Case Study on Liquor Store
- High Volume Liquor Store Downtown New York City.
- 7-9 employees.
- Open 15 years.
- 150-250 transactions average daily. *
- Implementation 2025.
- # of terminals 2.
- # of hand held terminal 1
- Label Printing,Barcode Scanning
The following is a guide of how we approach an upgrade or implementation of a business
Assessment:
Overview: Current solution is It is stable, on premise hosted. But it’s not accessible without a remote desktop solution.
2 Terminals are being used. 1 Office Terminal for management. They have provided their own equipment; and a decision needs to be made about what new equipment to use. Their terminals are out of date, and require being upgraded. (The hardware is +5 years old, for a business of their sales amount, it should have replaced hardware for uptime and reliability as well as speed and performance).
Staff manages inventory, update prices, but the management has some security concerns about. While their staff needs to do a lot of this work; they would like to consider the privacy of their business data.
Additionally management is unable to track the information without logging into the onsite computer remotely. And they are unable to check sales reporting as well without a classic remote desktop application.
In general their current system lacks the modern oversight that’s expected. It also lacks the immediate awareness of potential security / bad behaviors by staff.
An assessment of the Credit Card solution needs to be made, inventory control, security, behavior control, customer interaction.
Additionally features such they might not consider such as sales behaviors and general oversight of the business need to be addressed.
Goals
The goal is to implement a new modern solution,local/online hosting for maximum uptime. It should be stable and accessible for customers & admin. There should be a web interface for admin, sales, customers and online ordering. Management should be able to do some operations like voiding credit card sales from their phone to avoid giving over features to their staff.
Improved Security Controls: Good behavior control to track bad behaviors by staff and ensure they are limited to functions they should perform. Oversight tracking to find out if employees are performing unauthorized functions or attempting to circumvent controls.
Advanced Purchasing Options: Bill On Hold, Reorder functions. Item Sales Tracking/Cost Tracking.
Maintain rewards programs, customer discounts specials and incentives.
Integrations with Uber Eats, Grub Hub, online ordering solutions; and vendor ordering solutions.
Merchant Processing:
The store is currently using a dual processing solution, a back up clover device and Worldpay. Worldpay is expensive, and Clover also doesn’t truly provide services as described.
WorldPay
- No Pin Debit discount
- High fees.
- No modern integration.
Clover.
- No PIN Debit Discount
- Charge Back are Expensive, $25.
- PC Compliance is 50.
- Monthly Service is 20.
Feature Review & Implementation Examples
Overall Features needed to implement from Pointless POS:
Inventory
- Requires Employee Based Purchase Orders – Input cost, update inventory securely
- Bill On Hold –
- Hold items at vendors location for large orders.
- Keep track of items received and items on hold.
- Print que – Anytime a price is updated from the catalog, the label que is triggered so someone can print the labels. (this is great if you are remote admin changing item prices, and need staff to print the labels locally later).
Sales
Pointless can import product lists from CSV, or even grab your data from a database.
- From the basics to Barcoded items & Menu Buttons
- Making Discounts both Automated and Manual
- We address security options – Receipt Printing, Cash Drawer Notifications, Item delete notifications. Void alerts; price overrides. – Typically these alerts are emailed to admins.
- And to wrap it up, we provide a Daily Log of Events in your email when you review your sales reports.
Daily Journal
End of Day emails include a journal of exceptions. This report displays online order events, deletes, voids and other exceptions that occur throughout the day.
When abroad, you can check your end of day report to see the events that matter.
Additional Behavioral Features Used
- Voice Alerts – Audio Alerts. The software can indicate when an item scanned is not added, or found and other voice features.
Customer Features
Their current system keeps track of customers & rewards points. Pointless can as well, and we need to transfer the customers & their points.
Transaction Lookup
- Pointless offers many rewards features. In this case we are just using rewards points but we offer buy 2 get one free. Punch card style, happy hour, scheduled discounts and more.
Customers can currently not do the following, but will be able to with Pointless.
- Online Price Check
- Account History
Pointless can have customers check online their purchase history, place orders, and check the status of their orders.
Security / Staff Oversight and Control
Emails notify admin and management of crucial information.
- Unauthorized login attempts, admin login notifications.
- Password / PIN Change Notifications
- Security & User Behaviors are all finely tuned to your needs.
Integrations
Their current system can not and will not integrate with new API’s. They need a system that has a proven track record of updates, integrations and doing work to support their industry.
- Inventory / Price and item look ups with UberEats/DoorDash/Grub Hub
- Integrated site with Online ordering – re-ordering with one click.
- Pointless offers many integrations with popular API’s and frequently adds more.
Stability
- By providing an on site solution, that can be buttressed by an online source as well; we can provide a secure and stable solution that can not be interrupted by the internet or outside sources.
Implementation:
Equipment : Pointless POS Terminals / Printers & Customer Displays.
The customer could provide their own hardware, we went with Pointless POS hardware.
Merchant Credit Card Processing
Pax Credit Terminals : Pax A3700 Credit Card Terminals.
PointlessPOS uses Pax & Devices that support DC Direct.
Moving Forward, Ensuring Success with PointlessPOS
Pointless POS is provided as SASS solution which is onsite, and buttressed by online support. This allows for it to run offline if there is an internet outage.
Online access to custom domain. Management no longer needs remote connection software.
Oversight and awareness of behaviors. Behavioral notifications now alert management for:
- Price Changes
- Purchase orders
- Cash drawer opens
- Processing errors that are unexpected.
Enhancements Price Savings
PIN Debit has been implemented. This saves them cost over Clover & Worldpay where all of these transactions were charged at the credit card rate.
Cost / Support & Ongoing
Price Lock – No Increase in fees over time.
A stable no change in fee structure. Because of the implementation & architectural decisions of Pointless; it can maintain a virtually static price model. There are no upgrade fees, price increases and modules that are add ons. Yes, other third parties may have their expenses, but based on the Pointless POS model, the ongoing cost of the solution can remain in effect for another 10 years, like it had for them the previous ten years.
