Need advice on POS for my business

[gmem9]

hi... i have a small wine bar/wine shop. i am looking for an all apple (ipad etc.) pos solution to satisfy the bar and retail portions of my business. specifically looking for a pos system with strong inventory management, customer transactions, reporting, labor scheduling, associate time management, etc. please advise if anyone has configured a system like this.
thanks!
gmem

 

[MZ117]

If your looking for Apple primarily, there's a (somewhat new) company that I keep seeing in/out of the news called Revel Systems. Saw a demo at a trade show and it was nice but it didn't have everything we needed. For a small site, it would most likely work fine.

Also, you could look at Square (cheap and easily implemented) but their credit card fees are extremely high versus just about everyone else and obviously you have to use Square for CC processing if you use their solution.

Outside of Apple/iPad, check out Micros e7 (designed for small business both in function and price) and DinerWare / Squirrel isn't too bad, either. I personally am a big fan of Aloha, but they don't have much in the way of low end systems, but again you could go with Micros e7 and get a pretty good system for a fair price.

Whatever you do... Stay away from Aldelo and HarborTouch.

Good luck!

 

[MZ117]

And all named systems do inventory, payroll, clock in/out, etc.

I will caution you though that if your wanting Retail-level inventory control, your going to come up short on a Restaurant POS system. It will work, but your going to have to play with the inventory some. (There's a small retail shop next to one our locations that's using Aloha for her Retail because she got a really good deal on it from a closed restaurant---obviously not the best solution, but it works.)

- The major limitation you'll run into with Restaurant POS is that they'll let you sell past zero unless you manually modify it.

Good luck!

 

[Moregelen]

Mmm.. nope. You can do limited availability and it won't let you go past 0.

I only know of one wine place out there using a restaurant POS system, but they are using it in conjunction with an inventory program (they are using Micros):

I should preface this video link with the fact that it is essentially advertisement by their company, not necessarily about the specs of the system itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CcE16KZAG8

Are you only selling wine, or are you doing other things too like tastings, with servers? Do you also run a restaurant in there? There are some good inventory systems out there that are low overhead, but they are ONLY inventory. You won't really find a large Retail presence on this forum unfortunately, so if that was what you were specifically looking for you might end up having to look elsewhere. The only retail program I have ever dealt with is LOC and that IBM junk, and those are more for grocery stores, small shops.

 

[Moregelen]

*not small shops rather

 

[MZ117]

@Moregelen ---

We have multiple sites (Aloha and Micros 3700 at one) and sell coffee mugs and beer mugs and a few other retail items. I know you can set the limit to 0, but are you saying when we receive inventory in it will auto-adjust to the right sell amount? If yes, how? I haven't bothered playing with that function in a while, but if that's an option, I'd love to know how to configure it!​

@gmem9 ---

And if you are looking for "Pure Retail," the only one I know of is Microsoft RMS, but I don't have a clue about pricing or setup...​

 

[Moregelen]

I wrote a SIM a while back that allows someone with the proper permissions to hit a button that says '86 mode'. Once in this mode, they can directly control the inventory from the touchscreens that servers use; you just tap the item and it brings up a menu where they can set it to Out of Stock, Limited Availability and then enter the current count or a add to count button, or Always Available. You can't go below 0 at that point. The only people I really have that really use this are places with large wine collections. You still have to manually set when more comes in, but then you have to do that regardless of the system.

They don't use it in conjunction with a count sheet (like I said, its only being used in places with large wine collections where they want to set how many bottles they have), but it wouldn't be that hard to generate a crystal report off of that.

 

[gmem9]

thanks all for the replies. this is very helpful information.

a bit more about my business: my (very small) business is both a wine bar/wine shop (retail). guests can drink and eat product in the bar. guests can also buy product and take it home. similar to a coffee shop - drink coffee in house and/or buy pre-packaged coffee beans/grounds and take it home for later.

this is where i might be over thinking my pos system? most pos systems are either for restaurant or for retail. i'm assuming what differentiates the 2 is that the retail portion has the stronger inventory management system. so i need all this or any of it?

also, as most apple (ipad) solutions, i see revel systems is cloud based. is there anyway to bypass this and use an internal server?
thanks again!

 

[MZ117]

To your first question, retail POS systems are MUCH more focused on inventory and serialized/barcode items.

As for Revel, it is completely cloud based. This is what both peaked my interest and made me hesitant about it when I saw it last year at the trade event. One of the managers said flat out they wouldn't give you the ability to run their servers internally (my first question!) (there was a monthly fee but it wasn't much), however he said that should something happen to the company, they give you the software so it continues to run. Don't know if any of that is true or is still the case, but that was the story last year...

I personally wasn't comfortable with relying on an internet connection completely based on WiFi (with no Ethernet) (although I guess you could get an iPad with 3G/LTE and use that) to run my businesses. (What if their server goes out?) But again, I was extremely impressed with their system when I saw it and it was by far the easier back office I have ever seen... Keep in mind this was almost a year ago. At the very least, give them a call?​

[ul]
[li]If inventory isn't a major concern, you could again go with Square... If you already have an iPad, all you need to do is buy a cash drawer and receipt printer from them and you have a working POS system (very limited, but still working and very portable). Again, the big catch is Square's credit card rates---They are the highest I have ever seen and you have to use Square for CC if you use their terminal.[/li] Also, I don't have a clue how credit card disputes would work with Square... We have very little but that would be a concern of mine too, especially if you have expensive or high end wines...
[/ul]

I have much more (management/running/moderate programming experience) than the programming/technical side, however if you don't care too much about Apple (I know you said that in your original post):

[ul]
[li]I would again defer you back to the Micros e7. It's cheap, works great, I know several small bar and restaurant owners that love it, and you can pick your own CC processor. Aloha is still my favorite, but they don't cater to low budgets and really focus more on a "full table service" although, they do offer Quick Service systems. Both Micros and Aloha are fully customizable, but there also the "top end" of the POS world.[/li]

[li]Have you looked at DinerWare? I know a few restaurants that use it and are happy, but I don't have a clue on their pricing.[/li][/ul]

 

[MZ117]

@ Moregelen ---

Do you still have a copy of that SIM by any chance? (If not, don't worry about finding it.) But if you have it available and wouldn't mind, I'd love to try it out...​

Thanks!

 

[Moregelen]

Sure. I have a folder in my dropbox with a bunch of SIMs I've found myself needing.

This should be a link to the current version, let me know if something is missing/doesn't work. Sometimes it is pretty damn hard to remember which is which... I don't bother encrypting the SIMs I write, so feel free to look through the code.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pl6c342k3ueub88/pmsX.isl?m

Some things to know about the SIM:

[ul]
[li]Simply create a key linked to the SIM, inquiry 1. The SIM will give a message saying 'You are now in 86 mode' or something similar. Put it in your managers default landing screen, or at least in some screen only managers are really going to find. It does check for permissions before letting you edit things willy nilly, but better safe than sorry![/li]
[li]Modify var default_ts : N10 = 501 in the SIM to provide a landing screen to take them too once they enter 86 mode. I generally just choose my default food screen.[/li]
[/ul]

That should be it for setup. It should work by checking their menu item availability permission setting in POS Configurator.
As a point of interest, because the SIM works by letting you ring in a menu item and then immediately voids it, make sure that your managers know NOT to tender the check; simply cancel out when done. I had a site where she was $0 tendering to get out of 86 mode; that then posts all of the error corrects. No bueno.

Finally, I ran into an issue where a server can't ring in an out of stock item (and thus can't ring it in to active the SIM's menu!). The SIM puts you in void Transaction mode meaning that everything is set to negatives automatically when you ring it in. The SIM automatically removes the void entry from your check of course, but if the employee doesn't have the permission, that will be the source of a failure in the SIM. It is a pretty standard setting for Managers to have though, so I didn't foresee it being a problem. Also, when asked for the reason code, it just picks the first one on the list; as long as the check is never sent or tendered, it shouldn't be a problem, so train 'em to use the Cancel button when they are done. Like most things you change in Micros, the changes will not be immediate on the workstations when switching between Currently Available, Not Available, and Limited Availability; however, when updating how many you have on an item already in Limited Availability, the change IS instant.

Let me know if you have any specific questions about the SIM, or run into any problems with it. I have it running at a few sites (maybe.. 8? at this point), and haven't had any complaints.

 

[MZ117]

@Moregelen

Thanks! I'll play with it tomorrow!​