Wednesday, January 23, 2013

What is the IRC feature in a cash register?

Inter-register communications (IRC) in cash registers is a very important feature. What is it you might ask? We in simple terms it is a cash register network which you could compare to a computer network or LAN (local area network)

Why is this important? well if you only need one cash register it means nothing at all. If you need two or more cash registers then IRC can save you a lot of time and add features.

How does it save time to have IRC? Well first it allows you to program all of your cash registers by programming just one and downloading to the other cash registers in the network. The other benefit is reports, you can go to one register and take reports from all the registers and have them consolidated all from one cash register.

Some machines have a simple IRC and some have fully capable IRC. The differences may or may not affect your choice. The simple IRC allows programming download and IRC reporting but will not allows floating guest checks and cashiers or allow a shared device like a Datacap TwinTran or kitchen printer.

Most mid level SAM4s cash registers come standard with IRC however only the highest couple models of Sharp Cash Registers offer IRC.

Keep in mind if you have three cash registers and it takes you three hours to program one of them without IRC it will take you 9 hours total to program your cash registers as with IRC you would have been done in 3.5 hours total!

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