Harbortouch Review
With numerous point-of-sale options on the market, how do you decide which is the right fit for you?
The Harbortouch POS system is capable of assisting restaurants, bars, nightclubs, salons, spas, and convenience and retail stores.
Is the Harbortouch POS system the best choice to ensure the smooth running of your business?
Let’s dive in as we answer that question in our review. We’ll provide you with all the pertinent information that you’ll need to know before making your purchase.
Harbortouch POS Review
Pricing
There a 3 basic packages. Harbortouch POS pricing is as follows:
Harbortouch will provide the hardware, point of sale software, installation, menu programming, and training without any upfront costs.
However, look out for hidden fees and read the fine print, you have to pay a small monthly fee for the 24/7 customer and tech support, lifetime hardware warranty, and software updates.
They do offer various freebies for example the online ordering feature and various pieces of free equipment like the credit card reader, as well as the 30-day free trial and free POS software, which may be appealing to the small business owner.
Features and Benefits
Harbortouch is a subsidiary of Shift4 Payments. Founded in the late 90s it has received many industry awards it is widely recognized for its innovative point-of-sale systems. This POS system has many features which can help you to optimize your business and a 30-day free trial is available via their website. Let us take a look at some of the most useful Harbortouch POS features.
Payment Processing
With the Harbortouch POS system, setting up a merchant account is straightforward. Your business will then be able to accept any major debit and credit card types.
If you already take credit card payments, they will also carry out a rate review of your current credit card processing fees to make sure you are getting the best available rate.
Processing fees and rates will depend on various factors, for example, ticket volume, your type of business, processing volume, and credit score. One merchant account needs a one-year contract agreement and there are no early termination fees.
When it comes to gadgets, the SkyTab device not only allows customers to pay by cards at the table, it has built-in 4G technology that means you can take debit and credit card payments anywhere including roadside or at customer's homes if they have ordered takeout. It integrates fully with the POS system and allows you to send electronic receipts so you can do your bit to save the trees.
Overall this is a great piece of hardware for mobile eateries and those who make a lot of deliveries. Harbortouch offers the SkyTab for free to a selection of their POS solutions. Also, Harbortouch offers other free equipment, countertop credit card reader, which may be an appealing deal for a small business wanting to allow customers to make a credit card purchase and boost their credit card sales.
Ordering and Table Management
Harbortouch Tableside allows staff to place orders at the table. This is be done using the easy-to-handle 10-inch tablet via the app, which also looks the same as the POS software interface. Orders are sent automatically to the bar or kitchen streamlining the whole process and maximizing the accuracy of the orders.
Online orders can be accepted through the Harbortouch POS system. Customers can place their orders via your restaurant's website and they are sent directly to the kitchen. Any changes or updates you make to your menu are synced automatically with your POS system. Harbortouch offers this useful feature entirely free, there are no monthly fees or order fees.
The Harbortouch restaurant reservation system allows you to take orders manually whilst letting customers make reservations online through your restaurant's website. This restaurant reservation system allows you to manage your bookings directly via your POS system or hand-held tablet. It has a simple-to-use interface that uses drag-and-drop to set up your table layout in moments and shows you which tables are occupied by customers.
Menu and Inventory Management
Harbortouch has a cloud-based POS management system called Lighthouse which means you can access the POS system and perform your inventory management anytime from any location on any computer system.
The Harbortouch POS software allows you to track an unlimited number of SKUs, catering to the most complicated set of inventory management information. You can also update or alter your menu remotely using this feature. It can provide a valuation of your inventory, real-time reports of stock levels, and help you to identify the best and worst items when it comes to sales numbers, a good tool for inventory management.
Customer Relationship Management
Harbortouch has a customer loyalty program offering rewards, promotions, and special incentives to keep enticing your customers back.
The customer engagement tool gathers contact information at point-of-sale, keeping track of their purchase history allowing you to identify patterns in their spending and build a customer database.
This system lets you gather information about customers' birthdays and anniversaries allowing you to give your communications the personal touch.
You also can manage your online presence and social media accounts to maximize customer engagement with the Harbortouch back-office management feature.
Harbortouch offers a wide selection of colorful gift cards that customers may find appealing. They have various templates and you can produce your own customized gift card should you wish. Harbortouch offers this feature to merchants as a 60-day free trial.
Back Office Features
The Lighthouse Business Management feature provides you with total control over your business at any time or location. The dashboard can be customized with a significant range of widgets to help keep your business running smoothly.
You can easily retrieve information about methods of payment, workforce statistics, employees, best-selling products, open tickets and turnaround times, and more. It can make it easier to manage employees by allowing you to keep track of hours, update timesheets, work out over time, and review sales performance in order to reward your best staff.
Harbortouch POS reports and analytics can provide a comprehensive array of data from hourly sales reports and auditing, to loss prevention, inventory, and more.
Harbortouch has several third-party POS integrations which can give your business a boost. These include apps that allow online ordering (Uber Eats, TakeOut7, DoorDash Menufy), email marketing (FiveStars, MailChimp, Fisherman), accounting solutions, and staff scheduling (Sabari, Sling, Orca Ordering and Inventory).
Customer Support
The Harbortouch POS system is installed by certified technicians and comes with full training as well as 24/7 in-house support to make sure the setup is without flaws. The staff training is carried out onsite at first and they offer significant remote training in an effort to ensure you are fully happy working with their POS system. After successful installation and initial training technical support and their customer service department are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week all year round.
Complaints and Limitations
Some customers have found the Harbortouch POS system to be excellent and well priced however customers have reported that they have had difficulties with canceling their subscriptions and ending contracts early. The company has carried on taking monthly fees even after receiving all the correct cancellation paperwork and there has been confusion about any cancellation fee. There have also been reports of excessive fees being charge and it is recommended that you check your bill carefully.
Several other business owners have had negative experiences. Various features and benefits of this POS system have been claimed to not work properly, for example, online booking and email marketing. Glitches with the credit card processing system as well as system crashes have resulted in unhappy restaurant guests and financial losses for the business. The system has also been criticized for being basic and out of date.
The 24/7 customer help and tech support have been found to be unresponsive and not particularly helpful. Customer support has been described by one business owner as being very poor.
Award-winning point-of-sale company Toast provides food and beverage-specific POS systems. The Toast POS System has some great features in both its hardware and software, such as a self-service kiosk, kitchen display system, advanced inventory, and menu features and seamless online ordering. Their restaurant-grade hardware is stylish as well as being heat and splash-resistant.
Toast provides an all-in-one restaurant POS system, however, some advanced features come as paid add-ons, increasing the price from the basic package.
For credit card processing they promise to meet or beat any genuine quote from a competitor. The POS packages offered by Toast are very popular and for good reason.
Square provides a POS system for different types of business, from restaurants to retail stores. Their robust, restaurant-grade iPad-based hardware is aesthetically pleasing if sometimes expensive.
The basic packages are very affordably priced and cover all the basics, being designed for streamlined operation. This POS system also has some impressive advanced functionality although a lot of the advanced features cost extra.
Square is known for its excellent customer support, with users reporting quick response times and efficient responses.
Square POS system is primarily aimed at smaller businesses with more straightforward needs, although they do offer packages right up to enterprise levels.
Final Verdict
When it comes to POS systems, the HarborTouch POS System has a wide range of features and offers various packages to suit your business needs. They claim to have no upfront costs and have a fair price, with the basic Harbortouch Echo POS System currently being currently reduced from $39 to $29/ month.
Despite this, there is concern over customer support and some business practices. Problems seem to be encountered when something goes wrong and customer or tech support is needed, and also if you want to cancel your contract with them.
Larger and more complex restaurant businesses, for example, restaurants undertaking dine-in as well as takeout customers and deliveries, may consider looking into the Toast POS System first. For smaller or more straightforward businesses for example food trucks, it may be useful to find out more about the Square POS System.
Tyler Connaghan
Contributing Author
