Eight Essential Things Florists Need In A Floral POS System
These are the features that florists tell use they can't live without.
Multiple Orders
It's Mother's Day and John Smith wants to send flowers to his mother and his wife. Or it's Christmas and Acme Corporation wants to send poinsettias to their top twenty customers.
It's incredible but even now in 2016 most floral POS systems make you enter those as separate sales, with separate payments and receipts. That is more work for you and the customer.
Sometimes they have "solutions" but they all mean more work for you... just open an account for the customer, then charges all those sales to that account, then take a payment on that account, then apply that payment to those sales. Or some kind of crazy "merging" of different sales after the fact.
FloristWare does it right. Each sale can contain an unlimited number of orders (cash and carry items, pick-ups, local deliveries, wire deliveries... mix and match however you want) just the way you and the customer want – with one receipt/invoice and one payment...
Split Tender Payments
Unless of course you want to take multiple and/or split tender payments.
Smart florists realize the value of this and consider it essential. Sometimes a customer wants to split payment between two credit cards, or pay part with cash and part with credit. Or a grieving family wants to split the cost of sympathy flowers between them.
Very few POS system do this but FloristWare makes all of this possible, allowing you to split payment for sales into as many individual payments (of any type) that you like.
Register Mode
Most floral POS systems, especially those that are really e-commerce websites just pretending to be POS systems, are absolutely terrible at entering cash and carry sales. It's time-consuming for you and frustrating for your customers. At peak times like Mother's Day and Valentine's Day it is devastating.
FloristWare includes a powerful and extremely fast cash register mode. The best part is that it is also ridiculously easy to set up and assign products, colors and styles to 96 register buttons in nine different groups.
Address Lookup/Verification
Often the person sending the flowers doesn't have all the delivery/address details. They'll expect you to look it up online, and that is what other POS systems expect you to do as well.
FloristWare does it for you. Just start typing an address and FloristWare will find it for you now. No more bouncing back and forth doing searches in Google maps. It's faster for you and a better experience for the customer.
Discounting That Works For Florists
The discounting options in most floral POS systems are absolutely terrible. Usually you have to discount the entire sale manually or nothing at all.
FloristWare gives you control of unprecedented automated discounting options with unlimited manual overrides, all of it tracked and reported on. Set default discounts for individual products or entire product categories. Assign default discounts to certain customers, or orders going to specific places or being filled on specific dates. Automate discounts on specific payment methods. Automatically exempt other customers, payment or fulfillment methods from discounts. Choose what type of discounts take precedence.
It is truly remarkable system that was designed with the help of the smartest and most successful florists in the business, the ones who understand that intelligent discounting is an outstanding way to increase sales.
Serious Points Program
Everything mentioned about discounting above? It also goes for points.
A powerful points program doesn't just help ensure customer loyalty, it helps you shape customer behavior and make it more profitable. Want to wean people off charge accounts and checks? Make those payment methods ineligible for points, or offer bonus points on the payment methods you prefer.
Want to encourage advance ordering for major holidays without giving discounts? Offer bonus points instead. The possibilities are almost endless when you choose a system that really was built with florists in mind.
Reporting With The Flower Business In Mind
The flower business is hard. Your POS should make it simpler. That means reports, built specifically for retail florists, that give you the information that you need to make informed, profitable decisions at a glance. And even more importantly, it means reports that add up. That is something that, despite being so essential, eludes many POS systems.
Automated Printing
A lot of printing goes on in a flower shop (worksheets, enclosure cards, receipts, invoices, reports, etc.) and often to different printers and paper sources. You don't have time to be manually selecting printers for each job.
That is why FloristWare lets you specify what jobs should go to what printer on a station-by-station basis and then fully automates the printing process in your flower shop... unless of course you want to override it and FloristWare handles that too. Save time, money and countless headaches.
Delivery Management & Optimization
Drivers are hard to find and fuel is expensive. Successful florists need powerful route optimization tools to help their drivers make more deliveries in less time using less fuel.
Mobile Floral Delivery App
Florists need a mobile delivery app that will help their drivers be more productive and generate real-time delivery confirmations that include photos, video and offer signature capture.
Even more features real local florists need in a floral POS system...
Website Flexibility
Does your current POS lock you into one particular website? It is a common tactic – lock someone into a POS/website combination that isn't very good at either and then hope they won't be willing to switch both.
FloristWare works with a wide variety of websites. There is turnkey integration with both floral e-commerce websites from the best providers in the business (companies like Flower Shop Network, GravityFree, Strider Florist 2.0 and Epic Flowers) as well as general e-commerce platforms like Shopify.
There is also an API that lets you connect your custom website. We're focussed on giving you the best POS system, and integrating with the best providers of e-commerce websites for florists.
Cloud Options
The cloud is a great tool but it's not a religion, and many florists with less–than–ideal internet connections have realized the problem with being a true believer.
FloristWare lets you use as much or as little cloud as you like. Do you have a great internet connection and want to be fully in the cloud? No problem! Poor connection, or a desire to keep things local? We do that too. And of course everything in between, with our favorite setup being a local deployment (very fast!) that saves backups to the cloud (very safe!).
Customization
Florists know what looks good and FloristWare lets them create receipts, invoices, etc. that look as good and as unique as their flowers. This matters! All those materials are a big part of your branding and only FloristWare lets you customize them to reflect your vision of your floral business.