The restaurant business is known for being stressful. Whether people are waiting, bussing, cooking, bar-tending, hosting or prepping, hospitality takes fortitude and perseverance. Such hard-working people deserve help from technology, especially when they’re the ones who make your restaurant a success.
Restaurant staff management software isn’t just for managers; it can empower employees, too. When delivered as part of a total POS system, it offers all kinds of features that make life easier for employees. It makes daily tasks more accurate; from placing order to calculating checks. When there are less mistakes customers are happier, and so is your staff. And that leads to better customer service and less turnover. Here’s how upgrading to a POS system can make your restaurant a more attractive work environment by empowering your people.
Restaurant Staff Management Software Makes Employees Happier and More Productive
In a busy restaurant, traffic is crowded, margins are tight and tempers run high. Business owners aren’t the only ones trying to make a living—employees are too. A POS system includes restaurant staff management software that helps your people get more work done, which can lead to more tips. When jobs are made easier and more efficient you’re more likely to retain the best workers.
So, by implementing a robust POS system, you can help improve the quality of the jobs you offer at your restaurant, and increase opportunities for earning tips. And those are two major ways to retain talented staff. These are the features you should look for when searching for the best POS system to empower your staff.
Collaboration
Collaboration features are first and foremost. They empower your staff using real-time data sharing, enabling them to work as a team. Employees can plan shifts or vacations, and trade live info about orders, seating arrangements or dish shortages. It puts more decision-making ability into employees’ hands and moulds cohesion between parties working in the front or back of the house. Also, the more coordinated employees are with each other, the more independently they can work, freeing management to focus on other priorities.
Increase collaboration with a POS system that is:
- Cloud-based, which will never lose your data
- Accessible by all members or your staff anytime or anywhere
- Automatically synced online and throughout your devices
Automatic check calculation
Your wait staff’s job is to keep food moving, not to serve as part-time accountants. They need a POS system that runs on mobile devices they can carry from table to table that instantly makes all check calculations. Servers have a lot to worry about. And not having to whip out a calculator, paper and pencil during rush hours will make life way easier for them. Customers will appreciate the improved accuracy that prevents credit card disputes or other adjustments, too.
Make sure the restaurant staff management software you choose can accommodate:
- Checks, gift cards or store credit
- Pre-authorizations and open tabs
- Custom amount or fraction check-splitting
- Check-splitting by table position
- Partial payments
- Customer signatures via touch screen
- Tip adjustments, and suggested or custom tip amounts
- Emailed receipts
- Capturing customer contact information
- A display of all of a customer’s past orders or other metrics, such as; number of days since last visit, number of visits, total and average amount spent
- Customer loyalty programs
- Cash back
Another kind of check calculation that can trip servers up are discounts and taxes. Your POS system should be able to automatically apply:
- Discounts: Automatic discounts, item and order level discounts, fixed price discounts, Discount stacking, discounts by category, loyalty-based discounts, custom discounts
- Taxes: Support for local or state taxes, control over taxes per category and per product, the ability to toggle through taxes during order creation
Cash drawer and printer management
Of the long list of responsibilities your staff has every day, cash drawer management can be the most problematic. When taking cash and giving change during rush hours, employees can easily make mistakes. If there’s a cash deficit employees must pay for themselves, it can cause deep resentment. But you can avoid these problems while lowering theft by using a POS system that has meticulous cash drawer management features.
A POS system enables you to accurately:
- Manage multiple cash drawers
- Track no-sales, payouts, drops and pay-ins
- Track actions by employee and time
- Transfer orders between employees
- Split shared items
- Resend order tickets
- Save open orders
- Reopen, split and merge orders
- Offer partial refunds
- Sync orders between devices
- Void items
- Automatically print order tickets at the time of payment
- Assign table positions to items
- Automatically apply gratuities
And on days when the cash drawer doesn’t cause problems, the printer will. How many times have your employees struggled to fix a printer while irritable customers tap their feet? Having a POS system that includes printer management features can avoid this problem, that brings check-out or service to a standstill.
- Automatic printer detection
- Assignment of order-ticket-printers by category
- Grouping or ungrouping of items on order tickets
- Printer exclusion lists for order tickets
Empower Employees with a POS System and Watch Business Thrive
All of these features will make employees look forward to working at your restaurant. A POS system will make the work day run smoothly, as staff will have greater control over common problems. This will make your restaurant an even better place to work, raising employee retention and lowering absenteeism. And when you make employees happy by empowering them with technology, happier customers are sure to follow.
Empower employees to have greater control of their job roles using talech POS system. It has all the features your staff needs to work more efficiently and make less errors. This will make their work day hassle-free and position them to collect bigger tips. To give our restaurant staff management software a try, request a free demo.
