Have A Smooth Holiday Season With mPower

Holidays Are Hard.

Let’s face it. Holidays come with lots of customers, lots of extra product and extra promotions. Managing inventory can get a little more hectic around the holidays and sometimes, it’s just hard to keep up with.

mPower Beverage is designed with you, the Liquor Store Owner/Manager/Employee, in mind. We know running a business is tough, and we have the solution that will help you get through the holidays, and year-round, more smoothly.

How can mPower help your busy days run smooth?

A Modern, Easy to use, POS Interface.

This is listed first because you need to be able to get customers in and out the door quickly. By utilizing an easy to use interface, your employees can help customers find product and check them out without any hassle. To see more screenshots of what our POS interface looks like and its features, click here.

Promotion

Total Inventory Control

As mentioned earlier, managing inventory is a huge part of owning a liquor store. mPower gives you total control of your inventory, as well as complete visibility. You can track various categories for your items such as country, region, appellation, and more. With purchase orders, you can create one order that automatically creates separate orders for each vendor. When receiving orders, you can do quick receive or edit the receiving quantities before accepting them into inventory. You can also run a multitude of reports such as daily sales summary and comparison reports. If you wish to see your reports in graph format, you can easily hit the analyze button and the system will transform the data into a graph. Learn more about analyzing reports in mPower by clicking here.

AnalyzeGrid

Automated Ordering

mPower has many need-to-order reports to help the purchase decision process. These reports allow you to see what you may need to order based on case deal offers, minimums/maximums, day supply on hand, and more. To utilize these reports, you will run the report, edit it as needed, and send to purchase request. The purchase order will then be created for all need-to-order items. Learn more about our need-to-order reports by clicking here.

reportlisting

 

Customer Management & Promotions

Managing your customers and promotions has never been easier than with mPower. For your customer management you can track their address, phone number, email and more. You can see their purchase history, track their rewards points, and manage the customer groups they are a member of. With promotions, you can apply a simple discount (% or $ amount), mix and match, and price point. You can apply the promotions based on specified days or times, have them apply to specified items or merchandise levels, and apply them to specified customer groups. Learn more about our promotions by clicking here and learn more about customer management by clicking here.

Customer Setup Screen

Employee Roles & Rights

Manage what your employees can see, and do, on both the Back Office and Point of Sale. Do you want your managers to have access to create purchase orders but not see certain reports? Do you not want your cashiers to be allowed to give manual discounts? Manage all of this and more, giving yourself a peace of mind. Additionally, create employee templates for easily adding new season employees. Create a template with rights you want them to have and apply it to any applicable employee. You can also assign your employees a username and password to login on the point of sale to easily track and manager their hours worked.

Gift Baskets

During the holidays, you may want to put together a gift basket of various items you carry in the store. mPower Beverage has a built-in tool, called “maintain kits,” that allows you to create gift baskets and manage that inventory that is used. You can add as many, or as little, items as you wish to the basket and price it out when finished. The tool is easy to use, and you may also print off a barcode for the item for a seamless checkout at the register.

 

There are more ways mPower can help you not only have a smooth holiday season, but run your business smoothly year-round. Additional features include, but are not limited to, centralized database, cloud server hosting, remote access, and EMV integration.
 
For more information or to see an in-depth demonstration, please contact our sales team at (877) 396-0141 or fill out our contact form by clicking here.

Difference Between Gross Profit & Mark-Up

In liquor retail — as in any product-based business — understanding the difference between gross profit and mark-up is essential for making good pricing decisions. The two metrics are closely related but measure slightly different things. Confusing them can lead to pricing errors that quietly erode your margins over time.

What Is Gross Profit?

Gross profit (GP) is expressed as a percentage of the selling price. It represents how much of each sale is left over after subtracting the cost of the product. Operating expenses are then deducted from gross profit to determine net income.

The formula is straightforward: Gross Profit % = (Selling Price – Cost) ÷ Selling Price × 100

For example: if a bottle sells for $10 and costs you $8, the gross profit is $2. As a percentage of the $10 selling price, that’s a 20% gross profit margin.

What Is Mark-Up?

Mark-up is expressed as a percentage of the cost, not the selling price. It represents how much you added to the cost of a product to arrive at your retail price. The mark-up is intended to cover your operating costs and generate a return.

The formula is: Mark-Up % = (Selling Price – Cost) ÷ Cost × 100

Using the same example: a product costs $8 and sells for $10. The mark-up is $2 over the $8 cost — which equals a 25% mark-up.

Why Both Numbers Matter

The same $2 margin produces a 20% gross profit margin but a 25% mark-up — and this difference gets more pronounced at lower price points. If you price products using mark-up but report using gross profit (or vice versa), you can end up with pricing that doesn’t actually meet your margin targets.

  • Use gross profit % when evaluating overall store performance, comparing products, or analyzing financial reports
  • Use mark-up % when setting initial prices from cost — it tells you how much you need to add to cost to hit your GP target

For most liquor store owners, a gross profit margin target between 25–35% is typical, depending on category. Higher-margin categories like wine and specialty spirits can support higher GP targets; competitive commodity beer products typically run leaner.

How Your POS Should Support Pricing

A good liquor store POS system should show you both gross profit and mark-up at the item level, and let you run sales reports to analyze margin performance across your entire product catalog. When you can see GP and MU side by side in real time, pricing decisions become data-driven rather than guesswork.

mPower Beverage displays both metrics in the Vendor/Pricing tab of every item, and our reporting suite lets you run gross profit reports by item, department, or vendor. Request a free demo to see how mPower puts margin data at your fingertips.

Come see us at the 2019 TPSA Trade Show!

Calling All Texas Liquor Store Owners & Managers! mPower Beverage is a proud supporter and member of the Texas Package Store Association. We will be attending TPSA’s 2019 Annual Trade Show in Dallas, on July 14th, 2019. We would like to invite you to stop by our booth. If you have any questions before the trade show, please reach … Read more

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How Liquor Stores Can Market to Their Customers This Holiday Season

liquorreward

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