Member Article

Nisyst helps Cheshire hospice take CHARiot to increased revenues

Equipment supplied by Bolton-based specialist Electronic Point of Sale (EPoS) provider, Nisyst, has helped St Luke’s Hospice in Winsford increase its revenue from the sale of donated goods by £10,000 in just five months.

Developed specifically for the charity sector, the CHARiot EPoS system enables ten of St Luke’s Hospice’s shops to collect Gift Aid automatically on all donated items from donors that have signed up to the Gift Aid scheme.

As a result, the charity is already receiving an additional 25 per cent in revenue from around 30-35 per cent of donations and is continuing to build on these figures, targeting a £35,000 boost in income from Gift Aided sales by the end of the year.

Explained Steven Holmes, retail and hospice operations manager at St Luke’s Hospice: “With ten shops selling donated goods, we knew that collecting Gift Aid on every sale would help us increase our revenues and that a charity-specific EPoS system was the only effective way to achieve that.

“As a charity, we needed to ensure that our investment in EPoS was spent wisely and we considered three different systems, opting for the CHARiot system from Nisyst because it’s simple for our volunteers to use, uploads donor details quickly and enables us to process Gift Aid claims easily through our accounts systems.”

Nisyst worked closely with St Luke’s Hospice to specify the right software and hardware for the charity’s shops and implemented an installation and training roll out to suit the client’s needs.

Training was provided for shop staff and volunteers over three days, with a one-day training session for accounts staff and EPoS systems were installed two at a time. This enabled staff in each shop to become familiar with the system so that they could share their knowledge with the next installation phase.

St Luke’s Hospice expects to achieve payback for the CHARiot system within one year and is continuing to sign donors up to the Gift Aid scheme.

Steven Holmes added: “The introduction of EPoS to our shops marks a major change and a significant investment for us but the level of service and simple to use technology has given us confidence all the way through the process, maximising the value of donations.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .