Setting up Vend for retail success

Transcription

1 Setting up Vend for retail success Guide to setting up your Vend store, products, customer management and more. Congratulations! You ve just gotten started with opening up your first Vend store! In this guide, we ll take you through the things you need to know to get your store set-up in the easiest way possible. Along the way, we ll share the things you need to know and ensure you have the best set-up with the information you need to run your business better. Helping you set-up right from the start is going to allow you to get the most accurate reporting, speed up important stock management tasks like inventory counts, and automate tasks that will help guide you along the way to retail success. So let s get started!

2 Setup Let s cover the setup of your Vend store and ensure that you have added in all of the necessary settings. On the setup page of Vend ensure you have selected: Default currency. Time zone - track the time of your sales and register closures. Display Prices - tax inclusive or tax exclusive. SKU - can be setup by letter or a number. User switching security. Setting Up Outlets and Registers Set up one outlet for every store location. Set up one outlet for every individual device you will be processing sales through. Set up your Sales Taxes Go to Setup and select Sales Taxes. Create your individual sales taxes first. If you do have group tax then select combine taxes into a group from here you can name all of your taxes. If you choose to turn on Loyalty Go to Setup and then Loyalty. Tick Enable Loyalty if you choose to use it. Decide how much you want loyalty to be when purchasing products. Setup 2

3 Taxes Ensuring you have your taxes set up for your outlets and individual products provides a great basis for setting up the rest of your store and makes tax season and reporting a breeze. Make tax season and reporting a breeze. Set whether you have tax exclusive or inclusive pricing on your set-up page. You can set up different tax rates for individual outlets. As well as for your individual products on the product set-up page. Taxes 3

4 Loyalty Having a strong and well promoted loyalty program can help to generate a strong return client base and help you manage customer accounts easier. Setting up a loyalty program with Vend is easy. #RETAIL SUCCESS TIP: Loyalty dollars redeemed by your customers do come as an expense to your business so it is important that your financial reports reflect this. Also keep in mind your mark-up on your products so that your program does not cut into profits drastically. You can set up loyalty in your setup page under Loyalty by clicking the Enable Loyalty check box. You can also adjust loyalty amounts for your individual products on that specific product s set up page when you begin to add products. Loyalty 4

5 Products ORGANIZATION Adding your products into Vend the right way is essential. How else are you going to be able to track the items you ve sold, run accurate reports and ensure inventory levels are accurate across all locations and selling platforms? Before we even begin adding our products into Vend, it is essential to have your organization down! Types First we are going to think about all of the types of products you have in store. You need to ensure that you have the information you will need to keep track of items in store. For example, if you are creating inventory for a fashion store, this means, instead of simply creating a type called Clothing you may want to create types such as Shirts, Blouses, and so on. Some store owners like to keep reports very granular, creating types as specific as short sleeve or long sleeve shirts. Brand Ensure you know the brands you are carrying in your store and are inputting this information accurately as to be able to report on it later. It is great to see which brands are outperforming others. Supplier Adding your suppliers will allow you to track which suppliers are supplying you with products that sell better. Also with their details filled in, ordering more products from them will be a breeze. Tags Tags are very important to drill down on your categories to find insights on top performing merchandise. Many store owners will use tags like the material an item is made from, the region it is from, or a subcategory from their types. Products 5

6 PRICING Before you begin adding products, you will also want to consider how you are going to price them. It is essential that you have your supply price handy for all of your products and enter them into Vend the first time you upload. This will ensure your Costs of Goods (COGs) stay accurate and help you avoid doubledipping to improve efficiency. Calculating Supply Price To calculate your supply price there are important factors to keep in mind: OVERHEAD Labor Costs Rent Advertising and Promotion Administration Supplies DIRECT COSTS Cost to purchase merchandise or raw materials Packaging Costs Freight Taxes The taxes on your goods and services sold in your store can fluctuate based on the type of good, your region and other important factors like the total purchase price of a transaction and more. It is important to check with local rules and regulations to ensure you are creating the correct tax amounts on your merchandise. Items that could have unique taxing are: Foods - Take in to consideration essential food items Certain Medications Repair + Maintenance Supplies... more Products 6

7 ADDING PRODUCTS IN VEND Now that your merchandise is organized, and you have sorted the pricing and taxes of your items, you can begin loading your products into Vend! From your products page, you can begin to add your products individually by clicking on the Add Products page. Pricing Complete the pricing information by inputting your supply price and adjusting the % markup to the appropriate number for your operation. Your retail price will be automatically calculated. Set your taxes by inputting the tax amount for a tax-inclusive store or selecting the blue button and selecting the tax rate from a drop down. Loyalty If you have loyalty enabled in your store, you will be able to use the default amount or create a custom loyalty balance. This is the dollar-value loyalty amount customers will earn when purchasing this item. Product details Name your product. Vend will create a handle for you. You can change this, but it must be unique unless this product has multiple colors, sizes, and so on. If so, these products will have the exact same handle. If you don t want this product to be immediately available for sale, un-tick the Available to be sold box. Add a description of your product. This might be selling points for your staff and care instructions. This will be the same description in your Ecommerce site, so take care with the HTML and CSS formatting. To add an image, for your Vend store or Ecommerce click on Set Main Image. You can add a main image and multiple images as well. Ensure you add your Types, Tags, Brands and Suppliers. Products 7

8 ADDING PRODUCTS IN VEND (CONTINUED) Variants If you have an item that comes in multiple colors, sizes, or other attributes, you may want to create them as a variant. This means that Vend knows that they are from the same product family and they will share the exact same handle. #RETAIL SUCCESS TIP: Keep in mind, if you set an item up with variants they will appear on the same page in your ecommerce site. If you would like items to appear on separate pages, set them up as separate products. Inventory Here you can add your unique SKU. If your items already have bar codes on them, you can add them numbers on them here to make scanning your products into Vend a breeze. Make sure that you do not add multiple products with the same SKU. You can decide if you are adding a Standard product which is most common, or a composite product which is a grouping of products sold together at one price. You can also decide if you would like inventory to be tracked. For services offered you may want to turn inventory tracking off. Here you can set stock levels, reorder points and reorder amounts. To adjust inventory levels in future, it is advised to do so through a stock order. Products 8

9 Customers ORGANIZATION Vend makes it easy to keep track of the customers who shop in your store. You can use the customer management tools to add customers to Vend while you are ringing them through, add through the Customer page and also view their transaction history. You can also divide your customers up and sort them into groups based on the different types of customers that shop in your store. Your customers are the livelihood of your business. Customers 9

10 Pricebooks Price books are a feature in Vend that enable you to offer special pricing and loyalty amounts on your in-store products. These can be restricted to certain customer groups or outlets, enabling you to have sophisticated pricing strategies for your store. You can also automate start and end dates of sales, which makes it easy to plan and set up in advance. Once you set up a price book, the pricing will automatically apply for eligible customers and outlets when you, or your staff, process a sale in the sell screen. For example, to show appreciation to your top customers you might have a special sale for anyone listed in your Top-Tier customer group. Pricebooks 10

11 CSV A CSV is a spreadsheet that you can use to import a large amount of customers, products, or large pricebooks into Vend. A complete tutorial of how to use your CSV for any process can be found on VendU. A CSV stands for comma separated value which means that you should avoid using commas in the spreadsheet as it could compromise formatting. These are used to help import products in bulk, or if you are migrating from an existing point of sale. We advise using Open Office which is a free download-able spread-sheeting software to manipulate your files. All of our reporting, products, and customer information can be exported through a CSV. This would be a hard copy layout on a spreadsheet. These can be used if you are using a nonintegrated accounting platform (you can export out the information from Vend, and import into your accounting software). CSV 11

12 Users Setting up every employee with a user account is crucial as with proper staff management you are able to hold each employee accountable for every sale they put through. You are able to see who your top performing employees are and you can also give them target goals. You can add a User into Vend by going to Setup and Users Here you can add your users, add their details and set their permission levels. Here is a complete list of User Permission levels. Users 12

13 Quick Keys Having a great quick key set up will making cashing your customers through a breeze! Program quick keys with your top sellers, impulse buys, or items that are not coded to make sure you are using them to speed up the cashing through process. If you are using a PC or Mac computer with Vend on a chrome browser, you can set up your quick keys on the set-up page under quick keys. Here you can create custom layout and assign them to Vend POS registers. If you are using the new Register App, then you can set up a quick key template on that register by going to the Setting screen and Quick Keys. You will have to set-up each template individually. Quick Keys 13

14 Hardware Choosing your hardware is a completely different process for every retail business owner and completely depends on the unique needs of your business. Go through this checklist to see what kind of hardware you will need for your business before making all of your purchases. Our list of hardware is only the hardware we have tested therefore, can recommend. If you are coming from an existing Point of Sale and already have your own hardware, that doesn t mean it won t work with Vend, it just means you have to test it to see if it will work with Vend because we don t have it on-site to test it. Accepting and holding cash? You ll need a cash drawer Selling items with barcodes? You ll need a barcode scanner Printing receipts for your customers? You ll need a receipt printer Creating and printing unique barcodes? You ll need a barcode printer Using Vend wirelessly on an ipad? You ll need a wireless router Hardware 14

15 CHOOSING YOUR HARDWARE ipad + ipad MINI (Recommended options) Vend Register App Vend POS App Receipt printers Star TSP 100 LAN with Wifi Star TSP 650ii with Wifi or Bluetooth Star SM-200i with Bluetooth Star TSP LAN with Wifi Star SM-200i with Bluetooth Cash drawer Scanners Barcode printer Wireless router Any Cash Drawer that uses a RJ12 Cable to connect to a printer Socket Bluetooth Barcode 7Ci You will need to print labels using a Desktop or Laptop Computer Apple Airport Extreme DESKTOP AND LAPTOP (Recommended options) ` Vend Register App Vend POS App Receipt printers Star TSP 143 LAN or USB Star TSP 650 with Wifi or Bluetooth Cash drawer APG Vasario Series Cash Drawer Any Cash Drawer that uses a RJ12 Cable to connect to a printer Scanners Barcode printer Wireless router Socket Bluetooth Barcode 7Ci DYMO Labelwriter 450 Professional Thermal Label Printer Apple Airport Extreme Hardware 15

16 Payment methods There are two types of card payment types that you can use with Vend; integrated and non-integrated. Integrated payments are when Vend automatically pushes the sale total to the card terminal and receives an approval or decline response back to close the sale. Non-integrated payment types or manual payment types are when you will take payments from your customers outside of Vend and then consolidate it on your POS. This includes payment types like cash and card payments taken outside of vend with a credit card terminal. Non-integrated payments are when you need to type the payment amount into the card terminal, and confirm in Vend that the payment is accepted to close the sale. Add the payment types in Vend that you will be accepting so that you can let Vend know which tender was taken on a transaction. Payment methods 16

17 Add-ons Add-ons offer additional services that Vend does not have built in to allow you to customize your retail management solution to meet your needs. Add-ons are designed to help make your life easier. We have a great marketplace filled with add ons to help with appointment management, analytics of foot traffic, employee management and payroll, as well as a more in depth loyalty add on. Some add-ons can be turned on through Vend by going to set-up and Add-ons. Others may need to be integrated through the specific add-ons dashboard. Add-ons 17