Restaurant POS integrations are no longer a luxury add-on for a tight circle of the leaders-league players anymore. They are now an everyday upgrade and customization leverage for a run-of-the-mill food service outlet.

Upping your game by making systems automatically exchange data so that you don’t have to do manual bookkeeping, guest reviews collection, or count gratuities is a blessing of living in the 21st century.

For mom-and-pop shops only counting tips at the end of the shift—cash or card—it’s no big deal. But if you run a busy diner or a 70+ seat bar, times number of outlets in a chain, the summing up gratuities, distributing them among the team, and filing out taxes is a lot of manual work, unless your POS system software for restaurant is connected to a third-party app that does it all for you.

Let’s review what restaurant management software can be and should be integrated with your point-of-sale solution for smoother operations, accounting, marketing flows—and how to do it best.

Oracle MICROS Simphony POS Integrations

What Is a Restaurant POS Integration?

To start with, a POS [point-of-sale] system records transactions and sales in a physical store. As the tool is used for legal, accounting, and admin by millions of businesses, it evolved to include more functionalities than just recording a transaction. Now, many of the best POS solutions offer an extensive array of capabilities. 

However.

It’s not always the case that you can have all the capabilities you need in one tool, so you will want to automate processes by making two, three, or more software solutions to exchange data.

POS integration for restaurants is a set of system integration activities aimed at connecting a point-of-sale tool with other restaurant management software, like loyalty, accounting, inventory, and labor management applications. Most commonly, such integrations are now performed with the help of API. 

Not only can you enhance your systems capabilities by supercharging it with third-party applications, but also it’s common for companies to connect internal [vendor-or custom-made] software, like ERP, SCM, HRM, etc.

Why Food Service Companies Connect POS with Other Restaurant Management Software

Businesses may look to upgrade their POS systems by connecting them to third-party applications for many reasons:

  1. Using Legacy POS, Not Ready for A-Z System Upgrade Yet

Quite a bit of legacy tools are still used in the food service industry. Some are using on-prem solutions even when they already have everything in place and digital transformation seems scary. System integration is the perfect way to boost an existing program’s capabilities.

  1. Custom Point-of-Sale Tool Needing a Feature Extension

Companies that custom-made their POS based on their unique business requirements are often on the lookout for easy plug-and-play opportunities to extend these tools’ capabilities. But they may not yet be ready to hire a team of developers to create another feature.

  1. Cheaper Method Compared to Current System Modification

Some of the vendor-made POS systems will have different offerings and pricing plans depending on which features are included. In some cases, it’s cheaper to buy the POS subscription basic package and build on the capabilities by integrating third-party apps.

  1. Following Business Needs & Expansion

If you only serve food on-premises in your restaurant you don’t need a food delivery app integration. The moment you decide to add a take-away menu, your business needs to promptly consider maximum automation via two-way communication between all systems.

  1. Flexibility in Features, Users, Budgets, Timing

It’s not uncommon that a business will undergo POS system integration temporarily—as a patch up solution before developing this feature in their own custom-made point of sale. This is a great way to start using additional functionality ASAP and get first-hand experience of the existing solution’s best and worst elements. The team using the integrated solution can then provide feedback on how to best develop this module in the company’s own solution.

What do cafes, bars, clubs, and eateries gain by interconnecting their software solutions for a two-way sync? Let’s review.

Benefits of POS Integration In Restaurants

Each of the apps [whether internal, vendor, or third-party] when integrated with your restaurant POS work like an additional superpower. It’s an extended system capability that elevates one of the multiple facets of the service or administration.

Save Time 

Avoiding manual data transfer between systems equals time saved. If you need to pass sales figures to an accounting app, worked hours to HR sheets, sold items to the inventory management system—it all takes time. 

Save Money

Money is saved on labor, increased efficiency, better customer satisfaction, and multiple other cost centers in the connected restaurant & connected kitchen environments. So it’s your bottom line that benefits at the end of the day, by cutting costs and boosting sales.

Decrease Human Errors & Their Impact on Business

Humans will be humans; they are prone to mistakes. Some errors are innocent, some brutal, some cheap, and some expensive. When figures flow from system to system bypassing a human, businesses can rely on this data without a second thought.

Improve Customer Service

Customers like quick, personalized, efficient service, especially in the food service and delivery business, where any customer is bordering on the state of being hangry. From online ordering to cashless payments, delivery and loyalty, all of these experiences can be interconnected via API to a point-of-sale, providing a smooth experience.

Improve Decision Making

The industry’s razor-thin margins combined with product perishability, high food costs, and even higher labor costs, make owners wired to save costs and drive revenues at every step.

Analytics help drive cost saving initiatives and improve the customer base across the range by marketing and loyalty efforts, driving average check, and referral business. Integration with POS systems of reporting and analytics applications is a must in such a tight-margin niche.

Stay Competitive

Keeping your finger on the pulse of the industry is just common business sense. So is using the entire array of tools available to make your company competitive with the rest of the lot.

Prevent Business Disasters

Many companies go out of business because red flags go unnoticed for too long and grow into an eventual bankruptcy.

When a food service business has a reporting and analytics tool in their integrated POS systems, it’s easy to identify any of the looming negative trends and spot dips in the patterns to timely address any issues—be it food cost, scheduling, or inventory management.

The Restaurant POS Integrations to Consider for Your Success in 2023

If one of your business goals is to have a fully integrated point-of-sale system, these are some of the applications that you may want to consider.

Online Ordering & Delivery

It’s a huge convenience and a time saver for both parties—the one ordering food from the comfort of their home and the one whose prepaid order comes back straight from the kitchen printer without lifting a finger.

These are some of the vendor-made online order and delivery applications that can be seamlessly connected with your point-of-sale solution.

  • UberEats
  • DoorDash
  • Menufy
  • Waitbusters
  • Drive
  • Deliverect

Labor Management

Software that helps team scheduling and monitoring of clocking in and out can also communicate to your transaction registering platform. Consider these vendors:

  • 7shifts
  • SocialSchedules
  • Sling
  • CrunchTime
  • HotSchedules

Inventory Management

Stock management software is critical in a business where your best-selling item can go to zero in one busy lunch, and you’ll be losing revenue if you don’t top up that product by dinner. On the other hand, FIFO helps to reduce waste management and needs to be controlled to be effective, as most produce is perishable in days.

Restaurant POS systems are often integrated with these inventory management applications:

  • BevCheck
  • Barvision
  • Craftable
  • Orca
  • BarTrack

Marketing & Loyalty Software

Marketing software automation helps savvy digital marketers in the food service industry drive more foot traffic, increase share of group revenue, and achieve a higher average check too.

Sending people an SMS or an email with a freebie for the drink they just enjoyed for their next visit in the same month as they have just paid? Talk about striking while the iron is hot.

According to an NRA’s Restaurant Industry 2030 prediction, “frequent-diner databases and loyalty programs will be used more frequently for online advertising and promotion.”

  • Mailchimp
  • The call concierge
  • Emma
  • WideWail
  • Yumpingo

Property Management Systems

Hotel bars and restaurants can also be connected to a property management system to process room service orders as well as to charge food and beverages order in any food service outlet to the room.

  • Innquest
  • Opera
  • Fidelio
  • Ezee
Lightspeed POS/PMS integrations

Hospitality Tech is Dev.Pro’s core capability, check out our hospitality software development services here.

Accounting and Gratuity Management

Keeping a registry of all items sold during the day is critical for better inventory and team management. Tip management is another critical issue, specifically in the US, where regulations are strict. 

Fun fact, according to American Restaurant Association, waiters and waitresses in the FSR segment in 2022 in the US received a median $27 per hour, $20 of which were tips and only $7 were employer-paid funds. The upper quartile? In total, $41.5, with $30 in gratuities.

  • Shogo
  • Cohesion
  • GraTrack
  • Gratuity Solutions
  • KitchenSync

Payment Providers & Credit Card Processing

Payment gateway integration is a fundamental process of POS development process, but businesses prefer to ensure that they offer the most complete range of possible payments for the convenience of their customers.

  • Stripe
  • Authorize.NET
  • FreedomPay
  • Network
  • PayPal

Reporting & Analytics Software

Restaurant POS integration with reporting and analytical software needs to be done with utter precision. Many fast-food restaurants will make dozens of business decisions during service, basing them on analytics they get from a connected point-of-sale solution.

  • Tenzo
  • MarginEdge

Reservations & Table Management

Reservation software is also a type of marketing tool. It allows you to sell your inventory ahead and play with the seating before the rush hour for better revenues and tips for the team and the most pleasurable guest experience.

  • OpenTable
  • Mews
  • StaynTouch

Menu Management

Menu integration with your POS can be done for back and front of house teams. Popmenu, a dear partner of Dev.Pro, turns digital menus into a powerful conversion engine.

  • PopMenu
  • me&u

CRM [Customer Relationship Management]

When talking about POS apps for restaurants that need to be interconnected, CRM comes to mind in a last but not least kind of way. Having your clients’ databases synchronized with your sales on the floor helps you to know the frequency of their visits, preferences, birthdays, and so much more.

Some POS will have CRM features embedded, but it’s also possible to sync certain data points between initially disparate tools via APIs.

  • Lightspeed
  • TouchBistro
  • Clover
  • SalesForce
  • Nimble

With social selling gathering speed, we might soon see a time when businesses can integrate Instagram with POS direct.

Types of Integration for Restaurant POS

Technically, there are a few major ways how systems can be connected with each other:

  • API [Application Programming Interface; Options include Open API, Internal API, Partner, Composite APIs. REST API being rather popular now]
  • SDK [Software Development Kit]
  • Webhooks
  • Microservices orchestration
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Clover platform and third-party apps integration scheme

Oracle Cloud marketplace leverages the following array of API, for example:

  • Business Intelligence API (BI)
  • Transaction Services API Gen2 (STSG2)
  • Transaction Services API Gen1 (STS)
  • Simphony Payment Interface (SPI)d
  • Extensibility / SIM
  • Labor Management API
  • Oracle Payment Interface (OPI)
  • Command Module
  • Import / Export API
  • Standard Exports
  • Harmonized Fiscal API

Check out some of the integration settings for the best restaurant POS software on their respective official websites:

Get the Best out of Your Point-of-Sale Tool by Integrating it With Top Restaurant Management Software

Dev.Pro is a POS development company with extensive experience and multiple cases: Global Payments, Heartland, and Lavu are among our most relevant projects.

Talk to our devoted tech-savvy team for a consultation on how to best integrate your POS platform with internal and third-party systems for seamless two-way connectivity.