Many hospital gift shops found it necessary close their doors, shorten their hours of operation, or operate their shops with regular staff instead of volunteers during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Moreover, now that the return and reinstatement of many volunteers at their hospital gift shops is at hand, you may be considering how gift shop management software can best serve your volunteer gift shop operations. The retail operations of the hospital gift shop are unique, and if your gift shop sells over $200,000 per year, then a cash register computer system is necessary, however, that system should be easy to learn and easy to use for both your volunteers and staff.
Furthermore, here are a few key features that make gift shop management software easy to use and volunteer-friendly:
Easy Gift Shop Register Operations
The cash registers should be easy to use, with register keys easy for volunteers to see and operate. A good gift shop POS system will have customizable screens so that they may tailor to your gift shop, how it operates, and what your volunteers will be most comfortable using. Additionally, large, easy-to-see register keys organizations with a good flow for easy operations are ideal. Minimal steps and keystrokes help to keep register operations easier for volunteers to follow, with easy–to-understand prompts.
Integrated Gift Shop Inventory Management
If the POS system includes inventory management, as much as 95% of your merchandise may make use of barcode scanning at the POS. This not only helps with the check–out speed but results in greater accuracy ensuring that the correct items and prices show. Evidently, when item price management is in inventory and integrates with the POS register operating, volunteers don’t need to remember which items are on sale, regular price, or part of a promotion. The integration between purchases at the POS with inventory will maintain your on–hand inventory counts, with counts automatically adjusting as item sales, returns, or receiving are done. For merchandise without barcodes, a barcode scanner will enable your own barcode printing.
Automated Loyalty Program Software
Many hospital gift shops offer incentives to attract their customers to shop more often, and spend more each time they shop. A volunteer-friendly gift shop management software will incorporate loyalty programs into the POS that automatically apply a discount or incentive from the customer’s purchase history and the customer’s loyalty programs, or prompt them to apply credit earnings to a purchase. This eliminates any manual work by the volunteers to determine what loyalty incentives to apply for the customer and also provides you with a sales history to see how your loyalty programs are performing.
Payroll Deductions Integration for Gift Shops
On average, about 80% of hospital gift shop sales are to hospital employees. Many hospitals offer the benefit and convenience of Payroll Deductions the ability to read the employee badge at the Pont of Sale. Payroll Deductions that integrate with your hospital’s payroll system to automatically share deduction files will require no manual work by the gift shop or by payroll. A volunteer-friendly POS system will include native payroll deductions as part of the system, with an interface to Kronos, Workday, Oracle, Lawson, ADP, SAP, or other payroll systems. This integration will make the payroll deduction process easier for the volunteer.
Onsite Lobby Sales or Fundraisers
If you have several fundraising events per year, with vendors coming onsite to the hospital for Uniform Sales, Book Sales, or other events, having a fundraiser option added to your payroll deduction system is another way to make your POS system easier to operate and volunteer friendly. For these special events, a fundraiser system will provide a Point-of-Sale solution for each of these events, with the ability to manage payroll deduction spending limits by event. For example, if your current limit for payroll deductions in your gift shop is $300 per pay period, you may set up a separate payroll deduction limit for an upcoming Uniform Sale with another spending limit.
By having this fundraiser feature integrate with your payroll deductions and Point of Sale system, your volunteers and paid staff simply ring up the transactions at the point of sale, and the rest is automatically done by the system and through the custom interface with your hospital’s payroll system.
Author: Kathy de la Torre
