Imagine your small business is thriving—sales are up, customers are happy, and you’ve hired new employees to handle the growth. However, your outdated cash register is holding you back. It’s slow, difficult for employees, and doesn’t track inventory, leaving you with manual spreadsheets. With  POS integration, you can seamlessly connect ordering, payment, and inventory management systems, ensuring smoother operations and better customer service. This frustrating scenario can be avoided by upgrading to a modern POS system with advanced features that improve efficiency, streamline operations, and support your growth. This guide will explore essential POS system features to help you with how to choose  point of sale system and avoid unexpected challenges.
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The POS Exchange helps businesses like yours achieve their goals by providing access to POS systems. These systems can help improve efficiency, streamline operations, and support growth with essential features.

Why Does Your Business Need a POS System?

A POS system automates key business tasks like transaction processing, inventory tracking, and reporting, eliminating the need for manual input and reducing errors. It speeds up transactions, ensures real-time updates, and provides accurate sales and stock data. This helps streamline operations, allowing staff to focus on customer service.

Easy Invoice Processing

A POS system simplifies and automates the invoice generation, making it easier for businesses to manage sales, returns, and credit transactions. It generates digital invoices instantly, saving time and eliminating the need for manual paperwork. With integrated payment processing, invoices can be paid quickly and securely.

Enhanced Security

POS systems provide secure payment processing by encrypting sensitive customer data, such as credit card details, to protect against fraud. Most modern systems are PCI-compliant and include multi-level authentication and secure access controls. This reduces the risk of theft or data breaches, ensuring customer trust and regulatory compliance.

Automated Reporting

POS systems automatically generate detailed reports on:

• Sales
• Inventory
• Employee performance
• Customer behavior

Providing valuable insights for business owners. These reports can be customized to track specific metrics and can be scheduled for:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly

Automated reporting saves time and helps with data-driven decision-making.

Enhanced Customer Experience

POS systems help improve the customer experience by streamlining transactions, reducing wait times, and offering flexible payment options such as:

• Contactless
• Mobile
• Card payments

Integrated loyalty programs and personalized promotions also increase customer satisfaction and encourage repeat business.

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30 Key POS System Features to Drive Your Business Forward

1. Inventory Management: Track Your Stock for Success

Without built-in inventory management, the POS is just a cash register. Inventory management allows users to upload and track their products on one platform. This also means that inventory records are updated in real time for any sales or returns. Digitizing inventory counts is another advantage of integrated inventory management, mainly if the system can be used on a mobile device and is equipped with a bar scanner.

Make sure that your POS software’s inventory management feature can:

• Allow product images
• Add product variants
• Import and edit product details in bulk
• Assist with stock/inventory counts

2. Customer Profiles: Get to Know Your Customers

Most POS software comes with a customer relationship management (CRM) feature. This is where customer profiles are stored, along with data around:

• Purchases
• Shipping
• Contact
• Payment information

Customer records are used to build engagement through personalized loyalty programs and fine-tuned marketing campaigns. You should choose a POS software provider that offers free CRM functionality, not as an add-on.

3. Checkout: Speed Up Your Transaction Process

The checkout register is the POS’s user interface. On a traditional cash register, the interface would be buttons assigned for each product and various other functions. On modern POS systems, the interface is a touchscreen. Using familiar touchscreen hardware, a modern POS software’s checkout terminal is designed for ease of use to help prevent long queues. \

It can be customized to display the most popular products and the most used functionalities for fast access to:

• Frequently used discounts
• Returns
• Refunds

This is where your POS system’s payment processing feature is directly integrated.

4. Payment Processing: Seamlessly Accept Payments

Some POS systems like Square have a built-in payment processor, making it easy to start accepting payments. Meanwhile, others like Clover have ready integration tools to choose your payment processor.

Payment processing services come in many forms and vary depending on the business type. Some retailers only need a simple in-person checkout service. Others require digital invoicing with an embedded checkout form and the ability to accept remote payments. Online businesses will look for a payment processing service that can integrate with their website.

That said, every payment processing feature should have:

• Payment gateway integration functions
• Strong fraud prevention tools
• PCI-compliant data protection features

5. Security: Protect Your Business and Customers

POS security features include PIN-protected access and cash tracking in registers to malware protection. Most POS software is equipped with passwords and can receive automatic security updates from the provider. There should be regular prompts to change PINs and passwords and records of user logs whenever the POS system is used.

6. Reporting: Track Your Business’s Performance

Every POS software should have reporting features and pre-built reports, such as sales by category, at no additional cost. Some systems include customization options such as creating various filters and automations for scheduled reports. Inventory updates, such as:

• Inventory levels
• Low stock reporting

These are particularly crucial, and with the combination of sales records, the software can generate analytical data such as customer behavior. You can use information from these reports to plan marketing campaigns and personalize loyalty programs.

Additional POS Features: Tools to Help You Streamline Operations

These additional point-of-sale features are great because they can leverage your existing business software to streamline workflows. Some POS service providers include these features built into the software as paid plan upgrades, while others make these features available with third-party software integrations.

7. Mobility: Make Sales Anywhere

Nowadays, most POS systems can also be taken on-the-go. Most cloud-based POS systems have a mobile-optimized version of the POS software that can be downloaded to a phone or tablet, and then used to process sales anywhere within the store, curbside, and even out at events such as:

• Trade shows
• Pop-up stores
• Farmer’s markets

Sales and inventory records are synced to prevent sales of sold-out and out-of-stock items.   

Mobile-based POS software is prevalent nowadays. Most popular POS providers even have proprietary hardware to integrate tablets and iPads into a storefront checkout setup.

8. Order Management: Streamline Fulfillment for All Sales Channels

Order Management is one of the crucial Point of Sale features that enables businesses to track and manage orders across multiple channels—whether they’re placed via:

• Online store
• In-store
• Via mobile
  

This feature centralizes all orders, making it easier for staff to monitor their status, from initial placement to fulfillment. By streamlining the process, businesses can:

• Reduce errors
• Minimize delays
• Ensure timely deliveries or pickups

Example: A bakery managing online cake orders alongside in-store sales uses order management to ensure each order is fulfilled correctly and on time, improving both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

9. Integrated Loyalty Programs: Reward Repeat Customers

Integrated loyalty programs help businesses retain customers by rewarding them for repeat purchases. Customers can earn points and redeem rewards automatically during transactions.

Loyalty programs can benefit customers in several ways, such as:

• Increased customer retention
• Encourages repeat business
• Simplifies reward management

10. Gift Card Processing: Boost Sales with Gift Cards

Gift Card Processing allows businesses to issue, track, and redeem gift cards seamlessly through the POS system. It simplifies the process for customers and staff, helping drive sales and attract new customers.

Businesses can offer two main types of gift cards:

• Physical Gift Cards: some text
  • Sold in-store 
  • Tangible cards given to customers 
  • Easily tracked within the POS system
• Digital Gift Cards: some text
  • Purchased online and sent via email or SMS 
  • Convenient for last-minute purchases 
  • Integrated and managed through the POS system

Example: Retail stores sell gift cards through their POS system, allowing customers to purchase them for gifts, driving new customer acquisition when the cards are redeemed.

11. Employee Time Tracking: Manage Staff Efficiently

A POS system with employee time tracking lets businesses monitor work hours, schedule shifts, and track overtime.

It ensures accurate payroll management by integrating time logs directly into the system. Here are some of the top reasons why employee time tracking must be included in point of sale features:

• Automatically logs employee hours.
• Allows employers to manage shifts, assign tasks, and prevent overstaffing or understaffing.
• Provides insights into employee productivity, absenteeism, and overtime.
• Ensures adherence to labor laws by accurately recording hours worked, breaks, and overtime.

12. Customizable Reporting: Tailor Insights to Your Needs

Customizable reporting in a POS system allows businesses to generate reports tailored to their specific needs, providing detailed insights into:

• Sales
• Inventory
• Employee performance
• Customer data

Instead of one-size-fits-all reports, customizable reporting enables managers to focus on the metrics most relevant to their operations, such as:

• Product performance
• Profit margins
• Sales trends

Example: A retail store can customize reports to track the sales of seasonal products, helping them optimize stock levels and marketing efforts.

13. Efficient Payment Processing: Speed Up Customer Transactions

A modern POS system supports multiple payment methods, including credit/debit cards, mobile wallets, and contactless payments, improving the customer experience by offering flexible payment options.

Some of the key payment methods that should be supported are:

• Credit/Debit Cards
• Mobile Wallets
• Contactless Payments

For example: A café accepts payments via:

• Apple Pay
• Google Pay
• Traditional credit cards

Allowing customers to choose their preferred payment method.

14. Interactive Business Dashboards: Visualize Your Business Data

Interactive Business Dashboards is one of the POS system features that provides real-time visual insights into key business metrics, such as:

• Sales performance
• Track inventory levels
• Customer behavior 

These dashboards present data in a user-friendly, graphical format, allowing business owners to monitor and analyze trends at a glance. Customizable widgets let users track metrics most relevant to their business, such as:

• Daily revenue
• Best-selling products
• Employee performance

Example: A restaurant owner can use an interactive dashboard to quickly view daily sales and table turnover rates, making informed decisions on staffing and promotions to optimize operations and improve profitability.

15. Multi-Store Management: Oversee Operations across Locations

A multi-store management feature in a POS system allows businesses to oversee and coordinate operations across multiple store locations from a single platform. Ensuring consistency and efficiency across all stores, it enables centralized control of:

• Sales
• Inventory
• Staff management

Some of the key functionalities include:

• Real-time inventory synchronization
• Unified reporting
• Management of promotions and pricing

Example: A coffee shop chain uses multi-store management to oversee branch operations. By centralizing inventory data, the chain can quickly identify which locations have surplus or low stock levels and adjust inventory orders accordingly.

16. Omnichannel Sales Capabilities: Integrate Your Sales Channels

Omnichannel sales capabilities in a POS system unify multiple sales channels into one integrated platform, such as:

• Physical stores
• Online shops
• Mobile apps

This feature ensures synchronization of all channels, providing a seamless customer experience and consistent data across all touchpoints.

Businesses can manage inventory, process orders, and track customer interactions in real time, no matter where the sale occurs.

Example: A cosmetics brand uses omnichannel capabilities to integrate its eCommerce website with its physical stores. Customers can check product availability online, purchase items through the website, and choose to either have them shipped or pick them up in-store. Any returns or exchanges can be handled seamlessly at any location, regardless of where the purchase was made.

17. Real-Time Analytics: Get Instant Insights Into Your Operations

Real-time analytics provides up-to-the-minute insights into sales, customer behavior, and inventory. This allows businesses to respond swiftly to trends and make data-driven decisions.

Real-time analytics can be beneficial in various ways, such as:

• Faster decision-making
• Increased sales opportunities
• Optimized inventory management

‍Example: A restaurant uses real-time analytics to track which menu items are most prevalent during lunch, adjusting its promotions and inventory accordingly.

18. Customer-Facing Display: Increase Transparency with Customers

A customer-facing display increases transparency by showing customers their order in real time, including itemized prices and discounts.It also allows customers to interact with the system, get loyalty program benefits, or choose a payment method.

Example: In a retail store, customers can see their purchases on a display, ensuring they review the items and apply any loyalty points before finalizing the transaction.

19. Integration: Connect to Your Existing Business Systems

Your business is likely already using other types of business software, such as for accounting or CRM, but have you connected them to your POS platform? Integrating those with your POS system allows you to work more efficiently, as the systems will automatically share data rather than require you to transfer it between systems manually.

When switching or upgrading POS solutions, look for a POS system that can integrate with your existing software and any you plan on using in the future. This will make it easier to manage your business as you grow.

20. Scalability: Future-Proof Your POS System

Speaking of growing, it is essential to use a POS system that can scale with your business as you expand. This might mean the ability to add on more registers or accessories or even to open up a second or third location with one centralized POS platform. 

If your existing system can’t grow as your business does, you should seriously consider changing platforms to a solution that can meet your current and expected needs.

21. Payroll: Automate Employee Compensation

Payroll is an excellent addition to POS software, particularly if the system already supports employee management. With an integrated payroll function, businesses can pull information directly from employee attendance and performance records to generate payroll reports automatically.

It can also automate tax computation and reporting. The best POS payroll tools support integration with accounting tools. Other providers like Square can be set up to expedite direct deposits via digital wallets like CashApp.

22. Reputation Management: Monitor Your Online Reviews

Social media can boost your sales or tarnish your reputation. Some POS software now offers reputation management features to help track what consumers are saying about your business. This involves monitoring online review sites like Yelp and offering on-the-spot responses to customer feedback. 

Reputation management features also allow businesses to identify and respond immediately to negative reviews and even build a marketing campaign with incentives for those who provide feedback.

23. Vendor/Supplier Management: Streamline Your Purchasing Processes

Vendor management allows you to maintain vendor contact information, keep track of purchase orders, and even send out purchase order requests directly from the platform. With this integration, you get access to low-stock reports (alerts). You can set up automatic tasks, such as grouping low-stock items according to supplier and preparing purchase orders from templates.

Additionally, the system can easily upload the new inventory in bulk if the vendor sends a digital purchase invoice. Businesses can even automatically update their account payables systems.

24. Shipping and Local Delivery: Simplify Fulfillment for Online Orders

For online businesses, integrated shipping/delivery is a crucial POS feature. Providing shipping cost plus delivery information for customers creates transparency, which, in turn, helps minimize cart abandonment and chargeback claims. POS providers like Shopify include this as a built-in feature for all its POS plans. 

Toast POS for restaurants offers this feature both built-in and as an integration with local delivery apps for a fee. Before signing, make it a point to visit a POS provider’s list of partner integrations to see if they work with your preferred local delivery apps.

25. Kitchen Display System (KDS): Improve Communication in Foodservice Operations

A kitchen display system is back-of-house software integrated into a restaurant’s POS system. Restaurants using a KDS can digitally send customer orders to the kitchen to show outstanding orders with additional information, such as table numbers and time, so the kitchen staff can prioritize their tasks efficiently. Most restaurant POS systems like:

• Toast
• Lightspeed
• Square

26. Work Order Management: Track Custom Orders for Specialty Shops

Work order management is a must-have for specialty shops that offer custom-made products. For some specialty shops, regular inventory features don’t cut it. You need work order tools to:

• Apply specific labor costs
• Assign (and track) warranties
• Track unique customer requests

As the order moves within the inventory system. Lightspeed Retail is popular for its work order management features.

27. Appointment Setting: Organize Client Scheduling

Professional and service-based businesses such as salons, spas, and clinics use appointment setting to organize client consultations. When integrated into POS software, you can create appointment forms, send requests for reservation fees, and communicate with clients within the system. 

If you have a website, you can create customer portals so clients can conveniently:

• Request appointments
• Purchase products
• Make payments online

Square offers free appointment POS software plus paid optional upgrades for additional tools such as detailed invoicing.

28. Subscription Management: Automate Recurring Revenue

Subscription management doesn’t just refer to recurring payments. It’s also managing customers, products, and services such as:

• Utilities
• Streaming services
• Other software

With subscription management, you are provided tools to create subscription plans tailored to specific needs and then automate recurring invoice sends or charges to payment methods stored on file. 

Some retailers use subscription box models, which also require tools to build an online portal for customers to manage their subscriptions. Large businesses, such as architectural firms, use subscription management to create and convert proposals into invoices.

29. ID Verification: Comply with Age-Restricted Sales Regulations

ID verification is a compliance feature for businesses that sell age-restricted (liquor, tobacco) and other regulated products such as CBD. While not a hard requirement, having an integrated ID verification feature ensures that the business complies with federal and state laws. 

ID verification tools are often third-party integrations from providers accredited by regulating bodies, with functionalities that vary from ID scanners to customer-facing integrated verification apps.

30. Omni-Channel Integration: Improve Your Customer Experience

Omni-channel integration ensures a unified customer experience across online and offline channels. You should look for a system that can sync inventory, orders, and customer data between your physical store and eCommerce platforms, enabling features like click-and-collect, in-store returns of online purchases, and seamless loyalty programs. 

This integration improves the customer experience and provides comprehensive data for optimizing sales strategies. Retailers looking to expand online should prioritize POS systems with strong omni-channel capabilities.

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Book a Free Demo with POS Exchange to Learn about Our Customized POS System Solutions Today!

The POS Exchange brings over 20 years of restaurant expertise, serving 200,000+ merchants and processing billions annually. Our tailored POS system solutions help businesses speed up checkouts by 30%, implement dynamic pricing, and manage customer reviews while reducing overhead.

Perfect for:

• Full-service restaurants
• Pizza shops
• Coffee houses
• Multi-location enterprises

We offer end-to-end service, from brilliant consultation and interactive demos to local installation and 24/7 support. Our mobile iPad POS systems streamline operations with features like:

• Order management
• Bill splitting
• Inventory control

With integrations for business management tools and advanced security measures, we ensure your POS system grows with your business. Trust our expertise to help you avoid the common pitfall that affects 38% of new business owners who choose the wrong POS system. Whether you're managing:

• A busy restaurant
• A local café
• Operate a multi-location business

The POS Exchange delivers customized POS system solutions that tell your unique business story. Book a free demo with POS exchange to learn about our customized POS system solutions today.

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