How Do I Choose the Best Restaurant Inventory Software?

Restaurant inventory software is meant to help food service specialists keep track of their inventory. It is a specialized software, specifically created for fast food and full service restaurants, hospitals and nursing homes, and institutional caterers including school food services, bakeries, and bars. Inaccuracies in the inventory records can cause major operational problems, and knowing exactly what’s in stock can prevent waste. In order to choose the best inventory software for your operation, it is important to learn about the available software features and figure out how this software fits into your overall management plans.

Restaurant inventory software can be Microsoft® Excel®-based or stand-alone software. In choosing between these styles of software, integration with your existing system can be an important factor. Restaurant inventory software can also be a lone product, or may be offered by a company that offers a variety of hospitality software, such as management, marketing, point-of-sale, and operations software. Therefore, your decision may depend on other software that you already have and other software you foresee needing and whether you feel it’s in your interest to have all your software needs filled by the same vendor.

When it comes to restaurant inventory software, there are two important things you should check. One is how the look and feel of the particular software works for you. For example, some of the interfaces have the software menu items at the top of the interface, while some have them at the bottom. Some convey information primarily with words, while others use icon symbols. What you prefer is simply a matter of taste. The other thing to check is the range of features and how well it matches with your needs. Some restaurant inventory software is available in various versions to meet different needs, while other software only has one version available. As far as features go, some programs have extras like recipe costing and resizing, menu costing, prep forecasting, bar code technology, and handling of promotions.

Another factor to consider is support options and updates. For software tied to another program, like Microsoft® Excel®, it’s important to know about updates. For any software, it’s important that you have ample and timely support for bugs or other issues that may arise.