POS (or just register?) Suggestions & Insight Needed

[AJPRATT]

I have researched a few different POS programs and packages. I know this has been discussed at length, but I haven't seen anything recent. Unless I missed it (too many late nights). Would you please share the POS you have/prefer and a compelling reason why or why not? Right now, I am leaning towards CSM. I have also looked into Shelby, Halo, something my credit card guy is trying to sell me, and another small company.

And I thought selecting an espresso machine was tough. :roll:

 

[davidwhatley]

Quick Books?

Ann, have you looked at Quick books? I know they have a POS, and I am considering it. At the shop at church they use a POS by Microsoft, and I must say, The POS fits, but it doesnt mean Point of Sale

 

[AJPRATT]

I didn't even consider them. I don't know anything about it. Hmmm...

 

[davidwhatley]

Heres a Link

http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/ac ... ware.jhtml

 

[AJPRATT]

It looks interesting, but can it do "to go" at any point in the order?

 

[CCafe]

Be careful of purchasing Intuit products. They have a hard-on for planned obsolescence and have no qualms with disabling features just to make you purchase a new copy.

Also they recently did away with their upgrade program, citing it was more cost efficient to charge you the full price then have them carry an upgrade for 1/2 the cost of the retail version. They see it as only having one program instead of two.

Don't get me wrong, I like Intuits Quickbooks. I have Quickbooks Pro 2004, pissed me off though when they decided my version was too old to support emailing estimates and invoices. So they disabled the feature and told me to buy a new copy of 2007 for $200.

 

[AJPRATT]

Thanks for the warning.

I'm surprised others haven't chimed in about what they use in their cafes.

 

[davidwhatley]

Taste

Ann, I will more than likely use QB, as that will also be the accounting software that I use. If you google POS software and coffee, you will find a ton of options. They go from a couple of hundred dollars, to a couple of thousand. I want one that I can use a touch screen with, I am spoiled.
David

 

[AJPRATT]

Thanks, David... I have narrowed it down to a couple I have been looking into. I was curious what others thought, if they have used them or if they know of a reason not to use a certain one.

 

[AJPRATT]

OK, so where are all the usual suspects I expected to chime in? If you use a cash register and it works for you, let me know. Of course, everyone you talk to has "the best", but I want to make sure I make a good decision for my business and I could use some help from the more experienced.

 

[bluenote]

My POS

VitalLink POS is who I bought. I've heard of SelbySoft being used sometimes but have seen first hand their customer service leaves something to be desired.

VitalLink has outstanding customer service and training.

http://www.vitallinkpos.com/VitalLinkOrderEntry.html

~B

 

[nemoscoffee]

We use QB POS along with QB PRo.
It mostly works well for us, but it crashed ALL OF THE TIME in the beginning. Everytime we added a new product in the database, the POS would crash on us sometime in the next 10 hours. It is not a big deal to reboot, but sometimes it would pop up a screen that said we have exceeded our # of software licenses and would not open. That made us crazy. QB POS online help completely ignored all of the emails I sent them, and also did not return any of my calls. I finally figured out that if you go into the CONTROL PANEL > ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS > SERVICES there are various background applications that run to support QBPOS and QB. Some of those background applications randomly turn themselves off. After some three hour sessions of rebooting computers over and over and over and over again, I finally found out that these problems could be fixed in a matter of a couple of minutes in the Services section. Any service that relates to QB or QBPOS should be restarted and it would fix the problems. Some of the services would actually switch themselves to Disables, and you would have to enable then restart them.

I strongly believe that Intuit intentionally puts faults in their software to force you to use their customer service (which costs money after a certain amout of time has gone by). If you are tech savvy enough, you can keep these programs running on your own, but it can be very frustrating.

We spent $1500+ on them and are stuck with them... They work fine once you figure out how to coax them into working...

Good luck,
JD

 

[AJPRATT]

JD: Yikes! I think I would have broken the thing by now.

I have looked into a few POS and at this point, I think Coffee Shop Manager seems to meet our needs. I also like that I have called and emailed at least a hundred different questions and they are always helpful. I know another coffee place in Jersey has CSM and they said that there were a few bugs but they were worked out quickly. I like that the price is on the website and it includes tax and shipping and 90% of the hardware and credit card processing equipment needed. What's not included is stuff like a plain paper/report printer, virus protection, firewall, UPS, etc.

 

[CB]

Question for bluenote

Does this POS support Gift cards and Loyalty cards?
What can we expect the cost to be?

Thanks
CB

 

[Josh]

coffee shop manager, for just software is $2,700. Pretty crazy, it isnt that nice.