Entries Tagged 'Point of Sale Investing' ↓

The tendency is for restaurant and bar owners to try to save money by omitting printers from their point of sale system.  They will try to share a single printer between 2 or more terminals or they will reduce the number of remote printers in the network.  Both of these examples are asking for trouble.

Sharing a Receipt Printer is not the Answer 

If you share a single printer between multiple terminals you are magnifying the workload on that single printer by the number of terminals using it.  This will wear the printer out faster, cause delays in printing and give you a single point of failure for every terminal that uses that printer.

If you are sharing a printer between terminals there will be no savings in supplies.  You will run the same number of transactions, just on fewer printers.  This drastically increases the workload on fewer printers, wearing them out sooner and reducing their overall lifespan.

If that single printer has a problem now every terminal using it has a problem as well.  No guest checks, tickets or chits are being produced.  You have no immediate backup for those terminals and your system is crippled.  It won’t be long before speed of service is severely hindered and your customers start feeling the pain of your problem.

If you are sharing a receipt printer between terminals something as simple as being out of paper will take every terminal using that single printer out of commission.

Eliminating Remote Printers is not the Answer 

Remote printers or kitchen printers have a real purpose in a point of sale system.  They get the order to the prep station quickly and legibly.  In a properly designed point of sale system each prep station will have their own printer, which prints the portion of the order that applies to that station.

Most point of sale systems can have multiple printers in the system, some as many as 6 printers.  This gives the restaurant owner greater flexibility in designing their system.  The benefit is a much smoother kitchen operation and a much more efficient overall operation.

By eliminating remote printers you are causing harm to your business.  Less remote printers will:

• Reduce speed of service
• Increase the opportunity for theft in the kitchen
• Increase confusion and cause wait staff to have to verbally communicate with the kitchen
• Negatively effect your customer’s experience in your business through slower delivery of food and wrong orders

 Is There an Answer to Reducing your Initial Investment? 

Yes, there are some things that you can do to reduce your initial investment in a point of sale system.

• Do some of the work yourself.  In some cases you can eliminate substantial costs by:
  • Running communications cable yourself
  • Installing the hardware yourself
• Buying online instead of paying full retail
• Train yourself.  Don’t pay for training that you or your staff do not need
• Create your own database.  It is your menu so who knows it better than you?  Most POS systems today are easy to enter your menu into.  Try it yourself before paying thousands for someone else to do it. 

The few items listed above can save you between $3,000 – $5,000 in most cases.  Eliminating a printer may reduce the cost of the system by $300, but could cost you much more in the long run.

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www.myposprinter.com

www.myposterminal.com

You would never want your point of sale system to be down because you ran out of paper.  The same is true with regard to not have a supply of ribbons to use when your existing ribbon gets too light to read.

We are not suggesting that you have a warehouse full of backup printers, but we are suggesting that you can almost eliminate your downtime by having a single backup printer for your business.

Receipt and remote printers are the parts of your point of sale system most prone to failure.  They get the most use and have the most wear and tear of any part of your system. If a part of your point of sale system is going to break it will most likely be one of your printers.

The Reality of Service and Repairs

Point of sale dealers today are passing the manufacturer warranty directly to the business owner.  In more and more situations, this means that the dealer that you bought the equipment from is not the person who is repairing the broken hardware.  In most cases, they send the printer off for repair and never get beyond the simple repairs that can be done locally.

What this means for you is less cost of repairs but a longer down time.  In many cases the local dealer will offer you a loaner program.  Sometimes, this loaner program is in the form of a maintenance plan.  Most maintenance plans call for you, the business owner to prepay for a quarterly or annual contract that covers repairs and a loaner.  Look closely at the cost of this contract to fully understand what you are paying for.  You might be shocked at the cost when compared to owning your own backup equipment.

Even in the best of situations you should expect to have hours of downtime if a replacement printer is needed.  Even with your prepaid service agreement the technician has drive time to your place of business or there is shipping time if you are more than a day of travel from the service provider’s office.

In most businesses this is totally unacceptable and can cause significant loss of customer service.  If you are a customer oriented company, this is totally unacceptable.  If you want to have your customers return for future visits then must avoid this situation at all costs.

You Have Backup Ribbons don’t you?

The price of printers are coming down along with the cost of other computer peripherals.  There really is not need for your customers to suffer through the down time caused by a faulty printer.  You keep backup supplies such as ribbons and paper for your printers. You keep other supplies in your operation and you should consider keeping a backup printer as well.

Even if you have a mixture of thermal printers and dot matrix printers in your point of sale system, you should consider having a simple dot matrix printer as a backup.

Printers today are almost all “plug and play” with identical printer drivers.  This makes many of them interchangeable with other makes and models.  In most cases you can exchange a dot matrix printer for a thermal printer without any difficulties.

The only real difference you might encounter is a speed difference between a thermal and dot matrix printer.  Other than that you should not have any major problems exchanging a dot matrix for thermal at the point of sale.

For restaurants, you would not want to put a thermal printer in a kitchen environment simply because the receipt would turn black from the heat in the kitchen.  For this reason, if you only bought a single backup printer for a point of sale system that had both thermal and dot matrix printers it would probably be a dot matrix printer.

What Printer to Buy?

Look at your point of sale printer to determine what type of interface it is.  Many point of sale systems will use serial printers at all locations.  This makes buying a replacement printer extremely simple.  You need only buy a serial printer to backup all printers in your system.

In systems where a parallel printer is used as the point of sale receipt printer and a serial or Ethernet printer is used for the remote printer you will need to buy 2 different printers as most printers do not have multiple interfaces.

Note that I said most, as there are some printers that do have multiple interfaces.  Please be sure before you buy that the printer truly will work with multiple interfaces.

The Benefits to You

This is easy. Downtime is reduced from hours or days to a matter of minutes.  In the time it takes to call your service provider you could have already exchanged the broken printer and be back up servicing your customers. Now the situation is not as critical and your service provider can either dispatch a technician to gather your broken printer and send it off for service.

You are not as stressed by having your point of sale system be crippled by a down printer.

Your customers are not inconvenienced by not receiving a receipt, guest check or by having their food come out of the kitchen slow because the kitchen printer is down.

The steps to find the printer you need takes a few steps on the computer with an Internet connection. There is truly no mystery and the results can be very enlightening to you, the business owner.

Step 1 – Open the browser

This may sound elementary but this helps me make the point of just how easy this is. Open your favorite browser and connect to the Internet.

Step 2 – Pick a search engine

Now, go to your favorite search engine. The top 3 are Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Step 3 – Enter the search query

From your POS printer get the manufacturer name and model number. Not the serial number, but the model number. Enter this into the search engine query box and then click “Search”.

The Results

You will now probably see hundreds of thousands of results regarding your POS printer. Don’t be surprised as this is the power of the Internet and the major search engines that help you manage the information on the web.

Mixed in these results you will find:

• Articles about your printer
• Software drivers to help your printer operate properly
• Support sites for your printer
• Repair sites for your printer
• The manufacturer site for your printer
• Hundreds of sites that will sell you a new replacement printer

People who use search engines rarely go beyond the first 3 pages of results to find what they want. On the page you will find the top 10 results for the search phrase you entered. The results shown in the middle of the page are there naturally. By that I mean that they obtained this ranking through having information on their site that matched what you are looking for. These are usually good links to find what you are looking for.

Sponsored results can be found at the top and down the side of the page. These links are displayed for sites that have paid a price to have their sites ranked for the search phrase you entered. If you click on one of these ads you will be taken directly to that site and their account with the search engine will be charged for that click. It does not cost you, only the site that you are taken to.

Finally, on some search engines products are displayed at the top or bottom of the page that match your search phrase. These links are generally a single line of text with a price to the right. These are not sponsored results and do not cost the site if you click on the link. These results are usually extremely good links and will have what you are looking for.

What Next?

If you need a POS printer now you should shop and compare then make your purchase. In as few as a couple of days your replacement POS printer will be delivered to you.

If you don’t need a POS printer now you can always compare sites and then save your selection to your browser favorites. This will allow you to quickly return to the site in the future when you need to replace you POS printer.

Finally, remember that replacing your POS equipment is just not hard to do. Computer equipment is not as complicated as some would have you believe. It doesn’t take special training, certification or a college degree to replace POS printers, monitors and scanners. All of these are plug and play devices that are simple to replace.

You would not call an electrician to replace a light bulb in a lamp and you should not call a technician to replace a POS printer.

Administrator
My POS Printer

Prices of computer hardware continue to drop and increase in features and functions. This is to the advantage of the consumer. However, many consumers do not take full advantage of this situation.

Point of sale equipment that is computer based follows this pattern of drops in price and increase in features. An entire industry flourishes behind a cloak of mystery regarding point of sale hardware, software and systems. In large part, business owners continue to pour money into the pockets of dealers who continue to overcharge for repair and replacement parts, including printers.

POS Printer Repair – What you get

Let’s take a look at what most people do with a broken printer. They will attempt to repair the printer through their local dealer.

A call is placed to the dealer who will ask questions of the business owner to determine if the printer is truly broken or if the problem could be a software, cable or power issue. Yes, there are truly repair calls that are solved by properly plugging the printer power supply into the electrical outlet.

If the printer is determined to be broken a technician will come to pick it up. If there is a prior agreement with the dealer a temporary loaner printer may be substituted while the repairs are done.

Many dealers have now gone to a flat-fee for printer repairs. They will charge this fee plus parts to repair the printer. Parts are charged at full list price and will range as high as $125 – $150. Charges higher than that are generally not charged as they exceed the cost of a new printer.

In total, the charge to repair a POS printer should never exceed $300 as you could get a new printer for that amount. However, a repaired printer will not carry forward the full warranty like a new printer will. You will probably only have a 30 – 90 day warranty on the repairs. That means if this same printer goes down again in 91 days you are going to have to do this all over again.

POS Printer Replacement – What you get if a dealer does it

Replacing a POS printer is much simpler and quicker than repairing. This is largely due to the fact that most dealers do not repair the printer themselves. They actually send the printer to a repair depot to be serviced remotely and then returned. This repair process can take weeks and in the worst cases a month or more.

Replacement printers are often kept in stock by local dealers. If not, they can obtain a replacement printer from one of their vendors in a day or two. However, be prepared to pay full price with a dealer margin in excess of 40%. This could easily drive the replacement cost of a POS printer to the $500 mark.

At least with a new replacement printer you will start the clock on a new warranty period. The problem with this is how much of this new warranty is passed to you by the dealer. I am sorry to say that a great many dealers will pass 1 year of the 3 years of warranty offered by the manufacturer.

POS Printer Replacement – What you get if you do it

Let’s take a look at what you get if you source the replacement printer via the Internet. You may be shocked at how easy it is and how much you get for less money.

First, you get the same printer that you get from the dealer. You may even get the printer from the same warehouse that the dealer buys from.

Next, you pay far less because you are eliminating the dealer margin. In some cases this is in excess of 40%.

Finally, you get the full manufacturer warranty. In the case of POS printers this is usually 3 years or more. What this means is that you will contact the printer manufacturer who will then direct you to the nearest warranty repair center who will repair the printer and bill the manufacturer.

Want to know the really funny part of this? In a great many cases you will find that the dealer you were doing business with is the printer warranty repair center. Remember how they only passed a year of the 3 year manufacturer warranty? That means that they charge their customers to repair the printer and still get the warranty paid for by the printer manufacturer.

DIY is easier than you think

It no longer takes certification, special training or a college degree to change out a POS printer. A 12-year old can do it without a screw driver. Then why can’t you? Only because you have not tried.

The next time you pass by your point of sale system take a look at the printer. Look at the cables in the back. There are probably a maximum of 3 cables that plug into the same connectors on the replacement printer. Each cable has a different connector and will only fit the identical plug on the replacement printer. No tools required and no training is necessary.

You wouldn’t call an electrician to replace a light bulb in a lamp and you should not call a technician to replace a POS printer.

Administrator
My POS Printer

I am still amazed by business owners who are wanting, even asking to pay for training on their new computer and point of sale systems. I am not talking about $25 – $50 per hour here. I am talking 8-hour days at $750 per day. That equates to thousands of dollars in just a few days. How does this make sense? Read on and you will find out that it does not make any sense at all.

There was Time Training Required

Just a few years ago setting up computers was difficult for someone with training and next to impossible for the average business owner. It took a 4-year degree to program software. It also took special certification classes to be able to train someone how to use a piece of software.

There was a time in the past when training was required for accounting programs that ran on desktop computers. An entire week of 8-hour days was required whenever you bought an accounting package for your business.

The installation procedure in year’s past would have taken all day. This was a cost of ownership that you no longer have due to the intelligence built into more modern software applications.

Would you pay Thousands to Install a $50 Accounting Package?

Of course not! You would not consider paying someone thousands of dollars to install a software package that installed itself. Then why would you do the same for any other software package?

Today, that same accounting software package mentioned above can be bought online or off the shelf of any office supply store. You insert the CD into your computer’s drive and the software will install itself. A series of wizards will ask you questions to set up your company’s profile and within a few minutes your new accounting program is installed and ready for input.

After installation, you can watch online tutorials and read content sensitive help that will answer almost any question that you might have. If you have a question that is not answered in the help files you can always go to your favorite search engine and ask the question there. Hundreds, if not thousands of results will instantly be displayed to help obtain and answer.

You Should Not Pay Thousands to Install a Point of Sale System

Point of sale software has become increasingly easy to install and train in the past few years. Yes, there are packages with proprietary databases and others that have purposely kept their systems difficult. In these cases you will find that they are sold by exclusive dealerships that have a protected territory to keep other like dealers out of their area.

These dealerships have paid a premium for this territory, much like a franchise would pay for a specific area to market in. The products they represent are purposely difficult and if you wish to do business with them be prepared to pay their price.

You do have a choice. There are now dozens of options in selecting a new point of sale system. No matter if you are a restaurant or retail operation you have choices that are easy to install, train and maintain.

Some of your choices have dedicated support websites with dozens of training videos and set up documents. A few minutes watching tutorials can save you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in training expenses.

Your Savings can be 25% to 33%

Really, no joke. Look at the dealer’s proposal. Between 25% – 33% of the total cost of the system is setup, programming and training. Most or all of this you do not need.

Yes, someone is going to have to install the software. OK, in most cases the CD with the software will auto run and install itself. Ask. This is a question you should know before paying someone to do the work.

Yes, someone is going to have to build the menu if you are a restaurant or build the department and sub-department structure if you are a retail operation. That is where the tutorials and set up documents will come in handy.

How much training will you need? I am here to tell you that if you have already been trained on one point of sale system that others are not that much different. Once you get into the software you will find them remarkably the same.

What if I am Wrong?

What if I am wrong about how easy/hard it is? Go back to where you bought it from and buy some training. The dealership will be glad to see you.

At least, trying it by yourself first will give you the opportunity to save the money.

Remember this one fact. I know of a point of sale software company that has been selling via the Internet for 4 years. They have thousands of installations nationwide. In that time 95% of their customers have installed the software themselves. None have ever had a technician come onsite to install a system and none have ever had a service call that could not be handled via the phone.

Can you truly do it yourself? Yes, you can.

Administrator
My POS Printer

Computers are less of a mystery than they were 20 years ago. E-mail is more and more popular, more and more homes are getting high speed Internet access and every business that is serious about business has a computer or computerized cash register.

When computers were first introduced they may have been a mystery to those amongst us who were untrained. However, over the past several years business owners have become savvier with regard to computers in the workplace.

New employees start with a knowledge of point of sale systems, having worked on them at previous jobs. Learning systems at their new jobs takes less than 15 minutes, especially with the software currently being installed at businesses.

Why Pay for Unnecessary Training?

Smart business owners are installing new point of sale systems themselves and skipping the expensive training that they used to have forced down their throat. There was a time when the installing dealer would charge thousands to install, setup and train their new business owner for the system being installed. Business owners who paid for this training once are finding that they no longer need to pay again for this training.

Yes, software developers do make their package unique in appearance. However, once you get past the appearance you will find that the software is extremely similar in functionality. Think about it. If you can add an item to one software package do you think you could load the same item in another package? Probably so, especially with the help screens and searchable manual that will come with the new package.

Your employees are also coming to you pre-trained by previous employers. This is a valuable asset that you should not take for granted. Training on a new cash register or point of sale system is becoming totally unnecessary and a waste of your valuable money.

Only pay for what you need

If you need training then pay for what you need and not the huge price that the dealer is asking. If this is not your first system then you probably won’t need days of training. You may not even need a full day of training.

Your first step should be to take the manual and get on the system to see how much you are comfortable with. You may be shocked at how much you already know and don’t need any training on at all.

Next, write down your questions on the topics you need help on. Present these questions to the installing dealer and ask them for assistance in these areas instead of a broader spectrum of instruction.

You may even get lucky and find a dealer that does not charge for questions presented in an E-mail format. If you do, take advantage of this opportunity and get your answers that way.

If you must purchase assistance you should consider purchasing help by the hour or maybe a block of hours but you should avoid days and days of help as you probably will not need as much help as they would like to charge for.

Point of Sale Software is no Longer a Mystery

Software developers have been pressured in recent years to produce software that is easier to install, train and maintain. Internet websites have popped up to assist the do-it-yourselfer truly do it themselves.

There once was a time you needed help installing, understanding and maintaining your cash register and point of sale system. That time has passed. You should at least attempt to see how much you already know before you pay the thousands and thousands the point of sale dealers are going to want to install and train on your new system.

My POS Printer