Future POS: A Review of an Outdated Product
Updated On: July 2nd, 2024
Future POS, a well-established point-of-sale system provider, was acquired by Shift4 Payments in 2018. This acquisition integrated Future POS into Shift4’s robust platform, expanding its capabilities in secure payment processing across various industries. Recently, however, Future POS seems to have been rebranded as SkyTab, offering enhanced features like advanced reporting and management tools tailored for restaurants of all sizes, streamlining operations, and improving the guest experience. You can read all about their new incarnation in our SkyTab review.
If you want to learn more about this company and its many offerings prior to their acquisition and rebranding, please read our previous review below.
Pros
Cons
Content
Quick Stats
Types of Businesses Served
Future POS serves multiple types of businesses in the restaurant and hospitality industry. The following are the types of industries included:
- Restaurants
- Food trucks
- Breweries
- Bars and nightclubs
- Coffee shops
- Pizza shops
- Stadiums and arenas
Future POS Features
Future POS has all the typical POS features you might need along with many other features that can give you a unique experience. Some of these include:
Restaurant-specific functionality
Future POS is specifically designed to help restaurants and bars, and some of these restaurant-specific features include:
- Menu management and maintenance
- Frequent diner
- Loyalty programs
- Check and tip-splitting
- Driver's license verification
- Bartender drink menus
- Pizza construction
- Delivery modules
- Pre-authorized bar tabs
Accessible back office
This feature does not require you to be in the physical office; you can access and run your back office from anywhere. Future's point-of-sale system is cloud-based, which can give you your well-deserved operational freedom from any device (smartphone, tablet, or laptop). With this feature, you can find any report, maintenance, or product in your inventory with all the advanced search features.
Advanced front page setup
You can customize the front of the house to your business's point of sale. With your custom settings, you can streamline all processes instead of manually performing every task; this way, you save your employees time and effort and help them focus their energy on what really matters for your business's growth.
Kitchen video display unit
You can use their video display unit to quickly and efficiently fulfill orders. With this display screen, you can easily display orders to the kitchen staff immediately, along with instructions about a certain order, to ensure it is prepared correctly. Using the display unit instead of a remote printer will also help you cut back on paper use.
Custom reports
Most POS systems usually come with pre-set reports regarding certain aspects, thereby limiting your analytics view. On the other hand, Future POS allows you to customize your reports by either building them from scratch or editing a pre-made template. You can also connect and link all reports together for summaries and display all of your reports on the dashboard for easy access.
Mobile POS
With their mobile hardware options and accessibility, you may accept sales on the go. They are compatible with 3G and 4G SIMs, which means you can use your cellular data to connect and use the POS. You can also customize the user interface to your liking, such as choosing a template and modifying it according to your business and your preferences.
Surveillance
Future POS offers surveillance capabilities by incorporating a webcam. With this webcam, you can monitor what is happening in your restaurant in real time, which will help prevent fights, theft, fraud, and other similar incidents.
Future POS hardware
To use Future POS software, you will also need to use their hardware devices. This is because Future's point-of-sale software is not compatible with any device not made and sold by them or their regional dealers. This might be bad news for business owners who own iPads and tablets and want to use them for their POS through a mobile app. However, Future POS aims to make up for that by providing a wide range of hardware devices that offer any feature you might need for your business. To get one or more of their hardware devices, you can buy them from Future POS directly or from one of their 80+ regional dealers.
Future POS has many hardware device options, including mobile POS platforms, tablets, and fixed terminals. All of these devices have touchscreens and are meant to streamline processes. Other devices that you can use and connect to your POS hardware include caller IDs, scanners, scales, customer displays, liquor and coin dispensers, drive-thru menu boars, hotel property management systems, and more.
Future POS Pricing
They do not advertise their plans with pricing on their website, and you would need to contact them for a quote. However, after doing our research and talking to customers who have tried using Future's POS system, we concluded that their plans are paid for through a monthly subscription. Their prices generally range between $59 and $79 per terminal per month.
Their lack of information about prices could be seen as a deterrent, but it could also mean that they simply do not have fixed prices for every customer; their prices and plans may vary according to every customer's situation and business needs. If this is the case, putting a standard quote for all customers on the website could be difficult.
If price transparency is important to you, we recommend you consider this before choosing to subscribe to Future POS. This is especially true because there are many other POS systems on the market where you can see prices clearly before subscribing.
Customer Support
Future POS has a page dedicated to blogs and articles about point-of-sale systems in general and Future's specific point-of-sale system and hardware devices. There, you can find many articles that answer almost every question you may have.
If you still can't find an answer to your question, you can contact Future's customer service at 800-285-9661. You may also log in to your account for live support. Additionally, you can contact their customer support team by filling out the contact form on their website, and they will contact you as soon as possible.
Final Verdict
Future POS was a well-established point-of-sale system provider with over 20 years of experience serving small, medium, and large businesses. While the company’s transparency about pricing may have been a concern, this issue could have been easily resolved by contacting their team to get detailed information about the cost of any plan or device you need. As it stands, they do advertise a low-cost pricing plan in their new incarnation as SkyTab.
We have a long list of the best POS companies in the industry, most of which list their prices very clearly on their websites. You can also compare many of your top choices using our comparison tool, and learn more about this industry through our many blog articles.
Save Big on Point of Sale Systems
Fill out a quick form to claim special offers on Point of Sale Systems
