by Ben Dwyer Micros, a company owned by Oracle, has been a staple of the restaurant POS system world for years. Anyone who’s worked in a restaurant has probably come across it at some point in time.
Micros boasts customers that include Pizza Hut, TGIFriday’s, Aramark, Bertucci’s, and more. Is it the right fit for your restaurant or business? In this Micros POS review and profile, we’ll go over the system’s features, pricing, and more.
Is Micros just for the food industry?
While Micros specializes in restaurant and food service POS, it does offer solutions for other hospitality and recreation businesses, like hotels, theme parks, cruises, and casinos. The system can also be used in retail stores, though that’s not its primary purpose and in this profile we’ll focus on offerings for food/hospitality industries.
What You’ll Need
To use the Micros POS system, you’ll need Micros hardware and POS software, along with a merchant account for credit card processing. Micros has its own gateway for integrated payment processing, but does not disclose details on costs or specifications. In the past, Micros and processor Heartland Payment Systems have worked together to create easy integration between credit card processing and the Micros POS, but currently Micros POS doesn’t require use of a particular processor.
Micros POS Features
Businesses can accept payment, enter food orders, and arrange hotel reservations. In addition to accepting cash, credit cards, and debit cards, some systems and devices can support gift cards and PayPal. Micros POS systems can integrate seamlessly for multiple locations, allowing consolidated reporting and inventory management.
Takeout and Delivery
Micros’ web ordering solution offers your customers online food ordering for easy takeout or delivery requests. The web ordering solution includes integration with Google Maps to help customers find your business, and offers a delivery configuration system to show customers your delivery limits. You can also accept online coupons and set up promotions for customers, set up a minimum and maximum order amount, integrate with Facebook for social media promotion, and email order confirmations and payment receipts.
Kitchen Printing
Micros offers kitchen display and print systems for reading restaurant orders and tickets in the kitchen. Merchants can choose between kitchen printers, to directly print tickets to the kitchen, or kitchen paperless displays to eliminate the need to print customer orders. With tablet POS options, the tablets can be anchored in a location using an optional stand, or carried to various locations.
Employee Management
Labor management is an integrated application to help with human resources activity. You can track payroll expenses, schedule staff, set alerts when employees are approaching overtime, calculate labor costs, complete pre-processing payroll tasks such as holiday pay, and more. You can also review sales and tips by employee, manage tax data, and forecast future labor needs. Additionally, Micros offers swipe cards for employees to log in to the POS system.
Reporting and Management
To help manage your business, Micros offers a variety of reports and back-office functions, including labor management, product management, and financial management. Reports are available for multiple locations, helping consolidate and reconcile inventory and sales across multiple branches.
Product Management
Product management options help streamline ordering, receiving, and inventory with a product management database that uses real-time information on inventory levels. Product management extends to the ingredient-level for restaurants, allowing you to track inventory down to the lowest level. Micros also supports recipe management, offering the ability to save prep and serving instructions, including recipe cards and pictures. Additionally, you can view item performance for top selling and bottom selling items, track and analyze vendor bids, and match packing slips to invoices for easy inventory reconciliation.
Financial Management/Reporting
Financial management with Micros lets you create custom reports to view sales information in real-time. Reports can track budgets, sales, and more. Micros offers reporting for profit and loss, daily sales reconciliation, deposits, and expenses.
Equipment and Accessories
Micros POS systems run on Windows operating systems, reducing the learning curve for employees.
The company offers a wide range of hardware. Systems vary depending on business and industry needs, and may include merchant-facing and customer-facing screens, printers, barcode scanners, cash drawers, card readers, and more. You can choose to add or remove equipment to create a tailored solution for your needs. Micros hardware can be purchased through POS Depot, a division of Micros.
Security
Micros is PCI-DSS compliant, helping to ensure security for businesses and customers. Micros’ domestic and European data centers are also certified PCI-DSS compliant, ensuring that data in those locations is also secure.
Micros Pricing
The costs of implementing Micros systems can vary wildly depending on how many POS stations you need and what options you choose. Some restaurant owners find that the costs of choosing Micros are too high for their specific budget and needs. Costs for the POS system, accessories, and any required monthly fees, subscriptions, or maintenance packages will be in addition to the credit card processing fees charged when you take customers’ cards for payment.
