Hospital Gift Shop operations are unique in every way. Groups of volunteers get together to run an operation that contributes to a foundation, without receiving any profit. Although these operations are non-profit, there are still standard retail practices that an auxiliary gift shop will follow to generate revenue. If anything, an auxiliary gift shop will be more complex than your typical retail operation. This is because of the many solutions that are available for volunteer gift shops. It’s important to know that there are only a few companies that provide POS solutions to fit the exact needs of volunteer-run gift shops. The best volunteer gift shop POS solutions are easy-to-use and include strong inventory management, employee payroll deductions, fundraiser software, and integrated online stores.
Let’s go into more detail about the 4 solutions:
Strong Inventory Management
- Having a strong inventory management platform enables your business to keep close track of inventory while sales are being made.
- Inventory management that integrates into your POS register helps businesses save time and makes tracking physical inventory itself easy for staff members.
- Look for a system that integrates inventory with register sales and allows users to complete physical inventory counts seamlessly.
Custom Employee Payroll Deductions
- ID badge scanning is popular within volunteer gift shops. Typically, these gift shops sit within a hospital building and are easily findable for hospital staff to stop in and make purchases.
- Companies like ARBA Retail Systems will build a Custom Payroll Deductions Interface to automate your payroll deductions process. This type of interface allows payroll deduction balances to reach your company’s payroll system with minimal effort.
Fundraiser Software
- Guests and employees may make fundraiser purchases that your POS system tracks and monitors.
- Staff will use their payroll deductions to make fundraiser purchases without using their usual payroll deduction balances.
- Fundraisers are a great way to incentivize employees to make use of their payroll deductions within your volunteer gift shop.
Integrated Online Stores
- The ability to sell items online is a crucial part of today’s world. As customers adapt to buying and selling items online, so has ARBA Retail Systems.
- We build custom online stores that integrate directly into your ARBA POS inventory system. This eliminates the disconnect of selling your on-hand inventory through your online store.
- Volunteers will no longer need to worry about comparing current on-hand quantities to the online store quantities since the two connect directly.
Optimizing your volunteer gift shop operation starts with identifying the best gift shop solutions that will work for your operation. Finding a company, such as ARBA Retail Systems, that provides such solutions at an affordable cost is key. Each solution plays a key role in optimizing your volunteer gift shop operation. There are not many companies that combine all of the solutions of a volunteer gift shop POS into one system. ARBA Retail Systems takes pride and ownership in the development of key features in our POS system based on feedback from hundreds of clients over the past 40 years. We continue to listen to feedback from our clients and incorporate the best volunteer gift shop POS solutions into our system.
Author: Blake Bell
Learn more about Gift Shop POS
