A point of sale system is an investment in your business. Restaurant or retail, these things can make your life easier. They’re no longer just a way to ring people up faster. They are partners, keeping track of your employee hours, keeping track of your customers and their buying habits, keeping track of your purchasing habits. Most are full blown accounting tools that integrate with your accounting software or payroll company. They track every dollar earned, spent and perhaps stolen. With technology moving at a rapid pace, costs for these systems has come down considerably.
If your Point if Sale System has ever gone down, you know it can be one of the most frustrating and inconvenient things that can happen in your business. Even more so that these things ALWAYS happen during your busy time.
If this has even happened to you I’m sure you’re like everyone else, and you start fearing the worst.
➡️ Is this machine broken?
➡️ What am I going to do about all my customers?
➡️ Calling tech support can be a nightmare!
➡️ How long will it be down for?
No matter what, in these times it’s important to remain calm and remember these steps.
It’s Friday night. Fish fry is going out of the kitchen faster than a juiced up race horse. And just around turn number 3… BAM! System crash!
1️⃣ Reconcile
CALMLY (I cant stress this enough) have your staff take a moment to reconcile their orders. Figure out if the order they just sent to the kitchen actually printed. Figure out which orders are missing. Use hand written tickets temporarily if necessary to continue the flow of your dinner service. If you can keep it together for a few minutes, your guests may never know you had a problem.
2️⃣ Be honest!
Your guests came in tonight for an experience. Fantastic service trumps lack luster food. Part of great service is being honest with your customers. CALMLY (I can’t stress this enough) let your guests know that your computers went down. By being upfront and calm, you’ll be in front of their complaints. The general public grows impatient with what they don’t know. “I’m sorry, our computers went down a moment ago, we have (or can still take) your order, I just wanted to apologize that there may be a short delay as we get them back up and running”. It’s as simple as that. Your guests will accept this much better than if you don’t tell them anything.
3️⃣ Diagnose!
Now that everyone is cool, calm and collected, we need to figure out the root of the issue and your best bet at fixing the problem. Here’s some of the most common issues we run into.
➡️ Frozen screen or dead system.
➡️ No communication between devices.
➡️ Printers aren’t working.
➡️ Credit cards won’t run
Although these seem like major issues, they can all (likely) be solved quickly.
4️⃣ Repair
Now that we’ve pinpointed the issue, it’s time to get things back on track. Here’s a few of the basic fixes to those common issues.
➡️ Frozen / Dead. This is usually the worst of all scenarios for you. You assume the worst and start to panic. If you’re operating a PC based system, just unplug it. Sometimes these things overheat, and just have an error. Unplug it for 20-30 seconds and give it a break. This will cool it down and allow it to reset. Same goes for Tablet based systems as well. Kill the app, turn off the tablet. Allow it a moment to reboot, and hopefully it all goes back to normal
➡️ No communication. 90% of our tech support calls have to do with this. This one is the most frustrating. At the surface, everything seems to be working, but behind the scenes things are on FIRE. Your internet network could have gone down. A common misconception with internet is “Ive got full bars on my station, that means the internet is working”
This isn’t always the case. The communication bars on your tablet are showing a connection to your network router. This means that your system is “talking” to the router, but sometimes there’s no internet behind that. UNPLUG (I can’t stress this enough) your modem, router and any other managed devices. This allows them to reset and grab a new connection. It’s important to unplug the modem and router. Give it 20-30 seconds and plug them back in. Modem first. Once that’s on, turn on the router and hopefully your connection will be stable again.
➡️ Printers aren’t working. You’re sending orders to the kitchen, but they aren’t receiving them. This one is tough because nobody knows there’s a problem until it’s too late. As dumb as it sounds, this issue is most commonly caused because a printer got unplugged or knocked offline. If unplugged, plug it back in. If offline… ⬆️ refer to the previous step.
➡️ Credit Cards won’t run. Most cases, this is a network issue. Transactions “dial out” to the credit card networks to verify that the card is legit, and can verify the funds. Most newer systems will take “offline” payments so you can get your guests taken care of, and deal with the issue when things have cooled off. If that isn’t the case for you, then turning off your swipe/dip device and rebooting is a good option. Also, offline means no internet… (see above step ⬆️). It never hurts to have a back up credit card terminal or mobile device for these occasions. Sure it isn’t the streamlined service you paid thousands for, but in a pinch, this may get you over this hump.
5️⃣ Prevent!
It is never bad practice to give these machines a break. Just like you need rest, so do these machines, so power these things down once in a while. And hopefully the person you rely on for support keeps your system operating on the latest software versions for you so everything stays up to date.
Thank you for taking the time to check this out. If we care enough about you to write these tips and you aren’t a customer of ours, imagine the level of care you’d receive if you are a customer of ours.