5 Ways to Secure POS Connections in Your Venue

Being without POS in the middle of a busy service is enough to make any hospitality worker’s stomach churn. It’s not something you would wish on your worst enemy, and seems to only happen when the restaurant is packed.

 

Anyone who has worked in hospitality can tell you about the time it happened to them, including a lot of the staff here at Impos. It’s a moment we all dread.

POS terminals require a connection to the system database. Wireless or hardwired, these systems can sometimes fail and leave staff in a panic and diners confused.

Knowing how much this problem impacts on hospitality venues, we’ve put together a list of the best practices to make sure your system will stay online throughout your busy services.

The Impos team and the best restaurants across Australia have worked together to find the best ways to bolster their POS and ensure the connection doesn’t drop out. Just follow these tips so you won’t be thrown into chaos at the worst possible moment.

1. Invest in your cabling and get a great electrician

Don’t skimp on something like this. Electricians who do quality work are the best investment you can make to ensure you don’t end up with connection issues.

Patch panelling and cabling is so important to ensure that the communication between the database and terminals is established and isn’t interrupted. Damage to the cables, no matter how minor, can lead to POS connection dropouts.

If you are building or renovating, make sure you ask the tradesman to run extra Cat 5 or 6 cables, so that if there is a problem down the track you have options.

2. Hold on to your router information and keep it safe

A wireless solution is great for so many reasons, but you have to make sure you keep the passwords and information in a safe place.

They are invaluable for our support staff and also necessary if you plan to change your Internet Service Provider (ISP). If you’re forced to change the IP address of your router, it will cause an immediate dropout.

 

3. Your POS Wi-Fi signal is for POS only

Never give out your POS Wi-Fi password to clients or staff. There are so many signals that can affect the POS Wi-Fi in a venue, from phones to kitchen equipment – even tramlines! These can all interfere with your wireless network and cause disconnection.

Using a Wi-Fi signal dedicated to your POS system, and removing unnecessary traffic from your POS network, is the best practice for ensuring your wireless connection performs well under pressure.

4. Consider investing in a terminal

Tablet-sized terminals are often compact enough to be discreet and fast enough to keep up with a busy service.

Any terminal is better for productivity than no terminal, but if you are having trouble ensuring the tablets are reliable, consider investing in a hardwired terminal.

These are best for those times when staff are run off their feet and the tablets just aren’t keeping up. A hardwired terminal will make sure everything keeps running smoothly.

5. Hardwired is best

It can be difficult to identify connection problems if your system is purely wireless. With a hardwired connection for your terminals, server or printers, it’s easy to find and isolate issues and troubleshoot them accordingly.

Making sure your cabling is organised, up to date and labelled correctly will mean it will stay in tip-top condition. Which all in all, reduces the chance of drop-outs.

Here at Impos, through our consulting work, we have noticed a massive shift towards venues finding service efficiencies that maximise customer experience and turnover.

The best advice we can give venues is to install strong and reliable service stations with hardwired terminals.

We’ve done the research, gained the insight, and found that smaller terminals with strong connections are far more efficient than multiple tablet solutions.

They are better for customer experience than the practice of using tablets to order food at the tables. Tablets are still a viable option, and venues should take advantage of new technology. Indeed, we encourage our venues to take advantage of the convenience and affordability of tablets. But we have found that sometimes the problems with connection outweigh the efficiencies gained.

At Impos, we strongly recommend wireless solutions are used in conjunction with hardwired terminal solutions. Learn more about our hospitality POS system today.