The exponential growth in the beauty and wellness industry has also fueled the substantial growth in the ancillary industry, which enables salons and spas to deliver exceptional service. One such sector that has seen high growth is SaaS (i.e. software as a service) sector, and the market today for salon / spa POS software is ripe with huge number of choices for the businesses to select from. Each salon and spa software has its own unique selling point and their own business model. The software is designed to meet the requirements on businesses of various sizes. As a result, when it comes to selecting a POS software, business owners and managers often find themselves confounded with a barrage of choices. However, with a little care, planning and research selection of the Point of Sale system can be done easily.
In order to understand which software will work best for your business, it is important to ascertain both the present and future requirements of the business, the present issues, and the possible solutions that are desired. Subject to this outcome, one must always have the list of key features of a POS system included in the evaluation criteria of the software. Listed below are five must POS software features.
- Appointment & Scheduling
The first amongst the key features of a POS system is an omni-channel appointment booking system and scheduling software. The software should be able to accept bookings by democratizing the method to suit the client’s need. Calls, website, apps, and ChatBots the software should be able to deploy all means to accept appointment bookings in a few easy steps. Every successful booking should go through an equitable task assignment process and culminate in creating the schedule for the day. Prior to the upcoming appointment the system should be equipped to send automated reminders to both clients and the stylist such that there are minimal no show bookings and missed appointments. Further, the system should be intelligent enough to have a waitlist ready such that if any previous slot is not being utilized the waitlisted client can fill the space.
- Centralized Database
People centric businesses are require to maintain a comprehensive database on their clients. From basic information such as name, contact details, and birthdays to customer’s product and service choices and preferred payment methods all such information are necessary to enable the business to be able to better serve the clients. Often added as a separate module in some salon POS software, a centralized customer database is an essential POS software feature. A well designed salon/ spa POS software will not only have this module existing in the basic system but also will be designed to allow customers to make necessary update in their records on their own. With a comprehensive up-to-date client information, which includes the purchase history for both products and services, the POS software will provide you with the foundation to better plan promotional offers and run targeted marketing campaigns, and create loyalty rewards.
- Payment & Accounting
Ranking amongst the key features of a POS system is the track and trace payment and accounting feature. A well designed software must be able to track and trace each and every transaction from commencement to culmination i.e. from appointment to successful payment and auto post the relevant accounting entries. The basic steps included in the process should be accomplished as a series of automated task. The system should be able to generate professional tax invoice mentioning details of chosen products, and services, discounts, sales tax details and the payment method. Once the payment is successfully received, the software should be able to make necessary entries in both the inventory module and the accounting module. While every salon POS software allows to generate invoice and collect payments, there are only few of them which have an automatic book keeping feature. Based on the requirements of and volume of transactions your business handles, it is important to understand what the payments and accounting module of a given POS software can achieve.
- Inventory Management
The process of reconciling inventory and analyzing the records to figure out what sells and what doesn’t is a long drawn one and prone to errors. Therefore, another key feature of the POS software is inventory management. The software should be intelligent and intuitive enough to track consumption pattern of consumables and prompt for necessary action on replenishing the stocks. It should be able to analyze the data and segregate between fast moving and slow moving consumables and maintain the right inventory balance, such that business can run with the optimal inventory levels and limit the working capital that remains blocked in inventory.
- Reporting and Analytics
The fifth in the list of key features of a POS system is the on-demand reporting module, which can instantaneously generate on-demand reports to ascertain the performance of the business. Whether it is the daily sales report, weekly cash flow statements, and computation of the key business metrics the software should be able to create real time numerical and graphical report such that the management team can take informed decisions to ensure that the business performs optimally.
You can also manage your revenue leakage for your SaaS business. A variety of factors are taken into account when monitoring customer behaviour. It contains things like account attributes, activities, event instances, engagement with records, etc.
Aside from the above must have features, there are some other key features of a POS system include employee management, marketing management, loyalty programs etc. that are available in certain salon / spa POS software. One particular POS software, which comes with a full host of features and is easily scale-able to meet the ever changing needs of the businesses is Zenoti.