POS Systems: Taking Control Of Your Business

Aug. 28, 2009 - PRLog -- There are a lot more things a point of sale (POS) system can do for your business other than automating your transactions. Let our POS experts teach you how you can take control of your business, be more efficient and increase your profits without having to suffer from costly mistakes.

Having A Control Over Your Business

The right POS system will give you a new level of control over your operations, it helps fine-tune your business model, boost your profits, as well as your efficiency. A wrong system is just wasting time and money, and giving yourself a huge frustration.

In other terms, a POS system is a glorified cash register. The basic POS system you'll see in any quick service restaurants, consisting of a computer, cash drawer, receipt printer, keyboard and/or a scanner. In addition to being more efficient than cash registers, POS systems are able to create detailed reports which can help you plan ahead for your business' future.

A POS system saves money, provide productivity gains, and can cut down the amount of time you spend away from the primary focus of your business.

Saving money, getting more control over your business, and being more productive; sounds like a pretty neat combination, right? Here are some of the ways a modern point of sale system can help your business.

Getting rid of shrinkage

A computerized POS system can drastically cut down on shrinkage, the inventory missing from your store or restaurant due to theft, waste and employee misuse. Because employees will know inventory is being carefully tracked, internal shrinkage will diminish.

Accuracy

When it comes to pricing, you have to make sure that have the correct price on every item you sold, a POS system can help ensure this. Your staff will never have to guess prices again, and prices can easily be change with a single click of the mouse.

Get better margins

With a detailed sales report, you can focus more on the higher-margin items. By moving items within a retail location, or promoting poor-performing dishes in a restaurant, you can help boost sales of high-profit items.

Know where you stand

With the help of a POS system, you can instantly know how much money you have in your cash drawer, how much of that money is profit, as well as how many of a particular product you have sold today, yesterday, last week or even last month.

Manage inventory better

Detailed sales reports make it much easier for you to keep the right stock on hand. You can easily track your inventory, see what's on stock, spot sales trends, and use historical data to better forecast your needs. A POS software can be set to alert you when you're running low on stocks so you can reorder for them. There are many store owners who are caught by surprises when they have this data, because they think that they know exactly what trends affect them.

Build a customer list

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

Reducing 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 quicker if you use a barcode scanner and other POS features to aid you. And since POS systems streamlines your business, orders from the dining room is quick and accurately delivered to the kitchen. In both cases, you'll be making your customers happier with a faster and more accurate service.

Keep in mind that realizing these benefits requires a commitment of using your POS systems' capabilities to their fullest. Without proper training and analysis, any sophisticated POS system will just be another regular cash register.

Retail needs vs. Hospitality needs

You have to remember that the POS market is divided into two segments with 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 $2 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 sub shops and other retail-style restaurants, a POS system can greatly increase accuracy and cut down on time-per-transaction unlike with hastily-scrawled order tabs being passed to the kitchen. And for quick-service style restaurants, a POS system would be required to meet success: orders entered on terminals in the front are automatically displayed on monitors of the food preparation area, ready to be quickly assembled and delivered to the customer.

For table-service restaurants and fine dining, POS requirements are somewhat different. They need to know which staff is responsible for which table, and being able to create and store open checks. The efficiency gains from better management can be impressive. If your restaurant has 20 tables and has an average check of $45, it can increase turnover by one party per table, that would be an extra $900 on one busy night.

Return of Investment (ROI)

Migrating from your old system to a computers POS system is not as simple as it looks. There are several factors that needs to be considered and pitfalls to avoid. But the return of investment (ROI) can really make it worth the time and effort.

-----------------------------------

The author of this article is the Vice-President of Customer Relations at http://www.pos-for-restaurants.com with over 20 years of experience serving restaurants of all types throughout the U.S.

-----------------------------------

# # #

Searching for the best Restaurant POS System Solution for your business?
We're a National network of POS System Solution Experts who offer better value and features than most "Major National Suppliers"!