Setting The Sales Bar Higher With Proper POS Systems - 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, many innovations have become standard features within the POS industry. Below are more tips that can help your business increase its sales:
1. Staff Scheduling. Many restaurant POS packages includes the feature “staff scheduling”. You can expect to increase efficiency and dramatically reduce overall labor costs by controlling clock-ins and clock-outs, utilizing forecasting tools and control staffing levels. Integrated features allow for easy schedule access, unlimited shifts and multiple job positions for each employee. You are also able to tie in any number of security functions to a 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 efficiently and effectively managing your time & attendance information.
2. Software Upgrade Assurance (SUA). SUA is a software maintenance program that gives you a distinct advantage when you purchase a POS system. You are able to help stretch your investment and prolong the usable life of your restaurant point of sale system. Customers who are on an SUA plan will always have the most current 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 latest and most current POS system available with the newest, 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.
One other advantage of having a SUA is that no additional software purchase is required for 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 to get their benfits. Most customers agree that they receive huge benefits that help reap the full return on their POS investment.
3. Proper Restaurant Tip Handling. Some of the POS software products has a builtin tip tracking feature in their time in attendance module. Once a staff is set as a tipped employee, your POS system will require a tip declation 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. Prior to clock out, server/waiter will be shown their total sales for the day, collected charge tips 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. Frequent Diner & Customer Loyalty Programs. As the business owner you would like your restaurant POS system to provide accurate information on your customer’s number and frequency of visits, buying habits, 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. Prevent retail loss at all cost! Sweet hearting happens when an employee promises a deal to a customer so that he/she can 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. By accuratly tracking down your guests and their buying habits, you can prevent retail loss. Establish a secure database of guest’s information with an account number. This number can be their phone number or any number system you desire. However, the most popular and most secure method is by using magnetic cards with your logo on them. These cards may act as a constant reminder of your restaurant by having your logo in their wallet or purse. The software will secure the reward programs you put 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. Establishing reward programs takes your employees out of the game and puts you in total control of everything.
As you can see, there are so many ways to run your restaurant 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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