The best hotel management software for your business

Hotel POS refers to a point of sale system, cash register or till designed to help a hotel make sales and manage the business. POS is sometimes referred to as EPOS which stands for electronic point of sale.

These days, cash registers do far more than make a record and storage spot for cash and card payments. Though all these industry terms for tills can seem a little confusing, they demonstrate the way tills have expanded to incorporate more and more business functions to the point where they are rightly called "systems".

Point-of-sale systems are now centralised platforms that feature hospitality management software. These systems can process sales, help hotels with inventory management, generate reports to help make better business decisions, store all business data, automate accountancy, run promotions and marketing, and much more.

Furthermore, a top property management system will help businesses process sales from multiple sources easily and reliably. These might include integrating with a website, booking engine or numerous reservation management platforms.

With so many facets to businesses, till providers like Epos Now often work with business software providers to give users more options. A good example of this would be accounting software companies like Sage and Xero. The integration provides a seamless link between the point of sale and the accounting program. Data automatically appears on the accounting software for processing and management, helping a hotel business work more efficiently and spend more time focusing on guest relationship management and making sales.

Take the Epos Now Complete Solution - one of our most popular POS systems.

The Epos Now Complete Solution is a cloud-based hotel management system, which means your business data is not stored on the device you use to trade. Instead, all data is stored remotely on company servers with added security and the advantage that should one of your devices suffer damage, there is no risk of data loss.

When you trade, your device can operate online or offline, but it connects to your cloud whenever possible to upload sales data in real-time and download room cost changes, guest booking information, and other changes.

A good POS system will have other key features both in terms of hardware and software to help hotel staff and managers with their daily operations.

Regardless of the hardware a hotel uses, from the moment of purchase, a new POS system will start to bring the whole operation into that system. This helps the system generate custom reports that bigger competitors in the hospitality industry use, levelling the playing field for small hotels everywhere.

When the time arrives to complete your accounts and establish how much tax you need to pay, or to figure out where the many expenses of your business have been documented, having a clear and simple system can save hours and days of arduous work.

Thankfully, Epos Now tills automatically document tax information based on the information you provide about your business and by keeping reports on your sales (for every year you trade using the system). Epos Now systems document daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly reports with all information required to stay on top of your taxes easily accessible from the back office.

However, if you wish to use more specialist hospitality software with additional features or are familiar with one of the popular business accounting programs, Epos Now have partnered with Sage, Xero, and Quickbooks.

All three of these programs are very popular with hotel businesses! Epos Now customers that want to use them can make their lives much easier with an integration that automates data processing between the two platforms.

After downloading the integration from the Epos Now AppStore, businesses can direct where relevant parts of their data go into the accounting software. The result is at the end of the day, they have very little finance management needed and can do it all from the program they favour.

The best POS system doesn't necessarily have to be expensive. But the best system will vary for businesses with different requirements. It's important to make your needs very clear during the sales process as this can help point-of-sale providers ensure they include everything you need and provide you with an accurate quote.

Epos Now’s key features are always included on all packages, including a payroll system, and product, inventory, and customer management functions, in addition to the sales software.

However, hotels that wish to expand their system can choose to pay for third-party integrations such as accountancy integrations, website linking, and more. These pages all have individual pricing that Epos Now sales representatives will discuss with you during the setup process.

The Epos Now hotel system can take advantage of a number of sector-specific integrations. These apps can help integrate your business with a specific booking engine, handle front desk operations, and quickly manage reservations.

Finally, there's the question of up-front expenses. Up-front expenses can be reduced if businesses are struggling to find the capital to get started, and owners can choose to offset that cost by having slightly higher monthly payments. Epos Now also offers different deals based on which solution customers go for.