Ho. Ho. Ho. The Top 3 Ways to Plan With Your POS For The Holidays

The National Retail Federation expects holiday retail sales in November and December – excluding automobiles, gasoline and restaurants – to increase between 3.6 and 4 percent for a total of $678.75 billion to $682 billion. That’s up from $655.8 billion from last year.

Before the shopping season gets underway, it’s time to prepare with your point-of-sale (POS) system.

Forecasting & Goal Planning

Forecasting is the guide that builds your business. It can sometimes be wildly wrong because of incomplete data. Your POS can reduce those types of errors by providing data that is closest to the customer. What are they buying? When are they buying? How much are they buying?

First, pull your sales volume from this year and compare it to last year. This will help you to establish a baseline for the current year’s performance compared to last. A baseline forecast will help you understand your goals for the holiday season.

Next, analyze last year’s holiday sales and revenue with your POS. Create a holiday baseline forecast. How can you maximize or minimize the trends? With the right numbers, your forecast is a gold mine. You’ll be using it as a guide to help you make important decisions that can make or break your business during the holiday season.

Selling the Right Products

Now dig a little deeper into your data and find out what products sold the best? Do you think they will sell well this season? What are the trends? Have they been selling lately? What didn’t sell? You don’t want to try that again.

By understanding your best selling and worst selling products you can put in a pretty good guess with inventory purchasing. You always want to meet the demand – not having too much or too little.

Hiring and Work Schedules

Based on your data from last year and your current data, how much holiday help do you think you need – a few additional part-timers or a dozen? Look at past sales per employee and reach out to those who had high numbers. It’s always best to start out with re-hiring those who have already been trained and have a proven success record. Plus, by reviewing your data you’ll know where to plug in the right staff. Your POS will show you your peak selling times and days. That why you don’t have staff standing around or worse, not enough to help with your holiday rush.

Considering a few of these strategies with your POS system will give you a solid forecast, and hopefully solid sales this holiday season. Call Bepoz for more details about upgrading to a quality POS system.