The importance of choosing the right POS software for a restaurant
August 01, 2021
As the owner of a catering business, you wear a thousand hats. It's not always easy to be everywhere at once. But fortunately, there are many ways to help you concentrate on your core business. So today, we're going to talk to you about a key element: cash register software.
The basis of cash register software :
Visit point-of-sales software has a thousand important functions for managing your business. It is the neuralgic point that centralizes, simplifies and manages all your orders and cash receipts on a single interface. The cash register software will be the link between you and your customers. It will help you keep an overview of your business through statistics that will be automatically fed back into your accounts. A well-chosen software package will save you administrative time and hassle.
Thanks to the back office, cash register software enables you to make the right decisions, with all the data at hand at all times.
A regulated activity:
Since January 1, 2018, regulations have changed in France. There's no longer any question of being satisfied with a simple cash register. It's now a legal requirement to take a secure and certified cash register software.
But why this obligation? The aim is to prevent permissive software, which allows accounting transactions to be erased. This software therefore serves to reduce tax fraud, avoiding economic and financial delinquency.
Gone are the days when huge, proud crates sat on counters like works of art. Little by little, they have become miniaturized and modernized. In fact, digitization and digital technology have profoundly modernized traditional checkout software in favor of tablet-based solutions. The new modern cash registers are simple, tactile, reliable and highly ergonomic.
What are the functions of cash register software and why was it created?
Configuration of products to be sold, order taking and, of course, collection. This includes calculating taxes or VAT due to the state, bar code scanning on products, stock management, acceptance of luncheon vouchers and payment by credit card. So much for basic functionality.
Now you're faced with the obstacle course of finding the perfect solution. Today's cash register software has evolved enormously, moving towards an ecosystem approach, where it plugs in to numerous solutions to offer even more functionalities for optimizing restaurant management.
Your choice must take into account the achievement of the following 4 objectives:
- Profitability
- Customer satisfaction
- Safety
- Simplicity
It's essential that your choice be geared towards achieving these 3 objectives. Cash register software alone cannot cover all these points. In 2020, you need to see it as the gateway to efficient management. The key is the solutions you can plug into it. These are the complementary building blocks that will accompany your business towards efficiency and success.
Lots of competition, lots of good products, lots of features, it's not easy to find your way around. Choosing the right one is crucial, and it will be difficult to change later on. Migration to another system is quite complicated.
Let's take a few examples to conclude:
When it comes to profitability, your software needs to be able to connect to a high-performance inventory tool, so that you have as few losses as possible, and so that your purchases are simple. By connecting to Click & Collect and tabletop ordering via mobile, you multiply your sales levers, while retaining centralized control over order management. We advise you not to underestimate the importance of your digital transition, which is now strategic in the restaurant world.
When it comes to customer satisfaction, a good cash register software is first and foremost a tool that performs these basic functions brilliantly. It must be capable of cashing out your customers with ease. Customers like to be rewarded for their loyalty. Your choice should therefore be made for software that not only meets your customers' expectations, but also your own loyalty constraints: don't forget to look at the software's connectivity with modern loyalty solutions.
Your customers don't like to wait, so let them pass by order online easily.
For your working pleasure, choose software that's comfortable, fast and intuitive. Modern tablet software ticks all these boxes. It's software that's with you every day; it should help you, not be a burden. Make sure you're comfortable using it.
Price is also a very important argument. But it shouldn't be the only factor in your decision. Good software that keeps its promises is a very profitable investment. It will save you a lot of time, and therefore money. Not least thanks to its connectivity to numerous third-party solutions.
