EPOS system for small businesses

EPOS stands for 'Electronic Point of Sale' and is effectively the modern-day equivalent of what you would recognise as a traditional 'till' or 'cash register'.

The main difference between the two, is that an EPOS system runs on a completely digital platform instead of a mechanical setup, and it collects a vast amount of data versus just sales records.

EPOS tends to be bought as a complete 'system' or 'solution' and is made up of 3 components that must all be in place to make its use effective:


Hardware
The physical stuff you can see, including: Monitor, metal cash drawer, thermal printer and card machine.

Software
The program that drives the functionality of the system, e.g. recording sales, updating stock count and tracking employee performance.

Payment Processing
This is an agreement between you and a payment provider (like Retail Merchant Services) in order to accept card payments from your customers and have the funds sent to your account.

Get in touch for more information on how an EPOS system could benefit your business:

EPOS is an acronym for 'Electronic Point of Sale'. It works like a digital cash register and can accept the following payment types:


Digital payments
The card machine that's connected to the EPOS system can process card payments from all the major card schemes and digital wallets (such as Google Pay and Apple Pay), through contactless or chip and PIN.

Data between the card machine and EPOS system is shared, so the risk of mis-keying information is much lower. The data that's collected by both devices is used to generate business reports.

Cash payments
Customers can still pay by cash if your business uses an EPOS system. In this case, the EPOS software will also record these as transactions, so they can contribute to overall reporting.

An EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale) system, is used by retail stores as a digital till.

Depending on the provider, your EPOS system may come with software that's specifically designed for retailers, and already contains the industry-specific tools that you will find most useful.

For example, some of these may be (but are not limited to):


Automatic stocktake of online and instore inventory
Integrations to leading e-commerce platforms
Reports on sales, profits, trends and employee performance
Loyalty schemes for your best customers
Full barcode management

Are you a retailer intersted in learning more about EPOS systems?

Our EPOS systems can cater for both retail shops and a range of hospitality businesses including: restaurants, pubs, bars, cafés, takeaways and bakeries.

If you choose our hospitality software package with your EPOS system, it will come fully equipped with a toolkit specifically built for increasing customer satisfaction and improving efficiency in your restaurant.

Including features, such as:


Tableside ordering and contactless payments
Customisable floor plans and user-friendly table management
Integrations to well-known ordering and delivery applications
Reports that can idetify profitability, reduce wastage and staff performance
Streamline back of house operations with a comprehensive Kitchen Display System

Our intuitive EPOS systems are so simple to use, that your staff can typically be trained in about 15 minutes.

If you need some additional help, there's also a host of online tutorial videos, user guides and a 24/7 support line for ongoing help and coaching, so you’ll never be out on your own.

Want to learn more about our EPOS systems for small business?

When you receive your EPOS system, you will be assigned a dedicated EPOS account manager for your first 30 days using the system. They will deliver 5 training sessions to you, covering:


Product (hardware) setup
Reporting
Customer data capture
Stock management
Staff management

After 30 days, you can expect to be fully operational. However, in the case that you're not, or you have further questions, there is a 24/7, UK-based support line open to you. Which can offer advice and guidance on the following:


Technical support
New staff training sessions
Integrating new systems
Adding new features

The support package is included in the monthly cost of your solution. If you would like to know more, please get in touch below.

EPOS systems natively keep an accurate tally of your stock in real-time, whether it's being restocked (coming in) or it's being sold (going out). This naturally discourages small incidents of employee theft and reduces shrinkage expenses. Furthermore, you're more likely to notice disparities between the system's reporting and your physical stock count sooner than if you were taking stock counts manually.

With a full Retail Merchant Services EPOS system, you will also receive a PCI-compliant card machine. All of our devices receive customer data and encrypt it before securely sending it to the acquiring bank. This way, data cannot be intercepted between payment systems.

As for user access, you can set different levels of individual authorisation for each of your employees, applying restrictions or authorisations on discounts, refunds and void sales.

To protect yourself from employee fraud, you can block unauthorised access to the system and keep sensitive information only available to the staff that need to see it.

Our EPOS systems can be scaled to fit the size of your business, whether you're an independent retail store or a chain of restaurants, and have been proven from 1-1,000 sites.

For example, if you have a 5-site business with an EPOS system in each one, you can create a custom dashboard to monitor activity across all your sites and drill down into the performance of each one.

If you then open a sixth site, the next EPOS system will be set up as a new data point along with the five existing sites.

If you already have an EPOS system in place, but you're looking for a card machine to take payments, we can help you with this.

Depending on your system and setup, we can semi-integrate one of our card machines to work with your existing EPOS system and close your data loop.

Please get in touch for more information.