What POS Program Do I Recommend?
July 18, 2021 | 2 min read
Do you only record the credit card deposits that you make through your POS or Shopping Cart program? If so, you are not alone, but there is a better way!
Written by Jeanette Tan
If you are following this “industry standard” procedure, you are missing out on a wealth of information. Instead, we believe that you should be recording the details of the sales. For that reason, it is one of the steps in our Fundamental Five, which is our system to set up QuickBooks for the Wine Industry.
There are two ways to record the information in QuickBooks: the Push-in and the Summary Method.
The Push-in Method will create a sales receipt in QuickBooks for every sales transaction in your POS program. Whereas the Summary Method summarizes the sales into one sales transaction. This could be a daily or monthly summary. Both methods work, but our favorite programs will make this process easy.
A good program must have these characteristics:
Record sales by channel. They might call this "sales type"
Record the sale price of each wine after any discounts
Have reports for the Summary Method or the Push-In Method
Some features that might be important to you:
Supported by WGits by Wine Glass Marketing**
Integrate with ShipCompliant/Compli
Correctly handle split tenders
Use on an iPad
Accept tips for your crew
**In 2022 I began using the WGit software from Wine Glass Marketingthat automatically syncs the sales in the POS program with QB. You can choose if you want to see the individual sales in QB (the Push-in method) or a daily summary by channel (the Summary method). AND you can choose if you want QB to use cases or bottles. This program is a game-changer. There are some excellent POS programs that do not work with this tool, so working with the WGit is not a Must-Have feature.
If you are shopping for a new POS program, be careful because the sales team will proudly show off all of their bells and whistles.
These features are exciting, but they often mask a complicated program for your bookkeeping team to use.
Also, (and I don’t like having to give this warning because I love how the wine industry is so open and willing to share tools, advice, and even team members), please be careful when someone says “we love XX” or “we don’t like XX”. Unless that winery is willing to share its financials and financial management processes, you could be unwittingly relying on outdated and ineffective procedures.
We recommend that you first identify whether a program has the three primary characteristics listed above. Then identify any other features that are essential for your business model. Focus on that shortlist and pick a program with just a few useful bells and whistles.
