To sum it all up, the selling functionality in Flow Retail is so easy to use that you should not be needing to read this guide.

However, while you now are here, lets go trough it all 👍

Touch mode vs Keyboard mode

Flow Retail has two 'modes' for selling: Touch mode and Keyboard mode.

Although you typically decide on either of them, you can quickly switch between the two modes, even on an active order!

Touch mode

This is the most used mode, and is optimized for touch devices such as iPad and similar.

Many stores also use the Touch mode on non-touch-based devices, such as regular Windows or Mac computers, as it is so easy to use.

Keyboard mode

This mode is built for speed, and is for the most used by stores with a continuous queue of customers coming to pay.

Keyboard mode lets you use all sales features with just the keyboard.

In an optimized flow with just one product, it can take as low as 2-3 seconds to fulfill a sale.

The interface

Touch mode

The interface in Touch mode is super-intuitive, and most people would be able to start selling with this mode enabled in just a few minutes of training.

Receiving payment in Flow Retail is both very easy to do, and flexible.

A few important notes on payments

• You can use an unlimited number of payment methods on one settlement/order

  • E.g. on an order with a total amount of 1000, you can give your customer the option to pay 100 in cash, 500 one one card, 200 on another card, and the remaining 200 by gift card, to put it to the extreme

    • Note that combining multiple payment methods makes it more complex to do a refund, as especially card refunds must be refunded towards the exact same card

• We recommend to have at least two modern paymet methods (cash is not defined as modern) active, like card payment and one of the available mobile payment methods, like Dintero or Softpay, in case of technical issues

We offer a wide variety of payment methods, covering practically every retailer's needs.

All standard payment methods

Full list of all standard payment methods available in Flow Retail.

Most payment methods are included, however some require a one-time cost to set it up and a monthly fee, either per terminal/device or per store.

When selling products, it is very important to understand contribution margins (🇳🇴 dekningsbidrag), and the mechanisms around it, both to understand which sales price should be set on each product, and also to help understanding how much discounts you can offer on a specific product.

Example

In this example we follow a product all the way from being purchased to being sold, and where we will also look at how much discount you potentially can offer.

Preparations

• You purchase the product ZEISSVICTORY for NOK 1.000 ex. VAT from your supplier Zeiss Watches. Your total expense is then NOK 1.000, and everything on top of that is your profit.

• You decide to sell the product for NOK 10.000 incl VAT to your customers.

• The product has a VAT of 25%.

Finding the contribution margin: (🇳🇴 dekningsbidrag 1 or DB1)

1. To find the contribution margin we first need to remove the VAT: Net Sales Price = (Sales Price (incl. VAT) / 1 + VAT rate) = NOK 10.000 / 1,25 = NOK 8.000

2. Next we need to get the contribution margin, which is basically your profit: Contribution Margin = Net Sales Price - Cost Price = NOK 8.000 - NOK 1.000 = NOK 7.000 This means that for each product sold, NOK 7.000 is available to both cover fixed costs and generate profit.

Finding how much discount you can offer

This of course heavily depends on various factors, like how efficiently the business is being run, etc., but lets try with a relatively general example:

Since the product costs NOK 1.000 ex. VAT, you will need to add the VAT to the price, as you have to pay the VAT. The break-even price is therefore NOK 1.000 + 25% = NOK 1.250.

This means you can sell the product for NOK 1.250 and basically earn nothing. Which is normally pointless, and so you would want to add a minimum contribution margin on top of this, for lets say NOK 2.000 (to cover fixed costs, etc.). This means the lowest price you can sell for is NOK 1.000 + NOK 2.000 = NOK 3.000, and with the added VAT on top of that you get NOK 3.000 + 1,25 (25%) = NOK 3.750.

So, to ensure a certain contribution margin, you should at maximum discount the product down from NOK 10.000 to NOK 3.750, which will cover internal costs (house rental, salary, Flow Retail license, etc.) for a total amount of NOK 2.000.

Where and how can I see this in Flow Retail?

1. Add one or more products to an order (to become a sale)

2. Press cmd+b / ctrl+b in Keyboard-mode, or tap and hold DG in Touch-mode

3. You can now see the contribution margin per product, both as an amount and also as a percentage

What is a good contribution margin?

A contribution margin of 40% means that practically 40% of the revenue will go into covering the fixed costs like house rental, salary, etc., and the remaining 60% will be for variable costs, which includes purchasing the product, shipping from your supplier, and so on - and also hopefully to generate some profit on top.

The higher the contribution margin percentage, the more is left for profit.

Although we try to keep things as simple as possible can, we have a few concepts when it comes to sales orders that is important to understand.

Each time you create a new sale, it first becomes an order.

If you simply scan a few products, and proceed to payment and complete the order, what will happen is that there will be created an identical receipt of the products on that order.

Parking the order

You can also choose to park the order, for later fulfillment.

When parking an order you can choose to add a customer to it or not, though it is always recommended to have a customer added to a parked order so that you can more easily find it and open it later.

Setting an order to expire

When parking an order, it by default will never expire.

If you account is set up with Automatic Order Cancellation, any order will be cancelled automatically after a given date.

When parking an order, you can choose another date for the order to expire.

An expired order will be deleted, and the reservation will be freed up.

Paying for products on an order

When paying for any or all products on an order, a receipt is created with the relevant products.

The receipt is linked to the order.

This means you can keep an order open basically indefinitely, and take payments on the products on it until there are no products left.

You can also add more products to an open order.

When all products on an order is paid for and has gotten a receipt, the order enters the state Complete, which disallow for adding more products to it.

Offer

An order can be converted to an offer at any given time, as long as there are no receipts linked to it.

When changing an order over to become an offer, the products are NOT reserved any longer. Similarly, if the offer is changed back to become an order, the products are being reserved.