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How to Speed up Sales at the POS

5 min read

Ringing in sales in RetailEdge is as simple as shown here, but as you approach your busy retail seasons, you need to make your customer checkout process as fast and efficient as possible, keep your lines moving, and minimize slowness at the register.

 

There are lots of ways to do this, but here are a few simple ways to easily speed things up without having to resort to purchasing a separate line-busting register (although we can do this for you too).

 

 

Integrated Credit Card Processing Settings

 

Integrating credit card processing with one of RetailEdge’s processor partners can save time and reduce the risk of errors caused by clerks entering the incorrect sales total on the terminal.  Or worse yet, forgetting to charge the credit card at all (yes this has actually happened).  When you are using integrated card processing, you have the following options that can help increase your transaction speed:

 

  • Use the Reuse customer’s last card feature– RetailEdge allows you to securely re-use customers’ cards’ used on previous transactions.  Reusing a card can be faster than reentering the credit card if you need to hand key a credit card for a return or phone order.  Some RetailEdge users also use this feature in place of using customer house charges as it saves them time and money associated with printing and mailing invoices.
  • Turn Off Ask to Confirm Swipe Amount:  With our WorldPay and Card Connect integrated payment integrations, you have the option to ask the customer to confirm the transaction amount on the terminal.  Although this can be a useful feature that forces the customer to see and agree to the amount being charged, it is also another action the customer must take and if they are not paying attention, then it can slow down the checkout line.  You can change this option by going to Tools > Settings> Workstations > Modify > pressing the Credit Card (1 of 2) tab, then pressing the Edit button for the integration you are using and unchecking the “Ask to Confirm Swipe Amount?” option.
  • Set your “Required Signature for Amounts Over” to a very high value.  This will only prompt the customer for a signature when the transaction value is over the set value.  Again, this is another customer action that can slow down the sales process.  With the implementation of chip cards (EMV), signatures are no longer required by the card brands (MasterCard, Visa, etc.) as verification to prevent charge-backs.  Some businesses, however, still like to ask for signatures on certain high dollar transactions. This option can be changed by choosing Tools > Settings > Workstations > Modify, then pressing the Credit Card (1 of 2) tab.  You can then set the value in the Require Signatures for Amounts Over box.

 

 

RetailEdge Sales Screen Settings

 

  • Enter Items and Use the Touchscreen Buttons (QuickList).  Even if you are normally scanning barcode items, these buttons can be helpful selling items you don’t want to individually tag, heavy items, packages (kits), gift cards, etc.  If you have more than one type of business in the same location, then using the Touchscreen buttons on some registers can sometimes be better for these business areas (i.e., coffee shop register in your grocery, wine bar in liquor store, etc.)
  • Sell Items at Quantity*.  Although, scanning items one at a time with a barcode is very fast (think of how most grocery stores do it), if you are selling multiple quantities of the same items, you can also try:
    • Setting the Sales Screen – Advanced Quantity on an item:  Click on the item in Inventory Manager > Tab over to “Misc.” > Check box for “Sales Screen asks for Quantity”.  When you scan this item at the POS, RetailEdge will prompt you to enter a quantity, so you don’t have to scan them all individually.
    • Enter Quantity + Space before the scan: When a customer is purchasing a large number of an item, you can just key in the quantity of the item being bought, then hit the space bar, then scan in item. This will populate the sales screen with the desired quantity of items.  Dubbed the “Quantity Space Scan” method.
  • Suppress Quantity Lookups.  If your sales process requires looking up items a lot, and your inventory or sales history is very large, suppressing quantity lookups can speed things up.  By default RetailEdge’s lookup screen will display the inventory on-hand, allocated, and on-order quantities.  This helps clerks provide customers with useful information about an item’s availability and on-order status.  The Suppress Quantity Lookups setting will increase lookup speeds because RetailEdge no longer spends time calculating these quantities.   This can be set by choosing Tools > Settings > Workstations > Modify.  On the editor,  choose the Misc tab and check the box that says “Sales- Suppress Qty Lookups”.
  • Turn on Workstation Based Security.  Do your clerks have to sign in every transaction? Try Workstation Based Security with short time-out value. This setting allows your clerks to sign in once for a set period, and if they are active at the register, they stay logged in.   After a set period of inactivity RetailEdge will time out and they will have to reenter your clerk ID and password.   If one clerk at a time is using the register, this can speed up the sales process because the clerk does not have to enter their username (and optionally password) at the beginning of every sale.  This setting does allow for manager overrides if they are not authorized for the action (discount overrides).  This workstation security mode can be set on the General tab of the workstation editor.

 

  • Quickly Tender Exact Sale Amount on the Payment Screen.  If your business is taking credit cards which require the clerk to enter the exact amount of the transaction when tendering the sale, these under-utilized tricks can be used.
    • On Traditional sales screen: Use the + key on the payment screen to tender exact change. This reduces clicks and clerk error by eliminating the need to enter in the sales total.
    • On the Touch Screen, Double Click the payment method. This will populate exact amount in the payment field and post out the sale like the way the + key works in the traditional sales screen.

 

Use Your Hot Keys. In addition, there are a ton of convenient key combinations on your keyboard called “hot keys”. You can use these hot keys all over RetailEdge to minimize mouse clicks and speed up checkout. Some of our favorites are:

 

  1. Reprint Receipt – Ctrl + Alt + R: Allows you to quickly reprint the last receipt for a selected register.
  2. Gift Card Status – Ctrl + G: Opens Gift Card Status Screen
  3. Don’t use F4 for lookups.  The RetailEdge Sales Screen automatically looks up items when you type in the partial item information and press enter.  No need to use the F4 key here.
  4. Page Up/Page Down to move from Customer to Items to Payment tabs/pages
  5. Returns on the Traditional Sales Screen – Ctrl + Alt + N: Changes the quantity for all items on the sales screen to a negative.
  6. Exchanges on the Traditional Sales Screen – Ctrl + N: Changes the quantity of one item on the sales screen.

Check out the full list of hot keys here.

 

 

*Just be sure not to use both at the same time! I.e., don’t use the quantity space scan method on an item that will prompt you for quantity.

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