Earlier this year I provide Insightful Accountant readers with an overview of QuickBooks Point of Sale powered by Revel and its best use case for retail. Having worked with it more closely, as well as attending additional training, I am now writing part 2 of my evaluation so you can get a better understanding of how this new product might impact your clients and your practice.
As you all know from QuickBooks Online, any cloud product is a moving target and QuickBooks Point of Sale powered by Revel is no different. Intuit has worked with Revel and the reseller community extensively and Revel has opened up the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) as well as Table Service vertical markets to those in the reseller community who have been trained. This was a huge win as the Revel product excels in these verticals and it fills a gap in the QuickBooks Point of Sale line up that Intuit has tried to fill previously with other partnerships.
Revel is the real deal in hospitality. For the QSR market, the product out of the box supports modifiers, meaning that you can add or subtract items on the order. Think, add mustard, and hold the mayo. You can also set up standard modifiers for each item. For example, a sandwich always comes with lettuce and tomatoes. You can also set up combo’s meaning the burger combo has the choice of types of sides and drinks. I think you get the idea. Revel also supports kitchen displays/printers meaning that each station can see what they need to cook or prepare to finish their part of the order. Additionally, Revel supports dynamic menu boards as well as customer facing displays showing when the customer’s order is ready. On line ordering and delivery management can be added to round out the QSR offering.
For the Full Service Restaurant, all of this is available as well as table management and the ability to hold a receipt, print a copy to add a tip and then close out the ticket with tip included. I recently had the opportunity to follow a Revel installer to an Italian Restaurant where in the course of a day, 4 registers were replaced, and 4 kitchen displays and a hostess workstation were installed, thus allowing the customer to be up and running for their dinner service.
So Will, you are asking yourselves, why as an accountant, would this matter to me? The reason it matters is that like in the accounting software world, customers are looking to move to the cloud for hospitality. Think Square, BreadCrumb and the like. It is already happening. I spoke to a friend who has over 20 years in the hospitality industry and they see the power of cloud based POS’s systems. The manager can be watching sales, speed of service etc. real time from anywhere in the world by logging into a web browser. Same with meeting with vendors and placing orders. Lastly, there are no expensive servers to maintain, no bulky workstations to install, nor software maintenance contracts.
As Accountants, we are often trusted advisors to our customers and one of the reasons that QuickBooks Point of Sale Desktop has been so widely adopted is it connectivity to QuickBooks Desktop financial software. Now we have a Cloud based POS system well suited for the hospitality industry that is Intuit branded and connects seamlessly to either QuickBooks Online or with the release of the desktop connector, the QuickBooks Desktop Financial software. Imagine if your client’s POS system made sales and COGS entries automatically, in the firm of the future, where zero data entry is the goal.
Lastly, how can you engage with both your clients and Intuit to start the QBPOS by Revel conversation? I recommend engaging with a Reseller who has been certified by Intuit and understands the industry. Of course, we hope that would be us, but there are over 100 resellers who are qualified to help. Intuit is in discussion about developing a ProAdvisor Certification for QuickBooks Point of Sale Powered by Revel, but nothing is firmed up yet.
About the Author: William S. English is President of English Management Solutions, Inc. and a recognized expert in Point-of-sale solutions including QuickBooks Point of Sale. He is a frequent contributor to Insightful Accountant in 'all things' POS related.