Did you know you earn can more from your Restaurant POS Equipment? – Part II

For the longest time, most restaurant owners thought of their POS system as a fancy cash register. With technology becoming more advanced, most innovations have become standard features within the POS industry. Below are more tips that can help your business increase its sales:

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 accessing staff schedule with ease, as well as shifts and multiple job positions. You can tie in any number of security functions to any 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. So focus more on lowering labor cost while increasing staff performance by simply managing efficiently and effectively your time & attendance information.

2. Software Upgrade Assurance (SUA). This is a software maintenance program that gives you a distinct advantage when you purchase 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 will always have the latest version of their POS software. This basically keeps their POS system new. Every time you receive a software upgrade it’s just like you’ve bought the most current and advanced POS system 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 have a full advantage of the power its features can offer.

One other very important feature of SUA programs is that no software purchase is required if you upgrade or replace a hardware. When hardware needs to be replaced there’s a drastically lesser cost for upgrading it.

Typically, these programs work on a yearly fee for you to acquire their benefits. Many customers agree that they receive huge benefits which helps your business reap the full return on their POS investment.

3. Handling Tips. Some of the POS 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 clocking out. Servers and 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, server/waiter will be shown their total sales for the day, the charge tips collected and then will be 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 restaurant owner you would like your point of sale 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.

Some POS packages come standard with a frequent diner or customer loyalty package that does all these things and more. By accurately tracking down your customers and their buying habits, you can prevent retail loss. You can establish a database of account numbers using your guests information.. You may use their phone numbers or whatever number system you desire to use. However, the most popular and secure method is through magnetic cards with your logo on them. These cards can act as a simple reminder of your restaurant to your customers by having your logo in their wallet or purse. The POS software will secure the reward programs you set in place to prevent your employees 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. By establishing a restaurant reward programs takes your employees out of the game and place you in total control.

As you can see, there are so many ways to run your business more efficiently by using restaurant technology. Back to basics next month..

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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February 5, 2010  Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: News and Reviews

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