In our today’s economy, every cent counts and adding them to your bottom line is possible in the middle of economic crisis. Are are some steps that will increase your profits, by boosting your sales, reducing debit card fees and expenses, and most of all block theft.

In the food service industry, if you’re running a restaurant point of sale system then this simple tips can greatly help you grow your business!

Checks

Checks are still widely used, especially among older customers. So if you have not been accepting checks, start soon. There are POS equipments that can scan checks as fast as credit cards, measure them against a nationwide database of bad check writers, electronically deposit the money, and can guarantee that funds will be delivered to you within a couple of days. In addition, the cost is typically lower than for credit cards and could add 10-15 percent to sales—and possibly more if you have many senior customers.

Accepting Credit Cards

If you do accept credit cards, you’re probably accepting Visa and MasterCard already. But what about Discover and American Express? Particularly, the latter accompanies larger transactions in general. If you’ve hesitated because the fee is higher, reconsider—you may also think that it’s not worth it even a 1% difference, and because American Express transactions are often larger than those of other cards, you’ll make it up in gross profit. Furthermore, customers will coming back because they’ll know that your business accepts all forms of credit cards.

Researching

Most merchants think their fees are 1.69% plus an additional $.19 because that’s their qualified rate on a pricing program tier. Though fewer than 20 of 100 transactions receives low qualified rate and all the rest downgrade and cost one, two, or even three percent. By researching for alternate programs that offer different interchange rates that may end up saving more than what you’ve expected.

Insist of Understanding Rather Than Having a Conflict

Neither you nor your bookkeeper would have to scratch the back of your heads over a complex credit card statement that just doesn’t fit. A few companies have made extraordinary efforts to simplify these reports. You should be able to reconcile your statement and rates without exceeding 15 minutes.

Getting Your Reports Online

The post office is slow, don’t wait any longer for them to deliver you a letter of disputing a charge. Using the internet, you will know within 24 hours, which ables you to aggressively defend against chargebacks. With a quick response, it can increase your success rates and reduce your losses.

No need to scratch your head over complex credit card statements and for your bookkeeper as well.

Use the Card Validation Value and Address Verification System. They are highly effective fraud screens proven to reduce losses, and when using them correctly, you obtain the lowest possible rate for discounts.

In addition, you need to avoid hackers by being PCI compliant. Hackers can cause merchants huge fines, and drive them out of business. Find time to read Visa’s report on noncompliant systems, be alert at all cost.

Taking Care Of Chargebacks

If you run an online business, either by internet orders or by phone, it’s always a great idea to implement the “Verified by Visa” or “MasterCard Secure Code” plug-in on your web site. This will eliminate cardholder nonauthorization chargebacks. Liability for these chargebacks is shifted away back to the issuing card bank, and you qualify for the lowest discount rate available. Just by following this simple step, you can eliminate up to 80% of all chargebacks and increase your profits.

With over 20 years of restaurant point of sale experience and helping businesses in the food-service industry nationwide increase their efficiency and bottom-line profits, the author of this article is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants.com.

You may visit POS-For-Restaurants.com for further understanding of how our national network of restaurant point of sale professionals can help your business achieve greater success in these difficult economic times.

At Contactless, a leading provider of advanced, open-standard contactless chip technologies, and First Data, a global leader in electronic commerce and payment processing services, announced that they have signed an agreement for 3 years to develop contactless payment stickers, which First Data will market as GO-Tag products. With this agreement, INSIDE will supply MicroPass payment sticker prelams exclusively to First Data-qualified card manufacturers for production.

The agreement leverages the core technology from INSIDE Contactless and the issuing and transaction processing power of First Data. GO-Tag products will be marketed by First Data to major U.S. merchants, financial institutions, and other distribution channels in a variety of form factors.

First Data’s GO-Tag Solution represents a very important step into the future plastic cards and fobs, and offers a bridge to the future of mobile payments according to Barry McCarthy, the general manager of Mobile Commerce and Point of Sale Solutions at First Data. “Our partnership with INSIDE Contactless enables us to offer consumers an opportunity to turn just about any personal item, from a mobile phone to an employee ID badge, into a payment device.”

According to Charles Walton, executive vice president of payments for INSIDE Contactless, the agreement highlighted the versatility of the MicroPass platform to support a variety of contactless payment applications and form factors, also stickers.

You might also want to consider updating your restaurant POS system to Contactless credit card acceptance in the near future, because their technology is becoming more and more common in the marketplace. And we all know that customer service is all about the speed and fast transaction to a restaurant point of sale terminal, the better the service is the better your customer experience will reflect on the value of your services.

The author of this article is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants.com with over 20 years experience helping restaurants nationwide increase their efficiency and bottom-line profits using restaurant POS systems.

To learn on how our national POS network of restaurant point of sale professionals can help your business achieve greater success in these difficult economic times, visit POS-For-Restaurants.com.

If you want to run your restaurant business to success, learn the basics: good food, good service and the right location. But today, there’s an addition to these basics: a reliable software to run your POS systems.

Even though physical components like the monitors and computers are the most visible, the software is the core of your POS system. Doing a careful evaluation of restaurant POS software is key to getting a system that will satisfy your customers and staff.

Looking for the right restaurant software
First, it’s important to know what exactly you need the software to do. Your restaurant POS software should be able to handle checks per diner or per table, track orders per server, has the ability to move bar diners to the table, manage waiting lists and reservations, and more.

Once you’ve found that restaurant software that can meet your basic requirements, give it a test drive to learn how to use it. Even though there would be a learning curve for your staff when you purchase a new POS system, and since a POS software is easy to learn and navigate it can save you time on staff training.

You may have a couple of your staff to to be involved in the evaluation of the software while testing it. They may try different kinds of inputs and changes to the system that can cause problems with some software.

• Security – create login accounts for each employee. With this you are able to limit your employees’ access to some reports as well as the functions (such as comping meals) to managers, if desired.
• Flexibility – servers should be able to manipulate checks to match your patrons’ whims: easily splitting checks and tracking special orders, for example.
• Reporting – one the main advantages of restaurant software for owners and managers is the detailed reporting available. So you better make sure the software you choose gets the neccessary detailed information on your business transactions either by per server or over all sales from day-to-day or annually.
• Multiple location support – if applicable, make sure that your POS system is able to track and record on multiple locations, including local differences in staffing and pricing.

Don’t forget your hardware
Of course you’ll need to invest in restaurant POS hardware as well: computers to run the restaurant software on, touch-screen displays for servers to enter order, and printers to produce order slips for the kitchen. Along with POS software is hardware – the biggest hardware decision you’ll have to make is how many stations you need.

Think you need more learning when it comes to searching for the right POS dealer? You can read more information and get free unbiased quotes from the Restaurant POS professionals serving your area.

The author of this article is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants with over 20 years of POS experience meeting the automation needs of restaurants of all types throughout the U.S.