It is understood that a point-of-sale or POS system is a valuable piece of equipment, especially since many restaurants and service establishments base their entire transaction record system on the proper use of the POS terminals. Not every establishment with a POS system is getting the most out of their equipment. There are a number of ways that you can drastically increase the value of your POS system to your business. One value of a POS system is that it can help you to increase the amount of profit that you make. Here are some tips on how you can optimize the use of your POS system and maximize its value to your business.

One of the ways in which you can maximize the value of your POS system is to include additional prompts within the system in addition to the basics required to properly take an order. These prompts can include reminders to smile and be friendly toward the customer, lists of specials that customers might be interested in ordering and suggestive selling prompts before an order has been closed out. This can be used to cover any commonly forgotten aspects of taking an order, making sure that each order taken covers all of the essential questions that you want your employees to ask. Suggestive selling prompts can be especially useful, as suggestive selling is one of the most commonly forgotten aspects of the service industry and can yield quite significant profits if done correctly.

Integrating an inventory system within the POS system is another way that it can be used to maximize the efficiency of your restaurant or establishment and prevent employees from placing orders for out-of-stock items. The inventory system integration may not only list the amounts remaining items that are included in the inventory, but also displays a prompt to let the cashier know when they attempt to ring up an item that’s out of stock. Not only does this save time, but it also can save frustration on the part of the customer when the item that they order ends up being out of stock and they have to make a new selection (or worse, decide to go somewhere else to find what they want.)

Another way that the value of your POS system can be maximized is to integrate multiple printers into the system in order to speed up the order fulfillment process. When an order is placed, instead of having the cashier or server have to call the order back and send back a single printed ticket you can have the POS system automatically determine which items on the order should be sent to different stations and have a printer at each station that prints a ticket for only those items. Other additions, such as using advanced printers with multiple ink colors to emphasize special instructions, or indicate that orders are to-go or for a drive-thru window, for example, will also help to streamline the process of processing orders by instantly giving prominence to these important factors.

If you wish to reduce your costs with the POS system, you might consider doing away with printers completely and instead use additional POS monitors at kitchen stations or order fulfillment points. This allows your POS system to display all of the needed information directly on the screen for your employees instead of requiring them to collect and call out printed tickets.

In addition to speeding up the order fulfillment process slightly, this also has the added benefit of being able to provide visual prompts in the form of flashing order boxes or changing colors to show those orders that have been in the system for longer than it should take to process them.

Because the monitors use the same touch-screen POS software as your main registers, cooks and employees can interact directly with the orders to view them and can clear orders that have been sent out with just a touch of the screen. Not only does this reduce the costs that you spend on paper and ink (or thermal paper, if you use thermal printers instead) by having the only printouts be the receipts and guest checks that you provide for customers, but you will also be able to greatly reduce the amount of waste that is produced by your establishment.

Taking the time to realize that the POS system can be so much more than just a simple way to take orders is the first step in maximizing its value and make sure that your customers receive the highest level of service possible. There are many benefits to finding the right POS system and it mostly comes down to the needs of your business and the functionality that you are looking for in a POS system. Research the different options that are available and then choose the ones that are best for