Earn More Than What You Expected From Your Restaurant POS Equipment – Part II
For the longest time, most people thought of their point of sale system as a fancy cash register. Since technology has become more advance and slowly becoming an essential part in the retail systems, several innovations have become standard features within the POS industry. So here are a few more tips to help you increase your profit:
1. Scheduling Your Staff. Many restaurant POS packages include some level of “staff scheduling”. 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 feature allows easy schedule access, unlimited shifts and multiple job positions for each employee. You can also tie in any number of security functions to all job position. Some packages has a feature that allows you to post schedules to a website and even sends out a copy of the schedule to each 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 can give a bit different kind of advantage when buying a POS system. It enables you to prolong the 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 is as though they just bought 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 very important feature of SUA programs is that no software purchase is required if you upgrade or replace hardware. When hardware needs to be replaced there is a drastically reduced cost to upgrade.
The way these programs typically work is you pay a small fee per year for all these benefits. Most customers agree that they receive huge benefits that helps your business reap the full return on your POS investment.
3. Handling Tips. 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 clocking out. Servers and waiters who ring sales will have their total sales tracked. Tips collected through credit card sales are tracked and shown on the server closeout report. Before signing off, the servers or waiters 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. Frequent Diner & Customer Loyalty Programs. As the business owner you would like your restaurant POS system to provide accurate customer information on their buying habits, number of visits, frequency of visits, entice repeat visits and purchases using reward programs. You are able to do all this while managing the programs and preventing “sweet hearting” by employees.
Some of the restaurant POS packages come standard with a frequent diner or customer loyalty package that eases things within your business. By expertly tracking down your customers and their buying habits, you can prevent retail loss. You establish a database of guest’s information with an account number. It can be their phone numbers or any number system you want. In what ever method you use, the most popular and secured method is by using magnetic cards with your business logo on them. These cards may act as a constant reminder of your restaurant by having your logo in their wallet or purse. The POS software will secure the reward programs you set in place to prevent your server or 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. The establishment of reward programs takes your employees out of the game and place you in charge 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 help you in better management of your business so you will never have to waste more of your valuable time and money.
The author is the VP of Customer Relations for POS-for-Restaurants.com. With over 20 years of restaurant experience, POS-for-Restaurants.com helping business owners you their technology to be more efficient and more profitable.
