At IPS Ltd we understand how busy hospitality is and knowing this we have provided specially designed the i-Stock – Cashless Catering Management Software, to provide a management resource that is situated away from the till outlets, the system provides a range of resources that provides data to a range of departments.

This helps to understand how much money is being taken with the live reporting system and also enables the catering manager to manage their staff accordingly.

What is i-Stock – Cashless Catering Management Software

i-Stock is the administration module for the cashless payments and EPOS units, it is web-based, which means that it can be operated on any permitted device on your network from any location with the correct user permissions and access level.

It manages the products, sale items or fees. In fact, all services are available for sale. The system also manages all the EPOS units that are associated with the system.

They work in essence in master and slave relationship, the system constantly checks connections with all units, to alert if there is an issue with the units communicating and updating. an example of a report showing the systems updating and managing communication, if we are issuing meal deals or FSM allowances it is important that the units are able to query the users balance from any unit anywhere on the system even if there are WAN and communication issues.

i-Stock is used to hold stock information, it can manage bulk imports as well as single item entry, it assigns products to categories and using drag and drop facilitates the building of till sheets.

User Management

You already understand that an administrator has full user rights for both i-Stock and i-Till, however, there are other user roles within the system, for instance:-

• An Operator, who is only able to use the till system and not i-Stock
• A Reporter who will only see the reports within i-Stock and not be able to use i-till.

This will mean that their login details will only provide the views that are eligible to them, for anyone who has the permissions required to operate the tills they can do this in two different ways, by entering a pin number or simply tapping their ID Cards against a till Mifare readers.

REPORT MANAGEMENT

We have a catalogue of reports which provide a wealth of information these include full Z reports, Purse reports, summary reports and bursary reports. These reports have been designed from the feedback of our customers, many of them being Finance Directors, they have been audited by external and customer internal teams to ensure that they are at the highest standards. We however always focus on areas of improvement and tell our customers that if there is a report required, that is not in our catalogue then we can create this for them.

STOCK MANAGEMENT

i-Stock can be used to manage stock, and products such as drinks and snacks can be allocated to a catering environment and then moved from one area to another as and when required. This helps with replenishing stock and stocktaking.

MEAL DEALS & PRICE REDUCTIONS

Catering Managers at times need to reduce prices to set up meal deals, this could be for a range of reasons, for instance, if a product is near to reaching a sell-by date, the catering environment needs more attraction. i-Stock can do this at a click of a button and once submitted will be live on the tills in an instant, which of course means there is no downtime on the tills.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES

As an administrator of the system you have full access and can control not only reports, meal deals and price reductions, you can also change the style of the till buttons, the colour of them and how big they are, you are able to enable and disable new users for the tills and the i-Stock system providing them with the responsibilities they you want them to have and also can set up cost codes, void reasons an much more.

NOW AVAILABLE

We are delighted to provide you with further reporting methods with i-Stock Plus which gives you extensive report intelligence. With this additional plug in you will be able to receive live visual graphics in an instant to be able to identify a range of information, from average sale time, most popular sale categories, sales by day, bursary usage and of course the total sales.

Receiving this intelligence enables Catering Managers to manage catering outlets accordingly, and both the managers and Finance staff can see the profits that are being received by catering outlets.