This year’s Black Friday , Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday are now over, and there were many lessons to be learned for retail businesses. While the holiday season can be extra profitable, business owners need to make sure they are ready for the influx of customers and consider their potential to be short on employees, budget, or most importantly, time.

Pro: More customers. The end-of-year holidays are a very material time for most, so even people who don’t shop at any other time of the year tend to go shopping. We can assume that a large portion of the things being bought are gifts for others, but personal shopping will also grow during this season.

Con: Extra janitorial hours. With increased foot traffic in your stores comes increased feet tracking in more of the outdoors, and it is especially messy at this time of year. While this may seem like a minor worry, it can catch even the most prepared store owner off guard once customers start slipping on your floors.

Pro: Customers are ready to spend. Since it is the season of giving, it is almost a guarantee that a customer has wandered into your store with the full intent to purchase something before leaving. Thus, you can close on those purchases quickly and with less effort than at other times of the year.

Con: Long checkout lines. If your checkout processes take too long, you can be facing some unhappy customers and some heavy stress. One solution? Use a POS system to simplify and speed up the process. Implementing this system can be as easy as buying an iPad, using the Vend app, and using Bushel to manage the device and track it in inventory.

Pro: Your business will be viewed positively as a participant of the holiday festivities. Like businesses such as Target demonstrate, embracing the holiday spirit and decorating your store accordingly can really improve your brand image and have people view you as a happy, positive member of society.

Con: Decreased profit margins. While you have the potential to get a lot of customers in your store, this will only happen if you offer incentivizing deals and discounts, which can eat away at your profits. You should plan your promotions against your break-even prices so that you are able to make enough profit while still offering competitive discounts that will cause consumers to act.

Contributed by Charles Edge, Product Manager of Bushel. Bushel is a cloud-based device management solution for the Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod devices in your workplace. It’s designed to make the complex tasks – like tracking inventory and distributing apps – simple so anyone can use it to focus their attention on business. Three devices are free forever, and each additional device is just $2 per device per month, with no contracts or commitments.