Disclosure first: Pixxoft makes a restaurant management system, so weigh our view accordingly. We describe it as a restaurant management system, not a point-of-sale hardware package, and this article explains why the distinction matters when you choose.
What a POS does
A point-of-sale system is centred on the moment of payment: ringing up an order, printing a bill, taking cash or card, and often connecting to hardware such as receipt printers, cash drawers and card terminals. Its job is to complete the sale reliably and quickly.
What a restaurant management system covers
A management system looks at the whole operation around the sale. Typical areas include taking orders at the table and sending them to the kitchen, the floor plan and reservations, inventory and recipe costing, staff accounts and permissions, and reporting on takings by item, server and hour.
Our restaurant system covers those areas, including splitting or merging bills and reconciling cash, card and wallet takings into one end-of-day total. If you need specific devices connected, such as receipt printers or card terminals, tell us during discovery and we confirm what can be supported before you commit.
How to decide what you need
If your biggest problem is the till, speed at the counter, receipts and card payments, a POS-first product may fit. If your biggest problems are orders getting lost between floor and kitchen, not knowing your true food cost, or reconciling a drawer of receipts, a management system addresses more of the picture.
Many restaurants need a bit of both. The practical test is to write down what goes wrong in a normal service, then ask each vendor to show how their system handles exactly that.
Questions to ask any vendor
Which hardware do you support, and who supplies it? Can the kitchen see orders the moment they are sent? Does stock deduct per dish from a recipe? How are bills split? Can you import my menu and stock list? Who owns the data, and what does support look like during a busy service? How is pricing structured?
Next steps
If you would like to see how our system handles a service, you can request a restaurant management demo. To understand how quoting works, read how we price projects, and if neither a POS nor a ready-made system fits, see custom software development.
This is how we approach restaurant management software projects.
Restaurant Management Software