The 21st Century Dual- Cash Register Vs Restaurant POS System

Increasing customer footfall with consistent quality, effective service, and great customer experience is what makes a restaurant successful. However, with rapid technological advancements, it has become a never-ending debate about whether to replace cash registers with modern restaurant POS (Point of Sale) systems or not.

Whether your restaurant is a quick-service restaurant (QSR) or a full-service restaurant (FSR) you’d need a tool to run and manage business operations. Let’s weight both the sides and decide which one suits you and the needs of your restaurant better.

Cash Register

A traditional tool to process sales, generate receipts, calculate taxes, store cash in a cash drawer and print out daily sales reports for bookkeeping to track basic sales and daily progress of the restaurant. Here are its advantages:

1) 19th Century Workhorse

Invented in 1879, cash registers have come a long way. In spite of their limitation in performing modern complex tasks, cash registers have helped businesses achieve efficiency and the fact they still are ringing up sales is a testament to its longevity.

2) Costs

A basic cash register is comparatively cheaper than more sophisticated registers which require separate hardware, for instance, to process credit/debit card and barcode scanners alongside the cash register. However, for a small business to initiate processing cash transactions only, a conventional cash register offers it all.

3) Initiating Sales

Cash registers perform generation of daily sales and sales receipts with ease. Since their task does not involve to go beyond conducting sales and perform less complex tasks, they are suitable for initiating sales for small business.

Restaurant POS System

A modern tool to process all functionality of a cash register plus with a heavy artillery of features that allows any restaurant, large or small, to operate with much higher efficiency. Here are its advantages:

1) Report Detailing

Whether its sales details, employee scheduling and anything that you name it, restaurant POS system has it all. The real reason behind the success of a restaurant POS system is in its ability to give you detailed analysis in real-time from anywhere, at any time. This gives you and your restaurant flexibility to see into operations and progress of your restaurant effectively.

2) Customer Relationship

One-way restaurant POS software proves to be crucial for all sizes and kinds of restaurants is in its sheer ability to manage relationships with the customer like a pro. Whether it’s customer loyalty programs, promotions for customers, tailored promotions for customers and other complex tasks, a restaurant POS software lets you do that with ease.

3) Transparent Transactions

Restaurant POS systems offer transparency in all departments including inventory, periodic sales reports, discount features and much more. However, a POS offers unique and transparent transactions for both the restaurant and the customer. For example, restaurant POS system offers a quick upgrade to changes in tax for the customers and the employee. This promotes transparency and clarity in operation without any payment hiccups.

In conclusion, it is evident that a cash register is suitable for quick and easy transactions, however, they are limited for modern business transactions. For instance, a POS offers an in-depth control of operations; it’s ready to take both the responsibility of traditional cash register and modern transactions; easy to use for the employees; lets you focus on more important tasks rather than manually analyse transactional data into meaningful data, and much more.

India’s #1 restaurant POS software, Petpooja, is a complete solution addressing challenges of all sort and gives your restaurant the competitive edge. To the contrary, restaurant who do not adopt sufficient software is essentially leaving money and time on the table to be utilised by those who do opt for POS software. Furthermore, cloud-based restaurant POS software gives you the flexibility to move around, are easy to learn and affordable works for all sizes of restaurants. Inventory errors, misunderstood customers, lack of employees, depleting revenues due to fraud, or manipulation, and mundane traditional methods should not be costing your sales, money and/or business growth. Ultimately, a POS system gives you more time to manage, employees are able to focus more on customer service and you get to reign in harmony.