Point of sale

From Sales to Staff: How to Use Your POS to Drive Better Results

Sahana Ananth
February 15, 2025
1 mins

Table of Content

Imagine this: You own a busy pizzeria, food truck, or retail store. Sales are steady, but your profits don’t seem to match up. Some employees handle rush hours like pros, while others struggle. Some cashiers ring up big transactions, but others barely make a dent.

Without the right data, how can you tell who’s driving your business forward?

This is where a POS system comes in. It helps you track sales, monitor employee performance, and make better business decisions. Instead of relying on guesswork, you get clear data on who’s contributing the most to your business and who may need extra training.

Let’s explore how a POS system can improve employee management, boost efficiency, and increase profits.

Five Key Metrics Your POS Can Track

Tracking employee performance and sales data helps you understand your team’s impact on your business. Your POS system provides real-time insights into productivity, efficiency, and revenue generation. Here are five key metrics you can track to improve staff performance, customer experience, profitability, and business strategies for success.

1. Employee Hours Worked

Suppose you notice that an employee frequently clocks in late. You feel the need to track employee hours. However, tracking this manually is time-consuming and prone to manual errors

Retail POS alerts help you address this issue early. The system automates attendance tracking, ensuring accuracy and transparency. So, no negative impact on customer service.

With your POS, you can:

  • Monitor clock-ins and clock-outs: Employees log in directly through the system, ensuring they are on time. Late arrivals and early exits are flagged.
  • Calculate total hours worked: The system records shift durations, preventing payroll disputes.
  • Prevent "buddy punching": Unique logins ensure that employees cannot clock in for each other.

2. Tips Collected and Distributed

In quick service restaurants, bars, and food trucks, tip distribution can be a major source of conflict if not managed properly. A POS system ensures transparency.

Your POS can:

  • Track individual and pooled tips: It records tips per employee, shift, or day.
  • Ensure compliance: Tip reporting is logged properly to meet labor regulations.

So, if you switch to automated tip tracking through your POS, you can decrease employee complaints and ensure fair payouts.

3. Sales Metrics Per Employee

Understanding who drives your revenue helps with training, incentives, and scheduling. For example, a liquor store finds out that one cashier has a 20% higher average transaction value than others. After reviewing the POS data, they can train other employees on that cashier's sales techniques. 

Your POS system can track:

  • Total revenue per employee: Compare how much each staff member contributes.
  • Average transaction value: Identify who gets customers to spend more per purchase.

If the entire staff is well-versed with the sales techniques currently working well for the business, it can dramatically increase revenue.

4. Void and Refund Analysis

Suppose a quick service restaurant notices an unusually high number of voids. After investigating, they found a server was offering unauthorized discounts to friends. Frequent voids and refunds can signal fraud or training gaps. A restaurant POS helps by spotting unusual refund patterns that might indicate theft.

5. Sales by Discount

Suppose you run a 15% discount for mobile orders. The analytics report reveals the increase in sales. But it also showed that the net sales after discounts were lower than expected. You can later make adjustments to ensure future promotion ideas don't hurt profitability.

For this reason, tracking sales by discount helps understand the effectiveness of your marketing tips. Your POS system provides detailed breakdowns, including:

  • Gross sales, orders, and overall discount amounts
  • Product discounts, cash discounts, and total discounts
  • Refunds, net sales, shipping costs, tips, and taxes

This data helps you monitor whether discounts are boosting sales or cutting into profits too much. It also shows which seasonal promotions are working best and which ones need adjustment.

How to Access and Use the Dashboard Reports for Employee Performance and Sales Metrics

To effectively track employee performance and sales metrics, access and use your softPOS solution dashboard reports. These reports offer valuable insights into key metrics so that you can make data-driven decisions. 

1. Set Up Employee-Specific Logins

A unique login for each employee prevents unauthorized access and eliminates time clock fraud.

  • Role-based access: Cashiers, managers, and staff see only the data they need.
  • Secure authentication: Reduces buddy punching and unauthorized changes.

So, if your small business uses POS logins to track staff productivity, it can lead to better accountability and fairer shift assignments.

2. Review Clock-In/Out Reports

Your handheld POS system stores weekly, monthly, or custom reports, allowing you to:

  • Detect attendance patterns
  • Adjust scheduling based on peak business hours

After setting up the POS, a cloud kitchen can use its data to determine if staff are clocking in too early before rush hours. This insight helps optimize labor costs.

3. Track Tips and Sales Performance

Suppose a coffee shop notices that one barista consistently gets high tips. It can have the barista train new employees. The result: improved customer interactions across the team.

POS analytics reports allow you to:

  • Compare tips and sales across employees.
  • Identify top performers for rewards and training.

4. Analyze Refunds, Voids, and Discounts

What if your cashier is issuing refunds without receipts or giving out wrong discounts? A POS helps you spot unusual refunds or void activity in real-time. You can also monitor discount trends to prevent misuse. Then, you can stop fraudulent transactions.

5. Detect Seasonal Variations

During the holiday season, you might hire temporary staff to handle the rush. But what if they struggle with upselling? This is when you can put your last year's data from your POS to use. How? The answer is pre-season training sessions based on last year’s data.

Historical POS data helps predict staff performance trends.

  • Identify training needs before peak seasons.
  • Compare performance across different times of the year.

How OneHubPOS Enhances Employee Performance Tracking

With OneHubPOS, all the essential employee tracking features are built in. This all-in-one POS solution makes performance monitoring and sales analysis effortless.

Here's what OneHubPOS offers:

  • Accurate Employee Time Tracking: Monitor clock-ins, shift durations, and attendance issues to ensure payroll accuracy.
  • Automated Tip Distribution: Seamlessly allocate tips based on sales, shifts, or pooling preferences.
  • Employee Sales Insights: Track total revenue per employee and average transaction values.
  • Fraud Detection: Spot unusual refund or void trends to prevent employee theft.
  • Discount and Promotion Tracking: Ensure discounts are applied correctly, preventing misuse.
  • Role-Based Access Control: Provide customized access levels to employees for security and efficiency.

Conclusion

A POS system is more than a cash register. It's a powerful employee performance and sales tracking tool. By using POS data, you can:

  • Identify and reward top employees
  • Provide targeted training for underperformers
  • Prevent fraud and reduce revenue loss
  • Increase profitability and team efficiency

Looking to optimize employee management and boost sales? Book a demo of OneHubPOS today and start tracking your business success with confidence.

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AUTHOR
Sahana Ananth
Director, GTM - OneHubPOS

Sahana is a seasoned GTM leader with a passion for building startups. She excels in crafting GTM strategies for tech products, driving revenue growth.

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