A billing software is used at point of sale to process sales and collect customer, product, price and other such information to support various business activities and decisions.
Definition of Billing Software
A billing software, POS software or point of sale software enables businesses to process sale of all billable products and services, collect payments, and keep record of all customer transactions.
Essential Features of Best Free Billing Software
A free billing software can be effectively implemented in your stores if it has the following essential features:
Building customer database
The POS software you subscribe to should allow you to collect customer information like contact details, birthday, and product preferences. Every time customers make purchases, your POS software should map orders to unique customers and record transactions to the POS system.
All collected information should be available to managers and sales & marketing staff to analyze, so that optimal products and services can be offered to customers and effective marketing activities can be undertaken.
Flexibility to accommodate your products
A free billing software is useful to your business only if it is flexible enough to accommodate all the products, services, and outlets you have. It should enable you to customize product categories, products, etc., so that you can easily scale your product range and business.
Customizable attributes of a billing or POS software also enable businesses to make a software more relevant for themselves and their customers.
Enables payment through various modes
Your chosen billing software should allow customers to pay through cash, cards, online transfers, mobile transfers, and credit. This helps you cater to a wide base of customers with different payment preferences.
Offers data analysis
A billing software must offer analysis of customer, product, price and other information, so that informed business decision can be taken.
Supports marketing activities
An effective POS software enables businesses to promote products and services among registered customers. Billing software like Loyera allow businesses to create promotions and discounts for customers in the database of a business.
Loyalty program rewards can also be set in a billing software solution, so that existing customers can be encouraged to return to do more business.
Integration with other departments
Billing software solutions are truly effective when they can be integrated with software solutions being used in other departments. Software like Loyera support Loyalty management, Order management, product and inventory management and other business functions, making it an ideal free billing software. Such software enable smooth functioning of all business departments.
Paid Vs. Free Billing Software
Business often question if they should go for only paid software or if it’s worth spending time on freemium or free billing software.
The answer to this query is not in the price of software, but the functionalities, flexibility, ability to scale, and return on investment offered by a software.
Investment in a software is not just the money spent on purchasing or subscribing to a software. Investment in a billing software includes hardware and software costs besides staff and customer training and implementation costs.
Therefore, all cost components should be compared to the return a billing software will yield in terms of increased revenue, business efficiency and customer lifetime value, while deciding whether a POS or billing software is worth subscribing to.