Clover
Clover is a merchant solution and financial technology company that's a major player in the industry for many good reasons. Clover POS systems do many things better than their competitors; the system is intuitive and easy to set up and navigate. It's great for small to medium business owners who are just getting started, as it wouldn't be a hassle to set it up. Clover POS also offers a number of software and hardware options for any type of business and gives you the ability to upgrade once your business expands.
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Cons
Quick Stats
Clover POS Features
Clover POS has many unique features and tools, including order management, applying for discounts and refunds, and their hardware devices. The good thing about Clover is that it allows you to add items to a new or existing order using the Tables or Register app. In addition, you can have various payment options within the system, including cash, credit card, cheque, and debit card. Additional payment methods like Apple Pay, EMV, Android Pay, and Google Hands-Free are also supported.
Clover POS includes many more features that we will mention in more detail in our review section. So read on if you're curious to learn more about the exquisite features of Clover POS.
Hardware devices
Clover POS provides you with many hardware options for your business or restaurant. You can choose to get one or more of them, depending on your business size and needs.
The devices that Clover offers are:
- Station Solo
- Station Duo
- Station 2018
- Station
- Mini (2nd generation)
- Mini
- Flex (2nd generation)
- Flex
- Mobile
- Clover Go
You can choose to buy any hardware device separately, or you can buy a bundle. As you might already know, buying a bundle will give you the best value. A bundle usually covers your business needs and more.
App market
Clover POS runs on a variety of applications that offer specific point-of-sale solutions. It offers the Clover API for developers to build applications for custom features. Clover's app market has an extensive library of apps you can easily install on its software, they are sorted into categories by:
- Must-Have Apps
- New & Notable
- Save on Business Expenses
- Understand Your Business
- Reach your Customers
- Manage your Employees
- Recently Launched
- Organize Inventory
- Sell Online
- Invoicing
- Cash Management
- Form Building & Signature Capture
- Fundraising
- Customer Management
Order management
This is probably the most important feature you can have. If you're a restaurant owner, this feature allows customers to send orders to the kitchen directly. It also allows workers at the kitchen to send orders to the server directly; once a meal is ready, the server can be notified immediately, saving time and providing much better customer service.
Using this feature, customers can do tableside payments using EMV or credit card readers directly. This saves the time that could be spent on payment, by streamlining the payment process and making things easier for both customers and employees.
Menu management
Clover POS is a cloud-based POS, which means that information can be stored and updated whenever you want to. This way, if a certain item/ingredient for a certain meal is 86'd, your employees can update the menu directly so that your store/restaurant does not run out of it.
Online ordering
You can save your customers' time and effort by using Clover POS online ordering feature. That is because the menu gets updated all the time, and once the customer places an order, kitchen employees can see and start preparing it on the spot.
If they choose to, customers can have their profiles and purchase history. This will help save their time and effort in case they decide to order the same thing in the future. This system also supports gift cards and loyalty programs. Customers who repeatedly buy from your restaurant can be rewarded with special offers and gift cards.
Inventory management
The difference between inventory management and menu management is that inventory management focuses on employees instead of customers. For example, if your employees run out of a certain ingredient, all they need to do is update the list so that the person in charge can provide it. Better yet, you can have a list of the ingredients that you have along with their value. This way, your employees can rest assured they will never run out of a certain ingredient, simply by checking the list.
This inventory management feature can result in constant restocking of ingredients and avoiding wasting your business resources.
Real-time reports and analytics
Clover POS system comes with a built-in analytics tool. This way, you can get simple, essential business reports that show you stats about how you're doing in real-time. It also helps you monitor all the important stats of your business. For example, you can view and control net sales, the growth of sales, labor cost, and labor cost percentage in all of your stores. You can further utilize this to generate summaries of your sales for different times and periods.
When using real-time reports, you can see your areas of improvement to ensure that you're providing the best services.
Employee management
Because Clover believes that your employees are your most important and valuable resource, it ensures that everyone is on the same team when working. You can define roles for employees, which allows you to give different levels of access to each employee depending on their task and role. For example, the chef can be in charge of updating ingredients' availability; certain employees can be responsible for discounts, and so on. All reports can be viewed by the manager.
Clover's Employee management also allows you to keep track of staff working hours and shifts using the time tracking feature. This works by allowing employees to enter their PIN for punching-in and punching-out. Then, at the end of each shift, a report is generated to analyze the whole shift; it shows an overview and an analysis in detail of each employee's shift.
Customer management
Clover believes that a customer is the lifeblood of your work; therefore, they ensure that you have great relationships with customers to guarantee the steady growth of your business. When a customer pays, you can print out the receipt, including the tip the customer gives. Moreover, customers can choose the percentage of the tip on the terminal when they pay. All tips get added to the system, and at the end of the day, the system distributes the tips among all the servers.
You can also send your customers paperless receipts on their emails and keep track of them for their future purchases.
Clover POS Plans and Pricing
Payments Plan (Free)
This is Clover's most basic plan for accepting in-person payments. It's a good start when you're just getting into POS systems. This free plan is only available on Clover Flex, Clover Go, and Clover Mini, and the features it includes are:
- In-person payment processing (contactless and traditional)
- Integrate with barcode scanners, weight scales, and other accessories
- Send paperless receipts
- Generate sales reports
Essentials Plan ($9.95/month)
This plan is only available on Clover Go, Flex, and Mini. It comes with everything the Payments Plus plan offers, along with the following features:
- Virtual terminal for online payments
- Send invoices via emails to customers
- Online ordering module
- Employee management
- Customer management
- Open tabs
- Rewards in the form of discounts
- Limited order management
- Item assignments, including notes for tracking
- Limited access to Clover App Market
- Standard inventory management with item tracking
- Tax calculations
Register Plan ($39.95/month)
If you want to take full advantage of the Register plan, you'll want to use a Clover Mini or Clover Station (rather than just a portable Clover device). Register comes with everything you get from the Essentials plan, along with the following:
- Advanced inventory, including modifiers and tracking
- Built-in item exchanges
- Combine multiple orders and tickets
- Kitchen printing
- Full access to Clover App Market
Counter Service Plan ($39.95/month)
This plan is for restaurants and quick-service food industries. They get these features:
- Menu and order management
- Fire orders directly to kitchen or prep stations
- Online ordering module for restaurants
- Apply discounts at item and order level
- Apply service charges for large parties
- Run reports per revenue class (food, wine, etc.)
Table Service Plan ($69.95/month)
This plan is best suitable for full-service restaurants featuring servers and larger table layouts. It includes everything in the Counter Service plan, plus the following:
- Multiple check splitting options
- Pre-authorized bar tabs
- Table mapping
- Tableside ordering
- Scan to pay
No Hardware Plan ($9.95/month)
This plan is the best fit for merchants who want to take payments entirely online by entering credit card numbers into a virtual terminal. This plan includes:
- Virtual terminal with customer-facing online payments portal
- Email invoices to customers
- Generate sales reports
- Send paperless receipts
Final Verdict
A POS system is the basic equipment for any type of business you're thinking of starting or have already started. We understand that there are hundreds of vendors on the market, and each one of them promises you the best service. So, how can you decide on the best service provider for your business? You can simply do that by reading our POS reviews and deciding on the best vendor for you.
No matter what field your business is in, Clover POS is the right point of sale system for you. It will help you grow your business and take it to the next level in the best way. It will also save you lots of time and effort while ensuring you don't waste your money.
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