The Importance of Having Proper Restaurant POS Equipment - Part II

For such a long time, most restaurant owners thought of their POS system as a fancy cash register. With technology moving forward at such a quick pace, several innovations have become standard features within the retail POS industry. So here are some more tips to help you grow your profit:

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 time-ins and time-outs, utilizing forecasting tools and control staffing levels. This nice little feature allows easy schedule access, shifts and multiple job positions for each employee. You can tie in any number of security functions to multiple job position. In addition, some of the packages allow you to post schedules to a website and even automatically email the schedule out to your staff. Keep your labor costs in check and increase employee performance by simply managing efficiently and effectively your time & attendance information.

2. Software Upgrade Assurance or SUA. This is a software maintenance program that gives you a distinct advantage when purchasing a POS system. It enables you to extend the usable life of your restaurant POS system and help stretch your investment. Those who purchase a POS system along with a SUA plan always has the latest version of their POS software. Basically it’s an advantage because it keeps their POS system new. Whenever you receive an upgrade it is as though they just bought the latest and most current POS system available with the newest, most up to date features your restaurant can greatly benefit from. The most current features of a POS system set ensures that you have the best possible ROI by allowing you to have full advantage of what its POS software features offer.

Another advantage of having a SUA is that no additional software purchase is required if you’re upgrading or replacing a hardware. When hardware needs to be replaced there is a drastically reduced cost to upgrade.

These programs typically works on a yearly small fee for their benefits. Most customers are satisfied receiving the huge benefits of this program which helps your business reap the full return on their POS investment.

3. Restaurant Tip Handling. Some of the point of sale software products has a builtin tip tracking feature in their time in attendance module. Once you set an staff as a tipped employee, the system will require tip declaration prior to clock out. All servers 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 server/waiter will be shown their total sales, the charge tips collected collected and then asked to declare their cash tips. This functionality will help you enforce tip regulations and manage the tracking declared tips, charge tips and hours worked for every tipped employee.

4. Customer Loyalty Programs! As the business owner you would like your POS system to provide accurate customer information on their buying habits, number of visits, frequency of visits, entice repeat visits and purchases through reward programs. 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 close 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. You can establish a database of guest’s information with an account number. This number can be their phone number or whatever number system you wish to use. However, the most popular and most secure method is by using magnetic cards with a logo of your company. These cards may act as a simple reminder of your restaurant to your customers by having your business logo in their wallet or purse. The POS 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 puts you in charge.

If you pay enough attention to your business needs, you will find that there are so many ways you can do to help run your restaurant more efficiently. So stop wasting more of your valuable time and money on unreliable POS systems and focus more on what restaurant technology best suit your needs.

The author is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-for-Restaurants.com — helping businesses use technology to be more efficient and more profitable with its 20 years of restaurant experience.

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