Point of Sale Systems: Controlling Your Inventory To Increase Bottom Line

Sept. 4, 2009 - PRLog -- One major aspect to running a profitable restaurant is managing the controllable costs, such as food, labor and equipment. Although, controlling food would probably be the most difficult cost.

Simultaneously monitor portion sizes, prevent theft, watch waste and order efficiently must be done in order to manage food costs effectively.

An inventory software will be able to help you identify precisely when your food costs are out of line. Using inventory control software will typically save you 1 to 2 percent of sales, and may perhaps save you much more. And it is savings that drops straight to your bottom line as profit.

Using a POS-based inventory control system, operators will easily spot and solve food cost hindrances clear by just simply focusing on portion control. And when your employees know that the system is carefully keeping track, it eliminate waste as well as theft.

When experiencing food cost problems, a restaurateur will most likely to learn this lesson after a week of using inventory control software.

In his restaurant, he's portion controlling, yield testing and doing a physical inventory, but it wasn’t until he began using inventory software that he began to realize his inventory was out by exactly 2 pounds of chicken every week; coincidentally, it's precisely the same weight as a box. Knowing that, it was relatively easy to specify the source of the problem: a prep cook was stashing a box of goodies every every Saturday evening.

Raising your bottom line

The inventory control program, in a typical restaurant point of sale (POS), the operator will need to set up the software by simply entering their recipes and product costs to the system. The system then tracks the ideal usage based on those recipes and the restaurant’s actual sales.

The inventory control software is also able to track product usage in situations where some orders is not in line with the standard recipe. The operator then can do a physical inventory and generate reports comparing that inventory with the calculated ideal usage in order to spot variances. The software can also be set up to track as many items as the operator chooses.

In a majority of restaurants, in their top 10 items 80% of their food cost problem. Key items are also scheduled in nightly counts and weekly or even monthly counts of some other items.

With a single item alone, over-portioning by 1 ounce per order possibly will cost a restaurant hundreds of dollars in a month. If you eliminate over-portioning on 100 orders per day for 30 days on a $1.67 per pound of one item, may well add up to more than $300.00 in savings or $3600.00 per year!

Better tracking and controls also can help an operator reduce the amount of stock they keep on hand, reducing waste and freeing up cash for other things. If the operator carries too much inventory causes a loss of between 2 percent and 5 percent on an operator's average profit-and-loss statement.

According to one of our clients it was a lot of effort to set up because they have a fairly extensive menu, and by helping them program it properly, we were able to drop their food cost by 2 to 4 percent – a reasonable addition to their bottom line profits.

So if you have a restaurant POS system or are contemplating a purchase make sure you know how to and understand the additional profits that you can gain by learning and using the inventory module of the system accurately.

------------------------------

The author of this article writes for POS-For-Restaurants.com, with over 20  years experience in restaurant point of sale systems, helping restaurant owners nationwide increase their efficiency and bottom-line profits..

Visit http://www.pos-for-restaurants.com for more information on how our national network of restaurant point of sale professionals can help your business achieve greater success in these difficult economic times.

------------------------------

# # #

Searching for the best Restaurant POS System Solution for your business?
We're a National network of POS System Solution Experts who offer better value and features than most "Major National Suppliers"!