Why Alice POS is the Best System for Your Garden Center

Garden centers and nurseries have special requirements and with their vast array of products, managing these businesses can quickly become complex. The solution is to purchase a point of sale (POS) system. This valuable technology can increase your company’s productivity and profits in several ways.

Generally, a POS system tailored to garden centers can improve inventory management, strengthen customer relationships, and simplify communication between branches while remaining secure thanks to a cloud-based solution.

Although there are several POS systems available on the market, only a few companies have designed POS software for garden centers and nurseries. Read on to discover the best POS software for you!

Improve Your Inventory Management 

To meet customer demand, a business needs to control its inventory on a regular basis. Garden centers and nurseries sell hundreds of products, so having an efficient POS system is essential to managing your business.

Inventory Management

In the past, garden centers kept track of their inventory by hand using a pen and paper and had to take inventory frequently to account for sales, losses, and thefts. Nowadays, with a POS system, owners can easily see the quantities of each product on the computer. A computerized inventory takes less time to complete than a manual inventory.

In addition, there is less risk of error, and you can know what inventory you have in your garden center at any time. This allows your employees to focus their energy on other tasks. Ultimately, a POS system saves time and money. It can be used in independent garden centers or in multi-stores, such as franchises, corporate networks and buying groups.

Alice POS features a computerized inventory management system to keep track of your inventory in real time. Items sold are automatically deducted from the inventory after each transaction. Therefore, you can monitor the number of products in your garden center.

Suggested Minimum Inventory Quantities

POS software continuously monitors your garden center’s inventory. When the quantity of an item decreases, you need to place an order. An excellent POS, such as Alice POS, can make automatic or manual suggestions for minimum order quantities based on your purchase history. In other words, a POS can suggest the ideal quantity of items to keep in stock based on their popularity. 

This feature minimizes the risk of forgotten orders and ensures a minimum quantity of plants in your garden center. You can go on vacation knowing that Alice POS will always keep your inventory up to date. With our cloud-based solution, you can complete this task remotely.

Labelling

In a garden center, products can have complex names and the Latin name of many plants often prevails. Your POS system must be able to handle these unusual products. Alice POS can format the labels. You can choose the orientation and adjustment of the labels and adapt them to the product. 

An excellent POS system also lets you serialize products. These items have a unique inventory number, which allows for better tracking. Products sold are easily identifiable and searches in the system are faster.

Build a Strong Relationship with Your Customers

Many studies show the importance of customer service when it comes to increasing a company’s profits. Offering personalized service is the key to attracting and satisfying customers. A POS system helps create a unique experience for the consumer and offers many features to achieve this goal. 

Detailed Customer File 

Detailed customer records are essential for the development of your garden center and provide you with an accurate picture of the people who visit your store. A POS system, such as Alice POS, allows you to enter notes internally that only employees can see. You can also add images to customize the notes. Your garden center employees can easily see these notes and tailor the offer to the customers. 

This feature can be combined with the cross-selling system available in Alice POS to suggest similar or complementary products at the time of purchase. This is an easy and efficient way to satisfy your customers’ needs while increasing your profits.

Rental Services 

Most garden centers and nurseries specialize in the sale of various plants, flowers, and trees for homeowners. Many customers already have the tools they need to landscape their property and don’t need to purchase any additional equipment. However, some projects require expensive gardening tools, and it is often more cost effective to rent this equipment since it will only be used once. 

A rental service saves the customer an unnecessary trip because they can get everything they need for their project in one place. In addition, this service is an excellent way to generate a new source of revenue. A garden center or nursery offering a gardening equipment rental service must have a POS system that supports this feature. 

When a customer rents tools, a good POS system will record their details, the date of the rental and the condition of the items. This way, when there are a limited number of tools, you can let customers know when they will be able to rent them. Alice POS has this feature, which helps to build a good relationship with your customers.

Promotions

Promotions attract customers to stores, and garden centers are no exception. During promotional periods, you need to manage the additional flow of customers and systems must work properly to meet the demand. A POS system makes it easy to integrate pricing into the system to help employees properly bill customers. 

With Alice POS, you can control any promotions you run and their duration. You only need to enter your products in the software once and choose the ones you want to promote. In addition, you can set up your promotions up to one year in advance. This feature allows you to better manage your time by planning promotions during the off-season. 

Other features can help you improve the efficiency of your business during promotional periods. Alice POS is also available on Windows tablets, so employees can even take customer orders outside in the garden center’s yard. Consumers don’t have to go into the physical store as invoices can be sent by email. With tablets, you can avoid lineups at the cash registers and keep customers satisfied.

If you own several stores under the same banner, the Alice POS system is designed to simplify communication between them. Promotions are entered into the system and sent to all the stores. Read on to learn more about multi-store management.

Simplify Communication Between Your Branches

Some POS systems are designed for multi-location store networks such as franchises, buying groups and corporate networks. This feature allows companies with multiple locations to run their network smoothly and seamlessly. Owners of multiple garden centers under one banner can benefit greatly from it. Find out how this feature can increase the productivity of your garden center.

Price Management  

Integrating smart POS software within your garden center can help manage item pricing. A system built for multi-store management makes it easy to monitor the value of products across your branches. With your master account, you can set item prices and then share the information across the garden centers in your network. 

Prices can be adjusted at any time. This feature allows you to standardize the prices throughout your stores. A customer who visits another store can then benefit from the same low prices.  

With Alice POS, each store can add unique products to the system and adjust these prices. This allows a garden center to meet the demands of its particular customer base.

Inter-Store Inventory Transfer 

A state-of-the-art point of sale system allows you to manage your garden center’s inventory and orders in one place. The system displays the number of products you have in stock. Usually, when a customer wants a product that is not available in your store, you have to send an order to the supplier. 

With Alice POS, you can conduct inter-store inventory transfers. This feature shortens customer wait times to purchase an item. If a store is running low on a particular product, you can transfer the excess from another store to fill the gap. The system automatically calculates the delivery charges to ensure an easy understanding of the costs.

Special Orders     

A good POS system lets you place special orders to meet the needs of your garden center customers. You can track items in the order that are not in stock. This feature enables you to sell items from your supplier’s catalogue that you don’t have in your store.

The information you’ve just read may change your perception of POS systems. If you own a garden center or nursery, you’ll understand the benefits a POS system can bring to your business. 

Whether it’s to improve inventory management, build good customer relationships or simplify communication between branches, Alice POS is the solution for you. Contact one of our experts now for a system demo.