Point of sale (POS) application Gardens Point of Sale provides solutions responsible for proper and effective management at the retail outlet. The application works with POS terminals and is fully integrated with Gardens ERP system. Its task is to optimize and automate the retail sales, which makes customer service more intuitive. The POS application supports all types of touch panels and includes analytical and reporting tools. Gardens Point of Sales includes solutions that enable the handling of the sales process in its broadest sense, including: handling cash and non-cash payments, handling price promotions, cooperation with weighing devices, handling touchscreens, sales with a barcode reader, registration of returns and many others.
Cooperation with electronic scales and touchscreens
The use of a touch screen at the point of sale speeds up customer service and reduces costs of employee training. Graphic files containing pictures of the product can be attached to the product catalogue. The application enables quick assortment search by any chosen features, e.g. color or model, and everything runs in an interactive, clear menu. Tools included in the application provide a comprehensive presentation of goods including their pictures with full information about current prices and discount possibilities. The module enables identification of the seller/clienter by PIN, magnetic or chip card. On any computer with x86 architecture, also with a touch screen, on which Windows XP, Windows 7 or Windows 8 works, you can install the Gardens POS application and set the mode to run all windows in the maximized size. Thus it is possible to operate the interface with both finger and mouse.
Support for barcode readers
The application enables identification of goods with a barcode or weight code reader. The Gardens POS module can be activated at any checkout point and customer service station. The number of places where the system can be started at one location is unlimited. Reading the code can trigger any action in the Gardens POS application, e.g:
– Searching for a stock based on the code in the stock window containing various information, e.g. the fact that an invoice has been issued, and in the case of tickets – e.g. the number of seats in the audience,
– Inserting a stock in the POS receipt after reading the code that uniquely identifies the stock,
– identification of returns in the form of receipts or tickets.
Payment handling
The application supports various payment methods – cash, non-cash and deposits, manages the cash register, generates KP and KW documents. It enables generation of daily statements of receipts and cash register summaries. It includes tools for unpaid account settlement – vouchers, internal non-cash sales for employees. The application cooperates with cash registers, fiscal printers and any printer using DF300 protocol. Gardens POS allows you to issue typical sales documents: commodity invoices, service invoices, corrections to invoices, receipts etc. The system also supports records of retail returns and free advertising issues. Thanks to the integral communication with the Head Office module, all local documents can be automatically registered in the central database.
Graphic GUI POS variants
Depending on the customer/shop, the Gardens POS application can offer several types of connection between the cash register/tax printer and the Gardens system.
Access to fast and clear information
The application, thanks to the use of advanced tools, enables full service of buyer’s, warehouse, goods, sales stations and cashiers’ records. The whole sales process is recorded with accuracy to individual transactions and can be tracked thanks to a wide range of analyses. The system provides the seller with information about the customers’ previous transactions and their preferences. It can present photos of goods, as well as enable checking the availability of a given product in other stores in a given chain. The application enables full handling of complaints, including acceptance and control of complaint statuses and the possibility of analysing the causes of complaints.
The system allows to collect all information about transactions made with buyers and suppliers. The application also carries out more advanced analyses, i.e. analyses of the sales basket, customer behaviour, research of promotion results, payment types or analyses of products under own brand. The system gives wide possibilities of scalability – “grows together with the company”. It is suitable both for small stores and large wholesalers or supermarkets. We can work both online and offline – i.e. without a permanent connection to the headquarters. Databases are fully replicated and data is sent in packed and encoded XML packets so that there is full consistency between the cash desk and the head office.
Support for loyalty programs and conditional promotions
Gardens POS has the ability to handle loyalty programs based on a point and discount policy. The system can handle a variety of promotional campaigns, aimed at groups of customers who prefer a particular brand, type of goods, model or color. Promotions can be defined for a selected group of points of sale, for a given region, selected single products or a whole group of products. The module has an extensive tool for managing conditional promotions, which allows to gratify the customer several times during a given purchase. The case is well described by the following example: a customer can buy 2 packages of a given product at a regular price of the 3rd package for 1 PLN, additionally a customer can receive a free glass with the producer’s logo when purchasing 1 seal of a promotional drink of this producer and at the same time can receive a discount from the store for a purchase exceeding 60 PLN. The system supports customer cards – identification, discount or loyalty cards. Thanks to that it enables the analysis of customers’ activity in the scope of purchasing goods.
Control
Gardens POS enables defining cashier’s positions and accounting for cashiers, which is an important element of control, e.g. the analysis of withdrawing positions on a receipt or cancelling receipts in a given period may show irregularities in cashier’s work.
Infocodes
Another feature offered by the Gardens system is the infocode mechanism used to record any marketing information collected during the sales process (e.g. free of charge, customer preferences, postal codes, etc.).
Gardens at close range
Ticket sales and reservation module
The most important feature of the module is its high usability, which brings with it automation of the process of booking and selling tickets. Through cooperation with fiscal printers, ticket printers and an integrated module for booking and selling tickets via the Internet, the module provides a ready-made tool to increase the standard of services provided. The selection of places numbered by means of a graphical visualization of the room, automatic issuance of fiscal receipts, VAT invoices or efficient ticket reimbursement are selected benefits resulting from the application of such a module of the Gardens system. A practical and extremely effective tool is the designer of the audience allowing to draw the actual structure of the audience of a given object. Window with a view of the cash register in Gardens POS application – sales, ticket reservations, receipt handling, issuing invoices and corrections, daily settlements, customer reports. 
Catering module with table reservations
The application is fully adapted to the catering service and is aimed at speeding up and organizing work. Its unquestionable advantage is the possibility of using touch panels or mobile devices such as palmtops. The simplicity of the system operation combined with advanced features such as: easy selection of an order from the context menu, the ability to sum up receipts, reservation of a table, analysis of an average order, support for loyalty cards and discount cards translates into work efficiency and customer satisfaction. The module supports managers of catering points of sale by providing them with an in-built table layout designer, which enables them to create many variants of table layout in the rooms of a given facility.
View of the main menu window in Gardens POS application
View of the window with graphic layout of the tables
Store module
The Shop module is an easy-to-use retail tool. The important simplicity of use in this type of tools, however, hides a great deal of possibilities for managing points of sale. A strong feature of the system is the ability to automate processes. Each operation or function of the system can be performed automatically by the system, depending on the task schedule. The application enables automatic printing of price lists on the shelf for acceptance and discount documents as well as barcodes for products not coded by the manufacturer. It also supports printing of labels, price lists and cashier code books (also with barcodes).
