In today’s fast paced world, having the right software for your business is imperative. It does not matter if you sell clothing or shoes, it is always important to have an accurate inventory and to know your flow of incoming and outgoing money. Most people think that it is just “go in the store, grab the item you want and get out”. The truth is, there is a whole lot more behind the door than you would think. A retailer looks for many capabilities in his software, may it be special orders, layaways, gift cards, customer management, coupons, markdowns, employee commission and more.

Visual Retail Plus is one of the suppliers of such Point of Sale software. They offer more than 80 different reports to run, such as Commission to check your employee sales, Hot and Cold to find out which items are selling and which are dead in the water, Profit, Red Level which will inform you which items are running low as far as On Hand, Daily Totals per different payments, Credit Card transactions and much more.

Their Customer management is also something not to overlook. Keep your customer information in your system by more than just Customer ID and or name. Customer information consists of full address, shipping address, purchase history, VIP points and more. So when you are selling apparel, and a customer comes up, it would be nice to know the customer purchase history and thus allowing you to suggest any sales you might be having on similar items. If you have multiple stores, how many times has this happened to you. A customer comes up with an item, and asks if you have that item in a different size. You can either go with the customer on the floor and spent a long time trying to see if you even have that item or you could just pull up the item in the inventory of your Point of Sale system, and check not just your store, but any other store that could have it.

Then either you can inform the customer where the item is and give them direction, or have the item shipped to the customer from the other location. Visual Retail Plus also supports coupons, markdowns and price changes. Some customers love coupons, as it allows them to save money, thus it is an incentive for them to come into your store. Markdowns or special sales, are always big for retailers, especially Apparel retailers. A sale like “Buy one get one half off” or something like that is always nice. When it comes to running your business, you need the tools to work for you, not against you. Point of Sale companies such as Visual Retail Plus provide that kind of product. So make sure that you are using the right tool for your Apparel retail.