If you’re anything like most pet store owners, you didn’t get into this business to manage spreadsheets. You’re here because you love animals and your community.
But the reality of running a store means you’re often drowning in tedious, manual work — counting inventory, updating prices, building staff schedules, and constantly reconciling numbers.
That work costs you more than time — it’s a direct hit to your profits.
What if your point of sale (POS) system could handle the busywork? A truly modern POS acts as a central hub for automation, helping you cut costs, reduce errors, and free up hours so you can focus on your customers and their furry friends.
Here are 10 key functions you can automate with a smart POS system.
1. Forecast Stockouts
How much time do you spend every week walking the aisles, manually checking stock levels, and then typing up orders to your suppliers? When you rely on manual checks, you’re often guessing, which leads to stockouts (lost sales) or costly overstocking.
The fix:
Your POS should monitor inventory in real-time. When a product hits a set low threshold, the system needs to instantly draft a purchase order. A solution like eTailPet even uses past sales data to forecast demand, helping you order the right amount every time.
The payoff: You can save three to five hours a week by automating orders.
2. Eliminate Overselling
Selling both in-store and online is great — until an online order comes in for a bag of food you just sold minutes ago in your physical store. Manually updating two different stock counts is a recipe for overselling, refunds, and frustrated customers.
The fix:
A single, centralized POS dashboard is critical. It automatically syncs inventory levels between your brick-and-mortar store and e-commerce platform in real time. A sale in one place immediately updates the other. No more discrepancy hunting.
The payoff: Save two to three hours a week you would otherwise spend manually fixing inventory differences and handling the resulting customer service issues.
Related Read: Pet Store Supply Chain Crisis: How Independent Retailers Can Survive Inventory
3. Prevent Pricing Errors
It takes time to put together a sale. You have to update the price in the POS, print new tags, and make sure the online store matches. If you miss a step, pricing becomes inconsistent, which looks unprofessional and confuses both staff and shoppers.
The fix:
Schedule your price and promotion changes in advance. With a modern POS, you can set start and end dates for a sale, a bundle deal, or a tiered discount, and the system handles the rest. It applies the promotion automatically at checkout — everywhere.
The payoff: Your staff can save one to two hours a week they’d normally spend manually changing and correcting prices and tags.
4. Turn Shoppers Into Loyal Fans
Running a loyalty program manually — tracking points, figuring out rewards, and sending emails — is a huge drain on time and staff energy. It’s too easy for a team member to miscalculate points or forget to apply a customer’s earned reward.
The fix:
An automated loyalty program through your POS is the answer. An all-in-one POS system automatically tracks purchases, calculates points, and manages tiered reward programs. Customers can even redeem rewards instantly at checkout without staff having to stop and look up balances.
The payoff: Imagine saving one to three hours a week you used to spend on manual point calculations and troubleshooting loyalty issues.
5. Simplify Scheduling Conflicts
Building your daily grooming appointment schedule is a challenge of matching customer requests with groomer availability, ensuring adequate time for each service, and avoiding double bookings. Then there’s the back-and-forth of managing cancellations and rescheduling requests.
The fix:
A modern POS system can automate appointment booking based on groomer schedules and service times, minimizing conflicts and sending reminders to both customers and staff. It also streamlines cancellations and rescheduling requests digitally.
The payoff: Your grooming manager can save two to four hours a week on schedule creation and coordination, allowing them to use that time training staff or assisting customers.
6. Stop Manual Data Entry
Twice a month, you or a staff member spends an entire afternoon manually transferring sales data from your POS reports into your accounting software. This is a massive time sink and a leading cause of costly errors in your financials.
The fix:
Integration and automation are key. A comprehensive POS can automatically collect and consolidate sales data from both in-store and online sources, transferring it directly to your accounting software. It also generates real-time reports and dashboards on everything from cash flow to cost of goods sold (COGS).
The payoff: You can easily save four to six hours a week by eliminating manual data entry and report preparation.
7. Reduce Customer Wait Times
Slow transactions — from manually punching in product codes to waiting for card readers — lead to long lines, impatient customers, and a poor in-store experience. Extra time spent on a single checkout is time lost on other tasks.
The fix:
Use integrated payment processing and barcode scanning to speed up transactions. This reduces customer wait times, minimizes errors, and frees your staff to focus more on selling and helping shoppers.
The payoff: Save one to two hours a week by speeding up transactions and reducing mistakes at the register.
Related Read: Pet Store Employee Training: 6 Critical Topics
8. Create More Consistent Revenue
Manually tracking and processing recurring payments for subscription products — like monthly food deliveries or grooming packages — is tedious and can create missed payments, confusion, and uneven revenue.
The fix:
For subscription products, a modern POS automatically manages all recurring billing. This ensures predictable revenue for your store and convenience for your customers, all without manual effort.
The payoff: Save one to two hours a week by eliminating the manual work of tracking, invoicing, and processing recurring payments.
9. Remove Unreliable Suppliers
You rely on your suppliers, but manually tracking their reliability — delivery times, order accuracy, and product quality — is almost impossible. This leads to frustrating stockouts or costly overstocking from unreliable vendors.
The fix:
With an upgraded POS, you can automatically compile data on vendor performance, tracking key metrics like delivery times and order accuracy. This information helps you quickly identify and weed out unreliable suppliers, resulting in a smoother supply chain and better inventory control.
The payoff: Save one to three hours a week on supplier calls and managing stockout or overstock issues caused by unreliable vendors.
10. Cut Wasted Marketing Spend
Running generic, store-wide sales often results in low engagement and wasted marketing spend. You’re giving discounts to customers who may have bought the product anyway or sending irrelevant offers.
The fix:
Use a POS system’s built-in customer purchase history to segment shoppers and send targeted, relevant offers — such as a discount on cat toys after a customer buys cat food. This personalized approach drives repeat business and maximizes the return on every promotion you run.
The payoff: Reclaim one to two hours a week by automating customer segmentation and the deployment of targeted offers.
Ready To Save Time and Cut Costs? Try eTailPet
eTailPet automates these 10 functions in your pet store. When you add up the time saved, the benefits of an all-in-one POS system become clear.
Choose software designed for pet retail, and you get back 20–30 hours of administrative time every week.
And that time instantly becomes profit potential:
- Time spent on the floor: Train staff, help customers, and close sales.
- Time spent planning: Develop new services, promotions, and community events.
- Time spent avoiding errors: Eliminate stockouts, overstocks, and accounting mistakes that eat into your margins.
Stop wasting time and start growing. Schedule a demo with eTailPet today.
by Taylor Harnois
