Part 1: Cannabis Point-of-Sale
As any cannabis shop owner could tell you, setting up a cannabis business is no easy task. Most founders find themselves wearing several hats before their stores are even open, from raising funds, finding locations, managing licensing, overlooking renovations, and making technology decisions. Many retail companies don’t have a tremendous amount of experience when it comes to technology, and that can make the process of system selection seem daunting.
When making technology system decisions, there are two key questions businesses should ask themselves:
- How to select the best system for your business needs
- How to best utilize the system to increase your bottom line
From a high-level, there are four main types of technology systems used by most cannabis dispensaries:
- Cannabis Point-of-Sale (Cannabis POS)
- Digital Signage
- Interactive Menus & Express Checkout
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System
*Part 1 of this blog series focuses on Cannabis POS systems, Part 2 will focus on Digital Signage, and Part 3 will focus on Interactive Menus, Express Checkout & CRM Systems.*
CANNABIS POINT-OF-SALE SYSTEMS
The point-of-sale (POS) system is the heart of any cannabis dispensary. A good POS system will manage your product inventory for one-off or chain stores, manage product details, allow in-depth business reporting & accounting, and handle compliance requirements within any jurisdiction of focus.
From a technical standpoint, it’s important to know where your data is stored to ensure you’re comfortable with where you & your customer’s data will be held. It’s also important to know if the POS has developer API’s, which can be used to integrate your POS with other systems – a closed system is never ideal.
How to Select Your POS:
The POS is the cornerstone to all your cannabis retail operations. It is critical to choose an inventory system that works for your area’s specific compliance regulations. Inventory movements must be tracked accurately for monthly compliance reporting to the provinces, and failing to do so may jeopardize your licence going forward.
This is why choosing a POS that focuses on your province’s regulations is highly important. You should never shoehorn programs from other compliance regimes into your situation. Other key points in choosing a sound POS solution include proper security permissions for your staff, good business intelligence reports, accessible customer service, and also easy integrations with other services.
In summary, make sure that your POS choice can:
- Provide compliance reports formatted to the specifications of your province
- Lock down employee access and permissions by location
- Generate sales and growth reports to help build smarter purchase orders
- Easy to access customer support during all hours of your operations
- Live inventory ledger, with product movements tracked to the second
- Easy to connect with other services
How to Best Utilize Your POS:
When it comes to proper usage of your inventory system, access permissions and inventory accuracy are of the highest importance. Firstly, standard operating procedures and security roles must be set so that non-management staff cannot access critical business data. Locking down the levels of security for each employee is the first step to inventory accuracy, and the next step is regular audits.
Inventory audits and checkups happen in various frequencies at different cannabis retail stores; some do weekly checkups, others may even do daily stock audits. That being said, at bare minimum an inventory audit must be made before the end of month compliance report needs to be submitted to ensure 100% accuracy and compliance.
Essentially, it’s all about consistency and how strictly your employees follow the standard operating procedures your administrative team has laid out.
Beyond that, other integrations with accounting platforms, digital signage for auto updates, and customer-facing express checkouts, or order stations can also cut down on the hours of work you need to do in-store. Automation of procedures with integrations from the POS is always king when it comes to time savings.
Courtesy of Greenline POS – To learn more check out getgreenline.co, or email info@getgreenline.co
HOW BUDDI CAN HELP
Buddi offers tablet-based interactive menus, express checkout & CRM solutions that integrate with leading cannabis POS systems.
To learn more, book your free demo today at www.buddi.io, or email info@buddi.io.