July 2009

How did your end of financial year stocktake go? Want some ideas to make it run better next year? Amicus POS makes stocktakes really easy for your business, see how to use it to your best advantage - stocktake with Amicus POS.

Neotechnology have recently become business partners with the Service Station Association of Australia. Being a preferred supplier to service stations in the specialised area of fuel point of sale will allow us to continue to provide services and support to small to medium business in this space. Independent service stations often mention the lack of support from their POS providers, supporting our customers from the onset to the end is one of the many things we offer.

We are continuously working on our product and the month of July is no exception with the development team releasing a few fantastic new Amicus POS features.

A kitchen screen is also in the pipeline, with detailed information available soon.

If you have anything of particular interest you would like to see in our newsletter please email: marketing@neotechnology.com.au

Most businesses these days have EFTPOS payment facilities for credit card and bank card payments available for customers to use. Often this can mean two or sometimes even three different machines, all running various cables all over the place and sometimes not even integrated into the POS system!

Then there are the costs associated with having these payment facilities available. Have you experienced the tangle of cables when trying to serve a customer? Do you know there is an easier way? Are you paying too much to provide this service to customers? There are cheaper ways! See the options below for making EFTPOS work better for your business.

Wireless EFTPOS

Wireless EFTPOS can provide a significant reduction in ongoing running costs for your EFTPOS terminal and with no cables attached it allows for relocation of terminals to suit the business. This is great for fixed locations such as supermarkets, Service stations, convenience stores, cafes, restaurants and other retail outlets. Ok this helps with the wires...now what else can you do to improve the effectiveness of your EFTPOS?

EFTPOS and POS integration

Integrating your EFTPOS with your POS has a number of benefits including:

• Faster transactions speed so you can serve more customers quickly.
• POS and EFTPOS can share the same resources – printer, operating screen etc, reducing the number of devices you need and giving you room.
• No need to enter information twice, reducing operator error and time to serve customers.
• Your POS system controls refunds so no refund fraud is possible.
• Speeds up and makes the reconciliation process more effective.
• A reduction in communications costs and possibly Merchant Service Fees (MFS) - if you go with the enterprise solution. i.e. have a EFTPOS server and all clients connect to that.

It is now also possible to integrate your wireless EFTPOS with your POS. Ask us how to set up wireless EFTPOS and integrate with your POS now! Don’t have EFTPOS or a POS system? Contact us now to suggest options.

Please note that some options and features are bank dependent

Whether you do it once a year or more often, it can be a lengthy and time consuming process. With many product lines it can be really frustrating,, even though the actual steps involved aren’t that complicated. With Amicus POS stocktaking is made really simple.

Amicus has been designed with portable barcode scanners in mind since this is the fastest way to do a stocktake. Using Amicus PDA makes the process even easier, see the reasons why:

• Never use pen and paper again! Amicus PDA allows you to perform your stock takes electronically!
• Wireless connectivity makes electronic stocktaking more efficient as employees don't need to 'return to base' to input data
• Stocktakes can be partially completed and continued later if required. Data is only submitted when you it is complete, as determined by you and your staff
• Partially completed stocktakes can be reopened by anyone and multiple people can undertake one stocktake at the same time, greatly improving efficiency and reducing sales downtime.

The first thing that Amicus does when you start a stocktake is to take a snapshot of the inventory in the system at a specified time; this information is stored in the database. Then you to enter the actual stock information into Amicus and this will determine any discrepancies. The information you provide is entered into the system as the amount of stock held. I.e. the next stocktake you do will use this as a base, adding or subtracting sales, transfers, stock adjustments and deliveries as required.

Even if the stocktake takes you three days, you are still able to perform all usual functions with Amicus, as the stock calculations are based on the snapshot taken. You can even stop and restart the stocktake if needed, with Amicus keeping track of all the calculations for you.

Basic steps without a POS:

• Print out your current expected inventory
• Count the actual physical stock on hand and record the quantities on the same paper.
• If you are able to put your business on hold while you do this: list of all the items where expected quantity is different to actual quantity and mark the difference as either plus or minus the difference in quantity OR
• If you are not able to stop business during the stocktake, take note of movements that happened after you start but before you physically count and recheck the figures.
• Use a spreadsheet to calculate the difference in stock value and keep a record of the difference
• Change the quantities in your inventory to the actual count

Information is usually recorded in a general ledger, POS system or in account keeping books. Imagine doing this for 100s of items! Using a POS to help will vastly improve speed and accuracy of stocktakes.

Are you currently an Amicus POS user? Have you been raving to other businesses about how good the system is for your business?

Well how about turning this into some money for you!!

If you refer a business to us, hospitality, retail, supermarkets or fuel, and this turns into a sale you will receive a percentage of the software licence sales. We are there to provide any support you need to refer Amicus POS to your business colleagues, be it promotional material, assistance answering technical questions or general sales advice.

Contact us for the full details of the Amicus POS referral program