Find the best Convenience Store POS Systems

Here's what we'll cover:

• What Is Convenience Store POS Software?

• Common Features of Convenience Store POS Software

• Expected Benefits

• What Type of Buyer Are You?

What Is Convenience Store POS Software?

Convenience store point-of-sale (POS) software is specialized software to help convenience store owners automate and track fluctuating fuel prices, offer customers an efficient checkout process, and streamline inventory management. In addition to core accounting functions, common features of convenience store POS software include gasoline price calculation, spoilage reporting, and UPC code cataloging.

The hallmark of a convenience store is quick transactions. Customers want to get in and get out. Inventory turns are quick, but many items are also perishable. Adding gasoline and diesel sales to the mix makes both the transaction size and the documentation complexity increase. Gasoline sales are regulated and price changes are a continuing challenge; prices must be set at the pumps, on signs and in point-of-sale (POS) software; calculating inventory costs is also problematic as different-priced deliveries are mixed in the same tanks.

Accounts payable, payroll and general ledger are the same for convenience stores and gas stations. Accounts receivable is generally limited to handling credit card charges and cash handling is a particular problem for both. Inventory is also a challenge for both because of the amount of inventory for convenience stores and pricing of fuel for gas stations. Customer relationship management plays a very limited role.

Common Features of Convenience Store POS Software

In addition to the core accounting functions, gas station and convenience store operators should evaluate the following functions to meet their unique requirements:

Expected Benefits

Convenience store POS software helps retailers reduce transaction time, manage inventory and prices and increase sales. It also helps them to reduce human errors and manage compliance issues that arise from frequent changes in gas prices by automating the pricing process.

Stores should be able to realize the following potential benefits from a convenience store POS software:

Efficient POS operations: One of the most sought-after functionalities of a POS solution is automating the burdensome manual checkout process for both retailers and customers. POS solutions allow retailers to facilitate digital wallets and credit card transactions. This reduces the customer wait time during billing, allows cashiers to process additional transactions and prevents human errors that can result from frequent fluctuations in prices. Retailers can spend their freed-up time to address customers issues, analyze their business’s performance and focus on more pressing store management issues.

Streamline inventory management: Convenience store POS software helps retailers to automate inventory management processes, such as receiving product delivery and updating inventory levels after sale. In addition, retailers can track the best-performing products and their inventory levels in real time to ensure that inventory levels are optimum round the clock. With real-time inventory updates, retailers can prevent spoilage by selling perishable products on a first-in, first-out (FIFO) basis.

Reduces overheads and increases margins: Convenience store POS solutions automate manual tasks, such as data entry, price updates, cash management and billing, which reduces human errors and enhances customer satisfaction. By reducing these manual efforts, retailers can focus on improving customer engagement, creating performance reports to identify problems areas and training their employees to serve customers in a better way.

Personalize customer interactions: With POS solutions, retailers are able to personalize customer interactions by creating a customer database, sending offers via emails and running promotional campaigns targeting customer retention. Moreover, advanced POS solutions send automated emails to customers on important events in their lives such as birthdays, anniversaries and festivals.

What Type of Buyer Are You?

Small Business POS buyers: Retailers with a limited number of stores typically look for simple POS solutions to manage inventory, contact customers and facilitate credit transactions. These solutions are usually bundled up with the CRM and accounting capabilities to manage the different requirements of small businesses. Retailers also look for reporting and dashboard functionalities to analyze business performance and take timely corrective decisions.

Enterprise buyers: The typical buyers of these solutions are large enterprises that aim to resolve specific business challenges and target to achieve definite business goals. Buyers in this category look for advanced marketing and database management capabilities because of their large customer base. Legal compliance plays a pivotal role in these organizations due to the regulatory restrictions on the prices of gas products, which should remain within the prescribed limit.

The retail market is flooded with numerous convenience store POS solutions. Retailers should list down the functionalities they want in a solution so that they can solve business challenges and improve their operations. They should be wary of opting for a solution that provides the maximum number of features and yet, doesn’t fulfill all their needs.