Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Having the right convenience store point-of-sale (POS) system can make a huge difference in managing promotional pricing.
This is because a retail POS system designed specifically for convenience stores is less susceptible to human error and makes it easier to implement price changes. By implementing a POS system designed for c-stores, c-store owners can prevent errors, save time, and reduce their workload.
Promotional storage
For many c-stores, promotions change on a weekly — if not daily — basis. A variety of factors can change the promotions that are best for a business to offer. For example, the popularity of a particular item or the price charged by the vendor. These changes can be a lot to keep track of, especially for single-store operators. With the right POS system that offers sufficient storage, promotions can be implemented or removed with ease. This means that there is less chance of human error from an owner or employee entering all the pricing data.
For example, Petrosoft’s SmartPOS offers unlimited promotional storage in the Petrosoft cloud. This storage space means you can choose to activate and deactivate promos as needed, instead of manually changing prices depending on what promos you’d like to offer. Because promotional data is backed up remotely, a momentary disruption in business operations, such as a system crash or power outage, won’t delete all of your promotional pricing.
Managing price changes
The best POS system for convenience stores is able to keep up with ever-changing prices. Because of fluctuating vendor pricing, item popularity, and item availability, many retailers engage in dynamic pricing. According to investment firm McKinsey & Company, dynamic pricing is when a retailer changes the prices they charge customers for individual goods based on what it costs to purchase those goods wholesale from a supplier. Dynamic pricing also comes into play when choosing which items to put on promotion, as offering a discount on items that were expensive to acquire will lead to a lower profit on the sale of those items.
However, though dynamic pricing is a way for retailers to stay profitable in a world with rapidly changing prices, it can often be a lot of extra labor. If the retail price book isn’t centralized, daily price changes can lead to hours of time spent updating every terminal with new prices or promotional pricing. Fortunately, a POS for convenience store that offers centralization can cut back on the time it takes to make price book updates.
For example, SmartPOS offers a feature called Smart Price Book that allows for immediate price book updates across POS terminals. When a price change is implemented, like an item becoming eligible for a promotion, the Smart Price Book feature updates that pricing in a centralized price book that every SmartPOS can access. This means that c-store owners spend less time and effort updating their price book on every c-store POS.
Interested in buying a SmartPOS? Check us out on Amazon.
