Wednesday 29 February 2012

Stable Point of Sale Software for business operations


A Point of Sale system constitutes several software and hardware components. The basic hardware devices include workstations, receipt printers, barcode readers and cash drawers. All these devices connect to the system via networking devices and cables. On the other hand, software components are the intangible computer programs that human users employ to interact with the Point of Sale System.
Your point of sale stability guarantees sustained use without crashing or compromising speed of data processing. Most importantly, stability makes the system easy to integrate with other system software and hardware components.
Remember all hardware components in a POS take instructions directly from the Point of Sale software. The last thing you want for your POS, is software that fails to recognise devices such as the barcode scanners, printers or cash drawers.
At the same time, stability of the entire system stems from compatibility from the perspective of specific hardware devices or components. For instance, if your Operating System has problems detecting the printer or some other POS device, your software for POS will not function properly.
As such, you need to know or engage the services of a good POS solutions provider to help you understand the hardware and software environment before pumping money into purchase of incompatible system components.
Your software should also be highly intuitive with minimum requirements for user training. The good thing is that some POS companies offer free user training and you may leverage on those to successfully implement a stable POS system.
The best Point of Sale System accepts credit/debit card payments.  This takes care of customers that wish to pay through card or online systems. It is a value-added feature that allows your business to expand its market area and receive payment in a secure and fast manner.

Tuesday 14 February 2012

A reliable Restaurant POS for all seasons

Selecting the right Point of Sale System for your restaurant involves more than just one consideration. You need to have a proper grasp of the size of your needs and the market. In particular, you should understand demand trends of your industry-the peak and low seasons. With that information, you have a clear idea of the number of stations you need for your Restaurant POS. You should acquire a Restaurant POS that peak season demand will not over stretch. The influx of customers during peak season also determines the number of servers you will have for your restaurant. These too, will use the system and thus, should fall into play when working out the number of work stations you will acquire for your POS.

You need a comprehensive Restaurant POS solution that will address all key data processing tasks including payment transactions. For instance, your restaurant should have a number of cash drawers to facilitate safe storage of cash. Thus, every station you will have to accept cash should be connected to a functioning cash drawer. Depending on the size of your restaurant, you may need a lot of those. Also, buy cash drawers that integrate with the system to ensure safety of the cash stored.

Additionally, a Restaurant POS Solution should support online payment methods to address the needs of customers that wish to pay that way. Additionally, a well incorporated credit/debit card payment methods eliminates the need to keep separate records for cash and cards. Receipt printers will also be necessary.

You may need a back office server for your Restaurant POS, if you wish to sidestep monthly hosting fees by a solution provider. However, a back office server is not necessary for hosting of your POS because many POS developers offer hosting services at reasonable rates.