How to Automate SpotOn

SpotOn is the till, the kitchen screen and the guest list at once

SpotOn is a restaurant management platform, and the point-of-sale is only the visible part of it. Station 15 terminals and handhelds take the order, a Kitchen Display System puts it in front of the line, kiosks take it without a server, and SpotOn Order takes it from the web. Reservations and Waitlist run the door. Scheduling, the employee app and tip management run the staff.

It is used across casual and fine dining, bars and pubs, breweries, quick service, fast casual, cafes and bakeries, which is a wide range of businesses with one thing in common. Margins are thin and the day is long.

Everything that happened in the room ends up in it: every check, every void, every comp, every hour clocked, every cover seated and every item that ran out at eight. By the time the last table leaves, it knows more about the night than anyone who worked it.

The last table leaves and the counting begins

The doors lock and the arithmetic starts, done by whoever is still standing.

The drawer is counted. The card batch is checked against what the processor says it will send. The day's totals get keyed into the accounting package, or exported and reformatted first. The produce invoice from this morning is compared with what actually came off the truck, on a distributor's portal with its own login. Last night's reviews are read, and the bad one is read three times. Somebody works out who is short on Friday and starts texting.

It is one in the morning, the person doing it has been on their feet since eleven, and the whole thing repeats tomorrow. This is where restaurants lose money quietly. Not in a bad decision, but in a check nobody had the energy to make.

SpotOn

The night's numbers before morning Sales, labour and card batches gathered and compared while the restaurant is shut, so nobody is doing it at one in the morning.

Food cost that moves visibly Invoice lines from each distributor's portal priced against last week, so the item that went up shows before it eats the margin.

Reviews answered the same day Last night's reviews collected from the sites guests actually use, with replies drafted for a manager to read and post.

Marketing Assist and Loyalty already handle the regulars

SpotOn has automated the guest relationship properly, and none of what follows is a reason to stop using any of it.

Marketing Assist answers a few questions about your goals, then runs email and text campaigns in the background through the year without anyone managing them day to day, while the DIY marketing tools included with the POS let you build your own. SpotOn Loyalty issues automatic rewards on visits, birthdays and activity, and feeds the campaigns that follow. Review Management brings your online reviews into one place to monitor and respond to. Reporting covers the terminals and the locations, an AI menu assistant helps with the menu, and profitability analysis sits over the sales data.

Every one of those is fed by something that happened on a SpotOn terminal or in a SpotOn channel. A guest checked in. A card ran. An order came through the ordering page.

The distributor's invoice portal is not a SpotOn channel. Nor is the bank, the payroll provider, the marketplace dashboard where commission and refunds are itemised, the health department's inspection record, or the site where a liquor licence gets renewed. That is where the cost side of a restaurant lives, and the POS has never been able to see it.

The margin is decided on sites the POS never opens

Put something on those sites every night and the close-out stops being a person's problem.

Each distributor's invoice lines pulled from their portal and priced against last week, so the case of chicken that went up shows on a list before it eats a month of margin. The card batch compared with what actually landed in the bank, so a settlement that never arrived is chased this week rather than found in March.

Last night's reviews collected from the sites guests actually use, with a reply drafted and the ticket it refers to attached. Refunds and voids over your own threshold listed with the server and the time, so a pattern is visible in a week rather than a quarter. The health permit and the liquor licence renewal dates read from the issuing authority's own site, months before either becomes a closure.

None of it needs a distributor to build an integration or a marketplace to open an API. Each of those is a website with a login that a manager already has.

Keep the line at the guest and at the money. Counting and comparing can run while the restaurant is dark. Anything that replies in public, texts a guest or pays an invoice is left for a manager, because a bad public reply outlives the mistake.

The night's arithmetic does not need a manager awake

None of that counting needs a person who understands food. It needs one who can open six websites in order and read them carefully, at an hour when nobody wants to.

WebRun is an agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as your restaurant is. It opens the distributor portal, the bank, the review sites or the licensing authority, reads what is there, and leaves the night's figures somewhere your manager will find them with coffee.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, and a workflow can be locked to a named list of sites. You can watch a run and stop it. Nothing public and nothing that spends money goes out without a person saying yes.

Each workflow below names the sites it opens and what it brings back.