Why Point of Sale Systems?

How Can POS Systems Benefit You?

A point of sale system helps you manage your business, enforce your policies and ensure that your money gets to you. If you have employees, you are open to theft, sweet-hearting and careless mistakes.

Less Point of Sale Staff Mistakes

A point of sale system helps eliminate pricing and math errors. It is still amazing how many restaurants still use a calculator and hand written tickets. According to studies done by various institutions you are open to math and pricing mistakes totaling in excess of 1% of your annual volume. In a restaurant doing as little as $1,300 per day that would add up to $4,700 per year.

Payroll With POS

Employee payroll is one of the most overlooked and most easily managed portions of your profit and loss statement. If you have 12 employees and each of them clocks in 5 minutes early a day, which equates to 1 hour per day of extra payroll. Even with minimum wage plus benefits this could add up to $6 - $8 per day or over $2,900 per year. This figure doesn’t take into account the total man-hours it takes to compute time cards and then report on the hours worked for each employee. This is time that you could be spending elsewhere. If you have a few as 5 employees you need a POS system.

Point Of Sale Helps Deter Employee Theft

There is no better way to prevent theft in your business then to have a POS system and a security camera system. This is the original reason for the invention of the cash register back in the late 1800’s. Even when most of the businesses were family owned and run there was a need for a cash register to reduce theft. In today’s world of hiring employees to help staff and manage your store there is an even greater need for this type of control.

For years we have known about the tendencies of people with regard to theft. 10% of the people wouldn’t steal if giving the opportunity. 10 % of the people are going to steal no matter what safeguards are in place. 80% of the people will steal if given the opportunity. Point of sale systems are put in place to guard against the 80% and make it more difficult for them to steal from you.

Turning Tables Faster With POS

There is only one thing we can think of that will drive customers away faster than bad food and that is slow service. Once a customer places their order, their internal clock is running in overdrive. No matter how long they took to look over the menu and to place their order, once they have given your server or cashier their order, their hunger clock is speeding along faster than a fan on high! You need a fast, reliable way to get orders into your system.

A fast and easy to understand POS terminal will help your cashiers, servers and bartenders to respond quickly. The system should also distribute the order properly to the kitchen prep station or bar. Your point of sale system should also measure your speed of service and report on how you are doing. Reducing the time it takes to get your customer’s food is critical and can make up for other shortcomings. As proof, I give you some of the major fast food chains. Is their popularity based upon the best tasting, best dressed and best served burger or speed of service? If you want to speed up your customer service you need a point of sale system.

POS will help you understand how your business is doing

What is the use of having a computer and not taking advantage of the power? If all you need is to have a total amount of cash in the drawer that sometimes matches to the amount of sales shown, you probably don’t need a point of sale system.

However, if you would like more detailed information about your business, perhaps to help manage your operation and make it more profitable, then you need a point of sale system. Having a good product used to be enough to get you by. These days, it takes a lot more information in order to compete with the other restaurants in your market, all of which are looking for the same customer that you have seated in your restaurant. It is important to understand the buying habits of your customers. What are they ordering? When are they ordering it? What is your most profitable item? How many of it did you sell? What items on your menu are not selling? If you cannot answer all of these questions with total confidence in your answers, then you need a POS system. If you hesitate to correctly answer (without guessing) any of these questions you need a point of sale system.

Even most small businesses today have some form of electronic accounting in place either in their operation or through an accounting service. In addition, most businesses have an electronic payroll service or software that creates payroll. Point of sale systems capture critical data for you and then export this data in formats that automatically put this information into accounting and payroll packages, eliminating hours of tedious manual input that often leads to mistakes and human error. If you have an electronic accounting or payroll service/software or even if you want to track your sales in Excel, you need a point of sale system.

Point Of Sale System Inventory Control

Staying ahead of the competition is essential in the highly competitive world of business. Point of sale and inventory management systems offers a robust solution so you can increase inventory turnover and gross margins. You can use POS systems to manage:

• purchasing
• receiving
• barcode ticketing
• inter-store transfer
• physical inventory
• price change
• vendor management functions

Ultimately you will benefit from these features by gaining tighter control over inventory and merchandising activities, thus becoming more profitable.

POS helps you KNOW your customers

Who are your customers? What do they buy? How often do they visit? Of your frequent visitors, who hasn’t been in to see you during the past month and who has a special day coming up soon? These are questions that your POS system can help to answer.

All the major chains and all of your competitors are after the people who come to your restaurant. They want to take them for themselves. How are you going to compete with the billions of dollars being spent to draw your customer away? By marketing your operation and your menu.

Your point of sale system should be able to manage your customer base and keep track of their buying habits, how often they visit, when their last visit was and what special occasions they have coming up. Your point of sale system then should be able to sort these into groups that can be sent mailers, coupons and event invitations. Or to simply tell them that they are appreciated and that you hope they visit you again. If you have competition you need a point of sale system.