Setting Up An Efficient Pay And Processing System
Small businesses often need to make their work areas both compact and productivity-friendly. Setting up multiple stations for different processes is good for organization, but bad when you have a limited number of workers or work space. Here are a few techniques that can streamline your working area by bringing payment and processing either close together, or as a single, cohesive unit.
Card Readers Without Terminals
Point of sale (POS) technology is highly scalable, allowing business to either bind their sales to a dedicated machine or use an attachment for their current systems. Card readers are a great option for businesses that need to process sales at a specific place, but can't spare the additional room.
Card readers come with one challenge: configuration. The devices are meant to be connected and installed as any other computer peripheral, but you need to make sure that internet access is available and secure.
To guarantee at least mainstream economic security for your customer information, broadband internet on a dedicated connection is a must. Shy away from wireless internet, because while it can work and is sometimes the only option, a faster connection on an Ethernet cable, fiber optic cable, or other physical cables is more consistent and less susceptible to disconnects in the middle of payment processing.
This also means stepping away from dial-up internet. Except for areas that are rural and with satellite internet that costs far more than standard broadband, you're losing money by sticking to slower dial-up by slowing down processing time and other internet-based tasks.
POS Terminals With Sales Management
If your business needs to be dedicated to different parts of sales and as safe from viruses as possible, a dedicated sales terminal running on proprietary software is the key.
The main reason is what Apple used to be known for: avoiding viruses from obscurity. The benefit is simple; viruses exist, but it's rare to get hit with a virus because most of the bad code out on the internet is designed to hit the most amount of people. This means going after the most common computer operating systems, meaning Microsoft's Windows versions and recently Apple's OSX.
It's not about being designed to be an ironclad defense. It's about being obscure and not worth the effort for most people, meaning that fewer casual viruses will end up on your terminals. You won't have to worry about employees trying to check Facebook on the POS terminal, either.
Just on their phones.
Contact a point of sale systems professional to discuss the different options available for businesses of different sizes. Harbor Touch Bay Area