Help Your Coffee Shop Manager Out!
The person you have helping you run your store is probably buried. They have a ton of things to do on a daily basis and probably could use some help. So, let’s help them out by giving them the tools they need to effectively manage your location easily.
MobileDash – Let them see sales numbers when they are not even in the stores. MobileDash will allow them to quickly identify shifts that might need help.
Dashboard – Allow them to see sales numbers and comparisons quickly.
Training – We offer additional training to all our customers. Why not take advantage of it and go through a refresher course with your manager? They may learn things about SP-1 that you didn’t have a chance to teach them or that you simply don’t remember!
Pizza Delivery and Insurance in POS
Here is something that comes up every once in a while. . . If you have delivery drivers, then you might be paying more in insurance than you need to.
Most insurance companies bill you based on total payroll hours for all employees working the store. Delivery drivers are billed at a higher dollar per hour than kitchen prep or cashiers. This is done because there is obviously more risk when an employee is on the road. The problem here is the you are also paying the higher rate for that employee when they are not on the road as well.
For example . . . Let’s assume your insurance company bills you at $2 per $100 in payroll for prep, cashier etc and then $7 per $100 for delivery drivers.
For this store, they did 7,000 deliveries and 2,830 hours on the road. That is an average of 24 minutes per run. Insurance should only be billed at the higher rate for that payroll that was on the road! By taking the total payroll for all delivery drivers and subtracting out the payroll amount for those 2,830 hours on the road, we can get a true figure of how much payroll should be billed at the higher rate.
In this case, it was an $1,100 savings in insurance!
If you have deliveries, see how we can help you with our XML ticket history report.
System Security in SP-1
Security is important. I think we all agree about that! The question is how to best set it up?
First, we have to talk about how security levels in SP-1 work to begin with. SP-1 supports eleven different levels for employees. Each employee is assigned a number that represents what their minimum security level is. So, if you assign an employee level 3, they can do anything that requires a 0,1,2 or 3 level password.
The first security level is actually blank – If an employee has no security level number in their file then they can only clock in and out. This allows you to use that security for bakers, prep personnel etc. This security level has no access to any other function of the software.
The others are 0 through 9. Below are some suggestions as to what levels should be used for.
Level 3 – We recommend that this be used for shift supervisors or assistant managers.
Level 5 – We recommend that this be used for an in the store manager level.
Level 7 – Recommended level for any area or district managers when using multiple locations.
Level 9 – Owner level security.
Using this as a template give you the ability to still have areas for growth!
Discounts
SP-1 is a pretty powerful program. One of the things that makes it so powerful is the flexibility on the little things. I thought it would be beneficial to cover the different ways you can setup a discount in SP-1.
This blog was inspired by a conversation with Mark at Blackstone Pizza in Iron Mountain MI. Mark had some questions on how to manage discounts with his employees.
First, remember that you can have unlimited discounts in SP-1. Each discount can be setup to only discount a specific item at a specific time and a specific day! So, you can actually setup a discount that would give 10% off sandwiches on Tuesdays between 2pm and 4pm. That discount would only work at that time.
I’ve included a screen shot of a discount that we use in our demonstrations:
All discounts in SP-1 are a dollar or percentage off an item or items. Let’s cover some of these fields and see how they work.
Discount: This is the discount name that is used. This is how the discount is identified on reports and on the order screen when it is used.
Price/Table: Enter a price ($10.00) or price table in this field. If you use a price table, you can limit the discount to certain times of the day or even days of the week. There are three ways this works:
1) Percentage discount – the amount entered here is a percent.
2) If you are setting this up as a dollar amount discount then this will be the amount that the discount is for.
3) If this is left blank, then it is a manual discount. Manual discounts require the employee to enter the amount to be discounted. Usually not something that you want to leave without a security level.
Expire: This discount will no longer be available 30 days after this date.
Dollar Amount: Select this to have a dollar amount discount. If you had entered $10.00 into the Price/Table field, then this would be a $10 off discount.
Percentage: If this is selected, SP-1 will use this as a percentage discount. If you had entered $10.00 into the Price/Table field, then this would be a 10% discount.
Line Item: Line item is a special percentage that will only apply to one specific item on the ticket. This is a great way to discount a specific item in the case of a mistake.
Max.Disc.Amount: With this, you can enter the MAXIMUM amount an employee can discount! In the example above, you can enter any discount amount up to 10%. It’s a great way to limit what employees can discount.
Reward Pts.%: Setting this to zero means that any items that are discounted are excluded from the rewards! This stops “double dipping” for those of you doing buy 10 get 1 free programs.
Cust.Reward: Select this if this is a reward discount. Reward discounts are used with the free gift and loyalty system included with SP-1.
Misc.Charge.: Can you discount a miscellaneous charge.
Gift Card: Can you discount a gift card sale. This is very powerful as it allows you to be able to discount gift or pre-paid cards that customers purchase.
Security Level: Yes, you can password protect discounts. This is important so employees don’t use discounts they are not supposed to use.
Comp: This will allow you to setup a specific discount that is used to ‘comp’ a customer. This discount option affects your server and delivery close outs as well.
Dine In / Carry-Out / Pick-Up / Delivery: These switches set the discount to be order type specific. If you want a carry out only discount, this is how you would do it!
Menu Items: This is where you specify, exactly, what items are allowed in this discount.
Don’t hesitate to tell us how you use your discounts or if you have any comments!
Fingerprint ID for Employee Clock In
How do your employees clock in? Code? Swipe Card? Neither of those are bad but they also are not the easiest or more secure way.
Let’s look at some pros and cons in four common areas:
| Employee Code | Swipe Card | Fingerprint ID | |
| Cost | Free | $50 for a 25 pack of reusable cards. | $125 for the unit. |
| Employee Sharing | Easy to do. An employee can give their code and password to anyone. | Easy but in a different way. Employees can give their card to a friend use. | Secure. Employees cannot share fingers! |
| Potential Theft | High. Employees can easily steal someone else’s code and either use that or even a managers code to void transactions etc. | High. Employees can pick up someone else’s card and use it. This can be done even without the original employee knowing about it. | Low. Employees cannot perform functions they are not supposed to without physically touching the right finger to the Fingerprint ID unit. |
| Ease of Use | Fair. Employee has to type the code and password when clocking in. | Good. Swipe the card when asked for. | Better. Simply touch your finger to the reader and you are done. |
5 Features You Might Not Know About In SP-1!
SP-1 has a ton of features. I thought it would be fun to list a few that many of you might not be aware of!
1) Cash In: Cash in a special transaction type that is found under Misc. Charge in SP-1. Essentially, it is the opposite of a paid out. When you select this option, you are telling SP-1 that you have put money from an outside source into the cash drawer. It can be used in a number of situations including: Recording money earned from a gumball machine or arcade game, putting extra change in the cash drawer and so on.
2) Gift Card Refund: Have you ever wanted to give someone cash back for their gift card? Hopefully not but if you have to, there is an easy way to do it. When you select Paid Out, there is a Gift Card Refund button. That button allows you to swipe a gift card and issue a cash (or credit card) refund for the amount. You can setup a maximum amount to refund in the system setup portion of SP-1. This allows you to issue refunds but only of a certain amount.
3) Use Foreign Exchange: Are you near the Canadian or Mexican border? Do you accept their currency? If you do, this is something you should be using. When this is selected, you can push a button and see what the balance due is in that foreign currency!
4) License Expiration: If you have delivery, then this is for you. In the Employee File, you can enter the date that the employees drivers license expires. When that employee clocks in, you can setup a custom notification if their licence is expired. That will help ensure that the driver is not out representing you with an expired license! As a bonus, those of you without delivery can use this as well for other items. Some people use it to ensure they have a health permit that is up to date for example.
5) Print An Employee Hours Summary: This feature allows your employees to print a slip with the hours that they worked since their last clock in.
There you go. . . five features that you might not have been aware of. Hope they help!
ADP Interface for Payroll
Do you use ADP for employee payroll?
If so, you should talk to us about our ADP interface. We have built a specific interface for SP-1 that will export information to ADP. This is a great way to eliminate the time you personally spend on payroll!
Call us for pricing and more information!
3 Things Your Coffee Shop Manager Should Review In Your POS
1) Labor. This is a huge expense in most coffee shops. The owner should work to put together some guidelines on where labor should be and then stick to it. SP-1 can help by showing the labor cost both on the Business Summary and on the Dashboard screen. This gives your coffee shop manager the ability to know where they stand on an hourly basis. If your manager is not in the store all the time, then consider adding them to the MobilDash system so they get alerts on their smartphone.
2) Hourly Sales and Ticket Totals. Using the Hourly Recap By Week report, your manger can make sure that they know when the busy times are based on how many tickets were created. Better yet, this report can be organized by menu group so you know what to plan for during those hours.
3) Voids by Employee. Our Employee Summary report is designed to show you, by employee, the total sales and voids. This is a great way to spot red flags and see what may be happening in your store!
5 SP-1 For Coffee POS Tips You Might Not Know
For those of you that have our SP-1 touch screen point of sale system, here are five tips that you might not be aware of.
1. Do you often have an ‘on the side’, ‘extra hot’ or ‘see cashier’ comment? You can create up to thirteen pre-programmed comments to use in the Order Screen. That’s right, you don’t have to have every comment be a manual input. This can be setup in System Setup and then Comments.
2. Last ticket look up. Ever want to re-print that receipt for the customer? Easy. Review ticket and enter 9999. Because SP-1 can store up to 9,999 tickets per day, entering 9999 automatically pulls up the last ticket in the system.
3. Split checks simply. You don’t have to be a table service restaurant to need to split checks. We often hear from coffee shops and quick service pizzeria’s that they occasionally get a large orders. The customer then arrives with three other people’s money in hand and wants the tickets separated. SP-1 makes this easy by allowing you to touch the ticket items
4. Print labels. Actually two different kinds of labels. We can print your retail barcodes and also delivery box labels. Retail labels allow you to use a barcode scanner to quickly ring in retail items. Boxlabels are a great choice for making sure that your delivery drivers are able to see what needs to be delivered where.
5. Send employee messages. That’s right, you can type an internal email in SP-1. Better yet, that email will show up when the employee clocks in!