Posts Tagged ‘restaurant point of sale’
What Are The Advantages I Can Get From My POS System?
I know a lot of you may think “Will a POS system really help increase my profits?”. You may not mind relying on your cash register and sales ledger for your transactions because it’s affordable and reliable. But is it really the most efficient way to run your business?
While it is true that POS system requires expenses, it is very important to take into consideration the huge benefits it can offer to your business. Regardless of what industry you are in, your main goal is to have more sales and generate more revenue. POS can be your first step when achieving your goals – and a whole lot more. Here’s a sampling of what POS systems can do for your particular business:
Concentrate on your business - POS systems allow companies to concentrate on growing the business. When you’re not worrying about how your transactions are processed, you can spend your valuable time working on new techniques, promotions, and other initiatives to take your company to the next level.
Functionality - Your POS system is more than just a cash register! With its advanced features, it can take reservations, process special orders and provides guest beeper systems to keep your business running smoothly.
Work Efficiently With Your Operations - With a POS system, there’s little room for error. Every detial is entered and recorded accurately so the lines of communication are always clearly outlined. With a POS, orders are quickly served to customers with improved accuracy! In return, it also improves your productivity and level of customer service your retail business can offer.
Proper Inventory Management - One of the most important task in the food service industry is to check whether your supplies, perishable goods, are still in good state before serving it to your customers and be able to stock enough supplies without letting them to go to waste when not. With a POS, you know what’s in stock, what you’re running low on, and what your best sellers are so you can plan ahead.
Lessen Shrinkage – Having a POS system can help you keep your employees honest. With paper receipts and an old-fashioned cash register, the temptation will always be there to pocket a few dollars or give friends a free meal or two. POS curbs these activities tremendously, providing exact records which traces your merchandise (and money) and where they are going.
Reducing Errors – If you’re in the food service industry, you no longer need to decipher chicken scratch from busy wait staff! POS allows you to easily input orders, including specifics, to decrease the chances that it will come out wrong. You keep customers satisfied and save money by serving them the right orders.
Track Costs - If you don’t have prices clearly entered in a database, you might as well let customers shop with their own pricing gun. Slapping price stickers on items can make it too easy for thieves to swap labels. Using a POS, each item is bar coded and tracker so you can always know and input an item’s right price. And if there are changes needed, you can do them all at once direct from your POS terminal!
Increase Patronage - Get more customers in the door by limiting the time other customers wait in line. When customers don’t have to wait for wait staff to calculate checks, collect payment, and clear tables, you can serve more customers and increase profit.
Getting Accurate Reports - POS allows you to do more than you could with multiple ledgers and spreadsheets. You can record, track, sort, and organize data in any format and make revisions whenever necessary. The value of reporting is such a key component to a POS system. It allows you to track what is sold, see what products needs to be restocked and reordered, and help you plan for the next few months of business and beyond. It’s also a helpful reminder tool when you’re running low on supplies.
Tracking Customer Data - Build your customer loyalty and let the POS be your guide. Consider this, every customer that enters through your door will be entered into your POS system when they order something. Make tabs on what they order and how often they visit your store. You can use this data to compile information for targeted sales and other future plans. This data is also helpful to limit the poor selling merchandise you keep in stock and earmark funds for more popular items.
There are several critical things in restauratn POS systems purchase in any industry. Just be sure to meet with at least 3-4 qualified vendors before making this important decision. In any case, you can always request for a free POS system quote, where vendors will be able to provide your needs once you’ve given them enough info of your POS needs. Provide them with the details of the information you wish to track and the features that are vital to you. Keep an open mind when the software appears to MAKE you do things differently. Follow this simple procedure in order to find the right software that can improve your business’ efficiency. With a proper restaurant POS solution at hand, makes your business more efficient, more profitable, more enjoyable, and keep your customers coming back!
For more information or an online resource:
Go to POS-For-Restaurants.com
The author of this article is the Vice-President of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants with over 20 years of experience serving restaurants of all types throughout the U.S.
A Restaurant Point of Sale (or Point of Service) could be any restaurant POS equipment, hardware and software combined which is the the equivalent of an electronic cash register, used to process a transaction. A restaurant has many factors which makes the whole business function effectively. A POS terminal is used to accelerate sales transactions and secure the customers payment. Any location within a retail establishment where transaction occurs is referred to as the Point of Sale.
In a restaurant, there are lots of moving parts that’s involved for it’s performance. Having a restaurant restaurant POS Software can greatly help in managing staff attendance and performance, the inventory system, accounting and customers’ details, can help any retail business owner improve business performance. How is that? A restaurant POS software has powerful tools that can manage employee and customer information as well as increases both efficiency and profits.
Customer Satisfaction Can Increase Profit
Customer satisfaction is an important factor for any restaurants, bars, casinos, hotels and convenient stores, by meeting your customers’ expectations on your products or services, you’ll get a higher chance of customer return. The more customer returns you get, the higher your profit is! So you have to make sure your employees are accurately giving orders, providing assistance to customers and make an overall great performance all the time. Using a POS software, with touch screen technology, can greatly increase ordering accuracy and decrease ordering time by 50%.
Because your goal is to increase your profit, many retail POS vendors have developed systems that when combined can produce excellent results like the POS systems that enables you to integrate your accounting software such as QuickBooks and Peachtree. With a POS software like these, you can rest assured that all your financial data will be up to date and accurate, you can even print sales report on any POS terminal just with the touch of a button!
Inventory management is a tough job. Manually handling and updating your inventory sure is tiring, time consuming and costly! It’s really though job for any restaurant owner. Install a proper POS software that can help accelerate inventory management, you will see and increase in efficiency with its advance management features, you can enter any information with the items as well, such as purchase date or date of expiry, you will never have to back to manual system ever again.
Proper ordering system. Placing an order should have the right timing, ordering too late can cause you to loose an available item, order too soon can cause a risk of the item going bad. Installing automated inventory management enables you to increase the efficiency of your products orders, set a special alert to notify you and your staff when you’re running low of items so you’d be able to re-order for them, as well as setting up notifications to alert you when expiration dates are nearing. If your restaurant still doesn’t have point of sale software for inventory management you are potentially losing money every day.
Fight Leakage With Proper Restaurant POS Solutions!
Decrease shrinkage up to 10% by having a good restaurant POS solution to back you up. And since all data is digitally recorded, you can have a full report on who processed a transaction and if the transaction made is accurate. This way, you can also ensure an easier way to investigate profit loss.
The information I gave you is just the bits and pieces of what a restaurant point of sale system is and the importance of having a POS software for your business. Get advice and do your research online before making your final decision on any POS system since it making the WRONG decision can cost you in the long run. You may also request for a free POS system quote where suppliers serving your area can send you their competitive price lists.
For more information or to have a local POS professional serving the restaurant industry in your area help you go to POS-For-Restaurants.com
For such a long time, most retail business owners thought of their point of sale system as a fancy cash register. With technology becoming more advanced, most innovations have become a standard feature within the Point of Sale industry. Here are a few more:
1. Employee Scheduling. Some restaurant POS packages includes a “staff scheduling” feature. You can expect to increase efficiency and dramatically reduce overall labor costs by controlling clock-ins and clock-outs, utilizing forecasting tools and control staffing levels. This feature allows easy accessing staff schedules, unlimited shifts and multiple job positions for each staff. You can also tie in any number of security functions to a job position. Some of the packages has a feature that allows you to post schedule on a website and sends an email of the schedule to your staff automatically. Focus more on lowering labor cost while increasing your employee performance by efficiently and effectively managing your time & attendance information.
2. Software Upgrade Assurance (SUA). SUA gives you a distinct advantage when purchasing for a POS system. You are able to help stretch your investment and prolong the life of your restaurant point of sale system. Customers who are on an SUA plan will always have the most current software version. This basically keeps their POS system new. Every time you receive a software upgrade it’s just like buying the most current and advanced POS system available in the market with the newest and most up-to-date features for your restaurant. The most current feature set ensures that you have the best possible ROI by allowing you to take full advantage of the power the POS software offers.
Another advantage of having a SUA is that no additional software purchase is required for upgrading or replacing a hardware. If you need to replace hardware there’s a drastically lesser cost for upgrading it.
These programs typically works on a yearly small fee for their benefits. Ma customers are satisfied receiving the huge benefits of this program that helps your business reap the full return on their POS investment.
3. Proper Tip Handling. Some point of sale software products have tip tracking built into their time in attendance module. Once you set one of your staff as a tipped employee, the POS system will require a tip declaration before clock out. All servers or waiters who ring sales will have their total sales tracked. Tips collected through credit card sales are also tracked and shown on the server closeout report. Prior to clock out, the servers or waiters will be shown their total sales, collected charge tips collected and then asked to declare their cash tips. By this, you will be able to track and manage all declared tips, charge tips and hours worked for every tipped staff.
4. Frequent Diner & Customer Loyalty Programs. As the restaurant owner you would like your restaurant POS system to provide accurate information on your customer’s number and frequency of visits, buying habits, entice repeat visits and purchases through reward programs like a loyalty card, reward card or points card. You are able to do all this while managing the programs and preventing “sweet hearting” by employees. Sweet hearting happens when an employee promises a deal to a customer in order to make a sale.
Some of the restaurant POS packages come standard with a frequent diner or customer loyalty package that eases things within your business. They utilize secure methods of tracking your guests and their buying habits. Establish a database of guest’s information with an account number. This number can be their phone number or any number system you want. In what ever strategy you choose, the most popular and secure method is through magnetic cards with a logo of your restaurant. These cards can act as a simple reminder of your restaurant to your customers by having your business logo in their wallet or purse. The software will secure the reward programs you set in place and preventing the server/waiter from giving away food. Rewards are given only when earned through purchases, frequent visits or for items on your menu that you wish to highlight. Establishing reward programs takes your employees out of the game and place you in total control of everything.
As you can see, your business can be run more efficiently by using proper restaurant technology. There are many ways, methods you can use, to aid you in better management of your business so you will never have to waste more of your valuable time and money.
Michael Cummings is Vice President of Customer Relations at POS-for-Restaurants.com. With over 20 years of restaurant experience, POS-for-Restaurants.com helps you use your technology to be more efficient and more profitable.
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Start out the year right for your restaurant POS systems. Let’s tackle some of the most common and critical mistakes that restaurant owners make in regard to some very basic configuration aspects of the computer system. Mistakes can badly damage a restaurant or any other retail establishment, not to mention the waste of time and money on repairs. Worse than that… it can frustrate your guests and staff.
Whether you already have a computer system or you’re going to configure a new one yourself — it’s important for you to make sure everything is done properly.
Please don’t let me be guilty of giving you the wrong idea. I do not always recommend configuring your own computer system! I recommend letting a professional do the work. But I’m sure some of you will do it yourself no matter what I say. So this is for those that insist on doing your own computer installations and for everyone else to double check and make sure everything was done properly. This can help avoid major problems, be aware on the proper installations and save hours of precious time.
So here are some simple retail computer system configuration checklist for a Windows network you could use as a guide:
1) Install a UPS
The number one cause of electronic component failure is from fluctuations in electricity (up and down). A good UPS can solve this problem by providing clean power. I recommend that you at least put a good UPS on your server. And it’s also a good idea to use them on each of your worstations too.
2) Plug All Your Cables Into the UPS
Make sure all cables that power your computer and network are plugged into your UPS. It’s also important to check if cables that can carry electrical charges are plugged into a surge protector or UPS. For example, the phone line for your modem can easily fry your computer if you do not plug it into a surge protector. So make sure your modem line, network cables, and power cords are all plugged in properly.
3) Tightening Up Security
At the very least, I suggest locking down your server with a password on all Windows accounts so your employees and hackers have more difficulty messing with your server.
4) Install Anti-virus and Anti-Spyware Software and Configure For Automatic Updates
It is gravely important for you to make sure that these security tools are configured to updating automatically, so you would never forget.
5) Limit Your Employees’ Internet Access
Employees will surft on anything they can on the internet. Anti-virus and anti-spyware software does help but if an employee inadvertently downloads the wrong program or accepts the wrong message, it can damage your system down. You can avoid this by disabling internet browsing on your computers. Or another option is to password protect internet access.
For restaurant owners, this is very important! In order to protect secured files from the hands of the dirty minds, limiting employee internet access is a must. A retail business owner has to strickly implement rules to protect his business as well as his profit. Otherwise, what good will a restaurant POS system do if it’s run by a misbahaved or ignorant personnel.
6) Configuring Your Back Up To Run Regularly
In many situations, it’s still best to configure your back up to run automatically after work hours. But you still need to remember to change your back up device (like tapes) every day.
7) Test Your Backup By Restoring Files Once A Month
Can’t remember how many times I’ve chatted with restaurant owners that have hard drive failure and think they have a good back up plan to restore. But when they try to restore they find it hasn’t been working for months or years. That’s why you need to do a “real” test restore once a month to make sure it’s working. By the way, you should restore to an alternate file location so your existing software won’t be affected.
So please, start checking your computer systems now and do the neccessary updates, configurations and back ups.
With over 20 years of restaruant experience, the author and Vice President of Customer Relations at POS-for-Restaurants.com, helps you use your technology to be more efficient and more profitable.
Boosting Sales
Today’s economy, every cent counts and adding them to your bottom line is possible despite the economic crisis. These steps helps you increase your profit and decrease expenses, as well as blocking theft so your business can grow much bigger.
For businesses in the food service industry, running a restaurant point of sale system, this can greatly help you!
Take Checks
Checks may not seem that appealing to you, but their still widely used by older customers. So if you have not been accepting checks, better start soon. There’s equipment that will scan the check as quickly as a credit card, check out and measure them against a nationwide database of bad check writers, deposits the money electronically, and guarantee you receive your funds within a few days. In addition, it costs lower than for credit cards and adds up 10-15% to your sales—and possibly more if you have many senior customers.
Accepting All Cards
Of course, you’re already accepting cards like Visa and MasterCard. Do you also accept Discover and American Express? The latter, in particular, generally accompanies larger transactions. If you’ve hesitated because the fee is higher, reconsider—you may also think that it’s not worth it even a 1% difference, and since American Express transactions are often larger than those of other cards, you’ll make it up in gross profit. Furthermore, if you’re known for accepting all forms of credit and debit cards, your customers will probably be more likely to come back.
Do A Research
Many merchants think their fees are 1.69 percent plus $.19 because that’s their qualified rate on a tiered pricing program. Though fewer than 20 of 100 transactions receives low qualified rate and all the rest downgrade and cost one, two, or even three percent. By researching for alternate programs that offer different interchange rates that may save more than what you expect.
Insist of Understanding Rather Than Having a Conflict
Neither you nor your bookkeeper would have to scratch the back of your heads over a complex credit card statement that just doesn’t fit. A few companies have made extraordinary efforts to simplify these reports. You should be able to come into terms with your statement and rates in no more than 15 minutes.
Get Reports Over The Internet
The post office is slow, don’t wait any longer for them to deliver you a letter of disputing a charge. With Internet reporting, you will know within 24 hours, which ables you to aggressively defend against chargebacks. With a quick response, it can increase your success rates and reduce your losses.
So no more scratching of the head for both you and your bookkeeper over complex credit card statements.
Use the Card Validation Value and Address Verification System. They are highly effective fraud screens proven to reduce losses, and by using them the right way, you can obtain the lowest possible discount rate.
In addition, avoid by being PCI compliant. There are mammoth fines charged to merchants who are hacked, and even drives them out of business. Take the time to read Visa’s report on noncompliant systems, be alert at all cost.
Reduce Chargebacks
If you run an online business, either by internet orders or by phone, it’s always a great idea to implement the “Verified by Visa” or “MasterCard Secure Code” plug-in on your web site. This helps eliminate the chargebacks on cardholder nonauthorization. The state of being legally obliged and responsible for these chargebacks is shifted away back to the issuing card bank, and you qualify for the lowest discount rate available. By doing so, you could possibly eliminate up to 80% of all chargebacks and increase your profits.
The author of this article is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants.com with over 20 years experience helping restaurants nationwide increase their efficiency and bottom-line profits with restaurant point of sale systems.
You may visit POS-For-Restaurants.com for further understanding of how our national network of restaurant point of sale professionals can help your business achieve greater success in these difficult economic times.
Keep Your Point-Of-Sale Equipment Secure
While credit card commercials show lines of dancing shoppers merrily using their credit cards and praise the convenience of a cashless society, they don’t stress out the very real danger of identify theft at the cash register.
The director,Monica Chauhan, for embedded solutions at Solidcore (www.solidcore.com), a leading provider of real-time change control software, cites Gartner Group statistics showing that 4 out of five data breaches occur at POS systems.
Lock It Down
Chauhan states that if these Point of Sale systems are not properly locked down, they can be susceptible to attacks. “For decades, embedded devices consisted of specialized hardware running proprietary software, but in recent times, there has been a shift towards standardization, such as Unified Point of Sale (UPoS) in the retail industry.”
“Standardization has enabled devices to become increasingly interconnected and has allowed for the use of off-the-shelf software on commoditized hardware running commercial or open operating systems, such as Windows XP Embedded, WEPOS (Windows Embedded for Point of Service), and Linux,” Chauhan observes.
According to Chauhan, greater system flexibility and quicker development time has created security risks for POS equipment owners.
These Are Vulnerable Systems
Robert J. McCullen, chairman and CEO of Trustwave (www.trustwave.com), a security firm that specializes in information security and compliance management solutions, agreed to Chauhan that there are many POS systems that are vulnerable to attacks.
McCullen says, a little dial-up swipe machine has a low risk, but computer-based and/or have Internet access (risk lies in those two prime factors) devices are more prone to attacks.
Another thing, McCullen said that if a POS system stores credit card track data, exploitation can occur, and the swipe terminals can easily be exploited by tampering.
In general, as McCullen explained, hardware swipe terminals have low exploit risk, instead a higher risk of tampering, but with tampering comes the opportunity for hackers to read the cards, whether through a Bluetooth device used later to get the card data or other efforts in retrieving the information.
As Chauhan further points out other vulnerabilities, she claims that because today our POS systems are similar to networked PCs, constant patching is required. Chauhan also said that embedded systems have also become vulnerable to changes that are unauthorized and inappropriate as they are handed off to others in the distribution channel. Results of this can cause malfunctions to the equipment and may even loose their PCI DSS (PCI Data Security Standard) requirements.
PCI Data Security Standard Challenges
Chauhan and McCullen both agreed that Point of Sale equipment is faced with unique challenges when complying with the PCI DSS.
“Requirement 5 states that you must use and regularly update antivirus software,” Chauhan says. Antivirus software can be a very high overhead expense for a low-footprint POS system, she even notes; however, the need for an antivirus software can be eliminated with a change control software.
As an example, Chauhan explains that NEC Infrontia installed change control software on its POS offerings and thus prevented unauthorized code from breaking unpatched systems. It allowed NEC Infrontia to remove the antivirus software that was impacting the performance of its devices, according to Chauhan.
The the PCI DSS Requirement 6, develop and maintain secure systems and applications. It also presents unique challenges, Chauhan notes.
It’ll be a very challenging on the part of POS equipment providers to ensure their systems will supply the PCI compliance after shipping them to the dealer network and put into production at the retail location.
A large supplier of technology and POS systems for independent grocers and small chains, StoreNext (www.storenext.com), have solved their patching challenges with PCI DSS Requirement 6 by embedding Solidcore change control in its systems.
“In addition, StoreNext was able to reduce the amount of time spent on monthly test and patch distribution cycles by reducing its patch frequency to quarterly,” Chauhan states. Chauhan also claims that the PCI auditing requirement can be met through change control software.
Other difficult areas, as McCullen states, include data encryption and user-based access controls.
Any Questions?
If you would like to know more about this topic or have a question in mind, you may ask for advice with our Restaurant POS
professional serving your area.
The author of this article is the Vice President of Customer Relations at www.POS-For-Restaurants.com with over 20 years experience in the restaurant point of sale industry.
In the not-too-distant past, controlling labor in a food-service establishment was mostly an instinctive process. Having an effective labor control meant by being able to manage employees during a rush to keep the operation up and running, and send them home as quickly as possible when the rush is over.
In order to make projections of future sales, restaurant manager keeps track of their business for the past few weeks and converted those numbers into an employee schedule. And when the day is done, the manager sits down on his desk calculating time cards for the day’s labor percentage where success or failure of those efforts is determined.
But today, these manual tasks are eliminated with the help of a restaurant POS system where managers doesn’t have to do things by hand.
With the minimum wage set to rise to .25 over the next few years, operators are looking for every tool they can find to keep labor costs under control.
Jim Phillips the general manager of a Pizza Inn restaurant, tracks down his daily labor record via the store’s Point of Sale System. He uses a restaurant point of sale system from Pixel Point.
“I check my labor cost every 45 minutes when I’m in the restaurant,” Phillips said. “I can pull it up on the terminal, hit labor cost and it tells me where my labor stands, or if I want to I can go into my hourly stats and look at those,” says Phillips.
The restaurant POS system can display forecasted sales, actual sales and a variance between the two, as well as scheduled versus actual hours.
“The system tells me everything I need to know,” Phillips said. “I can look at the POS and see the number of pickups for any given hour; the number of dine-ins and the number of buffets. It gives me my supervisor hours, my kitchen hours and my assistant’s hours all in a breakdown.”
An extra pair of eyes
Other POS reports show labor trends over time, and owners or district managers can track labor cost manager performance shift-to-shift, said Jennifer Wiebe the marketing manager of Speedline Solutions. This system also provide detailed reports on manual editing of time clock reports where you can easily spot potential abuse.
Time clock reports and schedules also can provide important documentation for labor board reviews of attendance-related employee terminations, she said.
And by the end of the day, a system such as Phillips’ can generate payroll- and employee-information export files to integrate with above-store accounting systems or third-party payroll services.
It can also assist managers when assigning staff shifts by forecasting sales and generating a schedule based on those sales.
With sales forecasting and labor plans, operators can schedule efficiently to meet their labor targets. Pixel Point’s scheduling tool is linked with employee skills and availability which can speed up scheduling process.”
Hours and breaks restriction is easily done through schedule- and time-clock alerts. The schedule can also include a built-in time clock that requires a manager’s for overriding untimely ins and outs.
Mostly, operators sets their clock-in and clock-out times within 5 minutes before or after the actual time.
“Employees can’t clock in until 5 minutes before their scheduled shift or clock out late without a manager override. The system tells me if an employee is supposed to be off but he is still on the clock.”
The author of this article is a Customer Relations VP at POS-FOR-Restaurants.com – a national organization of retail and restaurant POS systems dealers.
For more information see their website at POS-For-Restaurants.com
Restaurant Point of Sale Software Overview
Find out about the best restaurant point of sale systems that will help your business grow! Compare and learn everything about online restaurant management softwares.
Restaurant owners would do well to use a good restaurant point of sale system, but between the confusion of hardware and software, monthly contracts,programming setup, leasing equipment asll well as your peripherals, that simple old cash register sure is a relief.
But remember; that breath of fresh air can be costing a restaurant owner thousands more than the cost of a POS system every month. It sure is nice to have that POS system that can easily track staff schedule, kitchen inventory, keeps track of orders and wait times, maintains reservations systems and can even accept orders from the restaurant’s website, all in one convenient central computer system!
Restaurant POS hardware and Point of Sale Software
The software, whether it’s Aldelo, Aloha, FuturePOS or Micros, consists of the program you’re running and not your touch-screen monitor, hand held PDA devices, keyboards, mouse and printers. As with any expensive POS, there’s always a catch at the end so never close a deal on the spot. You may find several vendors who offers very low prices for their POS software, disregarding to inform you that it will only work with their super expensive computers.
Note that a company that really works hard to provide good quality programs does not need to make a business of vending computer components. Or worse, leasing them at extremely high rates. Before signing a deal, you need to know what each component will actually cost you. Paying a month for a computer sure is affordable but after a year, it’s likely paid off at $600, what’s worse is that the client will still be paying for the lease after another year, so while technology changes the outdated equipment is still being charged as if it were new.
Managing Your Restaurant Online
The ability to access the system from a remote computer would be a great feature. Imagine this – enjoying a lovely breakfast in Palm Beach with your laptop sitting next to you and seeing the security camera. With a few keystrokes you can check your labor percentage, you can even send an email to your bar manager to remind him of the big party tonight, and maybe invite some influential people to join.
You might want to do a few check ups to see if your server is still online, check your employees performance for today and how much the sales was last night. This feature is such a relief, now you can go back to being pampered.
Restaurant Point of Sale System Programming
There are POS systems that are specifically designed to be programmed by the end user, which can really be intimidating at first. Check to see if their company has a list of consultants or other help for programming to help you out. Many POS Software companies work with the restaurant owner to make sure that the software can satisfy their business needs.
It would be a great decision to look specifically for companies who are willing to provide these services for free while getting started. Charging for a refresher course a year later really isn’t out of line but charging for initial training isn’t standard practice with every company.
Finding The Best POS System for your Restaurant
Every restaurant has different needs. A burger drive through shop will be needing less options compared to a family style restaurants. A restaurant bar and grill requires different features than of a donut shop. Every restaurant differ in their needs. It’s much better to send away for every information packet. Is there a warranty or guarantee? Would there be a trial period given? Is it compatible with your current credit card processor, or it or it needs a different one? Can you export sales data to your Quickbooks or other accounting software?
Weighing all of the hardware and software options before making a decision can save a restaurant owner from the stress and headache of ending up with a point of sale system that doesn’t fit the bill. Listen well to a salesman’s 15 minute speech and review each pitch carefully. Lastly, consider listening to the advices and suggestions of other restaurant owners before deciding on which point of sale system you’re going with.
For more information, check out: www.POS-For-Restaurants.com
Tips for selecting Restaurant POS Software
There are more and more restaurant and hospitality sector that are increasingly turning towards business management softwares to aid them with their needs, as well as to increase their efficiency.
It is with extreme importance that every restaurant must select the restaurant POS software suite that’s flexible to meet their needs and can grow with their business.
While not all restaurant owners are comfortable with pos technology it can be a huge importance and vital to any hotel or restaurant wanting to trade immediately after installation, therefore bringing in more customers. A good restaurant POS software will saving money on training time, stock control, payroll and ultimately wages.
The hospitality market sector can be extremely competitive and by streamlining your business can only mean one thing, failure or success. In the world of hospitality If you can’t level with your competitors you’ll slowly loose your customers through smoothly run establishments that that operates well with a POS system.
Of course, restaurants aren’t exempted from this! Having a reliable hospitality software suite is vital for succes.
While there may be times when external factors can make a difference to your success, using the right hospitality software can significantly increase your chances of success and give you the edge over your competitors.
If you are still searching for a software suite which is right for your business, make sure you look for a restaurant software suite that is robust, upgradeable, great value for money and above all easy to use.
You have to make sure that the hospitality software you purchase can be adapted to suit your needs. But if your software is inflexible and incapable of adapting to meet your needs, it can cause a lot problems in the long run.
A retail POS business software should be easy to install and use, intuitive and doesn’t even need days of training; make sure it’s fully modular, as well as flexible and upgradeable in order to grow with your business. Additionally, you need to look for restaurant software that will run on your computer systems.
If you’re planning to operate with multiple tills you need a good backup system for safety, a reliable system that will make copies of your master data file so that you will have copies of it in sa safe place in case of system crashes. It is also important to make sure that the restaurant POS you’re going to use allows multiple hardware configuration, payroll integration and data export to sage or quick-books. Mostly, some business owners will have at one time or another used a computer running on a windows operating system, because many of the professional scalable POS and hospitality software solutions were written specifically [with windows in mind.
As a final consideration, your POS software needs to be fast and user-friendly, for both you and your customers convenience.
Most good restaurants are extremely busy during peak times and need a restaurant POS system that will work quickly and not freeze or crash during constant use. A good old POS software may come expensive, but it does help you to ensure that your business runs smoothly allowing you to concentrate on other areas of your business.
Support is one of the main priorities of any business, so you better make sure you have the option of phone or online chat support similar to yahoo and msn messenger this will be an optional extra with any good POS software provider and worth its weight in gold if your systems go down and you are unable to trade.
Don’t forget, software developers know far more about the system than anyone. An overlooked point that many clients have regretted from my experience, make sure that whoever you purchase the software from can offer after- hours support should you need it, also a company in the same time zone is a very useful commodity.
With over 20 years working in the restaurant POS industry, the author of this article is the Customer Relations Vice President at POS-For-Restaurants.com, an online information service that helps restaurants through out US by giving competitive bids for any type of hardware, software or a complete restaurant point of sale system.
Check them out at POS-For-Restaurants.com
A good way to make more profits and run your restaurant to success is by managing the controllable costs, such as food, labor and supplies. With these, probably the most difficult cost to control is food.
In order to manage food costs effectively, an operator will need to monitor portion sizes, prevent theft, watch waste and order simultaneously.
An inventory software will help you identify exactly when your food costs are out of line. Using inventory control software will typically save you 1 to 2 percent of sales, and might save you much more. And it is savings that drops straight to your bottom line as profit.
A POS-based inventory control system operators can spot and solve food cost difficulties that might not become noticeable by simply focusing on portion control. And when your employees know that the system is carefully keeping track, it stop waste as well as theft.
A single restaurateur will be able to realize this lesson, when it comes to food cost problems, at least a week of using an inventory control software.
In his restaurant, he was portion controlling, yield testing and performing physical inventory, but it wasn’t until he uses an inventory software where he finds out his inventory was out by exactly 20 pounds of blue marlin every week; coincidentally, it’s the same weight as a box. Upon knowing, it was relatively that easy to pinpoint the source of the problem: one of the prep cooks was stashing a box of goodies every Friday night.
Boosting the bottom line
In a typical restaurant point of sale inventory control program, the operator sets up the software by first entering their recipes and product costs. The system then can track ideal usage based on those recipes and the restaurant’s actual sales.
The inventory control software can aslo track product usage in situations where some orders is not in line with the standard recipe. The operator can then do a physical inventory and generate reports comparing it with the calculated ideal usage to check their differences. The software can also be set up to track as many items as the operator chooses.
Mostly in restaurants, their top 10 items 80 percent of their food cost problem. And you can schedule nightly counts of key items and weekly or even monthly counts of some other items.
With just one item, over-portioning by 1 ounce per order may cost a restaurant hundreds of dollars a month. If you eliminate over-portioning on 100 orders per day for 30 days on a .67 per pound of a single item, could add up to more than 0.00 in savings or 00.00 in a year!
Reduce waste and free up cash for other things! So you better have a good which can help an operator reduce the amount of stock they keep on hand. Carrying too much inventory can cause a loss of between 2 percent and 5 percent on an average operator’s profit-and-loss statement.
We’ve assisted a client before who’s menu is fairly extensive and had lots of work for setting up, but by helping them program correctly, we were able to drop their food cost by 2 to 4 percent – it’s a big plus for their bottom line profits.
So if you have a restaurant POS system or are contemplating a purchase make sure you understand the additional profits that you can acquire and the “how to’s” by learning and using the inventory module of the system as you should be.
The author of this article is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-Fof-Restaurants.com with over 20 years experience in restaurant point of sale (POS) helping restaurants nationwide increase their efficiency and bottom-line profits.
To learn on how our national POS network of restaurant point of sale experts can help your business achieve greater success in these difficult economic times, visit POS-For-Restaurants.com.