Restaurant Point of Sale Systems
Before we go any further, we want to point out that a restaurant point of sale system is a very sophisticated piece of software that works in conjunction with specific items (like printers, touch screens and keyboards) that attach to a computer system. As with any other computer system, you should ALWAYS make sure you have current backup systems. Many times these systems have the ability to perform automated backups too. These are great but there are potential problems here too. We know of a restaurant owner who was very diligent about performing backups every night for all of his data. He even backed up the data to an external hard drive as an extra precaution in case the hard drive on his main computer failed. He felt quite safe and secure with this system...... until thieves broke into his restaurant one night and stole his computer AND his external hard drive. He was dead in the water and had not back up data a few years later when the IRS came knocking and wanted to do an audit.
We have heard similar horror stories about restaurants that burned down and/or were destroyed by a tornado or hurricane. The safest place for your backed up data is off site. Saving $5.00 per month can cost you thousands of dollars in having to reload and reprogram your new point of sale system. Personally, we use both. We have an external hard drive that we back up our data to and an external system too. We use both because it' a little faster to restore data from an external hard drive than online. But we feel secure that we are prepared for any emergency by using both types.
So the lesson here is that you must schedule regular backups to at least an external hard drive and we recommend that you also have all of your data backed up via the internet to an off site location too. There are services like Carbonite and Moxy that will perform off site backups for about $5.00 per month. That's the cheapest insurance you're going to find in the restaurant business.
Next comes the admonition that you must perform regular routine maintenance on the equipment if you expect to perform and to last for years and years. These tasks are usually very simple to do and are mostly for keeping dirt and grime ( and grease, since you are in the restaurant business) out of the equipment. The manufacturer of your system will have a few recommendations for routine maintenance. Be sure they are done at the recommended intervals.
As a last caution, you may want to be sure any printers you are using are not located near any extreme heat source. Many restaurant point of sale systems come with thermal printers as standard equipment. These generally work great but if you let the paper get too hot, like in the kitchen or sitting near a sunny window, the paper will turn black and be useless. In those cases, you can use an ink jet printer or an impact dot matrix printer.
There is a page dedicated to restaurant point of sale system already located on this site. If you look in the right hand sidebar you will see the page for Restaurant POS Systems. That page will give you a lot more information regarding what specifically to look for in a restaurant point of sale system.
