Taxes and Your POS
Taxes. . . Not the most exciting topic with a POS but one that people often overlook asking about. Can your POS handle the different methods that you tax items? We are pretty confident that ours can!
With SP-1 you have five different tax levels. Great right? Well, it gets more complicated than that. We also give you the full flexibility to charge taxes based on the order type (dine in, carry out, pick up, delivery) and by the menu groups (coffee, pizza, sandwich, beverage).
P.S. we also handle Canadian taxes!
Cash Accountability and Your POS
Recently I was talking to a client that is opening a new store. One of their concerns was on how to keep the cash sorted out with their employees. It is a great question and one that is answered differently for every store. I’ll try and hit the highlights on methods that SP-1 can use to help you stay on top of it.
First we need to know the different areas where employees handle cash.
Two of them, delivery drivers and servers (think table service) are easily accounted for because you will most likely have them carry a bank. When using server / drive banking, the cash accountability issue is pretty easy. These employees will simply cash out and match up against the server or driver close out report.
It gets more difficult when we talk about the counter service aspect of the store. If you want to help insure accurate tills, follow some of these steps:
- Assign employees to cash drawers. This locks down the cash to only the employee assigned.
- Use Employee Swipe Cards instead of codes and passwords. It is far more secure.
- Use Fingerprint ID instead of Employee Swipe Cards. It is the most secure.
- Buy an extra insert for the cash drawer (with or without a locking lid). That way you can quickly handle shift changes with minimum disruption.
- Buy multiple cash drawers. Employee one is assigned to drawer one and employee two is assigned to drawer two. If they are short, you know where to go.
- Don’t leave the key in the drawer!
- Integrate your credit cards with the POS – that way you don’t have cash / credit discrepencies.
Customer Confirmation Monitors
You may know that we have a Customer Confirmation monitor that can be installed with SP-1. This is an option that puts either a 9″ or 17″ monitor that sits on the counter facing the customer. The monitor plays a slide show to your customers and then when you start to place an order, the monitor shows the items and pricing to the customer. It’s a far better option than a pole display.
Since these have been available, we have had some customers ask to have the pricing removed on the screen so that customers don’t see the itemized up charges.
Get To Know Your Customer!
Here is a feature that is easy for us to take for granted. However, not everyone is aware of it. I thought it would make a nice blog entry.
Are you aware that you can ask for a name at the end of each order? This allows your employees to type in the name (usually just the first name) and have that recorded on the ticket. This can add a level of personalization to your transaction as well as help your employees become familiar with your customers.
Sounds simple right? I always like to point out that things are never as simple as they seem on the back end of things. What if you have already pulled the customer up with a loyalty or prepaid card? What if it’s a delivery order or phone order? All of these are accounted for!
If the order has no customer information already and it’s a Dine in or Carry Out, then the name prompt appears. If there is already a customer attached to the ticket, then the name prompt is skipped- You already have it!
If you are doing a delivery order or pickup order, then the name prompt is skipped and you are instead prompted to enter the phone number for the delivery or pickup order.
By the way, the name prints on both the customer ticket and any internal (kitchen / Barista) tickets.
Do you use this feature? Do you use it in a different way? Let us know!
Why Training A New Person Can Be Exciting
I’m training someone new. It’s a new salesperson for what we call “peripheral sales”. In other words, his job will be to contact all of our current customers on a regular basis and introduce new products, keep our company relationship going and generally see how things are going.
It’s time consuming and frustrating in some cases. It’s also a fantastic opportunity for me to re-open my eyes to the things we do and what we have to offer! I wrote once before about this but it bears repeating. . . Sometimes you have to pretend you are new.
So, take a few minutes and call us and ask what is new. Really go back to the reasons you bought a POS to begin with and see if you are using them. While you are at it, ask us about:
- Hands Free Marketing
- MobileDash
- Text Your Usual
- Online Ordering
- Sticky Printers
- Barista Monitors
Hands-Free Marketing
If you are like most of our customers, you don’t have a lot of free time. Between running your store, working the counter, driving around pickup up supplies, managing employees and trying to balance a life at the same time you are probably buried.
On top of that, you get emails and posts that tell you how you are supposed to stay on top of the social media and market to your customers as well.
SelbySoft realizes where you are at. Heck, half the time, we are there ourselves. It’s tough to find all the time to do the marketing you need. When we looked into email marketing, the prices were $50 to $150 a month or more. Now granted, there was a lot of bang for the buck with some of these but they were simply too expensive to integrate with most of our customers.
We decided to write it ourselves. . .
Hands-Free Marketing is based on email marketing to your current customer base. You collect the emails and we do the email marketing!
Here is how it works:
Every day, SelbySoft grabs the emails from your store. We then eliminate duplicates and automatically email the following:
- All customers that have had a new email address in the last 30 days.
- All customers that have a birthday coming up in the next 30 days.
- All customers that have not used their profile in the last 30 days (lazy customers).
Here is something that makes this even easier! You simply create the email that you want to be presented and send it to us. We take that email and forward it to all of your customers!
The cost? Only $120 a year ($10 a month!) per location.
Interested? Call us today and find out more!
Happy Hour Pricing?
Do you run a happy hour? We see that as a great way to help bring people in during the ‘slow time’ of the day. One of the problems with Happy Hour pricing is open tabs. If I start a tab but don’t close the ticket, do I still qualify for happy hour?
It’s up to you! We have two methods of handling this type of pricing:
Base pricing on start time: With this method selected, your pricing on open tabs is based on when the customer opened the tab. This is used to encourage customers to stay at a table and keep ordering. If you offer a $.50 discount per drink during happy hour, this method would extend that pricing until the ticket was closed.
Base pricing on actual time: This is the most common method of these orders. Pricing is based on the actual time that the item is ordered.
Don’t forget that SelbySoft allows up to nine prices per item per day with our price tables. This allows you to have these happy hour prices automatically take effect.
Call us for more information!