Customer Testimonial - Molowethu Eastern Cape

e'Molowethu Liquor Store

and 

Molowethu Cash & Carry 

Background:

In 2008 Paulo Agriao started using POSitive Point of Sale from the previous owners Regality in his business Central Market Garden in Pretoria. In July 2015 when he opened e'Molowethu Liquor Store, part of the Overland Liquors group, in Cathcart in the Eastern Cape he contacted POSitive POS SA looking to use his trusted Point of Sale. He started off with a single Point of Sale shipped to him by courier installed on hardware also provided by POSitive POS SA. Training was provided by telephone and so the relationship started.

Soon Paulo's business grew and he purchased more licences for POSitive POS and when he opened Molowethu Cash & Carry it just made sense that Paulo would stick by the feature rich POSitive Point of Sale software, so he opted to install POSitive POS with it's Pack Sizes in his cash and carry store.

During the past 6 years a few features were added to POSitive POS due to the influence of Paulo e.g. Bulk Selling Price Updates. 

The latest development in Cathcart was when Paulo saw that more and more of his customers, who was historically cash customers wanted to pay with bank cards. Bank cards provide customers more safety over their money, so Paulo again contacted POSitive POS SA who suggested using the recently certified Vexen Pin Pad EFT Integration.

"This integrated EFT as well as POSitive POS' airtime integration with Vexen will give me accurate control over the card transactions happening in my two businesses and will eliminate mistakes with the previous duplicate airtime  transactions." said Paulo.

Molowethu group of companies implemented seven Vexen Pin Pads with seven of their existing ten Point of Sale machines, the rest is operated as Cash Only points. To find out more about POSitive Point of Sale and the integration with the Vexen Pin Pads, contact support.

POSitive now integrates with Sage Business Cloud Accounting!

Sage Business Cloud Accounting, the accounting and finance package for small businesses are the most commonly used package used by accountants in South Africa. 

If your accountant is using Sage Business Cloud Accounting you can now integrate your POSitive Point of Sale to your Sage Business Cloud Accounting package.

After installation you will need a once off configuration of your Sage Accounts to be utilised by the integration.

The integration will run by default every 12 hours and can be increased or decreased as required.

POS Sales, Refunds, Credit Notes and Laybyes are aggregated per day thus every POS Sale does not create a Sales Journal in your Accounting software.

To find out more about this module for POSitive Point of Sale please contact support.

Do you own a Coffee Shop?

 Configure POSitive for your Coffee Shop

Before you start using a Point of Sale solution in your coffee shop ensure you understand what your purpose is for using a Point of Sale solution.

Most coffee shop owners prefer to use the POS system to manage their sales and cash/money. However with POSitive Point of Sale we also provide you proper food costing with a bit of upfront planning and configuration.

The below online training will assist you in setting up POSitive Point of Sale to use in your coffee shop with food costing.

Click on the link below to see the training video, also download the PowerPoint show and training script in the PDF.

• PowerPoint used in training
• PDF training script
• Training video

If you have any questions or need additional training have a look at our training schedule or email support.

New features

What have we done in the past year?

During the past year we had COVID-19, but we were very busy growing POSitive Point of Sale here at POSitive POS SA. 

Let us look at some of the new features added. Most of these features were requested by you, our loyal customers.

Vexen Payment Integration

With an already integrated Virtual Airtime and Electricity payment service from Vexen it just makes sense to utilise their Payment Gateway for integrated card payments. Vexen Technologies

Bulk Price Update

After lock down retailers had to incur additional cost like sanitizing stations, masks for their staff, etc. The requirement to update all retail prices by a certain percentage lead to the development of this feature.

Online Items

in May last year we brought you POSitive eCommerce online store. However our customers did not want to publish their full stock master file to their online store, thus the requirement to mark only the items you want to publish was added to the stock manager.

Netcash QR Integration

Netcash is a market-leading payment solutions provider to South African businesses and organizations, specialising in Debit Orders, Salary and Creditor payments, Pay Now and Risk Reports. They impact meaningfully on their clients by providing efficient, simple, cost-saving payment services. POSitive POS SA decide to integrate into their QR payment gateway for a contactless payment experience at your tills. See how it works here.

GRV saves file for Import during processing

Most of you have GRV's with a large number of lines. With load shedding in South Africa, how many times did it happen that you were busy capturing a GRV and then halway through the power goes down and you loose everything? Well now in POSitive POS you can start the GRV when the power comes on and once you select the Supplier you can import the items you already captured and just carry on. 

Scale File Integration / Scale Items

We have always been able to sell weight and price embedded barcode items, however whenever a price of a weight embedded item changes the retailer needs to also update the price on the scale using the scale program. Most of the new scales like the Teraoka range of scales are networked and can read files from your POS system to update prices on the scale. Now you can export your scale items to a file to be read by the scale.

Print Logo on Receipts

We can now print your logo on your POS slips, all you need to do is let your graphic designer design a black & white bitmap image of your log and name it Logo.bmp. It should be a maximum of 190 px by 190 px. If you do not have a graphic designer ask your POSitive support person to assist you as part of your version upgrade.

Support 58mm Slip Printer

For everyone that has a 58 mm slip printer instead of a 80 mm slip printer, you can now use it with POSitive POS. Just ask your friendly support person to assist you with the setup.

Allow foreign currency as Tender on Sales 

For our customers in Africa who is allowed to take foreign currency as a payment method on Sales, you can now configure POSitive POS to accept currencies other than your local currency. You will have to ensure to setup the Exchange Rate on a regular basis as the POS will use the dated exchange rate to convert the foreign currency to your local currency at the time of the sale.

Expand Constructed Items in POS Sales Screen

When selling Hamburgers you do not want to see the constructed item (Hamburger) as well it's components in the POS Sales screen, however when you sell a Hamper, a service item constructed of multiple physical items, it is sometimes required to see the components that make up the hamper in the sales screen. This is exactly what we did for you.

Credit Note validates Credit Note #

When you issue a Credit Note for return items and the customer pays with the Credit Note the POS will validate that the Credit Note does exist also that it has not been used before. You can now issue Credit Notes without any risk of fraud.

SnapScan Integration

On our Restaurant Touch POS you can now use SnapScan which will print a QR code on the Slip and your customers can pay using SnapScan.

Merge and Split Tables

When using the Restaurant Touch POS and your sitdown customers wants to join tables or even split the bill so that each person pays their own bull, it can now easily be done.

For an upgrade to be able to use any of the above features, please contact Support to assist you.

POSitive Online Training

New Online Training

POSitive POS SA will be launching it's online training academy on 16 February 2021. The courses will be presented on Tuesdays and Thursdays to have the least impact on your business. We will also be able to schedule training sessions for your company, drop us an email to discuss.

Training sessions will be sold at R 150.00 per session and will be discounted 50% during February. A session may be shared by more than one of your staff members, however there will be practical exercises and thus to get the benefit it is suggested to purchase a session per staff member. 

As part of the online training session you will receive a PDF document with the full lesson material, which you then can use to train your staff.

The first four online courses that will be available are:

• Basic Cashier Functions
• Cashup
• How to do a Stock Take
• Use POSitive for Butchery Items 

The initial training will be presented by Dawie Martins, General Manager of POSitive POS SA who has more than 20 years experience in Retail and POS Software Solutions.

All courses will follow this structure:

• Objectives
• Lesson
• Follow Me Steps
• Exercises
• Questions

Here are the objectives of the four available courses:

To find out more about these online training sessions, please send an email to Support.

We will then send you the schedule as well as how to register for the training session or check out the schedule here.

POSitive Loyalty Program

By Sean Ogino

What is a loyalty program?

Turning customers into brand loyalists requires a repeatable process that incentivizes them to keep buying from you. A loyalty program is essentially the process of rewarding customers through structured marketing strategies for their frequent or continued engagement with your brand. The more they spend, the more rewards they receive. If you put customer preferences at the heart of your marketing efforts and execute a program well, customers feel good about purchasing from you and that will give your business a competitive edge against your competitors.

Benefits of Loyalty Programs

1. Customer Retention

The primary motive behind a loyalty program is to retain customers by rewarding them for their repeat purchase behavior. In fact, Khan and Khan (2006) have also said, “Loyalty exists when a person regularly patronizes a particular (store or non-store) that he or she knows, likes and trusts.” In short, the customer loyalty program is a tool to retain customers by giving them a solid motive to buy again from the company and establishing habits.

There are many studies which have explained this relationship between loyalty program and retention rate. One European study found that customers’ relationship perception of a Dutch financial services company’s loyalty program explained about 10% of the total variation in customer retention and customer share. Annex Cloud’s own customer loyalty statistics—taken from our clients—have shown that a well-implemented loyalty program can achieve the following:

• Loyalty programs increase overall revenue by 5-10%.
• Loyalty members spend 5-20% than non-members on average.
• Loyalty program members buy 5-20% more frequently than non-members.

The direct impact that customer retention strategies have on the bottom line of business is a well-established fact. A business with a 60% customer retention rate is losing 3-4 times as many customers a business with 80% retention rates. Besides, increasing customer retention by just 5% boosts profits by 25 to 95%, according to the advisory firm Bain & Co. Indeed, out of the list of pros and cons of a loyalty program, retention is likely the ultimate benefit.

Advantage of customer retention

As a business owner in today’s competitive and packed marketplace, you’re hyper-focused on growth. A small change in retention can lead to big results. Hence customer retention is vital. Here are some benefits: 

• Retention is more cost-effective than acquisition. According to a report, it costs five times as much to bring in new customers compared to selling to existing ones. 
• Repeat customers deliver better returns. Research states that loyal customers buy 90% more frequently, spend 60% more per transaction, and deliver 23 % more revenue and profitability than first-time purchasers. Therefore, retention is a great way to grow and increase profits.
• It’s a known fact that people get strongly influenced by referrals from family and friends. Hence loyal customers are the best source of referrals and new business. Customers onboarded through a referral tend to have a much shorter (and cheaper) sales cycle.
• Customer retention also helps businesses improve CLV (customer lifetime value) and reduce churn.

Disadvantages of customer retention

• Investing in customer retention both in terms of price and time can prove to be steep. 
• Businesses trying to achieve an efficient customer retention rate may not focus on the needs of new customers. There may be chances of new customers being overlooked by brands in a hoard to satisfy their existing customers. 
• If you choose the wrong loyalty partner, you may end up investing heavily in the partnership but not reap the benefits.

2. Relevant Customer Data and Consumer Trends

Consumer data gets recorded in the company’s database as soon as a shopper registers for a loyalty program. Companies can use this data for omni-channel, offline, and ecommerce segmentation, profiling their best customers and tailoring their offerings to specific groups of consumers. As loyalty program data gives the company a complete view of customer behavior, buying habits, and preferences, the company can use this information to invigorate its inventory management, pricing, and promotional planning. This data also enables marketers to measure the results of special promotions based on additional purchases, use of additional channels, or decreased time between purchases.

The reaction of Tesco’s chairman speaks volumes about how efficient loyalty programs are in extracting valuable information from a customer. He has said, “What scares me about this [loyalty program], is that you know more about my customers in three months than I know in 30 years!”

3. Higher Cart Value

As explained in the above point, a company can use collected data to cross-sell and up-sell. It can offer extended warranties after an item is purchased, suggest accessories that go well with the purchased item, and provide discounts on related purchases. Moreover, the loyalty program can also bring relief by increasing demand in slow seasons. Its best example is an airline mileage program that is available only on selected flights. Due to less wastage, such targeted promotions are prone to yield more satisfactory results.

4. Reducing Unprofitable Customers

One of the less frequently considered items on this list of the pros and cons of loyalty programs is that they let companies shed unnecessary weight. A well-designed loyalty program allows companies to segment customers and discover profitable and unprofitable customers. It helps them in dropping off the customers who only buy the discounted lines and avoid premium range almost on a regular basis. These customer profiles can cost more money than they generate.

Through a loyalty program, companies can reward better customers only and thereby minimize the payout to not so profitable customers. Without an iota of doubt, this is the most efficient way to retain the customers from whom the company generates the most profit.

5. Better Customer Communication

A loyalty program offers a direct line to customers, making communication much easier. Aside from announcing new products/services, promoting sales, and the like, a useful item on this list of the pros and cons of loyalty programs is that they facilitate recalls when necessary. This is possible due to the purchase date and barcode of the recalled items. The recall notice gains more weight and significance, as it is based on the consumer’s actual purchase of the affected good. Compared to a store sign or newspaper notice, the chance that this email-borne recall notice will get read by the people is high.

POSitive Point of Sale Loyalty Program

POSitive has a fully-fledged, configurable Loyalty function. The retailer can also create their credit and COD customers as Loyalty Customers. To configure Loyalty within POSitive POS just select the function in the Program Options:

And specify the value of a point during sales as well as during redemption of points. In the example your customer will get 1 point for every R10 spent with you, and they will be able to buy for 10c with every point they have.

Scan or lookup the Loyalty Number any time before the transaction is tendered for the client to earn points.

Even when redeeming points to pay for goods the transaction will earn Loyalty points.

At any given point you can get a report of a specific Loyalty customer's transactions and how they earned and redeemed points. 

This information can also be used to determine spending patterns and provide you with the opportunity to do customer specific marketing.

To learn more contact POSitive Support

Year End 2020

POSitive POS SA would like to make use of this opportunity to wish all our customers and partners a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year!

Please ensure that you do a Year End on your POSitive Point of Sale on the last working day before the 31^st of December, however if you do not do it you will be forced to do a Year End on the first day you log on after the 31^st of December. Please also be certain to make a backup before you do your Year End. See how to do a backup by clicking here.

ONLY DO THE YEAR END ONCE! ALSO EXPORT OR SAVE ALL THE CUSTOMER, SUPPLIER AND STOCK REPORTS BEFORE DOING A YEAR END.

To do a Year End follow these easy steps:

Please note that if you do not make a backup and do your Year End and then want us to reverse the actions of the Year End a specialist will be required to assist you at double our Support cost.

 If you have any queries contact Support

POSitive Training

 We at POSitive POS SA have decided to start an online training academy providing training in all aspects of the use of POSitive Point of Sale as well as retail in general. We would like to start these training classes early in the new year. These classes will be provided using Zoom™. We would like to find out from you, our customer or prospective customer, how you would like us to proceed with this.

Please cast your vote by clicking on the following link

Vote here...

POSitive Restaurant - Do you know what you get for free?

 POSitive Restaurant (Touch)

When looking for a Point of Sale for your restaurant, take away, pub & grill or shebeen; look no further. POSitive Point of Sale ship with a FREE Touch Screen / Restaurant version. 

Why free? You might ask. Well actually it is not free, you still need to purchase POSitive Point of Sale our feature rich cash and stock management POS software. So what are you getting free with the restaurant version?

1. Touch screen capability - This allows you to install it on a touch Screen for easy usage by your waiter staff without a keyboard or mouse.
2. Dine In - Waiters select their tables from a graphical representation of your floor layout and add items to the table while your customers dine. On completion the waiter prints the bill and allow the customer to pay.
3. Table layout - The floor layout can be configured and even re-configured before you open your restaurant on a daily basis to show the layout of your tables.
   
   
   
4. Kitchen printer - POSitive POS allows you to configure up to 10 kitchen printers and you link any menu item to any kitchen printer during the configuration.
5. Cooking messages - This is where you define the cooking messages to assist your chefs to prepare the food exactly as per the customer's requirement. Will that steak be rare, medium rare, medium or well done?
6. Custom button setup - You have a 3 x 5 (15) button main menu which each opens up to a menu with unlimited buttons   
    
7. Table management - Here you can assign waiters from one table to another, merge tables and split tables.
8. Take Away - This function allows you to quickly take orders from your customers and send the orders to the predefined kitchen printers for quick preparation. 
9. Delivery - Typically the same functionality as Take Away except that you can capture your customer's address detail for your delivery person. This is done by telephone number so that return customers can easily be loaded without re-capturing their address detail.
10. Gratuity - On Dine In, Take Away and Delivery a separate Gratuity can be captured and a Sales by Waiter report with Gratuities can be printed for each day or shift.
11. EFT Payment Gateways - Currently the Touch module can make use of the following 3 Payment Gateways:
• Vexen
• Yoco
• Netcash QR
• Snapscan and Zapper is currently being integrated and will be available by the end of 2020.

To get your restaurant up and running with POSitive ask our support to provide you with our dummy guide to setup and configure your restaurant.

Fresh vegetables in Harare thanks to POSitive!

 

Our Partner, Misrah Innovative Solutions, based in Harare, Zimbabwe implemented POSitive Point of Sale at their new customer, Cruscate Investments T/A Mlambo Holdings.

Cruscate Investments is a locally owned shop, which provides good quality, fresh vegetables to wholesalers and retail supermarkets. Cruscate Investments is situated at number 45 Cunningham Rd, Greendale, Harare, Zimbabwe.

Installation and training was successfully done in two days. Cruscate Investment  is happy with the service they received.

Misrah Innovative Solutions can be contacted at: 

Address: 29 Carsberg Avenue Alexandra Park, Harare, Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe

Tel: +2638677116312 / +263773531346 

Email:  Misrah Innovative Solutions

KwaZulu Natal and Eastern Cape gets a Partner!

 Safe IT Solutions

POSitive POS SA has signed up Safe IT Solutions who is a Durban Based Company that specializes in POINT OF SALE, CCTV-DVR Systems & I.T Services. 

Mr Saeed Essack said: "We have grown accustomed to working with companies of all sizes. Providing QUALITY solutions to keep a tight control on their CASH and COMMODITY. We enjoy applying our minds together to deliver a UNIQUE solutions for any business." and thus they have decided on POSitive Point of Sale to partner with as POSitive Point of Sale will assist their customers to control their stock and their cash.

Safe IT Solutions has customers throughout the whole of KwaZulu Natal and most parts of Eastern Cape and will be able to assist you if you are a retailer looking for a Point of Sale solution in these provinces.

They can be contacted at:

Tel: 073 314 3003

Email: info@safeitsolutions.co.za

Namibia is growing!

 

POSitive POS SA welcomes Lambert Software Solutions who are a Software and Hardware supplier to the Retail, Wholesale, Distribution & Service, Restaurant, Fast Food and Bar industries.

Pierre and his team are already a well known player in the Retail space in Namibia and would like to extend their existing product offering. They selected POSitive Point of Sale because of it's feature richness, price point and large customer base in the market.

Lambert Software solutions can be contacted at:

Tel: +264 (0) 61 23 6000

Email: info@lambertss.com

Web: https://lambertsoftwaresolutions.com/

POSitive Point of Sale now available in Tanzania

GAYO International Tanzania today signed up as POSitive POS SA Partner. 

GAYO International is a medium, owner-managed firm, based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, providing ICT and Electrical Engineering Services with a good record of giving excellent ICT and Electrical Engineering Services to domestic, commercial and Industrial clients since its incorporation in 2012. The Company is well positioned to offer leading edge solutions to all markets. The Company has experts in ICT and Electrical Engineering. 

Alfa Chiwanga and his team will be responsible for the marketing and implementation of POSitive Point of Sale in Tanzania and can be contacted on:

Tel: +255 (0) 758 028 000 

Email:    info@gayointernational.co.tz

Website: www.gayointernational.co.tz 

POSitive Inventory Functions

 POSitive Point of Sale allows you the following functions:

1. Constructed Items

Constructed (Bill of Material) items are normally associated with the food industry where Hamburgers are constructed of items such as 1 x bread roll, 2 x slices of tomato, 1 x slice of cheese, 1 x meat patty etc. But are you aware that you can also use it for furniture? If you are selling beds they normally consist of a base and a mattress which can be sold as a base set or the base and mattress can be sold individually. 

Configuring POSitive as in the above image will keep the physical stock of Base and Mattress and the Base Set will be a Service Item which when sold will extract 1 x Base and 1 x Mattress from your stock or when GRV'd will add 1 x Base and 1 x Mattress to your stock on hand.

2.  Pack Sizes

POSitive caters for a unlimited number of Pack Sizes thus allowing you to configure your Inventory in Single, Six Pack, Case, Pallet, Container etc if required. Before using the Pack Sizes function in POSitive it is important to identify the largest stock size of the Inventory Item. In the example below it is the Case (24) which will be the item which will be broken up when selling Six Packs and Singles.

 

Negative stock on hand will thus only be visible on the Item with Pack Quantity of 1.

3.  Embedded Barcodes 

If you are using scales in your store you can configure scale items using this embedded barcode function of POSitive Point of Sale.  

POSitive caters for both weight embedded as well as price embedded barcodes. Please consult your scale supplier to assist with the configuration of your scale items.

Good News: POSitive will soon be able to create your scale pricing file to integrate with your scales.

Contact us on Support to receive more information about these and all our other Inventory features. 

 

 

Namibia is “Baking” with POSitive

 

Last week a Windhoek retailer, Trendy Cake Essentials, purchased POSitivePoint of Sale from our Partner, Betech Solutions, to implement in their store.

They cater for all your baking and cake decorating needs whether you are a professional baker, hobby baker or just someone baking for family and friends... and yes they follow the trends too.... if it's trending they bring it closer to you.

If you need any baking essentials, visit them at their store at Shop number 28, Kingsway Plaza, Corner of Mandume Ndemufayo and Fidel Castro Streets, Windhoek. They will also use POSitive’s web shop and soon you will be able to purchase your cake essentials on there.

You can also visit them on their Facebook Page.

New Support Procedure

As you might have noticed we are in the process of growing our company’s footprint into the rest of Africa. Now what does this mean to you, our existing customer? Well we will improve the POSitive Point of Sale product and you will be able to benefit from these changes. Some of the existing changes made were the integration into an online shop. We are also soon releasing Netcash QR payments which will allow your customers to pay you directly from their bank’s mobile app ensuring that there is no physical touching of their bank cards.

What implications will these changes have on me? Sure, there will be changes, as with any other growth there must be changes to ensure service delivery. One of the most important changes we will enforce from 1 July 2020 is the creating of a Support Ticket whenever you need assistance from our support team. We are aware that it was easy to just pick up the phone and call Mariká whenever you had a question or query. Due to the pressure of a growing customer base we would like to allow Mariká and her team to provide all our customers with the same excellent service. If we do not manage the process you might be at the receiving end of bad service which we obviously not want.

To ensure you all are familiar with the POSitive Helpdesk, we have created an Annexure below which explains exactly how to use it.

We appreciate your assistance with this matter and assure you that our support will exceed your expectations.

Annexure A:

1. To log in to the POSitive Point of Sale Helpdesk click on this link:

https://positivesa.freshdesk.com/support/home

2. This page will open.

3. Click on the + next to New Support Ticket

4. Complete the following form

5. Enter all the information marked with Red on the left in the form. Once you start typing

the Subject you will see the Helpdesk system will try to match existing Frequently Asked

Questions (FAQ) to your query. In the above example the one marked in Red on the

right matches with the problem logged. By clicking on the FAQ, you can see possible

resolutions.

6. Or you can click on the I’m not a robot checkbox and then click the SUBMIT button

7. One of our friendly support persons will respond to your ticket or give you a call.

8. PS: Always include your number