Six retail apps to heat up your summer sales

As the summer holiday season kicks off, many Australian retailers are looking forward to a boost in sales, hoping to make up for slower winter months and October’s dip in retail turnover. However, more than half (55.3%) of Australian small businesses say they are concerned that the increasing cost of living is going to impact their summer sales, according to a Xero Small Business Insights Report: Crunch: Cash flow challenges facing small businesses.

On average, Australian small businesses receive almost 20% less of their annual revenues over January and February – 7% compared to an average of 8.6% in the other 10 months of the year. This year, apps could be the key factor to make it easier for shoppers to spend with you, boost business efficiency and drive profits. 

We’ve rounded up just six of the extensive range of apps in the Xero App Store that can save you time and give you complete control of your sales and business data, whether you’re serving customers face to face or online. Better yet, each of these apps offers a free trial so you can try it out and make sure it works for you and your business before you commit. 

To make life even easier, if you’re a Xero user you can access these free trials via the Xero App Store, where you can log in with your Xero account, get your data connected and app set up in just a few clicks. 

Create seamless customer experiences and streamline payments 

Making getting paid easy and take advantage of cross-app integrations with these point of sale apps. 

Square

Square has built a whole suite of tools that help businesses to do more with less. Its attractive and easy-to-use in-store payments hardware, its range of vertical-specific point of sale (POS), ecommerce capabilities, and digital payments app all integrate with Xero to give businesses a powerful toolkit and reduce time spent on admin. With Square and Xero, business owners can easily track daily sales and can use the integration to easily reconcile bank deposits, letting Xero automatically set aside processing fees. Square offers a huge range of functionality beyond payments, too, including automating team rostering, CRM and automated marketing tools, and inventory management, giving businesses back valuable time.

posBoss

posBoss is point of sale software designed to suit the unique needs of hospitality venues like restaurants, cafes and bars — and is especially handy for high-volume seasons like summer. Intuitive and simple to use even for first-time users, posBoss gives you a quick three-tap order and pay function, easy access to order history, venue table mapping, recipe building (including profit margin insights), daily sales targets, digital docket options, click and collect solution and bill splitting. Customers will love how easy it is to settle their bill, and you’ll love how this app integrates with Xero for easy account reconciliation, complete oversight on daily EFTPOS, cash and credit transactions and a comprehensive picture of your business’s sales history.

Gain real-time control of your inventory

Take the stress out of keeping track of your inventory with apps that provide oversight on stock levels, reduce shrinkage, track order movement and more.

DEAR

No matter which way the economic winds are blowing, businesses always benefit from good inventory control and retail software. DEAR is ideal for retailers and ecommerce with plenty of products to move, with options for product grouping, auto-generated SKUs, POS, visibility of stock across multiple locations and a host of stock adjustment controls. With its comprehensive Xero integration, you can easily combine DEAR’s inventory oversight with accounts, invoices, customer and supplier data, tax rules and payment terms to maintain complete visibility over your stock.

Unleashed

Without complete visibility over your inventory, it’s hard to balance the risk of overstocking against the need to keep customers satisfied. Unleashed is another inventory app that automates every element of stock control, saving you time and keeping inventory lean while growing profits. Perpetual inventory control gives complete oversight on the cost of inventory you hold, your profit margins on each product, how much you’re selling (and where) and what you need to buy more of. Using Unleashed with Xero makes business even easier, with stock movements and transactions updated in real time, saving hours of work for everyone in your team and providing every detail you need, right down to the balance sheet.

Automate your online sales and accounting

Save time and gain insights when your business is at its busiest with these powerful ecommerce apps that simplify your sales data.

A2X

The pointy end of the year isn’t just intense for brick and mortar retailers. If your business is largely in ecommerce — think Amazon, Shopify or eBay — A2X is an app that streamlines and simplifies the accounting process, quickly allowing you to see your business’s financial health. A2X takes sales data from your ecommerce platforms and posts it automatically into Xero, reconciling payouts and providing up-to-date profit margin data. Accountants love A2X for its “gold standard accuracy” and automated accounting power, and merchants love how they can find their data seamlessly packaged into Xero — even when operating across multiple ecommerce platforms at once.

Dext Commerce

For ecommerce retailers looking for truly personalised control of the books, Dext Commerce is the answer. The power of Dext Commerce is in the level of detail it provides, whether you’re more of a hands-on or hands-off type of user. Interested in complete oversight? Dext lets ecommerce accountants separate out data for individual transactions and delve into years worth of customer details, SKU numbers, and tax information. On the flipside, Dext Commerce can also keep things simple with autopilot settings that publish data to Xero without you having to do a thing. Plus, Dext data shows a time saving of up to 25 hours per month for users. That means more time for you to focus on delivering the best possible customer experience.

Start your free trial of these apps today and supercharge your summer sales. Head to the Xero App Store to easily find, try and buy apps designed to make running your business easier. You can compare app listings and read real-time reviews from verified Xero customers to find the apps that will best suit your business.