It’s bound to happen at some point. Your bar will lose internet connectivity, which can potentially put business at a stand-still. Don’t let that happen to you!
Here are 4 survival tactics to help you strategize and implement a plan for when your POS is offline in your bar, restaurant, or nightclub:
1. Develop an action plan for system outages.
The inevitable has happened- your network is down, your POS is offline in your bar, and customers are three-deep waiting to get served. But you’re not worried. Why? Because you’ve developed an action plan for this exact scenario.
By making sure that all managers and staff know exactly what to do when the internet goes out or you lose connectivity you don’t need to panic and neither do your employees. Assign roles and responsibilities for both front of the house and back of the house staff, especially if you are serving food at your bar, it will be essential to have a communication plan to keep the kitchen moving.
Offline Action Plan Tips:
- Have your IT support’s phone number or email address readily accessible
- Periodically update and review your offline plan with managers and staff
- Update staff periodically as to the status and ETA of getting back online
2. Have a POS that can function offline.
Your bar or nightclub doesn’t have to come to a halt just because the internet goes out, even if you have a cloud-based POS. Time is money in our industry and reliability is essential from your point of sale system, especially when it comes to offline functionality. Invest in a system that can keep operating without internet connection, which provides an extra layer of flexibility that you need in the high-volume, fast-paced bar or club.
Systems with a peer-to-peer function are still able to communicate with one-another without the dependence on the internet, meaning that your staff can all stay on the same page without missing a beat. Your customers benefit too, as they won’t even notice anything out of the ordinary, providing them with the best customer experience possible.
Also, with a system that can still process card transactions when you POS is offline you can avoid turning guests away if they don’t have cash.
3. Be on the watch for employee theft.
Unfortunately, when your POS is offline, it creates increased opportunities for employee theft. Whether from pocketing cash from tabs being closed out or giving away free drinks, it is a real problem that all bar owners face. Remind employees that inventory will still be measured and that all drinks and orders need to be rung up on the point of sale, even when they system goes down.
4. Have a data restoration strategy to account for offline sales.
After an offline POS event, you’ll have to reconcile offline sales with your cloud-based point of sale database and any credit card transactions need to push through to the processor. Designate a someone in your organization like a manager, or even yourself, that is responsible for making sure the restoration occurs as soon as possible.
Syncing data to the cloud as a routine practice and having that data backed up daily from a secure location is also an important aspect of fully restoring your system after an outage.
Rely on Paradise POS
When your POS is offline it doesn’t mean that you need to shut down or that your restaurant, bar, or nightclub has to suffer. With the right tools, like a point of sale from Paradise POS that has offline capabilities, you can do more than simply survive offline.
Planning for an offline event helps you and your staff know what to do in case one occurs. It also gives you an advantage in knowing that your sales are accounted for when your POS system is offline.
Discover Paradise POS Nightclub and Bar POS, built on Apple’s simple and intuitive iOS interface.