Tips on Selecting a Restaurant POS System
There are various kinds of POS systems in the market, and the number keeps rising as more I-pad based solutions enter the market and finding the right POS system for the market can be a difficult task. Each restaurant owner wants a POS system that has excellent customer support, that is easy to use, matches their budget, has good customer support, and offers features that are unique to the business and knowing what one needs is a great place to start in, and it helps to narrow down the field a bit. After narrowing down on the options what is left is to test out each of the restaurant POS systems but before taking the system for a test, the buyer has to narrow it down using certain guidelines that are discussed below.
Before choosing a certain POS system, the person needs to know how much money they intend to spend and this helps to narrow down the selection pool and keeps the person from doing impromptu shopping and overspending when buying the POS system. As the client factors in the budget for the POS system the person has to factor the following costs in mind that are: license fees, the cost of any hardware bundles that may need to be purchased and the monthly support costs. In most cases locally installed restaurant POS software has a one-time license fee that is between $1000 t0 $2500, but most web-based systems do not charge a licensing fee. The monthly fees for support for the same locally-installed systems runs for about $25 to $1000 on a monthly basis, and web-based restaurant POS systems charge between $50 to $200 on a monthly basis for their service. These systems also come with the hardware requirements that can cost between $2000 to $4000 and the hardware bundles for web-based systems can cost between $450-$1500.
The person has to decide between having a web-based or locally installed system, and this means that choosing between a system that stores the data and updates on a server in the cloud or the businessperson prefers the data and the updates be housed in a computer on the premises of the restaurant.
After narrowing down on the alternatives based on the budgetary needs and if the system will be cloud-based or based locally then the next step is to narrow down the choices based on the features that each system has to offer. One of the features to have is to have QuickBooks integration, and the system has to have real-time integration otherwise, the person will have to import some kind of CSV or IIF file.