Top 5 Add-Ons For Vend POS

Welcome to yet another round of the POS integration Hunger Games! In the past few weeks, we have tackled the top 11 add-ons for Revel POS and the top 7 add-ons for Shopify POS. What ground-breaking POS system is up this week? Vend.

As the first completely hardware independent POS, Vend made a name for itself right out of the gate. Not only is it unique for its offline functionality, it also boasts exemplary inventory management, multi-channel sales in-store and online, and a slew of integrations with third-party software. 15,000+ stores later, Vend has established itself as a POS system worthy of any retailer wanting to make their mark in this cutthroat industry.

So kudos for choosing Vend – it will serve you well. But don’t forget to take advantage of that slew of integrations I mentioned earlier! If you don’t feel like sifting through the selection yourself – say no more. This article is all you need.

I have separated the available Vend POS integrations into five categories and pitted them against one other to give you the highest-rated integrations for each category. Here are the winners of the Vend POS integration Hunger Games:

Accounting: Xero

Thanks to New Zealand, we have Russell Crowe, the stunning Lord of the Rings films, and Xero (see our review)– the highest rated accounting integration Vend POS offers. Though QuickBooks typically dominates the field of accounting, Xero has asserted itself as a more-than-worthy competitor with its innovative features and excellent customer service.

All your necessary Vend data automatically syncs to Xero – including your store’s daily sales, payment totals, cost of goods sold, invoices, and customer details. Xero also syncs cash payments, float movements, and petty cash while alerting you of any discrepancies in banked deposits and daily cash totals. Using Xero, you can make the right decisions and ensure your company’s success by tracking sales, profit margins, and revenue by staff, store, brand, or product. You can create invoices and manage payments as well as monitor outstanding purchases and past due accounts.

Best of all, you won’t have to worry about losing contacts when you take the leap of integrating Xero into your Vend POS system – both supplier and customer details sync automatically and updates stream smoothly between Vend and Xero. Want to be able to check on the performance of your business while you’re away? Xero can connect to your mobile device through Vend’s retail dashboard so you can run your business from anywhere. Try out Xero for yourself.

The Takeaway: Xero may be relatively new to the accounting game, but it has already proven its mettle by 1) Doing the heavy-lifting for its customers and 2) Providing an intuitive and aesthetically pleasing platform which truly does make accounting seem like a breeze.

Employee Management: Deputy

Since Deputy is the only employee management add-on offered by Vend POS, it is the winner by default – but that doesn’t take away from the inherent merit of the software. In fact, Deputy was chosen as Xero’s add-on of the year due to its seamless employee scheduling and integration with Vend and Xero.

Deputy allows its customers to easily schedule staff, track employee performance, and assign tasks. Through Deputy’s geo-location or photo verification capabilities, you can record the movements of your staff. Immediately after employees clock in or out, Deputy generates automatic timesheets with the Deputy Kiosk iPad app or Deputy mobile. Deputy also enables you to track your store’s daily performance with staff scheduling and wages. This integration reduces the risk of understaffing or overstaffing by compiling rosters based on performance reports and raw data.

Communicating with your staff can be easy using Deputy’s staff-wide announcement, targeted messaging, and task list capabilities. The beauty of this software is that most functions essential to your business can be done in one click – payroll (including overtime, penalty rates, and allowances) and staffing and scheduling (including tracking available staff and creating and publishing schedules). Deputy and Xero sync employee details and time-off requests, and coordinate award rates from Xero to Deputy. So if you’re looking to integrate accounting and employee management solutions with your Vend POS system, Deputy and Xero are the way to go.

The Takeaway: Deputy deftly manages your employee scheduling, communication, time, and attendance so that you don’t have to.

CRM: Timely

Timely is yet another sole competitor in its category – but why mess with perfection? Timely’s appointment-managing capabilities make scheduling easy for both you and your customers.

If booking and rebooking appointments is the bane of your existence, Timely is the Vend POS integration for you. Timely lets you manage appointments in only a couple of clicks. Group bookings, classes, recurring bookings are all made easy with Timely’s user-friendly platform. Have multiple services that you need to be able to attach to a single booking? Timely makes it a cinch. Do you have a bad habit of scheduling appointments during busy times and breaks? Timely lets you block out breaks and busy times so you don’t overwhelm yourself.

It’s always a bummer when customers don’t show up for their appointments, but Timely reduces no-shows by providing you the opportunity to send unlimited free email reminders and SMS reminders that you only pay for on an as-you-use basis. You can specify when the reminders are sent – even personalize the reminder to the preferences of the customer – and customize the reminders to reflect the style of your business. With Timely, customer records can include a thorough history of sales, notes, bookings, and SMS or emails. This data helps you understand your consumer-base and recognize trends. Timely also manages online booking from Facebook or your own website. Want to give it a spin? Check out the Timely Website.

The Takeaway: Timely makes booking and managing appointments a hassle-free process so you don’t waste time and money on no-shows and double booking.

Email Marketing: MailSync

MailSync doesn’t have any competition in terms of Vend POS email marketing integrations but that’s because MailSync does it all.

With MailSync, you can sync with any of the most prominent email tools: Campaign Monitor, GetResponse, AWeber, MailChimp, Constant Contact, or iContact. These tools make growing your mailing list look like a piece of cake – allowing you to email more customers. The MailSync integration automatically syncs your Vend customer database to your mailing list so you can maintain contact with every customer.

Your mailing list will always be up-to-date with detailed information like the customer’s name, email, purchase activity, and Vend Loyalty balances. Set up is stress-free – it only takes two minutes –  and you can “connect and forget”. No up-keep involved. Customers’ loyalty balances are easily added to your newsletters so they can keep track of when they can save the biggest. If you are sick and tired of manually exporting and importing data with CSVs, MailSync is your best friend – it automatically syncs all that information to save you time.

The Takeaway: Email marketing can be a pain if you’re trying to import/export all that data by hand. That’s why MailSync seamlessly marries all the top email tools so you get the benefit of high-end email marketing services without the struggle of transferring and updating customer information.

Inventory Management: Stitch Labs

Founded in 2011, Stitch Labs – the company – developed an inventory management integration called Stitch. Stitch was created to make the most of your inventory through all of your sales channels.

Stitch serves to unite your Vend POS system with Amazon, Etsy, BigCommerce, ShipStation, Shopify, Storenvy, PayPal, and many more. Through Stitch, inventory and sales order management can be a walk in the park – inventory availability is automatically synced across all your locations so you can evade overselling nightmares via low stock alerts, automatically generated purchase orders, and automatic stock updates as orders are placed and received. This software provides valuable insight into which products are popular or unpopular, which locations are the most lucrative, etc. by way of detailed sales, profit, and other KPI reports for every channel.

Stitch also gives you visibility into your inventory levels to streamline the fulfillment process. You can track inventory and manage orders in real-time so you’ll always be on top of the status of orders, and easily recognize channels and products that are driving sales while accurately predicting and responding to trends with actionable reports. All inventory and customers can be managed centrally, allowing you to make more informed decisions about your business as a whole. Want to experience the wonderful service of Stitch Labs firsthand? Check out their website.

The Takeaway: Stitch Labs has created an inventory management add-on that intuitively allows your business access to a plethora of big-name eCommerce platforms while keeping you informed about the status of order, sales, stock, etc.

Final Thoughts

I hope the end of this article finds you more informed about which Vend POS add-ons would be best to incorporate into your business. We’re open to feedback, however, so let us know which Vend POS integrations have met your needs or even gone above and beyond for your business. We’d love to hear about it!