8 Must-Knows & Hacks Your Staff Need To Operate POS Systems Efficiently

As a small business owner, you might think you’ve found the perfect POS system to tackle your challenges. But if your team isn’t sure how to use it, you could be facing low productivity and plenty of order mistakes. Sound familiar?

Providing comprehensive training to your staff can empower them to use the POS system with ease and improve overall efficiency. We’ll break down the steps to help you train your staff on using the POS system effectively. 

Understanding the Heart of Your Business – Your POS System

Consider this: It’s Monday morning and you have a long queue of commuters lining up for your famous breakfast pancakes. Now, if you don’t have a POS, they would be queued up for a long time. The processes would be manual and time-consuming and lines would move at a sluggish pace. 

But if you have a POS, it’ll speed up the ordering process, ensuring every transaction is accurate and quick. It would also tell you exactly when to restock the ingredients. This means you would be able to service more customers in a short time, essentially boosting your revenue.

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Your POS system can remember repeat customers and their favorite orders. And when you sell that last slice of lemon cake, your POS system updates your inventory in real time. This ensures you know which product and ingredient needs restocking, preventing shortages and overstock. 

Sure, you know and agree that restaurant tech like POS systems makes their experience better. But it really only works if your staff knows how to use it!

Train Your Staff On These 8 Hacks for Optimizing POS System Usage

Training your staff with POS’s user-friendly features not only boosts their confidence but also makes daily operations smoother and efficient. To make the most of your training, use this handy checklist to ensure your team is ready to handle transactions, manage returns, and deliver top-notch customer service!

Getting Started with POS – Logging In

Training starts with the basics, and logging into your POS is the first step. Here’s how your team can get started:

1. Turn on the POS terminal if it’s not already powered on.
2. Locate the POS software icon on the desktop and open it. 
3. On the login screen, enter your username and password. Usernames are often case-sensitive, so pay attention to capitalization.
4. Click on the login button and you’ll be taken to the main POS interface. 

Starting a Sale

Initiating a sale accurately sets the foundation for the entire transaction — ensuring accurate order entry and efficient service. So, here’s how you can teach your staff to initiate sales: 

• Learn and use keyboard shortcuts for common functions, for example creating a new order.
• Use the barcode scanner for packaged items when available.
• Creating and using combo buttons for packaged items when available. 

Personalizing the Experience with Customer Lookup

Did you know that your POS system can help personalize your customer service? In fact, over 70% of customers expect that. Not just experience — when customers feel valued, they often spend more (reciprocity principle — the psychological urge to reciprocate generosity).

So, your staff needs to know how to personalize the experience for customers:

• Searching for a customer by their names, phone number or program number or loyalty membership name
• Looking up ‘Purchase History’ for a list of the customer’s previous orders.
• Paying attention to frequently ordered items, preferences, or special requests noted in past orders.

Boost Efficiency with Product Lookup

Product lookup is a process that allows your staff to retrieve product information based on a unique identifier—a barcode, product name, or other identifying characteristics. This ensures your staff can find and select items from your inventory quickly. It saves the time they could spend looking for a particular item or when dealing with specialty or seasonable items. Here are some best practices they can follow: 

• Double-checking for spelling to find the correct item
• Using specific terms instead of generic words. For example, instead of searching ‘soda’, search for ‘Coca-Cola’.
• Always confirming the chosen product matches the customer’s request
• Using category filters to narrow down search results.
• Knowing the procedure for when a product can’t be found.

Process Returns Quickly

Processing returns can be a tricky part of retail operations, can’t it? Let’s look at how you can train your staff to handle returns smoothly:

• If the customer has a receipt or bill, use the barcode or transaction number to find the  transaction details.
• Knowing what reasons to select the reasons for the return or  choosing from a  predefined list or entering additional notes.
• Printing or emailing the refund receipt 
• Confirming the return in the system to update the inventory. 

What if your customers don’t have the receipt, though? Use the customer's name or phone number to access their purchase history and look through the history to locate the transaction in question.

Easy Payment Processing

Efficient payment processing further speeds up your order processing and checkout, while giving a great experience to the customer. Here’s how to train your staff for payment processing:

• Asking  the customer for their preferred payment method.
• Once the payment is made, verifying the payment has been processed successfully.
• Offer the customer a printed or soft copy of the receipt.
• Depending on the type of card, prompt the customer to insert, tab, or swipe card as directed by the POS.
• Stating the change amount due while handling cash payments 

You would also need to train them to verify the authenticity of the cash, here’s how you can do that:

• Feeling  the texture — genuine dollar bills have slightly raised ink.
• Looking for color-shifting
• Holding up the bill to the light to check for the watermark. 

And for check-based payments: 

• Verifying that the check is properly filled out (date, payee, amount, signature).
• Checking for any obvious alterations or inconsistencies.
• Using a check verification system if available.

Hassle-Free Receipt Management

A POS system automatically generates receipts after customers pay. However, your staff will want to make sure the printer is always ready to print at a moment’s notice during rush hours, without keeping your customer waiting.

• Removing any remaining paper roll or empty spool. 
• Inserting new paper roll, ensuring it unrolls from the bottom.
• Testing the printer by printing a sample receipt.

Troubleshooting common issues: 

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• Paper Jam: Open the printer cover to remove the jammed paper, then reload the paper and test if it’s working.
• Faded print: Check if the paper is loaded correctly (that is, ensure the thermal side is facing the heating element).
• Printer not responding: Check all cable connections and restart the POS and printer. 

Applying Promotions and Discounts

Over 70% of US consumers are loyal to brands that offer loyalty programs and restaurants can leverage this trend to drive more sales and improve brand loyalty. 

Here’s how your staff should apply discounts at checkout:

1. During the checkout process, look for the ‘Discounts/Promotions’ button on the POS interface.
2. Selecting the correct discount type. 
3. Confirming the discount to ensure it’s reflected in the total.
4. Completing the transaction using the customer’s preferred payment method.

Think about your current operations. How smoothly could things run with a fully trained team on your POS system?

Simple and Effective Training Techniques

Now that we’ve covered the essentials, we’ll get into how you can make POS training engaging and effective for your team:

• Hands-On Learning: Interactive training improves overall performance while allowing your staff to become comfortable with the system quickly. So, if you’re running a restaurant, let your new server practice entering orders and processing payments on actual POS machines.

• Peer Learning: Peer learning improves learning outcomes while providing opportunities for authentic practice. Pair your new employees with the older ones for role-playing exercises where they can practice using POS in different scenarios together.

• Gamify Training: Gamification makes training fun, which could boost your baristas’ and service staff’s performance by up to 67%. So you could implement a challenge, like the ‘Barista Badge Challenge’ where your employees could earn badges when they complete various POS training tasks. 

Wrapping Up

Investing time in comprehensive POS system training benefits everyone—your business, your employees, and customers. By creating a structured learning environment, you empower your staff to use the system confidently and efficiently. 

OneHubPOS’s user-friendly design means your team can navigate the system with ease, reducing training time and increasing productivity. It is a powerful point-of-sale system and operations software that helps streamline operation and manage front- and back-of-house. 

Want to integrate OneHubPOS with delivery partners and third-party software? We make the integration quick and hassle-free! Not just that, but we manage your finances well to ensure you can focus on servicing the customers! 

With a well-trained team and a reliable POS, your business will run more smoothly and effectively. Plus, OneHubPOS offers the lowest processing fee in the industry — just 2.3% + 10 cents/transaction — resulting in cost savings and increased productivity. And remember, OneHubPOS’s support team is always available to assist if you or your staff encounter any challenges. 

So, are you ready to streamline your restaurant’s operations? Get started with OneHubPOS and see firsthand how it simplifies restaurant management!