How To Manage Labor Cost Using Restaurant Point of Sale Systems
In the not-too-distant past, controlling labor in a food-service establishment was mostly an instinctive process. Effective labor control meant having just enough people on hand during a rush to keep the operation up and running, and by sending people home as quickly as possible as the rush died down.
To effectively make projections of future sales, restaurant manager keeps track of their business for the past couple of weeks and converted those numbers into an staff schedule. The success or failure of those efforts was determined at the end of the night, when the manager sat down with a stack of time cards and calculated the day’s labor percentage.
However, those days are no longer with us and a restaurant’s point-of-sale system has taken over many of the functions a restaurant manager used to do manually.
And since the minimum wage sets to rise to .25 for a few years to come, business owners looks for alternatives they can use for labor cost control.
At a Pizza Inn restaurant, their general manager Jim Phillips uses his restaurant POS system from Pixel Point to track labor throughout the day.
Check out your labor cost every 45 minutes or at any time of the day you want! Your POS system is sure to deliver detailed and accurate reports anytime you want it. Just by simply clicking on a POS terminal, you can easily see where your labor stands or check on your hourly stats.
The restaurant POS system can display forecasted sales, actual sales and a variance between the two, as well as scheduled versus actual hours.
“The system tells me everything I need to know,” Phillips said. “I can look at the POS and see the number of pickups for any given hour; the number of dine-ins and the number of buffets. It gives me my supervisor hours, my kitchen hours and my assistant’s hours all in a breakdown.”
An extra pair of eyes
Other POS reports show labor trends over time, with this owners or district managers can track labor cost manager performance shift-to-shift, said Jennifer Wiebe the marketing manager of Speedline Solutions. The system can also produce reports detailing manual editing of time clock reports that can help spot potential abuse.
The time clock reports provides important documentation which can also be used as a basis for labor board reviews of attendance-related employee terminations.
And by the end of the day, a POS system just like Phillips’ can generate, export and integrate file reports of your payroll and employee information, store accounting systems or third-party payroll services.
It can also assist managers when assigning staff shifts by the forcasted sales and by generating a schedule from them.
Operators can efficiently schedule to meet their labor targets using sales forecasting and their labor plans. Pixel Point’s scheduling tool is linked with employee skills and availability which can speed up scheduling process.”
Hours and breaks restriction can easily be done with schedule- and time-clock alerts. The schedule also can be linked to a built-in time clock that requires a manager override for late clock-ins or early clock-outs.
Most operators set their clock-in and clock-out times very close, within 5 minutes.
There would be no way that an employee can clock in until 5 minutes before their scheduled shift or clock out late without a manager override with this system. It tells if an employee is supposed to be off-duty but he is still on the clock.
This article’s author is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-FOR-Restaurants.com – a national organization of retail and restaurant POS systems dealers.
For more information see their website at POS-For-Restaurants.com
Looking for the right Restaurant POS Software?
A few simple tips for selecting Restaurant POS Software
There are more and more restaurant and hospitality sector that are increasingly turning towards business management softwares to aid them with their needs, as well as to increase their efficiency.
It is with extreme importance that every restaurant must select the restaurant POS software suite that’s flexible enough to meet their needs and be able to grown alongside their business.
And because not all restaurant owners can be comfortable with the POS technology, it can be a huge importance and vital to any hotel or restaurant wanting to trade immediately after installation, which attracts more customers. Always remember that a good POS software can save you money, time for training your staff, complete control on stocks, payroll and even on wages.
For the hospitality market sector, it is very competative and streamlining your business operations can mean the difference between failure or success. So, in this world, If you can’t level with your competitors you could see yourself loosing your customer base through promotions and cheaper offers by smoothly run establishments operating management and restaurant software.
Even restaurants aren’t exempted from this, that’s why having a good hospitality software suite is very important for any restaurant’s success.
At some times, you may notice that your restaurant’s external factors can a make a difference to your success, think again. With the right hospitality software, it can can greatly add up to your success and can even boost you up on top of your competitors.
If you are still searching for a software suite which is right for your business, make sure you look for a restaurant software suite that is robust, upgradeable, a great value for the price you payed for, and most of all easy to use.
Your hospitality software also needs to be adaptable to meet your business needs. But if your software is rigid and allows for no flexibility it will be unable to adapt it to suit your business needs as your business grows causing problems for the future.
A retail POS business software should be easy to install and use, intuitive and doesn’t even need days of training; make sure it’s fully modular, flexible and upgradeable to grow with your business. Additionally, you need to look for restaurant software that will run on your computer systems.
If you’re going to use multiple till then you’ll be needing a good back up system, a reliable system that will replicate your master data file so you would never have to loose any important data in case of system crashes. It is also important to make sure that the restaurant POS you’re going to use allows multiple hardware configuration, as well as payroll integration and data export to sage or quick-books. Mostly, some restaurant owners will have at one time or another used a computer running on a windows operating system, many of the professional scalable point of sales and hospitality software solutions are written specifically with windows in mind.
A final consideration is the requirement that the software will fast and user-friendly.
Mostly, restaurants are extremely busy especially during peak hours, so a POS system that workd quickly and doesn’t crashes easily would be the best choice!Since most good restaurants are always busy, especially during peak times, a POS system that will work quickly and not freeze or crash during constant use should be the one you purchase. A good stable piece of software can sometimes be expensive, but it will certainly help you to ensure that your business runs smoothly allowing you to concentrate on other areas of your business.
Support is one of the main priorities of any business, make sure you have the option of telephone support or virtual network connection support similar to yahoo and msn messenger this will be an optional extra with any good POS software provider and worth its weight in gold if your systems go down and you are unable to trade.
Don’t forget that software programmers knows far more than anyone does. An overlooked point that many clients have regretted from my experience, make sure that whoever you purchase the software from can offer after- hours support should you need it, also a company in the same time zone is a very useful commodity.
With over 20 years working in the restaurant POS industry, the author of this article is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants.com, an online information service to help restaurants receive competitive bids for hardware, software or a complete restaurant point of sale system.
Check them out at POS-For-Restaurants.com
Checking What Restaurant POS Software And Hardware Is Best For Your Business
Restaurant Software
To be able to run your business to success you have to learn the basics: good location, good food, good service. But today, there’s another consideration to add: the restaurant software you use to run your POS system.
Though the harware are more visible, your POS software is the the core of your POS systems. Doing a careful evaluation of restaurant POS software is key to getting a system that will satisfy your customers and staff.
What to look for in restaurant software
Before anything else, it’s important to know what exactly you need the software to do. Your restaurant POS software can handle checks by diner or table, track orders per server, able to move diners at the bar to the table, manage waiting lists and reservations, and many more.
After you’ve found that restaurant software that can meet your basic requirements, give it a test drive to learn how to use it. While there will always be a learning curve for your employees when you purchase a new POS system, choosing restaurant software that’s easy to use can reduce the learning curve to manageable levels.
You may have a couple of your staff to to be involved in the evaluation of the software while testing its features. They may try different kinds of oddball situations and changes that can cause problems with some software.
- Security – create login accounts for each employee. You should be able to limit access to sensitive reports and functions (such as comping meals) to managers, if desired.
- Flexibility – your servers should be able to control checks to match the whims of your patrons: easily splitting checks and tracking special orders, for example.
- Reporting – one the main advantages of restaurant software for owners and managers is the detailed reporting available. Make sure the software you choose lets you get detailed information either per check, per server, or overall, ranging from daily to annually.
- Multiple location support – if applicable, make sure that your POS system is able to track and record on multiple locations, including local differences in staffing and pricing.
What to look for in a hardware
Of course you’ll need to invest in restaurant POS hardware as well: computers to run the restaurant software on, touch-screen displays for servers to enter order, and printers to produce order slips for the kitchen. The POS software you decide to use will require hardware – The only big deicision with it comes to using hardware is how many will you need.
Think you need more learning when it comes to searching for the right POS dealer? Find out more at POS-For-Restaurants.com and receive free unbiased quotes from the Restaurant POS professionals serving your area.
The author of this article is the Vice-President of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants with over 20 years of POS experience meeting the automation needs of restaurants of all types throughout the U.S.