12 Essential EPOS Features for Pubs & Restaurants

Fast, simple touchscreen tills

Staff should be able to learn the till quickly, especially when teams change or temporary staff join during busy periods. Clear product buttons, logical menu layouts, prompts and questions all help reduce mistakes.

Example: A busy pub can use prompts for mixers, cooking notes or eat-in and takeaway choices so staff do not need to remember every option manually.

Integrated card payments

With standalone card machines, staff key the transaction amount into the terminal separately. With integrated card payments, the amount is sent directly from the EPOS system to the payment terminal.

This reduces keying errors, speeds up transactions, makes reconciliation easier and means staff spend less time handling the payment terminal itself.

Example: At the end of service, integrated payments can make it easier to match card totals against EPOS takings because the two systems have handled the same transaction values.

Kitchen printing and kitchen display systems

Food and drink orders can be routed automatically to the right preparation area, such as the kitchen, bar, desserts or coffee station. Some venues prefer kitchen printers, while others benefit from kitchen display screens.

The right setup depends on the layout, order volume and how your team manages preparation during service.

Example: A restaurant might send starters and mains to the kitchen screen while drinks print at the bar, keeping each team focused on the orders they need to prepare.

Table management

Table management helps staff open tables, transfer tables, move items, split bills, add customers to tabs and track table status. It is particularly useful for pubs, restaurants and hotels with table service.

Example: If guests move from a bar table to the restaurant, staff can transfer the open table rather than closing and re-keying the order.

Handheld ordering

Handheld ordering lets staff take orders directly at the table or in outside trading areas. Orders can be sent straight to the kitchen or bar, reducing walking time and helping service move faster.

It is especially useful for gardens, terraces, large venues and businesses where staff cover several trading areas.

Example: A pub with a large garden can take an order outside and send food to the kitchen without the server returning to the main till.

Cloud reporting

Cloud reporting gives owners and managers access to management information away from the till. This can include sales, products, departments, staff activity, payment types and trading periods.

The value is not simply producing reports. It is making the right information accessible when decisions need to be made.

Example: A manager can compare lunch and evening trade remotely without waiting until they are physically back at the venue.

Central product and price management

Updating products, prices and menus centrally is much easier than programming individual tills one by one. This matters for price changes, seasonal menus, multiple tills, multiple trading areas and multi-site businesses.

Example: A hotel with a bar, restaurant and events area can keep shared drinks prices consistent while still managing area-specific menus.

Staff permissions and accountability

Different members of staff may need different access levels for refunds, voids, discounts, no-sales, cash drawer access and management functions.

A good EPOS system should create accountability without making everyday operation difficult for staff.

Example: Junior staff might process normal sales, while supervisors approve refunds or larger discounts.

Fraud and exception reporting

EPOS data can help identify unusual activity such as excessive refunds, repeated voids, frequent no-sales, unusual discounts, error corrections or transactions happening outside normal patterns.

This is about giving business owners better information for investigating activity that needs attention, not creating an aggressive monitoring culture.

Example: If voids are unusually high during one trading period, a manager can review what happened and decide whether it was training, process or something else.

Reliable networking and Wi-Fi

Modern EPOS systems increasingly rely on the network around them. Poor networking or Wi-Fi can affect handheld ordering, card terminals, cloud reporting, kitchen systems, online services and remote management.

The EPOS system and the network should ideally be considered together rather than treated as unrelated systems. Flex EPOS can provide managed networking and Wi-Fi solutions where the venue needs that wider support.

Case study: See how we brought EPOS, payments, Wi-Fi and CCTV together at The Bridge House.

CCTV and transaction investigation

CCTV and EPOS can increasingly be used together when investigating what happened around a transaction. The concept is straightforward: a manager selects a transaction and can quickly find the relevant CCTV footage covering that point in time.

This can be useful when reviewing refunds, voids, cancelled transactions, cash discrepancies or customer disputes. Treat it as an emerging area to discuss during system design, rather than assuming every EPOS and CCTV setup already works this way by default.

Backup and resilience

EPOS is business-critical infrastructure. Businesses should consider what happens if internet connectivity is lost, a till fails, hardware needs replacing, data becomes corrupted or there is a power issue.

Backups, recovery processes and resilience planning cannot prevent every possible problem, but they can make the business better prepared when something goes wrong.

Example: A resilience plan might cover backup data, spare hardware options, network failover and who staff contact during service if a system stops working.