Investing in a ruggedized hardware store POS is a great way to grow your business, as well as to do a better job of competing with big-box hardware retailers. While some ruggedized hardware store POS features are “nice to have,” others fall into the “must have” category and are essential if you’re going to maximize your software expenditure. These essential ruggedized hardware store POS features include:
Ability to view inventory details on-screen.
The nature of the hardware business, as well as the breadth and type of merchandise sold in hardware stores, is such that—to properly serve customers—operators must track far more inventory data, and more varieties of inventory data, than their counterparts in most other retail segments. A good hardware store POS system satisfies this requirement by displaying a wide variety of inventory details on screen; examples encompass item numbers, UPC numbers, vendor part numbers, and item descriptions. Such a system is also configured to allow information lookup by the individual manufacturer.
Multi-dimensional inventory grid.
Managing hardware store inventory and inventory information can also be a challenge because so many items have multiple attributes. To minimize confusion and for easier merchandise management, select a hardware store POS system that permits you to access data in a grid format—e.g., soft goods data with size, color, and style and hard goods data with height, length, and width attributes broken out for easy visibility.
Scale interface.
Most hardware stores sell some items, like nuts, bolts, and screws, by weight rather than by unit. Properly capturing these sales and ensuring that employees charge the right price for them necessitates a hardware store POS system that supports and interfaces with a scale or scales. When this interface exists, information pertaining to product weight is transmitted from the scale directly to the POS software, guaranteeing accuracy.
Flexibility to sell by multiple units of measure.
Certain types of merchandise are sold not by individual item, box, case, or weight, but by partial quantity. For example, rope, certain types of wood, chain, and fencing are typically sold by the lineal foot or meter and tile, hardwood floors, and carpet, by the square foot, yard, or meter. Your ruggedized hardware POS system should handle these units of measure. It should also be flexible enough to accommodate sales by partial quantity—i.e., if a customer orders 5.88 feet of rope, you should be able to charge him or her for 5.88 feet of rope rather than 6 feet of rope, and the system should track any partial quantity remaining in stock.
Loose case and quantity breakdown.
Selling items by the case or box as well as by the individual item is also a common practice among hardware stores. A viable hardware store POS solution is structured to take this into account and lets you sell either way (e.g., a case of shingles or three shingles). It also is configured to reflect the number of individual items and cases or boxes left in stock following each sale.
Rental module.
Offering customers the option to rent tools and equipment (such as ladders, sanders, power washers and the like) contributes nicely to the bottom line, but tracking rentals via paper-based methods is a time-consuming, error-prone process. With the rental module of a hardware store POS system, you can automatically generate rental quotes and invoices as well as calculate and charge the proper rental rates and track due dates. You can also keep a detailed rental and service history for each rental item. Knowing who has rented a particular tool or piece of equipment, when, and for what duration—as well as the date it was last serviced and when the next maintenance is due—heads off many problems (e.g., a power washer breaks down in the midst of a customer’s job because it hasn’t been serviced in several months).
The hardware business continues to be lucrative, especially given the number of “do-it-yourselfers” out there these days. Why not let technology—specifically, a ruggedized hardware POS system with the above-described key features—help you make the most of a booming market?
