Vend product profile

Features

 

Vend’s features are extensive, particularly around product profiles and stock management. If you want a system that manages detailed supply information, stock levels, product information and flexible sales records, you will find that Vend meets all those comprehensively.

 

It should be said that many of Vend’s features are standard in retail & hospitality EPOS system, but compared with alternatives, still quite advanced. The following features are just a slice of what’s included.

 

Stock management: Perhaps the biggest strength of Vend is its ability to track and organise rich inventories in the system. If you already have a list of products in an Excel spreadsheet (CSV file), it is easy to import these into the system. Otherwise, manually add detailed product information in the library, to be displayed in the POS interface or found through search. Add notifications if someone is about to process something that’s low in stock, and make use of the many other inventory tools designed to automate supply ordering and make it easy for you to organise stock across multiple stores.

 

Image: Mobile Transaction

Vend product profile

 

Product profile, which can be analysed and edited through the dashboard (in-app or in-browser).

 

Customer loyalty: As with most other EPOS systems today, you can save customer details in the system and attach sales to them. This allows you to give loyalty points, which the customer can use for payments, send digital receipts, organise deliveries, and much more. It is up to you what details are added about customers – there are plenty of fields to fill in, for instance address, date of birth, phone number, or a custom note about the person.

 

Float and cash management: At the start of each day, you enter the float amount to compare the end-of-day cash total with. During the day, record when you take out money that counts towards expenses, e.g. team lunch or an electrician’s bill. In other words, the system works just like a traditional cash register, allowing a complete overview of payments, pay-ins/pay-outs, discrepancies and total takings in the cashing-up report at the end of each day.

 

Image: Mobile Transaction

Vend POS checkout

 

Checkout interface in Vend on iPad.

 

Sales, petty cash and refunds: Vend’s transaction functions are impressive, even including an option to edit details of a sale after it took place (in case you want to e.g. attach customer details to a receipt later). Exchanges and refunds can be done from the app, and you can edit or lay away sales for later. You decide how staff void transactions: delete the items on the list, or void to be recorded in the sales report but not counted towards sales totals.

 

Discounts and promotions: Promotions and discounts can be applied to specific items, date ranges, customer groups (e.g. students, loyalty members), or you can apply promo codes at checkout. Specify whether the discount runs in-store or in your online store, or if it just applies when spending over a certain amount.

 

Image: Mobile Transaction

Vend POS payment interface

 

Payment screen at checkout. Only a few payment methods are shown here – add many more ways to pay in the settings.

 

Receipts: As with most cloud-based POS today, you can send digital receipts via email, either straight after transactions or later if the sale is attached to a customer record with email address. Receipts are customised in the browser dashboard, where you can make a different receipt for each outlet, add logo, written text and edit what kind of information goes on receipts.

 

Employee and store management: The system can handle multiple outlets and staff accounts, allowing you to look at sales and staff performance anywhere in your business. Manage users by Cashier, Manager or Admin role with varying permissions, and set sales targets for individual users.

 

As for differences between the Vend Lite and Vend Pro plans, these are the features that differ:

Feature Lite Pro

Reporting Small-business reports Advanced reports & analytics

Location management Support for one store only Multi-outlet retail management

Add-on integrations Xero only All add-ons & ecommerce channels

API access

 

Regarding add-ons, only Xero (for accounting) can be integrated with Vend on the Lite plan. To integrate other third-party software, you’ll need to upgrade to Pro, which gives you access to connect to a range of other platforms such as Deputy or Timely for scheduling and staff management, and WooCommerce or Shopify for ecommerce.

 

Online and offline use

 

As a cloud-based point of sale (POS) platform, all your Vend data are stored online rather than on a local computer or server. This enables you to access it anywhere at any time through an internet browser or the app, since it is backed up in the cloud and updated automatically.

 

Like many other cloud-based POS systems, Vend keeps core features available in the event of a situation where you find yourself offline, so you can keep running your business through those (hopefully rare) eventualities. Any card machine used with Vend, however, will need a network connection to process a card sale, so this won’t work offline.

 

Hardware and payments integration

 

Vend is designed for Windows, Mac and iPad and can work on different combinations thereof. So you can, for example, operate the Vend system on a PC in a fixed location and also have the system running on an iPad for mobile use – all with access to the same real-time data.

 

Vend can be used with most card machines and payment processors in the UK, although only the following can be fully integrated:

 

    iZettle (iPad)

    Payment Express (iPad, Mac, Windows)

    Paymentsense (iPad, Mac, Windows)

    PayPal Here (iPad)

    Square (iPad)

    SumUp (iPad)

 

Integrated payments are when payments registered in Vend’s app are synced with the card machine. In other words, the card machine automatically processes payments in conjunction with the POS app, so you don’t have to manually enter an amount on the card machine and then manually confirm in the app that the payment took place.

 

Learn more: Square vs iZettle vs SumUp: compare the three best UK card readers