Retail guides > Retailer's guide to managing time and people > Time-saving retail apps
Time-saving retail apps
When it comes to saving time, technology is one of the great enablers. There are five types of app that can transform a retailer’s day, and productivity.
1. Point-of-sale apps
Smart POS apps make it easy to ring up sales and accept payment, of course, but they can do a lot more. They share important information with other business systems, so you can stay on top of inventory and accounting without transcribing all the data yourself.
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2. Inventory management apps
Inventory management apps can act as bookends for your business, counting stock on the way in and on the way out. That ensures you’re always on top of inventory levels and it allows you to use powerful FIFO accounting techniques, which provide more insight into business profitability.
Scan new items as they arrive into the warehouse and the software will automatically add them to your stock.
Items are removed from stock as they’re processed through your point-of-sale system.
3. Online accounting software
By automatically pulling sales and expense data directly from the source, online accounting systems can give you a near real-time picture of income, costs, profitability, inventory value, and cash flow.
All your financial data flows to one place to be reconciled, making it easy for you (or your bookkeeper or accountant) to create reports and keep your finger on the pulse.
4. Workforce management apps
You can use workforce management apps to share schedules to an employee’s phone, which cuts down a lot of manual to and fro. They can clock in and out of shifts using the same app, which generates an accurate record of hours worked for payroll.
Scheduling
You design and share work schedules with employees on their phone.
Time recording
Employees clock in and out of shifts from a device and the info flows into payroll.
And then payroll software can work out wages owed, PAYE and other deductions – plus generate payslips for staff, and reports for IRD. You may already have payroll software as part of your online accounting package, so check.
5. Off-the-shelf ecommerce
Rather than building an online shop from the ground up, you can use a kitset model. These come with templates for your shopfront, payment processing systems, and tools for managing the store. You set it up and all the hard technical stuff just falls into place.
All chapters:
1. Managing your workload and staying happy
2. Hiring, managing, and paying staff
3. Customer service and customer rights
4. Time-saving apps
