What is a free POS software and why is it important for your small business

Jane Samarasekara
3 min readSep 14, 2022

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Point of Sales (POS) is the point at which an individual is ready to make a purchase at a store, add items to the cart online or pick out an item. The hardware and software POS assist business owners to make these sales. POS software, also known as point of purchase software, is the technology used with POS hardware such as a card reader and is used to process and monitor sales, track inventory, store customer data, integrate with systems and databases, help the owner gain critical business insights and multiple other functions.

If you are a small business owner who is quite diligent in the cost of the business, using a free POS software would help your business in numerous ways. It allows you to reap the benefits of such an effective tool for zero cost and will allow you to upgrade the plan when you can invest more. The free POS software could help you take your business to the next level because of the many benefits it offers. Here are our top 4 features that make a free POS software vital for your small business!

1. Faster Customer Checkouts

One of the main features that can help your business is the fast customer checkouts that are aided by the various tools available. Business owners can sync the POS to customer display on a separate screen to show order details to customers during the billing process, keep drawer transactions transparent throughout the shift, maintain visibility to cash in and cash out which prevents mistakes and theft, and have a dashboard app that monitors real-time sales and stock. POS also makes it possible to accept payment from any method, enable refunds quite easily and either issue printed receipts or share the receipts via Email or Whatsapp with the customer making the process of checkout quite efficient.

2. Customer Loyalty Programs

When utilizing a POS software, business owners are given the opportunity to set up customer loyalty programs. This would mean customers have an incentive to visit your store over other stores for their purchases as they could use their loyalty cards to redeem the collected points. This could benefit business owners in many ways as they are able to build a customer base and even gather contact details, preferences and purchase trends which would help provide better service and plan sales. This would also help you track individual visits and add important notes about customers and their purchases, helping you to evaluate your sales effectively.

3. Easy Inventory Management

A free POS software also gives you the necessary tools to centralize your inventory and manage stocks across multiple shops and businesses. You are also able to view inventory history to track the flow of inventory in all shop locations and transfer goods between shops which makes the process of coordinating between outlets seamless. Additionally, through the POS software you are able to raise purchase orders, accept goods received based on PO, share PO with suppliers, adjust stock levels and rectify differences, and be notified of low stock and stock expiry.

4. Understand Business Performance through Analytics

POS software gives you the ability to track daily sales revenue, net profit, gross profit and discounts while gaining insight into the best performing categories over a period. This could help business owners understand their business progress in depth and make constructive improvements and changes. You could also monitor fast-selling products, understand sales volume by product and even gain access to credit settlements of your customers and the full report of creditors.

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