Retail furniture businesses with multiple locations have to keep track of a lot of data — sales from each store, categories of purchases, inventory, staff commissions, and more – that’s a lot of data. Plus, planning the most efficient delivery routes is even more complicated when you deliver from multiple locations. How can you manage it all?
It’s a lot easier than you think.
Point of service (POS) software can be your best friend in a business, saving you time and money. Furniture business POS software — developed especially for furniture stores — can help even more. Here’s how.
Multiple Furniture Stores, One Standard Operating Procedure
Before you even contemplate adding a POS system to your business, you should ensure that each store is operating with a consistent policy and procedure that is standard for all stores. You don’t want different systems and software in place for each furniture store so you can manage details for individual stores all together at once.
If you create one standard operating procedure (SOP) for all stores, you’ll eliminate a lot of confusion and potential complaints from both customers and employees having different experiences at different locations.
Just as you want one SOP, you want one POS.
Centralize Your Sales and Bookkeeping Data
Instead of having three sets of bookkeeping data and possibly three accountants, manage all your furniture retail stores with one furniture POS software program.
To look at trends, you might want to make notations of which store is selling what products and has the most sales, but you want one universal accounting system. Some things will have to be individualized, like staff scheduling, but the basics of the business such as overall sales and expenses can be — and should be — tracked in one place. Or, in one software program.
Streamline Individual Furniture Store Needs
For those things which need to be store specific, such as staffing and inventory, you want to make the process as efficient as possible. Instead of manually doing inventory at each location, a good POS software program can keep track of your inventory so you can order and reorder the stock you need for customers at that particular store.
There’s a reason it’s called “supply and demand” — you need the supply to meet the demand. Inventory tracking in your POS software saves a lot of time and ensures you have what customers want or need.
Furniture POS Software Can Create One Hub
While some stores will need individualized management on certain aspects, using a POS system centralizes the data to allow one person to manage all locations. Whether that you, the owner, or someone else you hire, that means saving time and money on many of the details of running a furniture business.
Not only can it save you money, but the extra time you get from running an efficient business allows you to focus on other priorities, such as marketing and expanding your business — it might even allow you to open up more locations and franchise stores.
It can help you run more stores with fewer employees, which is always a big plus.
Centralize Your Furniture Business, But Don’t Neglect Your Individual Furniture Stores
It’s great to be able to condense many business practices to one person or one location, but it’s important to visit all of your individual stores regularly to talk to employees and customers and make sure the business is in good hands.
No matter how thorough your potential employee screening process it is, it’s always good to observe employees in their jobs. This can also boost employee morale when they know you truly value them at an individual store. If there are problems, you can manage them quickly before they escalate by making routine store visits.
Improve Employee Communication and Tracking
You want to make sure employees have clear channels of communication and a way to track the location of teams that make deliveries or do business outside the store.
Wouldn’t a GPS feature come in handy for those employees? You can see exactly where they are, anticipate any scheduling issues, plus communicate with them on mobile devices.
ServiceWorks software can also track employees so you know exactly where everyone is at any time. If one delivery team is running behind schedule, you can either notify the customer or if another delivery team at a store is available, they might be able to help
Optimize Your Furniture Delivery Schedule
This is an important part of business for any furniture store. Not only do you want to deliver items quickly to keep your customers happy, but you want to deliver efficiently to save employee time and fuel expenses.
A good POS software can help you with optimizing that schedule for efficiency.
Centralizing delivery schedules is a good idea, but you also need to look at fuel-efficient routes to save money on that expense, such as grouping deliveries together in one area each day rather than driving all over town every day. Particularly with gas prices running the way they are, this is more important than ever.
Wouldn’t it be great if your POS software could do that for you? Guess what — it can. At least if you get the right software.
ServiceWorks POS software offers a great solution for optimizing delivery routes and schedules, as well as an affordable way to process customer credit cards, transfer data to QuickBooks, track inventory, and so much more. You can even get a free trial without giving out your credit card information. Then you can see firsthand not only how affordable the software is, but how much you can help your furniture store business. You succeed and sign up today.
