Retail small businesses are no stranger to the importance of detailed record keeping. With cash constantly coming and going and inventory levels always in flux, there’s a lot to keep track of, not to mention keeping on top of payroll, taxes and ledgers. Carefully tracking all of these areas can take time away from more high value tasks that will drive sales.
The answer to that can be found in Xero’s Ecosystem. Using Vend, Xero and Deputy can reduce the hours you spend tracking all the details of your business by making it automated.
Banyan Tree, a boutique retail store, has been able to completely revolutionize the way they run their business with Xero, Vend and Deputy. By integrating their point-of-sale, accounting and employee scheduling they have been able to automate often painful tasks. The best part is, they can do it from any connected device, meaning scheduling staff and tracking real-time financial performance can now be done on-the-go from anywhere.
This means owner Christie Murdoch now has more time to focus on what she says matters – her customers and helping her business grow. Here’s how it all works.
Manage stock and sales with Vend point-of-sale
Together, Vend and Xero can save hours of admin by reducing manual data entry, which cuts down on errors. When Banyan Tree closes their Vend register at the end of each day, it automatically syncs with Xero. Daily sales, payment totals, cash movements and cost of goods sold are all automatically updated with no manual data entry. Christie even gets an alert if stock needs to be reordered. Vend and Xero also allows retailers to better track their overall profit or loss to make more informed business decisions in real-time.
Manage your staff with Deputy
Christie used to use pen and paper for employee schedules. Now she says “employees can clock in the minute they walk in on their own device,” making employee scheduling “seamless”.
Using Deputy and Xero is about as close as you can get to having a full-time people manager in your business, without actually hiring one. The app enables you to assign staff and publish schedules in minutes. It then integrates that information with Xero to create timesheets. Owners can approve timesheets and automatically push them to the Xero payroll.
The combination of Deputy and Xero also opens the door to powerful and accurate reporting. Employees can have Deputy on their iPhone, and owners can sync employee data to avoid double entry.
Schedule staff based on sales demand
Integrating both Vend and Deputy with Xero means that retailers can manage not just their sales and profits, but also their staff operations. Sales data syncs automatically from Vend so future staffing decisions can be based on sales projections, making it easier to schedule staff for busy periods and get the best out of your sales team.
You can learn more about how the integration has helped Christie in this two-minute video.
Make your business even smarter
Of course, every business has slightly different needs. This webinar walks you through a day in the life of a retail business and the seamless solution Xero.
We also have some quick tips on how to run Vend, Deputy and Xero on iOS. Plus you can head over to our add-on marketplace to check out the other apps we integrate with.
For more ideas on running a smart retail business check out our collection of small business guides.
