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For such a long time, most retail business owners thought of their POS system as a fancy cash register. With technology moving forward at such a quick pace, many innovations have become a standard feature within the Point of Sale industry. Here are a few more:

1. Employee Scheduling. Some restaurant POS packages includes a “staff scheduling” feature. 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. This feature allows easy accessing staff schedules, shifts and multiple job positions for each employee. You can also tie in any number of security functions to multiple job position. In addition, some of the packages has a feature that allows 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 or SUA. SUA is a software maintenance program that can give a bit different kind of advantage when purchasing a POS system. It enables you to extend the usable life of your restaurant POS system and help stretch your investment. Customers who are on an 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 latest and most current POS system available in the market with the newest, most up to date features your restaurant can greatly benefit from. 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 advantage of having a SUA is that no additional software purchase is required if you’re upgrading or replacing a 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. Ma customers are satisfied receiving the huge benefits of this program that helps your business reap the full return on their POS investment.

3. Proper Tip Handling. Some of the point of sale software products has a builtin tip tracking feature in their time in attendance module. Once you set an employee as a tipped employee, the system will require tip declaration prior to clock out. Servers and waiters who ring sales will have their total sales tracked. Tips collected through credit card sales are also tracked and shown on the server closeout report. Before logging out, 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. Customer Loyalty Programs! As the business owner you would like your POS system to provide accurate information on your customer’s number of visits, frequency of visits, their buying habits, entice repeat visits and purchases using reward programs like a loyalty card, reward card or points card. 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 expertly tracking down your guests and their buying habits, you can prevent retail loss. You establish a database of customer’s information with an account number. You may use their phone numbers or whatever number system you desire to use. However, the most popular and secure method is through magnetic cards with your logo on them. These cards 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 set in place to prevent your staff from giving away food. Typically, rewards are given only to customers who frequently visits or purchases on the menu you highlighted. Establishing reward programs takes your staff out of the game and place you in total control.

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 aid you in better business managing so you will never have to waste more of your valuable time and money.

The author is the Vice President of Customer Relations at POS-for-Restaurants.com — helping businesses use technology to be more efficient and more profitable with its 20 years of restaurant experience.