Using Aloha POS for Banquets and Collecting Deposit 1

[PCollum]

I'm hoping someone out there has some experience with using Aloha to collect deposits for banquets and special events...

We are a single-site restaurant/bar using Aloha 5.3 TableService POS. We recently expanded our site and have started taking reservations for banquets and special events in private rooms.

When we make a reservation for a banquet we collect a deposit of 1/2 of the total expected bill. Weeks later, at the conclusion of the event, we want to collect the full amount minus the deposit. We don't just want to bill them for the remaining amount, since that will not report taxes correctly (i.e. they will be taxed on the remaining amount, but not on the original deposit they placed weeks earlier). Instead we'd rather ring-in their total bill, add the tax, then subtract their deposit.

I know we can do this by creating a new tender, say call it "CREDIT" or something like that. However we are concerned that, given access to it, servers may misuse the new tender to steal from us (i.e. start crediting things they shouldn't). And we have not found any way to limit access to the new tender to managers only.

I'm not familiar with th House Accounts feature, and the manual doesn't explain it very well. But it doesn't seem to be something that will help with this. (?)

Any other suggestions for this one?

 

[zahead31]

We have been doing this for a while and it has worked great for us.

The deposit is set up as a menu item. On the Miscellaneous tab in Menu Item Maintenance, check the Revenue Item box. These sales are handled the same as gift card sales - not taxed, do not impact gross/net sales. When the deposit is redemeed the day of the event, we have a tender set up called "Party Deposit". The server credits the deposit to the bill using this tender.

I know you mentioned that you do not want to go this way due to possible theft issues. However, if your managers are checking payment types when they take the server's checkout, the manager will see if the server applied the credit to any checks.

Hope this helps

 

[OrtegasBistro]

Thanks zahead31, you confirmed my thinking that a new tender was the right way to go. And you bring up a great point about the theft concern. I forgot about the fact that the managers review the checkouts.

I'll discuss it with the owner. I think we'll go forward with your suggestion.

Thanks again!