Tackle Grocery Receiving Challenges with a Grocery POS Upgrade
The grocery industry is evolving to meet new customer expectations, compete against new competition from big box and ecommerce stores, and protect margins in a tough economy. During this transformation, operational efficiency must be a top priority. Although grocers are adapting their strategies and business models to maintain their edge, grocery receiving is one area that most stores need to improve. While grocery receiving tasks like verification and labeling can’t be avoided, they don’t have to drain your budget. You can replace inefficient, slow, error-prone processes with a robust grocery store mobile point of sale (POS) system that saves time and decreases shrinkage and losses.
How The Right POS System Overcomes Grocery Receiving Hurdles
Traditionally, grocers have kept paper copies of invoices and purchase orders or referred to documents on a server during receiving processes. However, either method can lead to spending time looking for misplaced or misfiled documents. Manual grocery receiving processes rely heavily on experienced employees to manage inventory, but even the best employee sometimes makes mistakes. Suppose employees pull the wrong purchase order or send the wrong invoice to accounts payable. In that case, it can lead to incorrect logs, payment issues, and inaccurate tracking data, which can be a roadblock if the store must respond to a product recall.
Manual grocery receiving processes also take time. Matching the items in the shipment to an invoice and purchase is slow on paper. There is also no good solution if receiving is derailed by information that doesn’t line up with the packing slip, a mistake, or a distraction. Employees have no way to “hit pause” and resume where they left off. In most cases, the process has to begin again, taking more time away from other activities and requiring more labor.
Power Up Receiving with a Grocery POS That Connects, Tracks & Scales
Developers with expertise in grocery POS systems give stores a way to manage receiving more efficiently. The right grocery store point of sale system for your business will give you the capability to integrate with your supplier or vendor’s system. This integration allows you to automatically track orders and match shipping lists with purchase orders and invoices. Furthermore, a hardware-agnostic POS system lets employees access information on a handheld computer, eliminating the need to walk back and forth to a terminal and print documents.
Upgrading to a grocery store point of sale system with integrated back office functionality also decreases grocery receiving time and enables real-time visibility into receiving processes and inventory. A purpose-built system that gives you grocery store mobile POS functionality will streamline receiving so that even a new employee can learn the process quickly, giving your store more agility and scalability.
Decreasing Loss & Inventory Shrinkage with Accurate Verification
How Verification with the Right Grocery Store Mobile Point of Sale System Helps
Automating verification with handheld computers is faster and more accurate than manual methods. Employees can use grocery store mobile POS devices to scan barcodes as cases and units come into receiving rather than trying to match item names and numbers with the packing list. Additionally, by scanning with grocery store mobile POS devices, employees will catch exceptions immediately, spotting errors, substitutions, or promo items at receiving before they end up on the shelves and are sold at a loss.
The best grocery store mobile point of sale solution will use a handheld that allows employees to read barcodes smoothly and grocery POS software that enables live sync. Systems that talk to each other allow fast verification and system updates that ensure you price items correctly and pay vendors exactly what you owe.
Grocery Store Mobile Point of Sale Efficiently Creates Tabs & Labels
With price volatility, updating grocery tags and shelf labels is an ongoing task, and operating profitably requires your team to print new grocery tags promptly and accurately. Unfortunately, traditional processes involve requesting new labels and tags for printing with a separate system and then going back and applying grocery tags to the shelves.
These processes are time-consuming and error-prone, primarily when stores must address weekly specials and promotions and price changes based on costs. Employees are also challenged to tag and label items accurately when vendors have diverse product lines with multiple SKUs. It increases the chance that an employee will tag the wrong item, particularly in departments like produce, deli, and meat.
Upgrade to Printing Grocery Tabs & Labels with Intelligent Grocery POS Software
A comprehensive grocery POS system will show staff which grocery tags and labels need updating, eliminating the need for managers to walk the aisles to determine what is missing or incorrect. With smart, dynamic tagging, employees can print new grocery tags and labels from mobile printers, updating prices immediately and optimizing promotional pricing visibility. With consistent signage, you’ll operate more profitably, comply with price notification laws, and clearly provide customers with the information to make informed shopping decisions.
Give Your Business An Edge with a Full-Featured Grocery POS System
You won’t find the specific functionality you need for efficient grocery receiving, verification, and tag and label printing in every POS solution. You need software from a developer with industry expertise and the technological know-how to support your processes. The ideal solution includes devices with the design and features for grocery store mobile POS applications and purpose-built grocery store point of sale software.
RHC devices natively integrated with ThriVersA point of sale from LOC Software create receiving documentation that allows you to leverage the system’s accountability methods and optimize your receiving processes. You can quickly access vendor documentation, verify pricing, and make on-the-spot adjustments with the solution’s mobile printer.
Evaluate your grocery receiving processes, and consider the gains in time savings, accuracy, profitability, and customer experiences that a fully integrated grocery store point of sale system can provide to your business. Have questions about how RHC can benefit your store? Contact us—we’re here to help.
