Upserve POS Review: Is It Right for Your Business?

The world of point-of-sale software is changing as retailers are becoming more reliant on technology for the success in their business. In order to keep up with leading competitors, you need a system that functions efficiently and offers support services designed to improve operations.
Upserve POS may be just what your company needs to attract new customers while improving productivity!

The “upserve pos costs” is a POS system that has been around for a while. It has received mixed reviews, but some people have said it’s the right choice for their business.

Lightspeed’s Upserve is an iPad POS (point-of-sale) system created by former restaurant employees. This method is ideal for full-service and fine dining establishments, as well as artisan cocktail bars. Upserve features built-in payment processing with a contactless option as an all-in-one solution. In a beautiful, easy-to-navigate packaging, it also blends dynamic reporting with fast online purchase choices. Upserve’s basic subscription includes marketing and reputation management features, making it a great solution for small restaurants focusing on customer relationship management.

Go to Upserve to learn more.

Upserve’s Recommendations

Upserve began as a customer relationship management (CRM) solution meant to handle outdated POS systems such as MICROS and Aloha that were deployed locally. As a result, Upserve’s customer interaction features are among the most sophisticated in the cloud POS industry. This system also has certain unique reporting tools that aren’t seen in other POS systems. This popular restaurant POS system is on our list of the top restaurant POS systems on a regular basis.

We suggest Upserve in particular for:

• Restaurants looking for an iPad POS system: Upserve is our top recommendation for a restaurant iPad POS system. It received a 4.38 out of 5 rating in our review, with excellent points for its feature-rich software.
• Upscale bars: Upserve’s dark mode and recipe display capabilities make it ideal for craft cocktail establishments with lengthy menus of unusual concoctions and low lighting.
• Restaurants and cafes focused on CRM: Upserve’s core POS includes marketing and customer monitoring tools, as well as restaurant features that work well for operating coffee shops. One of our top suggestions for café POS systems is Upserve.
• Restaurants/bars in need of reporting capabilities: Many alternative POS systems lack specific performance indicators that Upserve’s Server Insight, Menu Insight, Reputation Management, and Campaign reports provide.

When Upserve Isn’t the Right Fit

• Budget-conscious businesses should be aware that Upserve is not a low-cost POS. Check out our preferred low-cost POS systems if you’re on a budget.
• Food trucks with a single unit: Upserve is likely to have more bells and whistles than a micro-enterprise like a single food truck. For the finest alternatives, check out our list of suggested food truck POS systems.
• Pizzerias: Upserve allows for delivery and menu changes, but it isn’t strong enough for most pizza shops. Check out our best picks for pizza POS systems for pizzeria-specific features.

Are you looking for something unique? Check out our list of the top restaurant POS systems to choose one that’s appropriate for your company.

Overview of Upserve POS

Go to Upserve to learn more.

Pricing for Upserve

Upserve has a one-of-a-kind price system. There is a single monthly membership price, plus a per-terminal fee, depending on the functional tier you pick. The most basic subscription (Upserve’s “Core”) costs $59 per month + $60 per terminal for software. It’s simple to understand how your expenses may quickly mount. However, one of the reasons it’s so obvious is because Upserve publishes more price information than rivals like Toast.

Upserve, like Toast, is priced to compete with existing legacy POS systems like MICROS, Aloha, and Positouch, and its pricing is competitive when compared to such systems. Upserve, on the other hand, is at the top of the cloud POS market.

Pricing for Upserve Plans

Go to Upserve to learn more.

Payments by Upserve

• Built-In: Using Payments by Upserve is a required part of the Upserve POS.
• Rates vary depending on the kind of restaurant and the amount of sales.
• Flat Charge: Custom quotations are based on a flat rate per transaction, making it simple to calculate your expenditures.
• Troubleshoot at any time: Upserve’s payments package includes 24/7/year-round US-based customer assistance.
• Swiped, tapped, dipped, NFC, and card-not-present payments are both PCI-1 and EMV compliant, decreasing chargeback liability.

Upserve is an all-in-one restaurant POS solution. Restaurants that use Upserve will have to use Upserve’s in-house payment processing for credit, debit, and mobile wallet transactions. Payments by Upserve offers a single flat rate for processing payments. Your quoted rate will vary, usually based on your card mix and sales volume.

You won’t be able to search around for the cheapest cost if your POS supplier is also your payment processor. However, it also means that you’ll have access to US-based customer service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for any payment-related concerns. Getting a few quotations from various merchant service providers is a smart idea before signing a service contract with Upserve. Upserve will very certainly strive to match or surpass any cheaper pricing you discover elsewhere.

Hardware from Upserve

• Choose between Android and iPad terminals based on your preferences.
• Tableside ordering and payment are possible with handheld tablets.
• Kitchen Display System (KDS): Touch-screen tablets and monitors with bump bars are available.
• Readers that don’t need contact: Tape credit, debit, and mobile wallet payments are accepted by EMV-compliant readers.
• Wireless networking extends Wi-Fi signals over the whole facility, allowing for faster POS speeds and offline capability.

Upserve POS is compatible with Android tablets and iPads. These tablets should be bought via Upserve for optimal operation. You may, however, bring your own iPads and utilize Upserve’s extensive online Knowledge Center to walk you through the setup process.

Although Upserve is cloud-based, you may hardwire your Upserve terminals to mimic a traditional POS configuration. This improves offline functioning significantly—you’ll never lose kitchen conversations if your internet goes down—but it may cost $1,700 or more to install. You may even add portable tablets with contactless card readers to the mix.

Some Upserve customers complain that the portable tablets are too restricted in terms of functionality. This problem affects all portable tablets, in my opinion. They’re ideal for cutting lines and placing orders quickly in crowded pubs and quick-service restaurants. A mobile tablet’s little screen, on the other hand, can never function precisely like a bigger POS terminal that shows every table and numerous checks at the same time. Large menus with several courses and menu modifiers will always be affected by the smaller buttons and squashed screen of a mobile tablet.

Features of Upserve POS

• Create bespoke zones and floor layouts related to your numerous revenue centers for table management.
• Transfer bar tabs to tables and tables between servers using check management. Split checks by seat number, specific products over numerous checks, split payments, and accept different payment forms on a single check.
• Digital Ordering: The Pro and Pro Plus versions provide in-house online ordering capabilities. Third-party integrations or in-house digital ordering may be added to core plans.
• Contactless Readers: EMV-compliant contactless readers are included with Upserve tablets. Customers may scan QR codes on printed receipts and pay using their cellphones.
• Upserve integrates with a variety of systems, including delivery platforms, accounting (including QuickBooks), payroll, and scheduling tools.

Upserve is pretty similar to Toast in terms of functionality. Both systems position themselves as alternatives to traditional, locally installed POS systems such as MICROS. The most significant distinction between Upserve and Toast is in the more subtle features and modules available in each system’s basic memberships. Upserve’s Core membership, for example, provides Workforce and Marketing features. However, subscribing to Pro or Pro Plus unlocks the system’s sophisticated inventory capabilities. Upserve is likely to be preferred by small eateries that are more concerned with marketing than inventory.

Upserve is a one-stop shop for all of your needs. Payment processing is included, including contactless possibilities. There are add-on modules for managing in-house deliveries, inventory management, and extensive reporting. Upserve also provides a number of unique reports for monitoring online reviews from the POS. Upserve is likely to interface with any third-party system you use. QuickBooks, Gusto, and Chowly are just a few of the prominent accounting, human resources, and delivery aggregators that interact with the system.

Inventory Upserve

• Recipe costing: By entering recipes and component information, full-scale recipe costing reports may be generated, displaying the profitability of each menu item.
• Vendor management: Using the vendor log, you can handle purchase orders and bills all from one place.
• Short inventory alerts: When supplies are running low, you’ll get an automated alert.
• One-click ordering: With this simplified approach, you can place supply orders with only one click.
• Using a bar code scanning smartphone app, you can count physical inventory and register new merchandise as it arrives.

Physical inventory counts are sped up using Upserve’s barcode scanning program. (Photo courtesy of Upserve)

The merchandise on Upserve is simple to navigate. Vendors and menu items may be bulk-uploaded using an Excel, CSV, or ODS file. Any smartphone can be turned into a barcode scanner with a short download, allowing you to check in vendor deliveries or speed up physical inventory counts. You may specify raw ingredient par and warning levels, and Upserve will notify you when it’s time to order.

The inventory module, like the rest of the Upserve ecosystem, employs colors and other visual signals to show information for quick examination. Stock levels are shown by red, yellow, or green circles; red indicates a low stock level, while green indicates a high stock level. A single “Top Up All” button on the system writes orders for all ingredients below the par level when activated. You may sort the orders by vendor and then place them with a single click. Vendor payments are simple to execute thanks to a QuickBooks connection.

CRM by Upserve

• Get to know your visitors: Customer profiles keep track of contact information for marketing purposes. They also keep track of purchasing patterns, typical orders, and visits.
• Recognize the regulars: Notable Guests are alerted to you through daily, weekly, and monthly digest emails.
• Streamlined loyalty: Loyalty members may be tracked automatically by credit/debit card number for Pro and Pro Plus users. A single Loyalty account may be connected to many cards.
• Create your own criteria: Decide whether your visitors will get a percentage discount or payback on subsequent visits.
• Set minimum and maximum expenditure requirements for earning rewards, as well as maximum reward limitations per visit.

The “Best Guest” report from Upserve provides information on your top 100 customers. (Photo courtesy of Upserve)

Upserve subscriptions with the most basic features offer the opportunity to generate visitor logs and monitor the success of promotional activities. When a visitor pays with a credit card at your restaurant, Upserve’s Guest Book function creates a customer profile for them instantly. The Upserve system will link the new card to the old client if the same consumer pays with a different card. Your top 100 clients are automatically tracked by the system. You may also design customized marketing campaigns by creating a custom list based on ordering preferences or checking averages.

A Pro or Pro Plus membership is required to run a Loyalty & Rewards program on Upserve. Running a loyalty program, on the other hand, is a breeze once those functionalities are accessible. Customers may sign up via a website widget, a text message, or a custom URL in the bottom of an email or receipt. You may include a sign-up bonus and select how to apply earned points. You may choose whether consumers get a percentage discount or a fixed cash amount discount on subsequent visits. The criteria for minimum expenditure and maximum reward may also be changed.

Workforce Upserve

• Tip pools may be tailored by revenue center and employee function, and they can be based on sales or total tips.
• Controlling labor costs: Real-time notifications keep track of how much work you’ve scheduled.
• Send schedules by text or email to personalize communications.
• Control clock-ins: To avoid early clock-ins, lock your terminals.

With daily and weekly views, you can keep track of your team’s calendar. (Photo courtesy of Upserve)

Employee administration services, including as scheduling and clock-in controls, are included with Upserve’s Core membership. To automate tip distributions in the POS, you may add highly comprehensive staff responsibilities and tip tracking information. California meal break and overtime rules are well-served by break and overtime monitoring. Upserve does not currently have an alert to comply with New York City’s “Spread of Hours” rule, which requires employers to notify workers who are scheduled to return to work fewer than 10 hours after their last shift.

The Workforce features in Upserve enable you to build custom schedules or construct templates for your most common scheduling patterns. You may send finished schedules to employees by email or text message, and you can construct lists to deliver specific schedules to certain employees. Upserve also allows you to restrict clock-in timings so that you don’t compensate employees who arrive early. The scheduler displays you how much labor your schedule will cost in dollars so you can see whether your plans are in line with your labor budget.

Reporting by Upserve

• Comprehensive: All membership levels include basic sales, labor, product mix, profit and loss, and daily records.
• Recognize what works: Individual promotions are tracked in campaign reporting so you can readily understand where your advertising expenditures are going.
• All of your reviews in one convenient location: Reputation Management reports capture internet reviews across several sites so you can keep track of your reputation in one place.
• At-a-glance analysis: Reports with callout boxes, vibrant colors, and automatic charts enable your managers to swiftly examine the health of your business.
• Higher-level data, such as Server Insights, Menu Insights, and recipe pricing, are accessible at higher reporting levels.

The reporting module for Upserve is called HQ, and it is included in all three subscription levels, albeit the reporting capabilities varies. Basic reporting such as daily sales, server shut out, closing-of-shift, and close-of-day reports are included with core subscriptions. Upserve’s Pro and Pro Plus levels provide more detailed reports, many of which are exclusive to Upserve. Small businesses don’t have to pay for analytics they don’t utilize because of this setup. However, it may cause confusion as to which reports are included at each layer.

Basic Reporting using Upserve

• Sales, Product, and Labor Reports: There are enough reports to support day-to-day operations. Employee scheduling is included in the entry-level plan, as are labor expense reports.
• Reputation Management: The reputation management services are available to all Upserve clients.
• Marketing Reports: Because marketing is included in the basic membership, all marketing reports are as well.
• All HQ reports are accessible in real time through a mobile app, so you can access them wherever you are.

The reports from Upserve synthesize data and show it graphically for easy viewing. (Photo courtesy of Upserve)

The Campaign report from Upserve analyzes events and promotions, from theme evenings to promo codes, to assist you assess if a promotion or advertising campaign was worthwhile. To compare sales and traffic statistics, including new client acquisitions, you may compare the dates you conducted a campaign to comparable days in the past. Reputation management keeps track of all of your online reviews and keeps tabs on your competition.

The most helpful feature of all Upserve reports is their readability. Upserve’s HQ synthesizes data into charts, graphs, and callout boxes, highlighting the most relevant information at a glance for you (and your team). The reports from Upserve are a joy to read and study.

Reporting (Pro and Pro Plus)

• Custom Reports: With the help of the Upserve staff, Pro Plus clients may create custom reports.
• Menu Insights: Upserve’s Magic Quadrant report, similar to Toast’s menu management reports, enables you to assess the performance of your menu items at a glance.
• Server Insights: This report breaks into the sales habits of servers and bartenders to help you spot top performers and training opportunities.
• Inventory-Related Information: The inventory module includes reports on recipe costing and real-versus-actual food costing.

The Menu Insights report from Upserve informs you precisely which products should be removed from your menu. (Photo courtesy of Upserve)

Upserve’s Pro and Pro Plus plans provide more detailed reports. These reports include information on employee productivity and menu item performance, as well as the ability to construct custom reports. The Pro and Pro Plus level reports, like Upserve’s baseline reports, pre-analyze a lot of your data. You may retrieve a Menu Insight report that analyzes all of that data and puts it on a scannable grid instead of wading through product mix reports and comparing each dish to its individual food cost.

The Server Insights report, which depicts front-of-house worker productivity, will be especially useful to restaurants with big staffs. This report employs a dynamic color-coded theme to demonstrate how successfully individual employees sell different menu items such as dinners, desserts, wine, and beer. This enables you to quickly discover training opportunities and even match employees who need to improve with a trainer who specializes in the area in which they need to develop.

Ease of Use with Upserve

• Training Mode: Upserve users like the fully working training mode, which enables new employees to learn the ins and outs of Upserve without disrupting the day’s sales.
• Visual Ecosystem: Reports and order screens use a variety of colors and symbols to convey a lot of information at a look.
• Buttons and menus seem to fall naturally where you expect them in an intuitive layout. Screens are really responsive and enjoyable to use.
• Streamlined Screens: To make navigating easier, screens have a simple layout with extra tabs on the right side.

Upserve is without a doubt one of the most user-friendly restaurant POS systems available. Customers usually comment on how fast their employees pick up the system. This POS is easy to use thanks to its reduced panels and straightforward layouts. Vivid colors and navigation bars keep you centered in the back office. Vendors are displayed on the vendor dashboard by their corporate logos, so you can immediately choose the proper one from the list.

Upserve’s product will be outdated for restaurants who depend on a KDS. The KDS depends on stripped-down Epson monitors rather than the dynamic touch-screen design seen on other Upserve displays. These are more resistant to heat in the kitchen, but they lack the breadth of functionality and productivity insights that rivals like Toast provide. However, Upserve’s recent acquisition by Lightspeed (which has one of our favorite KDSes) may alter that.

Alternatives to Upserve Restaurant Software

Although Upserve is a fantastic technology, it may not be the ideal match for every establishment. Not everyone will benefit from an all-in-one POS with locked-in payment processing and a strong emphasis on marketing features.

Are you still missing the mark? Check out our complete list of the finest small company POS systems.

What Users Have to Say About Upserve POS

The restaurant POS system Upserve is well-liked by its users. In several evaluations, Upserve is described as the simplest restaurant POS system the reviewer has ever used. Upserve also gets excellent scores from experts for its simplicity of use and dynamic, simplified reporting. The KDS module, on the other hand, may be an acquired taste; consumers either adore or despise its simplicity. Meanwhile, other bad reviews describe signing up for Upserve during a promotional period only to discover that the system was too expensive once they had to pay full freight.

• G2: Names Upserve as a summer 2021 Leader, with a user rating of 4.1 out of 5 based on 85 reviews.
• Capterra: Upserve is ranked #20 in the Top 20 Restaurant Software for 2021, with a 4.4 out of 5 star rating based on 270 user ratings.

Conclusion

Upserve is one of the most user-friendly restaurant POS systems available. The back office, in particular, is really easy to grasp because to the clever use of color and visual clues. Small restaurants that are more concerned with marketing and customer acquisition than inventory control can benefit from Upserve. Medium- to high-volume restaurants that can afford the higher subscription levels, on the other hand, will benefit from the most efficient inventory system possible in a cloud POS. Contact Upserve for a comprehensive walk-through to determine whether it’s a good match for your business.

Go to Upserve to learn more.

The “toast pos reviews” is a POS system that allows users to manage their business from anywhere. The system offers features like inventory management, customer management, order processing and reports.

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