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need a pos system

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franwake13

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hey whats up everyone. new to this board and this is my first post. first my name is frank and im opening up a pizza shop down here in nw florida. im fairly new to the pizza game and am always open for ideas and criticism. So, im looking for a POS system that is fairly good and does not cost like 4 grand. Just starting up and the budget is tight. (guess u guys know what thats like) any help u guys can give would be great. i have learned alot from this board and i thank you guys!
—frank
 
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1st of all Frank RUN

haha now to the question you are gonna hear all about the low ends and the high ends so i will start with the low ends
price wise that is i currently use POS Pizza no it does not stand for piece of #$%^ pizza i got into this sytem complete 2cpus, 2printers, & software for under a grand scott is awsome to work with its a cutdown no frills sysytem track orders and sales i bought used xp cpus dymo label printer and a thermal printer set it up and was off and running in about 2 hours after loading menu, delivery areas and streets have used for 4yrs now this is my only POS experience so take it for what its worth

now my next pos is probably gonna be point of success they seem to have a bigger system c/c processing incorporated mktg help and i can use my existing equipment (I THINK) and it starts @ $499.00 and $200 for each additional cpu

so there you go
 
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Welcome aboard.

I’m probably the only guy on the board that uses FREEPOS from Positive Feedback Software. But, I’ll stick to my guns and say its the way to go if you’re looking to cut costs, nothing else comes close. It’s $99.95 per license for lifetime, and you can buy as much hardware as you like, or use your own. If you already own some P-4 computers, you’re 1/2 way there.
 
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My best advice is find the ones that have a free demo that you can download. Play with them and see which one meets your needs and expectations. I chose Point of Success because it did the things I needed at the time and the price was right for what I wanted to spend.
 
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You get what you pay for. 4K is CHEAP for a good POS. We have used Prism by Microworks now for 12 years and without question I would use them again if I were starting over.

We have a 6 station, touch screen system with integrated CC processing, on-line ordering, 4 line caller ID etc. Cost? Probably more 18K if we started from scratch today.

Do your homework and find out what really works, what the systems really do etc. The cheap stable ones can be a good choice but are very limited in where they can go as you want to add capabilities. BTW, if your budget is so tight that you are concerned about a 4K POS you probably DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO GET INTO THIS GAME.
 
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Howdy Frank,
I’ll suggest POS Pizza too. It’s a good reliable system and Scott Slater was always very great to deal with.
Point of success is also good but POS Pizza can get you started alot cheaper. We started out with Paper and Pen
ourselves (11 years ago) as we hadn’t much money. If you listen to Bodega and wait til you save up 100K you’re chances of success may be greater, but then again you may never open at all. Good luck

Paul
 
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We also opened a little over 11 years ago. I bought all the equipment in place (failed PJs) for 35K. I needed to add money for a sign, freezers, dough trays, mixer and some other odds and ends which came to about 15K. POS was 15K. Start-up advertising and other operational costs was another 10K or so before we had much $$ rolling in and that was with the benefit of getting the PJs phone number that still was out there on a fair amount of advertising like the yellow pages.

I think that if I had been there day to day rather than a manager we could have run it from that point without additional $$ input up to the point that we bought our second store. So… 75K with some very lucky windfalls like buying a full buildout for 15% of what it cost to build.

Can it be done on a shoe string? Sure. Are there people on the TT that have done it? Absolutely. But reality is that we see under capitalized newbies around here a couple of times a month and we do not help if we are are not pushing back a bit on the $$ side of things and asking good questions.

Are there functional POS systems that will get the job done on a small scale for less than 4K. I guess there are. Is the size business they can handle what you aspire to? Then fine.

I stand by my statement that if 4K is serious challenge then a new store owner should be having a hard look at the true costs of getting and staying open and comparing that to the resources they have. Sometimes the difference between success and failure is waiting another year or two and saving just the little bit more that gives you the cushion you need to make through the first year.

Sometimes, “never getting open at all” might be the best thing that could happen to you. As a SCORE counselor, I find that some of the most useful advice I have given was that the person seeking advice was not ready. I do not know this person or what the plans and resources look like and perhaps I jumped the gun with my comment, but… I see a red flag when concern about relatively smalls sums is an issue.
 
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I use Point of Success. I have some background with PC’s and have been a tinkerer all my life. For the money, it is as full featured as most POS systems out there AND it is pizza-centric. It has it’s quirks, etc, but the support community is great and I haven’t had to pay for support yet…

As to Bodegahwy’s point, I’m reminded of when we built our current house. We had a budget of x. As we made our “design decisions” we constantly told ourselves that each upgrade was “just another $1000 or just another $2000”. And how could we live without the Bain Ultra Bath Tub? Or the 6" crown instead of the 4" crown. In the end, our upgrades put us $100,000 over our original budget! And we didn’t need any of them. The house would have been the same size, etc without those items. The point being, you must be budget conscious during every phase of startup in any business because little things add up quick. It is as appropriate to keep a tight reign on your startup cost as it is to control your operating costs once you’re running.

A POS is REALLY useful tool (some would argue it’s not even necessary but I’d wholly disagree). But, if you’re willing to tinker a little, you can definitely get a fully functional POS within your budget. However, I would set your requirements for the POS before you set a firm budget. What do you want to get out of the POS? How many terminals do you expect to have long-term? Are you doing delivery-dispatch? Online order? Can you live without touchscreens (we don’t use them and I prefer the mouse and keyboard myself…) What level of maintenance and install are you willing to take on?

Hope this was some help…
 
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There are a ton of variables that determine price. For instance, if you buy software that requires you to buy their hardware, it costs more. HOWEVER, you typically will run into fewer problems because they require specific hardware. Their support techs support a limited scope of hardware and therefore have worked with your exact model recently. As an example, Freepos allows you to use anything you can find. However, when you’re having issues with printing, there’s a limited amount of support you can expect from such a company – I do NOT speak for Freepos. They can offer generic printer support, but when you start asking very specific questions, you’re going to be referred to the vendor (again, this is not specific to Freepos).

Determine what your actual requirements are. You probably need a requirements list and a “nice to have” list. If the software fails on any single requirement, mark it off the list. You can then start making choices based on cost with the “nice to have” list.

One thing I STRONGLY urge you to do is to buy two of those $100 USB external drives. One stays at your house in a safe at all times. You swap them out daily. Day 1, you backup the system to drive 1. It goes home with you that night and goes in the safe. On day 2, you backup the system to drive 2. It goes home with you and drive 1 comes back to work with you the next day. Why a safe? It’s data… it’s somewhat on the “priceless” side. Why not in your car? If your building catches on fire, your car may not make it away from the building. By the way, two drives is the ABSOLUTE least you want. In addition, not instead of, you may want an online backup service as well.

A good POS system IS your business. It has all of your customers, their orders, your costs of products, your inventory, your sales, and your entire accounting system in it. Every attempt I’ve seen at going “completely paperless” has failed. However, the paper has certainly changed. The notebook is gone, and it’s all printed by your printer. You need a soft copy (a backup) to even attempt to re-assemble your business after a disaster (including something as simple as a computer hard drive crash).

If costs are that tight, perhaps you want to start with hand-written paper and upgrade to a POS system when you can afford it.
 
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Hi, I have been open 1 year and 4 months. I started with Revention POS and have been happy with it. If you plan on delivery being a large part of you business I would strongly recommend putting the money in a delivery specific system. I believe the POS has saved us money on labor and mistakes. It was a big chunk of change, but I agree with Bodega. I bought most things used and started with around $100,000. I still had a very hard time in my first winter which is the off season in this very tourist town.
 
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