San Diego POS | San Diego Point of Sale | POS Systems

In order to run your business to success, there are several factors that needs to be considered in Restaurant Point of Sale (POS) Systems. Let our experts show you how you can take control of your business and increase your profits.

Controlling Your Business

Having the right POS system will boost your business into a new level of control over your operations, increasing efficiency, boosting profits, and helping you fine-tune your business model. The wrong system, however, can waste both your time and money, and even bring you a lot of frustrations.

In a sense, a POS system is a glorified cash register. The most basic POS system that consists of a computer, a cash drawer, receipt printer, and an input device such as a keyboard or scanner. However, in addition to being more efficient than cash registers, POS systems can create detailed reports that can help you make more informed business decisions.

POS systems can save you a great amount of money, increase your profits, and lesses the amount of time you spend on one business plan to the next.

Save more money, gain more control over your business, and be more productive; sounds like a great combination, right? Well here are some of the best ways a modern point of sale (POS) system can help your business.

Eliminate shrinkage

A computerized point of sale system can drastically cut down on shrinkage, due to theft, waste and misuse of your staff. Because employees will know inventory is being carefully tracked, internal shrinkage will dwindle.

Improve Accuracy

Whether you use barcode scanning or not, POS systems ensure that every item in your store or on your menu is sold for the right price. Your staff will never have to guess prices again, and you can change prices with just one tweak in the computer.

Get better margins

You can get better magins by having a detailed sales report, focusing on higher-margin items would be cinch. By moving items within a retail location, or promoting under-performing foods in a restaurant, you can help boost sales of high-profit items.

Know where you stand

You can easily know which of your items have been sold today, yesterday, last week or months ago, with the help of a POS systems. It can even tell how much money is in the cash drawer as well as how much of that money is profit.

Manage inventory better

Detailed sales reports make it much easier for you to keep the right stock on hand. Track your remaining inventory, spot sales trends, and use historical data to better forecast your needs. The software can alert you to reorder when stocks run low. Many store owners who think they know exactly what trends affect them find a couple of surprises once they have this data.

Build a customer list

Collecting names and address of your best customers may come in handy in the long run. You can use this list for targeted advertising or for announcing incentive programs.

Reduce paperwork

Reducing the time you spend on doing inventory, sales figures, and other repetitive but important paperworks can be lessen if you use a POS system to help you out. It doesn’t only reduce the time but save more for you as well as give you a peace of mind.

More efficient transactions

In retail settings, checkouts can be made faster if you use a barcode scanner and other POS features to aid you. Restaurants will find their order process greatly streamlined as orders are relayed automatically to the kitchen from the dining room. In both cases, your customers get faster, more accurate service.

Keep in mind that realizing these benefits requires a commitment to utilizing the POS system capabilities to their fullest. Without proper training and analysis, even the most sophisticated POS system is nothing more than a regualr cash register.

Retail vs. Hospitality Needs

The POS market is divided into two segments with very different needs: retail operations and hospitality businesses like restaurants, bars, and hotels.

> Retail

Of the two groups, retailers have simpler POS needs. Their transactions are completed all at once, and there is often less variation in the types of products they sell. Some POS features retailers may specifically want include the ability to support kits (e.g. 3 for deals), returns and exchanges, and support for digital scales. But if your business sells items in a variety of styles like clothes, then you will need a POS system that supports matrixes. For example, matrixes let you create one inventory and price entry for a particular sweater, but still track sales according to size and color.

> Hospitality

Restaurants and other hospitality businesses differ in requirements.

Efficiency is the key focus for casual restaurants. For retail-style restaurants like sub shops, POS systems that relay inputted orders cut down on time-per-transaction and reduce the errors that can happen when hastily-scrawled orders are passed back to the kitchen. For quick-service restaurants, POS systems are practically a requirement for living up to their name: a customers’ order is entered on the terminal at the front which sends the order and displays them on a monitor in the food preparation area where the order is assembled and delivered to the appropriate customer.

For table-service restaurants and fine dining, POS requirements are somewhat different. Their needs includes the ability to create and store open checks, as parties order more over time, and to determine which waiter is responsible for which table. The efficiency gains from better management can be impressive. If a restaurant with 20 tables and an average check of can increase turnover by one party per table, that is an extra 0 on a busy night.

Return on Investment Worth the Trouble

Switching from a traditional cash register to a computerized POS system can be difficult. There are many factors to consider and some pitfalls to avoid. However the return on investment and benefits to your business can really make it worth your time and effort.