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Cost of a POS System

Using a Cash Register vs. a POS (Point of Sale) System

How to Run a Successful Hookah Bar

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Cost of a POS System

December 28th 2009 15:31

When starting a business, there are always several expenses you have to incur in order to make that business function properly. While some expenses can be avoided at the beginning to make sure you are sticking to your budget, some expenses are necessary from the beginning. One of these necessary expenses is what we can call the cash management system, the transactions management system, the traditional cash register, or the elaborate computerized point of sale (POS) system.

This is necessary for that it enables your business to handle transactions on a daily basis, to process payments, and to report sales, taxes, and labor time sheet. A POS system has far more benefits to a business than just processing transactions and payments, but for the sake of the subject of this article we will not detail these benefits here. However, if you’d like to know more about what a POS system can do for your business, read my other article “The Benefits of a POS System”.

There are hundreds and hundreds of POS systems out there that range from the $2000 to the $6000 depending on multiple factors that we will discuss in this article. The first thing to keep in mind is that the systems for $2000 are not the best value for the price, and the systems for $6000 are not the best because they are the most expensive. There are several things that can be included or excluded from the price of a system that you need to be aware of in order to make the right decision.

The following shows the different components as well as the services that need to be included in a complete POS system package for three different kinds of businesses. There are also two different types of POS systems: the All-in-One system, and the Component system.
Restaurant, Bar, or Coffee Shop

pos package, point of sale, computer, touch screen monitor, solution

Click here to get a detailed quote

Frozen Yogurt, or Candy Shop

pos system package, computer, touch screen monitor, pos solution, point of sale,

Click here to get a detailed quote

Retail, or Liquor Store

Click here to get a detailed quote

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Using a Cash Register vs. a POS (Point of Sale) System

December 26th 2009 22:13

Businesses using cash register are most likely very familiar with the following problems and they maybe face them on a daily basis:

Clueless Cashier, cash register, pos system

-Not able to keep accurate track of employees clocking in and out: having to do that manually enables for error which can cost you money in the form of extra time you are paying for. The few extra minutes each time an employee clocks in or out can add up quickly and in the course of just one year sums up to thousands of dollars especially if you have many employees.
In addition to that, the extra time you have to spend yourself to manually or using an excel spreadsheet calculate the hours and minutes of each employee for each shift then converting that to a decimal number so you can multiply it by each employees hourly rate to determine their pay. It’s just too complicated, isn’t it?

-Inputting all the items you sell can get too complicated as well. The number of buttons in a cash register is limited which is going to force you to use different combinations of buttons in order to account for all the products you sell. Well, this is very time consuming to start with, besides that you have to make a list of all your products and their corresponding combinations. It will also consume more of your time and your employees to memorize all this or you have to look at that list every time you are ringing up a customer. A touch screen monitor with your menu on it sounds a better alternative by now, don’t you think so?

cash, pos system, business, coffee shop, retail

On the other hand, you might think you avoided all this mess and just input the price for each item purchased as you go. Well, you probably figured it wasn’t really a good idea once you thought about running a sales report to understand what is selling more.
Even in the other case, the best report a cash register can give you is the number of times each item sold. If you are a sophisticated business owner who’d like to understand the purchasing trends of his customers or to figure out your best sellers, the busiest and the slowest hours of the day, the number of times customers used a coupon, etc… then cash register is not your best course of action. If you are skeptical still about the benefits of knowing all that information, please read my other article “How to use your POS system to promote your business and better manage it”.

-Most businesses run promotions and use discounts to attract new customers and to reward loyal existing ones. If you ever thought about doing so, your cash register most likely discouraged you because you have no clue how to keep track of customer information, how to measure the impact of these promotions or coupons, how to charge different price for the same item during happy hours, how to input discounts when applicable and how to account for these discounts at the end of the day, and so on.
Well, promotions and discounts are a very powerful tool to increase your revenues and enlarge your customer base; if you are not using them you are definitely losing money because money that is not made is money that is lost.
Also, most businesses nowadays use gift cards. Gift cards are a free advertising tool that helps increase brand awareness among consumers, a tool to bring new customers to your establishment, and a guarantee that your existing customers are going to be back. Now forget about all these features if you are using a cash register unless you are willing to pay high rates to your merchant services provider to process gift cards transactions for you.

-Reports are very important to managing your business; cash register reports are very outdated and not very useful because they only show you your total sales and maybe the breakdown of that total. Now, you have to record those sales manually every night to a separate spreadsheet to keep track of weekly sales, monthly sales, taxes, and other financial data that you will need for your accounting. In addition to that, if you accept credit cards you are required to run these transactions separately in a stand alone terminal but you have to ring them up in the cash register as cash transactions. Then at the end of the day, you need to run your daily credit card transactions report and then adjust your daily sales report to distinguish the cash sales from the credit card sales.

-You cannot integrate a credit card terminal to a cash register, so as mentioed in the last paragraph in order to process credit card transactions you will need to have a stand alone terminal that is very slow to use and very unpractical for busy places. We all have been somewhere where the cashier rings up our order in the register which already takes some of our valuable time, then takes your credit card, swipes it in the terminal, waits few seconds, enters the dollar amount, then processes it. The worst part is yet to come, because of the type of connectivity between these terminals and the merchant services provider it takes too long for that receipt to print which you have to sign then of course. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't we all wonder at that point why are they using an outdated technology and why did we decide to walk in this store rather than the one next door.

POS, POINT OF SALE, cash handling, business, manage your cafe, bistro, deli,

-Have you even been to a restaurant, bar, or a café where you see your order taken on a piece of paper; then when you are done and ready to pay you see the waiter or waitress browsing through bunch of similar papers, pulls out your order, uses a small calculator and counts the total of your order, then brings you the hand written total? We all did at a certain point in time and it doesn’t make the business look professional or efficient. It actually makes you look very bad especially if your competitor next door does not use a cash register like you do.
Well, if you think it’s time to switch from your old fashioned cash register to a more modern Point of sale system that can help you better manager your operations, save you time and money, and enable your business to grow click here.
Read what other business owners who use a POS systems have to say.
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How to Run a Successful Hookah Bar

December 17th 2009 00:35

The good news is, if you are thinking about opening a Hookah bar, that the chances of your business failing are extremely slim for two main reasons:

First, starting a Hookah bar is a very low cost investment. This article is dedicated to discussing the factors that enable you to run your Hookah bar efficiently and effectively in order to generate the most out of your investment; to review the breakdown of the investment you need, and the details of your fixed and variable costs please refer to the article entitled “How much it costs to start a Hookah bar”.

Second, the Hookah industry in the US is a new and a booming industry where the demand is high and growing, and the supply is still limited. Hookah bars, even though few of them has opened long time ago in the US, only marketed to ethnicities such as Arab and Persian communities in the US until recently. The discovery of Hookah by Americans in the last couple of years has resulted in a substantial growth in demand and supply of Hookahs.

Running a Hookah bar is almost a guaranteed profitable business; however generating the most out of your investment demands the presence of the following factors: the setting, the employees, the menu, the inventory, and the point of sale.

First, Hookah is a very social product, to a certain extent you can compare it to wine. People who smoke Hookah around the world enjoy it not only for the sake of smoking, but also for the atmosphere it creates where a group of people gather around and engage in conversations while listening to music. In addition to that, Hookah takes typically an hour to be consumed. Accordingly, the existence of a comfortable setting is very crucial to create a cozy environment where customers can enjoy smoking their Hookahs; imagine spending couple of hours in an uncomfortable chair in a place with an irritating lighting and an awful choice of music. So make sure you set up that cozy environment, provide coaches and big chairs preferably with arms, choose wall colors that do not irritate the eye, dim the lights a little bit, have a good and diverse music playing list, play it loud but not too loud that your customers cannot hear each other, and provide some social games such as cards and backgammon. Always remember, if your customers feel comfortable and don’t feel the time passing by, they will always come back and in the case of Hookah smokers they will do on a daily basis.

Second, the quality of your employees is very crucial to the success of your business notably in Hookah bars. The best structure to use is to have two departments of labor: you will need employees for the back of the house, and employees for its front. In other words, don’t make the mistake of hiring the same person to make the Hookah and serve it as well. Here’s why: on one hand, making the Hookah is similar to making a cappuccino. The product needs to be consistent; having different people make the Hookah will make its quality vary from good to bad depending on the skills of the person making it. On another hand, you will need to train everybody on how to make it; therefore the process will cost you time and time is money. In addition to that, the consistency will be nonexistent.
So, here’s the optimal formula for hiring your employees
- With operations based on 2 shifts a day and 7 days a week, you will need to hire 3 to 4 full time Hookah makers. Your Hookah makers are very important to the success of your business because they will be responsible for the quality of your product. Make the best of them in charge of the group and assign him your busiest hours. - Hookah customers are somewhat picky and difficult. Make sure your waiters and waitresses are patient and keep a smile on their faces. When selecting your employees, try to pick them from different ethnic backgrounds. To emphasize again on the social nature of your product, having a multi-ethnic labor structure will help you draw customers from different ethnic backgrounds making your premise socially more interesting. In addition to that, make sure your employees are talkative because Hookah customers like to talk.

Third, you need to build an extensive menu offering a wide range of regular flavors as well as specialty flavors. Please refer to our article entitled “How to build your Hookah menu?” to find out about the structure of the menu, the list of flavors, and how to make your own specialty flavors.

Fourth, keeping an accurate record of your inventory is very essential to the success of your operations. On one hand, maintaining an accurate record of your inventory will enable you to minimize theft, waste, and overstocking fees; on another hand, it will enable you to better analyze your customer trends, better identify your bestsellers, and therefore better serve your clientele needs. By maintaining an accurate track of your inventory, first you will be able to minimize theft-which could be a substantial problem given that the cost of the tobacco makes up most of the cost of preparing the hookah. Second, running a just-in-time inventory thanks to a precise tracking of your consumption and ordering will eliminate waste and overstocking fees by eliminating over ordering. Third, knowing your bestsellers will enable you to focus more on these products and structure your ordering in order to carry an inventory that better serves the needs of your customers rather than carrying all types of products regardless of their demand.

Fifth, the POS system you will adopt will play a vital role in the success of your operations unlike many business owners might think. In addition to its most basic functions such as taking orders, processing credit card transactions, and keeping record of your daily sales, a POS system that is tailored to your specific business needs makes a huge difference in terms of simplifying your daily operations and inventory tracking, as well as minimizing your training costs in a high labor turn-over business. Here’s what a tailored POS system can offer you as opposed to a regular one:

· a/ list of all the popular brands of tobacco
Hookah Menu Screen Shot

hookah menu, hookah, shisha menu, hookah flavors

· b/ sub lists of all the flavors from each brand

· c/ list of all the popular combinations of flavors

· d/ simplified order taking process that will enable you to upsell your customers easily just by following the steps indicated on the screen ( can make all of your employees look like bright salespeople)

· e/ inventory tracking tools

· f/ sales tracking tools that enable you to identify i/your bestsellers and focus on them ii/your weak performers and either promote them more and use them as specials in slow times or get rid of them and avoid waste in your next orders.
· g/ ordering tools
In addition to that, a tailored POS system such as “Habibi 3200” has many other advantages over regular POS systems for you whether you are starting your business or trying to upgrade it. Refer to this page to compare the functions of “Habibi 3200” in respect to most of other competing brands in the market.

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December 2009

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