Do you spend too high time repricing stock in your newsagency?
I see newsagents waste hours on work their software could do in minutes, and repricing is the worst offender.
You know the job. A supplier sends through a price rise across their range, or you decide the plush department needs a margin tune-up before Christmas. Someone sits at the back computer opening one product at a time, keying the new price, clicking save, a few hundred times over. Everyone hates the job, so it gets put off, which means weeks of selling at old prices on new costs.
Or, it could be that you have finally decided to adjust your prices ahead of losing the credit card surcharge you currently have and need to cover costs another way.
The Stock Manager facility in the Tower Systems newsagency software handles this in bulk. Pull up everything from that supplier or department and change the lot together. A range-wide price rise is a five-minute job.
The part I want every newsagent to understand is the gross profit option. When a supplier lifts costs and you only pass on the dollar amount, your margin percentage shrinks without you noticing. Do that across a few suppliers over a couple of years and you have quietly given away points of margin in a channel that cannot afford to give away any. Stock Manager can reprice a whole range to the gross profit percentage you choose. Decide what margin your gift department must make, then make every item in it comply. That is managing, not just retailing.
Pricing is the headline but not the whole story. Details, images and descriptions can all be updated across a range in one go. The bulk tag tools matter if you run a connected Shopify store, because building a collection by opening hundreds of products individually is nobody’s idea of a Tuesday night.
My usual disclosure: I work with Tower Systems, so weigh my words accordingly. But the advice stands whatever software you use. If your system makes you reprice item by item, you are paying for that limitation in wages, and in margin you never noticed leaking away. Ask your software company to show you their bulk editing tools. If they cannot, that tells you something.
One tip from the Tower support desk: back up before any bulk change. Bulk cuts both ways.
Your time is the scarcest resource in your shop. Better spent out the front with customers than out the back keying prices.