How a restaurant POS actually works, step by step
The chain of events from seating a party to money in the bank, and the five places it usually breaks. Authorisation is not settlement.
Insights
For the people running the floor.
Page 10 of 11.
Kitchen display or printer: when a screen is worth it
A screen times and routes tickets and cannot jam. Paper survives anything and cannot be bumped by accident. Why most kitchens end up running both.
Switching restaurant POS systems without a bad month
Read the processing contract before the software one, pick your slowest fortnight, and rebuild the menu rather than importing it. The order that works.
Training staff on a new restaurant POS in two sessions
Teach the nine-step sequence from seated to paid, then rehearse in service. The hard cases to train explicitly, and the two numbers that show it worked.
Building a POS menu that does not annoy you later
Build from the sales report, not the printed menu. Where modifiers go wrong, why notes fields are a leak, and the two people who must check it.
The six POS reports actually worth reading
One daily, three weekly, two monthly, and the one everyone asks for that you should ignore. What question each report exists to answer.
What a salon POS has to track, and the question each answers
Eight things, each tied to a question owners actually ask. If a system cannot do one of them, you find out in month four rather than in the demo.
What a salon POS really costs: all four lines
Software is often a ninth of the total. Processing, hardware and the edges make up the rest, with a worked example and its assumptions stated.
Booking system and register: one system or two?
Five ordinary questions neither system can answer alone, the two client lists that drift apart, and the honest case for leaving them separate.
Choosing a POS system for a barbershop
Speed at the counter, a walk-in queue rather than a calendar, and chair rent mixed with commission. What to ignore from salon software.
Esthetician salary: why the average tells you nothing
Four pay structures, and where you work matters more than the licence. Why state comparisons are cost of living in disguise, and the arithmetic to do instead.
Booth rent or commission: the comparison that matters
Not 100% against 45%. It is 45% of revenue against 100% minus every cost you just took on, and the question is whether your book is full.