texas, Brookwood in Georgetown is a non-profit organization that offers a program for adults with special needs, their mission is to provide an educational environment that creates meaningful jobs and builds a sense of belonging and validates dignity and respect for adults with disabilities. Diane Saphiro, buying manager, shared with us their purpose of using SalesVu and why they decided to start using a POS system.
 

Brookwood in Georgetown was created 6 years ago and is an expansion from a larger program by the same name which is located in Texas. In March of 2016 the decided to open a shop, cafe and greenhouse, they needed to have a better control of products that were selling and pulling specific data and reports to continue growing, a POS system is what they needed.
 

‘We started using a system from our parent program which was Windows based and it was not working properly based on our needs, that’s why we decided to improve and switch. SalesVu was one of the first programs that offered pictures on the menu. It was able to do both, cafe and gift shop and that was very important for us, using a Ipad POS system that was able to handle different industries under one account’. – Diane Saphiro
 

 

 

Brookwood in Texas uses three main modules in their business: POS, Inventory and Employe modules. With POS they are able to differentiate which categories they can arrange and sell, whether is the cafe or shop, they can distinguish between both of them and pull reports with very specific fields. Inventory is used for the most part for the retail products, they are able to adjust the items on stock in real time and they have a threshold, which is a notification alert when inventory is low, SalesVu sends an email to notify the business owner or any other staff members in order for them to create purchase orders from their vendors. Lastly, the employee module is used for adding more staff into their account and mainly for keeping track of their hours, clock in/out and generating a labor report for payroll.
 

‘SalesVu is really easy to use, our staff learn the system really fast, how to take orders, close the shift, apply discounts for our Christmas or eben birthday discounts. The sales reports and inventory reports are customizable and easy to obtain’. – Diane Saphiro
 

This non-profit organization is very inspirational, if you’re in town don’t hesitate to go there and grab some food and coffee and get some handmade beautiful products. For more information, follow them on social media below.
 

  

Posted in Restaurants and Bars, Retail, RSS | Tagged , , ,

Tresori Vineyards started using SalesVu POS system in 2012 and they couldn’t be happier!


 

Tresori Vineyard is a small wine boutique located in Newberg, OR. They are a family business that started in 1997 and they produce their own Pinot Noir wine bottles and commercialize them in the region. David Walker shared with us their great experience with SalesVu and why they decided to innovate and start using a POS system.
 

‘In 2012 we started our journey with SalesVu, it had a very good price point and we decided the system fit into our business plan. We found the system browsing online and we look for recommendations as well. We talked to some people about SalesVu and thanks to the great reviews we decided this solution was perfect for Tresori Vineyards’ – David Walker
 

David and his team are using the Ipad POS module and it has been great with keeping track of the historical data. They produce a couple of specific pinot noir bottles every season and what they love the most about the POS is the ability to run sales reports, per general sales, categories or products. Basic analytics are available with the this module and are great to run any type of business. In Tresori Vineyards they also sell merchandise as t-shirts or caps but 99% of their sales are wine and they were able to get that information using the POS module and the specific reports.
 

David also uses the inventory module to keep track of wine bottles. He is always working offsite and he loves that he can login from any city and monitor every sold product and his stock remotely. He uses this feature on a monthly basis to make sure all wine bottles are deducting accordingly and to keep track of what they receive from their warehouse.
 

  

 

SalesVu offers 24/7 support and David shared with us his experience so far, he describes tech support as very easy to get ahold of and extremely helpful with any issue.
 

Looking for the perfect gift? Check out below Tresori Vineyard’s social media and find out if shipping is available for your state. Or if you’re in the area don’t forget to visit them and buy some Pinot Noir bottles.
 

   

Posted in RSS, Wineries | Tagged ,

Learn more about how SalesVu POS system and TownVu are helping Wea Creek Orchard!

 
 
 

Located in the beautiful city of Lafayette, Indiana, Wea Creek Orchard is a wedding venue, event and party site, and they also specialize in their own local product such as honey, pumpkins, peaches and apples. They mainly use the POS system for collecting payments for events and on the farmer’s market to sell fresh fruit.
 

‘It is so easy to use the Point of Sale. We can just have a product up and build different categories and even somebody who is not used to using SalesVu just gets the picture because it is very intuitive’ – Perry
 

Perry Kirkham started his journey with SalesVu 4 years ago and was in complete drawn by the ease of use of the software. Before making the big switch, he was using Excel and spreadsheets to have control of the different areas of the business. What Perry and his team were looking in a POS was flexibility, affordability, cloud based, and user friendly. SalesVu met all of these requirements and offered more features to make their work life simpler.
 

‘Linking TownVu to our website has been absolutely tremendous for the business. It terms of measurement, it has increased our record keeping ability and it has greatly increased our efficiency’ – Wea Creek Orchard
 

About 3 months ago, Perry and his team needed a way for clients to pay directly online and keep track of it. They looked at the capabilities of the software and found that SalesVu was able to handle it. It was great news that they didn’t need to find any third-party software that provides that service.
SalesVu offers the ability to create your own website or link the shopping cart to an existing website through a widget code. The biggest advantage is that you will manage all sales, POS and online, in one place and you can even compare which source gives the best results. Another plus about this feature is the ease of taking payments, you can set up 3 different types: full payment upfront, payment in the business and upfront deposit, it will all depend on how your business operates. Selecting which products to offer for online ordering is very simple and will be done in seconds and the software will record the customer’s information into you own CRM.
 


 

Taking the big step and upgrading to an online ordering system was a one of the best decisions for Wea Creek Orchard. To find more information about their products and services, visit their website and don’t forget to follow them on social media below!
 

Posted in Retail | Tagged , , ,

Learn more about Living the Dream Brewing Co 4 years of experience with SalesVu POS system!


 

Based in Littleton, Colorado, Living the Dream Brewing Co. produces craft beer on site to serve on their taprooms and sell it on the market . They also offer a large variety of merchandise, including accessories, women’s, men’s and unisex clothing available in different colors and sizes. Jason Bell was very excited to share with us his experience throughout SalesVu and how it has helped manage the brewery.
 

Business opened their doors back in 2013, they started using SalesVu right away because at that time it was the best software that suit their needs, the features fit perfectly for the business and the best part is that the price was very affordable. It was very important for Jason to choose a software that was iPad and cloud based, but most important the flexibility that the system provides, access to all of their information from any device at anytime it’s a really great feature to have.
 


 

‘SalesVu has definitely helped us with everything. It allowed us to have a point of sale system when we opened and now that we’ve been expanding we can add more iPads to make the workflow run smoother’.
– Jason Bell

 

The three modules that Living the Dream Brewing Co uses on a daily basis are POS, inventory and gift cards. They were able to switch from paper gift certificates to physical gift cards, the greatest advantage of this is the fact that they can keep track of all the numbers, balances and recharge history using the system. To redeem or sell gift cards they can just simply scan them with the iPad’s camera or enter the number manually. This change was very convenient for them and made their management life easier in every aspect.
 

POS and Inventory are 2 modules that get along really well, Jason told us that sometimes they have events where they sell their merchandise and retail items, all the products and different matrixes that are uploaded into the system can also be tracked under the inventory feature. They are always in control of what’s selling and which items need to be reordered.
 

The Living the Dream Brewing Co. staff couldn’t be happier with SalesVu, they have a system that’s economical, works pretty well and adjust to their needs right away. Next time you’re visiting Colorado, take time to visit them and try their craft beers and merchandise, this place is 10% pet friendly! Check their newest updates below!
 

Posted in Restaurants and Bars, Uncategorized | Tagged , ,

Three main features for Jojo’s Jerky: POS system, Inventory and CRM!

 

Hans Hippert is the proud business owner of Jojo’s Jerky, he started doing jerkies as a hobby and experimenting with all kind of different flavors. His passion leaded him to found his business in 2004, located in Las Vegas Nevada. Jojo’s Jerky is a food manufacturer, they make all fresh, all natural jerkies, fat free and non-GMO. Besides his principal product, he also has another line for seasonings, nut sacks and hot sauces. His business model is 100% sustainable, all the ideas for the different products come with sustainability in mind. Every single product is made with natural ingredients with no preservatives. Hans owns three locations and he’s a wholesaler for whole foods, craft house brewery, and different retailers.

‘Without SalesVu we couldn’t grow as much as we can, they have been really cool with us and very supportive. Tech support has always been great and responsive’ – Hippert

He decided to start using SalesVu four years ago, he based his decision on level of functionalities, necessary tools and cost efficiency. He’s been a happy customer ever since. The modules that he uses the most are POS, CRM and Inventory Management.

 

     
 

With the mobile POS he can accept payments in all of his stores but also, he is able to go to any event and sell his products offsite. The reports that come with this module are extremely easy to see at any time and from any device. In addition, he receives weekly sales reports via email.

Hans defines the CRM module as one of the best tools to keep track of his customers, especially because he needs to store the email of his clients to follow up with them. In this module, there’s an email marketing feature that allows him to send emails with any news, promotions, specials, and he can target those emails to specific groups of customers. The best part about the CRM is the purchase history, he can keep track of what their customers ordered, the specific products and date and time.

 

Inventory tracking is a crucial module for him, with the access levels or permissions that he sets on the employee module, he is able to manage theft or loss prevention. Besides that, creating purchase orders is fantastic, especially because he creates them from the web portal, they’re sent automatically to the vendor and when receiving them, the inventory updates in real time. The Inventory adjustment report is great when he wants to check which items or limited-edition products are available in which store, it is time saving and he can check them remotely.
One key factor that helps Jojo’s Jerky grow constantly is having the right software solution. SalesVu provides the perfect tools at a very affordable price for Hans to take care of his business. For more information about their products you can go to their website. Don’t forget to follow them on social media below!

Posted in Retail, Uncategorized | Tagged , , ,

Quick Product Addition, Inventory Management and Customer History in SalesVu iPad POS SystemMake the Difference at JV Skin and Beauty

The Company

JV Skin and Beauty (JVSB) is a skin care and beauty boutique. JVSB was created with the intent to ensure a customized, serious treatment focused on skin health. Each appointment is unique and centers around individual clients’ goals.

“I help clients achieve individual beauty,” said Jen Valdivia. “It is not how we look to the world, but how we feel in it. JV Skin and Beauty is about helping people realize their desired experience.”

The Needs

JVSB needed an mPOS solution to accept payments anywhere, anytime using mobile devices. Valdivia occasionally travels for work and needs the flexibility of a “simple card reader” and a “secure system that is capable of quick transactions.” JVSB includes products and services, so the POS system needs to go beyond a simple solution.

“I need to be able to manage inventory, customers, product costs and taxes on the go,” said Valdivia. “This helps me avoid time-consuming updates and painful reconciliation when I’m back at my desk.”

The SalesVu Decision

JVSB began looking into other POS and ECommerce solutions, including Booker, Intuit, NCR Silver and Shopify, after using Square.

SalesVu allows me to manage product inventory and link customers to their purchases,” said Valdivia. “I have products that I provide for my clients and needed a system that allowed the inclusion of products in the same transaction of an actual client service. I also chose SalesVu because of the easy export feature and customizable features that set it apart, such as: alerts, customer profiles and quick additions at POS.”

The Results

JVSB likes the capability to quickly add a service or product that may have been missed in the initial upload of products. They can quickly type in the service, cost, tax rate, etc when finishing a transaction without disturbing the client. According to Valdivia, this ability has been critical at JV Skin and Beauty.

“One of my customers tends to add on services on-the-spot that are not common, so I absolutely needed to quickly add it at POS,” said Valdivia.

SalesVu has also helped JVSB streamline the ability to view revenue and profits.

“I can pull and save reports when I analyze sales; I get inventory alerts, can customize the type of notifications I receive and use both the mobile and full site to view data,” said Valdivia. “It’s easy to use, looks clean and streamlines, and customer service has been outstanding the few times I’ve called.”

Lastly, JVSB has saved about $50 per month by using SalesVu.

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For more information about JV Skin and Beauty, go to www.jvskinandbeauty.com, like their Facebook or follow them on Twitter @JVSkinandBeauty.

Posted in Beauty and Wellness, Retail | Tagged , , ,

SalesVu iPad POS System Tip of the Day: Using the Component Feature

Wondering what the purposes of the components feature are? Look no further. The component feature of SalesVu’s POS system is a very powerful tool for tracking your inventory and maximizing it’s effecieny.

The first use: is when you need to track inventory, ‘Chocolate,’ ‘Eggs,’ ‘Flour,’ and ‘Oil’ as products. Since we do not sell these products to customers as standalone products when creating them we would change the field ‘Type’ to ‘Component’. This denotes that it is only sold as a part of another product. A single product such as ‘Chocolate Cake’ can have several components (or ingredients) that make up that product for inventory tracking purposes. For example the components of a product ‘Chocolate Cake’ might be, ‘Chocolate,’ ‘Eggs,’ ‘Flour,’ and ‘Oil’.

To complete the product setup for the example above you would need to do the following:

  1. 1. Login to SalesVu.com
  2. 2. Click the ‘Products’ tab or icon
  3. 3. Click ‘Add Product’
    1. a. In the name field enter, ‘Chocolate’
    2. b. A description can be added (optional)
    3. c. Click ‘Select Category’
    4. d. Choose a category by clicking one or create one by entering one at the top and clicking ‘Add’
    5. e. Click ‘Save’
    6. f. Change the field ‘Type’ to ‘Component’
    7. g. Click the check next to ‘Track this component in inventory using the following unit’
    8. h. The default unit is ‘Item,’ which is good for retail, etc. but will likely be changed in situations like this example. Click ‘Select Unit’ and choose the unit that you want to track ‘Chocolate’ in. In this example I will choose ‘kg’ for kilogram. (note: if you need to create a unit of measurement that is not there please see ‘Settings->Unit Conversion’ or the support article here-
    9. i. Once a unit is selected click ‘Save’
    10. j. Click ‘Finish’
  4. 4. Repeat steps, 3a – 3j above for each component of your product in this case you would repeat for ‘Eggs,’ ‘Flour,’ and ‘Oil’.
  5. 5. Next we’ll create the ‘Chocolate Cake’ product. On the products page, click ‘Add Product’
  6. 6. In the name field type ‘Chocolate Cake’
  7. 7. Next to the ‘Type’ field you will leave this as ‘Product’ for ‘Chocolate Cake’ since you will actually be selling this product
  8. 8. Do not click the box next to ‘Remove the following number of units from inventory every time this item is sold’ unless you plan to track how much cake you have in inventory as well as the ingredients.
  1. 9. Fill out remaining fields with necessary information
  2. 10. Click ‘Add Modifiers’
  3. 11. On the next page, click ‘Add Components’
    1. a. Click ‘Select Product’
    2. b. Choose the first product, ‘Chocolate’ and click ‘Next’
    3. c. Choose the unit that you want to use to have as a part of this product (the inventory will be tracked in the unit that the ‘chocolate’ component product was setup with and will convert automatically) and click ‘Next’
    4. d. Enter a quantity. When we set the inventory up for the ‘Chocolate’ component product we choose to track in kilograms (kg). If each ‘Chocolate Cake’ product uses .10 kg of ‘Chocolate’ per cake you would enter .10 and click ‘Next’
  4. 12. Repeat steps, 11a – 11d for each component of your product. In this example you would repeat for ‘Eggs,’ ‘Flour,’ and ‘Oil’.
  5. 13. Click ‘Save’
  6. 14. You now have created the product ‘Chocolate Cake’. Each time that it is sold the component products, ‘Chocolate,’ ‘Eggs,’ ‘Flour,’ and ‘Oil’ will be removed from inventory

The second practical use for components:

Components can be considered as ingredients in the example above, but they can also be used when you sell products in various quantities and only want to track one product in inventory. For example if you have a wine tasting room or wine bar where you sell by the glass, bottle, or case, but you only want to track your inventory in terms of bottles you can use the components feature.

For example if you sell a product called, ‘House Red – Glass,’ ‘House Red – Bottle,’ and ‘House Red – Case’, but you only want to track it in inventory by the bottle you would do the following,

  1. 1. Login to SalesVu.com
  2. 2. Click the ‘Products’ tab or icon
  3. 3. For the product that you do want to track directly in inventory click, ‘Add Product’
    1. a. In the name field enter, ‘House Red – Bottle’
    2. b. A description can be added (optional)
    3. c. Click ‘Select Category’
    4. d. Choose a category by clicking one or create one by entering one at the top and clicking ‘Add’
    5. e. Click ‘Save’
    6. f. Since we are selling all of these products directly to the customer the ‘Type’ for all these will be ‘Product’
  1. 4. Click the check box next to the field ‘Remove the following number of units from inventory every time this item is sold’ for this product since this is the product unit that we want to track.
  2. 5. The ‘Unit’ can be left as ‘Item’ or you can create a unit named ‘Bottle’ in the ‘Settings->Unit Conversion’ menu
  3. 6. Once a unit is selected click, ‘Save’
  1. 7. Repeats steps 3a – 3j for each product that you do not want to track directly in inventory
  2. 8. For the products that will not be tracking directly, click ‘Add Product’
    1. a. In the name field enter, ‘House Red – Glass’
    2. b. A description can be added (optional)
    3. c. Click ‘Select Category’
    4. d. Choose a category by clicking one or create one by entering one at the top and clicking ‘Add’
    5. e. Click ‘Save’
    6. f. Since we are selling all of these products directly to the customer the ‘Type’ for all these will be ‘Product’
    7. g. Do not click the check box next to the field ‘Remove the following number of units from inventory every time this item is sold’ for the product(s) that you do not want to track in inventory (in this example it would be the ‘House Red – Glass’ and ‘House Red – Case’ since we want to track by bottles)
    8. h. The ‘Unit’ can be left as ‘Item’ or you can create a unit called bottle in the ‘Settings->Unit Conversion’ menu
    9. i. Once a unit is selected click ‘Add Modifiers’
    10. j. Click ‘Add Components’
    11. k. Click ‘Select Product’
    12. l. Choose the product created earlier, ‘House Red – Bottle’ and click ‘Next’
    13. m. Choose the unit that you want to use to have as a part of this product (the inventory will be tracked in the unit that the ‘House Red – Bottle’ component product was setup with and will convert automatically) and click ‘Next’
    14. n. Enter a quantity and click ‘Next’. When we set the inventory up for the ‘House Red – Bottle’ product we choose to track it as an ‘Item’ or ‘Bottle’. In this example we will say that each glass of red wine is 1⁄4 of a bottle we would enter 0.25 or for a case if there were 12 bottles in a case we would enter 12
    15. o. Click ‘Save’
    16. p. Repeat steps 8a – 8o for each product that applies (in this example you would repeat with the case product’.

You have now created 3 products (glass, bottle, case of wine) that pull inventory from 1 product (bottle of wine).

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged

SalesVu iPad POS System at The Candy Wrapper

The Candy Wrapper (TCW) is a bulk custom gift and candy store in Lubbock, Texas. TCW needed an iPad POS to maximize sales and efficiency during the holiday season.

“Being a bulk candy store, we needed to be able to use a decimal point to accurately get people rung up; there were many apps out there, only a few that would incorporate a decimal for us to put in weight for a sales total,” said Tiffany Jablonsky, co-owner of The Candy Wrapper.

In addition to researching SalesVu’s retail POS, TCW also considered using Shopkeep and Imonggo.

“We researched apps for our business knowing we wanted to move to an ipad register,” said Jablonsky. “We found [SalesVu] through online reviews. We were using Square for credit card processing and an old offline register without inventory tracking.”

The Candy Wrapper enjoys the app’s ease of use, employee tracking and the ability to use the POS system in one spot in addition to mobility.

“We like all of the different reports you can look at for the store to track what is selling and when,” said Jablonsky. “We also deliver and it is handy for deliveries.”

For more information about The Candy Wrapper, like their Facebook page or follow them on Twitter.

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Posted in Restaurants and Bars | Tagged ,

Resource Nation’s 8 Industries Transformed by SalesVu iPad POS System

Check out this Resource Nation article on some of the industries that have evolved through mobile point of sales solutions, like SalesVu’s iPad POS! See the perks of going mobile and how it has become effective in a few specific industries. Tell us how the revolution has helped your business or industry!

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