Ease Of Use Vend

 

Ease Of Use

Rating: Excellent

Once signed up for the free trial, you’ll have the opportunity to take a self-guided tour. Each category is linked to the appropriate page in the dashboard for configuration, and you’ll be walked through the processes of adding products and customers, setting up taxes, and customizing the register quick keys, among other things. It’s a great way to get oriented to the system, though it’s all pretty self-explanatory, given how intuitive the software is.

 

Vend

 

Even as you get into some of the more peripheral functions of the POS — the loyalty program, inventory management, that sort of thing — Vend is ridiculously simple to use. Vend offers a helpful 10-minute demo video that gives a brief overview of its offerings, but if you have any experience with EPOS software, it’s unlikely you’ll need it to figure out basic functions. Adding inventory was simple, and the option to create tags to more efficiently sort products was a snap. If you import your inventory via a CSV file, you can be up and ready to accept payments in a matter of minutes.

 

Vend doesn’t have an in-house eCommerce platform, but Vend integrates with Shopify and suggests using them for online sales. If, however, you are already set up with another popular eCommerce platform, such as Ecwid, BigCommerce, or WooCommerce, Vend also integrates with those companies. Once your store is up and running to your liking, Vend’s functionality is excellent. Managing products and customers even across multiple locations is simple and intuitive, though it does require a few more taps or clicks than some other POS systems offer.

 

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Hardware & Operating System Requirements

If you run Vend in a web browser, you can use Google Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge, or Firefox. As far as the OS, as long as your hardware can run at least Windows 7, Mac OSX Mountain Lion, or iOS 11, you’re good to go.

 

Along with standalone equipment, Vend offers three all-in-one POS bundles:

 

Mac bundle

PC bundle

iPad bundle

The Mac and PC bundles come with cash drawers, printers, and scanners, and the iPad bundle comes with a stand, printer, cash drawer, and other optional accessories. You can also use Star’s all-in-one mobile point of purchase (mPOP) receipt printer and cash drawer. For more information regarding the peripheral equipment that works with Vend, you can check out the company website.

 

Features

Rating: Good

You can check out a full list of Vend’s features and see a demo video on Vend’s website (though you’ll need to give your name, phone number, and email address to gain access). Here, I just want to touch on a few of Vend’s most notable features.

 

eCommerce Integration: eCommerce integration is only available in the Pro and Enterprise plans. At one time, Vend had its own basic in-house eComm solution, but now it only integrates with third-party eCommerce platforms. Vend integrates with most of the top eCommerce platforms on the market, making it simple to either import your online store or start from scratch. Purchase orders made through the online store are automatically emailed to the admin, so order fulfillment is in real-time.

Vend

 

Loyalty Program: It’s becoming commonplace for a POS to include some kind of loyalty engine and for good reason. Anytime you can create an incentive for customers to keep shopping at your store, you’ve got a leg up on the competition. Vend has an excellent Loyalty package, allowing you to import existing customers via a CSV file or easily add new customers to a list, storing their information under a unique profile, which can later be used for marketing. The Loyalty package also includes gift cards, and a customer’s balance is viewable from the payment screen at the time of checkout (assuming you’ve attached this person to the sale). You’ll see clearly how much the sale will earn the customer, how much they have available, and how much they owe on the current transaction. The Loyalty program also makes its way into other areas of Vend and, with some creativity, can be used to really drive sales.

 

 

Customer Management: You can customize the fields you want for your customer list with such things as an address, phone number, email address, website, customer group, Facebook account, and Twitter ID. Vend uses the Loyalty program to entice shyer customers into giving up their info. When you enable the Loyalty program, there’s an option to create and send an automatic email to new enrollees. This email contains a personalized link to a Customer Portal, where people can give you their full contact info in exchange for bonus loyalty dollars. This makes adding customers at the time of sale quicker and less invasive — you only need to ask for their email address and then tell them to wait until they get the email so that they can earn more rewards. The link they receive is tied directly to the account you just created and can only be used to redeem rewards once (meaning if they fill out their info and get their bonus, the link will then expire to prevent double-dipping).

Inventory Management: With Vend, you can easily add, remove, and edit inventory items. You can also include images of products as well as keep track of stock levels and any special taxes, costs, or prices for certain products. Prices can be set differently based on location or customer type or by creating special promotional discounts. Additionally, inventory can be imported to/exported from a CSV file. The system can import, create, and print barcode labels for easier inventory management. And any product can have an individualized Loyalty earning that overrides the default spend-to-earning ratio, which is especially helpful if there’s a particular product you want to push. Vend also offers a purchase order management feature.