Charity Retail News Issue #5 November 2024
Stocktakes go digital on your phone or shop tablet
Eproductive have developed a new app based stocktake solution available to all Touch Till clients at no additional charge. You don’t need to print off stocktake sheets and walk round with a pen; instead, using the secure MyEPR app, staff simply scan an item’s barcode via a phone or tablet’s camera and enter the number of items in stock. So if you use shop tablets for donor sign-up they can also be used for stocktakes.
A picture of the item scanned is shown on the app and it even works off-line, so basement storerooms with no Wi-Fi signal are not an issue. The app saves your stocktake as you go ready to upload to your database when back on line.
Eproductive Director Nick Cowls said:
“Paper based stocktakes are time consuming and prone to error. Using an app massively reduces workload and improves accuracy. Stock levels are automatically uploaded, and Head Office can run reports showing stock levels and discrepancies by shop immediatlely. We don’t charge for this new feature, it’s free to all our Touch Till clients.”
Nottinghamshire Hospice pilots weekly CO2 savings for each shop
Nottinghamshire Hospice has been piloting a new feature on the till’s customer facing display. When not processing a purchase the large colour display screen usually shows a screensaver of up to six images on rotation, promoting everything from volunteering to charity events. This November their West Bridgford store has been showing the shop’s CO2 and landfill savings - calculated on the shop’s total sales of donated goods for the past week.
Research shows that buying second-hand reduces consumption of new goods and avoids significant CO2 emissions exacerbated by the rise of fast fashion. Eproductive’s EPOS system allows charity’s to calculate these savings by using donated goods sales from the till. For more detail see this page on our website.
Paula Watkins, Retail Operations Manager at the hospice had this to say:
“Focusing on CO2 and landfill savings for individual shops brings the ‘buy second-hand’ message closer to home for both customers and staff. The feedback has been very positive and we plan to roll out this free new feature over the coming months”
Add Donation till prompt adds £11,436 in just 8 weeks
East Anglia's Children's Hospices’ Help Hydrotherapy Happen campaign aimed to encourage customers to donate an extra 25p when paying at the till. The target was to raise £9,000 – enough to fund a hydrotherapy session every week for the next 12 months. Instead, the campaign raised a phenomenal £11,436 from 5th August to 29th September 2024 in EACH’s 48 shops.
The Eproductive tills featured staff and customer prompts on both the till’s touch screen and the colour customer facing display (CDU) just before payment for each transaction was processed.
Eproductive’s Client Services Manager, Tracey Rogers, explains what made the campaign so successful:
“East Anglia's Children's Hospices decided to replace their six screensaver images on shops’ CDUs with just one for the whole campaign. Because the impact of a message inevitably fades over time, the campaign was limited to just 8 weeks. Getting shop staff on board was crucial. Managers and volunteers did a great job of promoting the campaign to customers at the counter, ably assisted by the till prompts and CDUs.”
Eproductive will be enhancing Add Donation so that charities can update the message on the CDU using the latest donation data from the till. A half way there, £1,000 raised this week or Just £500 to go message can be highly effective.
Genine Woodcock, Retail Central Support Manager said:
“It has been an amazing success. Shops have really embraced it. The Add Donation prompt made it so easy for shop staff to tell customers about the Help Hydrotherapy Happen campaign. We will definitely run fundraising campaigns this way again in the future”
Eproductive do not charge for this feature and charities can upload their own images direct to their shops’ customer facing displays.