Choosing a restaurant and bar POS for a hotel: questions before you buy

A hotel POS (point of sale, the till system for restaurant and bar sales) must do four things a restaurant till does not: separate outlets and price levels, apply board and package rules before pricing, post a charge to the guest's room bill, and close the day with totals that match the PMS. Test all four before you buy.

The restaurant till works. Then the first all-inclusive guest orders a second main course, the waiter charges it to the room, and the bill that reaches the front desk is wrong. The problem is rarely the hardware; it is the rules nobody wrote down before the contract was signed. This article gives you the questions to ask about POS systems for hotels before you sign, so the failures appear in the demo instead of at check-out.

What does a hotel POS need that a restaurant POS does not?#

Four things: separate outlets and price levels, board and package rules applied before the price is set, a charge that lands on the guest's room bill, and a day-end that reconciles with the PMS (property management system, the hotel's core system).

A POS is the till where restaurant and bar sales are recorded. A hotel needs one system across its outlets, not one system per outlet, or you will close three days every night. An outlet is a selling point with its own menu, its own tax treatment and its own reporting line: restaurant, bar, pool bar, lobby café, room service. Ask how many outlets the licence covers and whether each produces its own report.

A price level is the same menu at different prices for different contexts: breakfast included in the rate, à la carte at dinner, room service with a tray charge, a set menu for a group. Ask whether price levels sit on the menu or on the item, and who is allowed to change them.

Guest identification is the hotel-specific test. The till must find the guest by name or room number, show the board basis, and post to the guest's bill. Ask what happens when two guests share a surname or a room has just changed. Permissions matter just as much: a waiter should not be able to void a charge that has already reached the room. Ask which roles exist and whether every void carries a reason and a name.

At day-end, the outlet's totals must reconcile with what the PMS expects to receive. Ask for the reconciliation report, not the sales report; the sales report always looks fine. Then ask both vendors for the same demo: same guest scenario, same outlet, same day-end, on the same day. A written requirements document makes the comparison honest; see this template that makes vendor offers comparable.

How do all-inclusive and half-board rules work at the till?#

The till must know the guest's board basis before it prices anything; otherwise the package turns into a discount the waiter applies by hand, and nobody can audit it later.

Two definitions first. The board basis is the meal arrangement sold with the room: room only, bed and breakfast, half board, full board, all inclusive. A package rule says which items that arrangement includes, in which outlet, at which times, and for how many people.

There are three common ways to handle an included item. A zero-price posting records the item at zero; it still consumes stock and still appears on the bill. An allowance gives the guest a credit to spend freely. A discount takes a percentage off the price. Each produces a different bill, a different stock effect and a different day-end total. Ask which one the vendor uses and watch it happen on screen.

Rules need limits: one main course per person per meal, drinks by the glass rather than the bottle, a time window for lunch. Ask where the limit is enforced, at the till or by a person reviewing the bill afterwards. Overrides must be visible: when a waiter serves outside the package, the bill should show who allowed it, when and why. If the till cannot show that, the front desk will be arguing about it at check-out.

Test with a written scenario before you sign, not with a feature list. For example, a half-board guest orders a second main course and a bottle of wine: what does the bill say, what does the kitchen see, what does the day-end show. Ask how a mid-stay package change is handled, for example a guest upgrading from half board to all inclusive on the second morning. The till must reprice the rest of the stay, not the whole stay.

Do you need kitchen printers or kitchen screens?#

Both move an order from the till to the station that cooks it. The choice is about paper, noise, staff habits and what happens when the connection drops, not about which one is more modern.

Station routing matters more than the output device. The order must split by station, hot kitchen, cold larder, bar, pastry, not print one long ticket at every printer. Course firing is the next question: starters go now, mains go when the waiter says so. Ask whether the system holds courses or prints everything the moment the order is taken.

A kitchen display system (KDS) is a screen at the station showing open tickets and their age. It needs power and a network at the station, and staff who will actually read it instead of walking to the pass. Printers are cheap per station and need no training, but they need paper, they jam, and a printer that is offline is an order nobody cooked. Ask what the till does when a printer or a screen is unreachable: does it warn the waiter at the moment of sending, or does the ticket disappear quietly. Ask for ticket time reporting too, how long from order to fire and from fire to pass. Without that number the kitchen discussion stays an opinion.

How does the till connect to stock, recipes and plate cost?#

Only if the recipe is written down as a list of ingredients and quantities per portion. Without that, the till records sales and the stockroom guesses.

A recipe here means a bill of materials for one portion: ingredient, quantity, unit. The till depletes stock by multiplying that recipe by the number of portions sold. Ask whether recipes are versioned; a price change next month must not rewrite what last month's plate actually cost. Ask what happens with modifiers: no onion, extra cheese, a double portion. Does the recipe adjust, or does the kitchen adjust by hand and the stock figure drift.

Stock counts need rules for waste, staff meals, complimentary items and transfers between outlets. Each of these is a real movement and each needs a place to go. Ask to see the variance report, theoretical use against counted use, per item, with sample data in the demo. That report is the reason to connect stock to the till at all. If recipes are not ready yet, the till can still run; stock accuracy waits. Building the recipe and the portion cost is its own project, and standard recipes and portion cost are worth a separate study.

What happens when the network drops?#

It depends on where the data lives. Ask the vendor to describe in writing what the till can do with no connection, and how it catches up when the connection returns.

In local mode, the till keeps a copy of the menu, the prices and the open bills on the device, and queues the sales until the connection returns. What usually is not available offline is the guest lookup and the room charge, because both live in the PMS. Ask whether the till can hold a room charge locally and post it later, and how the front desk learns that it exists.

Conflicts come next: two tills offline at the same time, the same table, the same room. Ask how the system resolves duplicates, and who reviews them. Ask about time limits too: how long the till will run offline before it refuses to open a new bill, and what staff are supposed to do at that point. Write that instruction down for the team. The test is simple and most buyers skip it: unplug the network in the demo, take an order, charge it to a room, restore the network, and watch what posts and what does not.

Which fiscal device and e-document questions do you ask?#

Ask the vendor what the till can drive, and ask your accountant what your property is obliged to use. Those are two different questions with two different owners.

In Türkiye every sale needs a fiscal document. The form that document takes depends on the taxpayer's scope and on the outlet, and that is an accounting question, not a software question. Two terms come up constantly. ÖKC (yazar kasa) is the fiscal cash register used at an outlet. e-Adisyon is the electronic outlet bill. Which outlets must use which is a matter for your accountant and your tax adviser; this article does not decide it for you.

Ask the vendor: which fiscal devices has this till been connected to, in which outlet, who installs the connection, and who maintains it when it breaks on a Saturday night. Ask the accountant: which document does this outlet issue today, and would a new till change that. Get the answer before the contract, not after the installation. Ask what the till does when the fiscal device is unreachable: block the sale, queue it, or record it and print later. Each answer has a different consequence at the counter. Dates, thresholds and penalties change; confirm your own position with your accountant or legal adviser rather than relying on a vendor's summary.

What must the PMS interface do, and how do you test it?#

Find the guest, post the charge, reverse it, transfer it, and close the day with two sets of totals that agree. Anything less is a manual reconciliation every night. The mechanics of how outlet charges reach the room are worth understanding before you test the interface.

Guest lookup must work by room number and by name, with the board basis visible on the same screen. If the waiter has to open the PMS in another window, the interface is not finished. Posting: the charge lands on the guest's bill with the outlet, the item and the time. Ask what the front desk sees, because that is the version of the charge the guest will argue about.

Reversal: a wrong charge must be voided and reversed, not deleted, and the correction must show on both sides. Ask to see the correction, not just the original posting. Transfer: moving a charge from a guest's bill to a company account or a group master without retyping it. This is where most manual work hides at check-out. Day-end: the outlet's total and the total the PMS received must match, and a difference report must exist for the nights they do not. Finally, PMS down: can the till still take orders and post them when the PMS returns. It is the same question you asked about the network, with a different cause.

What to do next#

Write the seven areas into one page: outlets and price levels, package rules, kitchen routing, stock and recipes, offline behaviour, fiscal devices and the PMS interface. Send the same page to both vendors, and ask each to demonstrate the same scenarios on the same day with sample data. The offer that answers in writing and then shows it on screen is the one worth a second meeting; the offer that answers with adjectives is not.