I was surprised to learn that there are newsagents who continue to process magazines at the end of the week (for weekly returns) or at the end of the month (for monthly returns). In our newsagencies we scan the magazines as they come off each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We do this regardless of whether we have the electronic returns file from the distributor – the software will allocate to the right form once it has been received even after we have scanned the titles.
This approach of scanning magazine returns daily saves considerable time and space.
A newsagent I know who made the switch to the daily returns approach last year, after changing software, is saving at least eight paid hours of labour a month – $152 a month or $1,824 a year – plus on-costs.
I cringe when I see stacks of loose magazines in the back room of a newsagency. This is like leaving cash for anyone to pick up or saleable stock to go missing. I prefer to see tied or strapped bundles of magazines which have been scanned – ready for collection and return.
Too often, software companies fail to train newsagents on proper processes around tasks like magazine returns. This is where the Tower Systems online Magazine Management training works – it is being run by someone who managed this in his own newsagency for years.
I do my returns every time the mags come off the shelf and yes this does save a lot of time doing it this way but at the end of the day it is still stock sitting out the back doing bugger all wether it is weekly returns or monthly we still loose out with the coin at the end of the day .
We started doing this last year when an ex Newsagent was teaching us POS Browser (sorry mate). If you had of told me back then how much time would be saved I never would have believed you. Infact I prostested changing to the daily approach, but I wouldn’t look back now!
Hi Mark,
We moved across to full point of sale (with Tower) about two months ago and are still comming to terms with many things…
In the long run we know it will benefit us, however my wife who is not computer literate and runs the shop is still having massive problems with the magazine management side of the operation.
Is there an easy to follow guide anywhere in the Tower Suite… I have tried to search through and there is no end to end guide. Including how you use Exchange it…
Cheers
Peter
Peter,
There is a terrific guide as well as online training and other learning opportunities. Let the support team know and they will be able to help.
mark
Peter , just like you i have no computer background at all and the thought of all the things to learn almost done my head in ,it even took me a few months to attempt doing my returns via exchange it because i i didn’t know to trust it or not but after a while everything just falls in place it is the best thing i have ever done