How to prepare your EPoS for Christmas

Christmas is the most profitable stretch of the hospitality year, and the most unforgiving. Covers stack up, payment methods multiply, and the margin for error shrinks to almost nothing. Your EPoS system sits at the centre of all of it: every order, every transaction, every upsell opportunity. Get it ready before the rush hits, and it becomes your most reliable member of staff. Leave it until December, and it becomes your biggest liability. 

For hotels, food and beverage revenue is growing more each year, with F&B revenue increasing by 3.8% last year, showing that Christmas dining and bar service is a key revenue driver. That means your hotel EPoS needs to be ready to capture every order.  

Here are ten practical steps to make sure your EPoS system is ready for the festive season, from hardware checks to digital ordering. 

1. Check your hardware and software are up to date 

Before anything else, run a full hardware check. Inspect every terminal, printer, card reader, and cable. Replace anything that's showing signs of wear: a receipt printer that jams twice a week in October will jam ten times a night in December. 

Make sure your hospitality EPoS system connects your whole operation: kitchen display screens, bar tabs, table management, and back-office reporting should all be talking to each other. For hotels, this means checking that your hotel EPoS connects across every revenue area like your restaurant, bar, spa and events space so nothing operates separately during your busiest time. Check that your EPoS  system is compatible with other critical systems like purchase-to-pay software, pay-at-table technology, and online ordering platforms. Check that those integrations are tested before the season starts, not during it. 

Install any pending software updates now. Updates that go in during a quiet Tuesday in November don't cause problems. Updates that go in the week before Christmas do. 

Checklist: hardware and software:

• All terminals, printers, and card readers inspected and working
• Software updated to the latest version
• Kitchen display screens and table management connected and tested
• Integrations with other systems confirmed and tested

2. Set up your festive menu and promotions

Your EPoS should reflect your Christmas menu before the first booking arrives, not after. Build your festive items, set-menu options and promotional bundles into the system early, including any modifiers, allergen flags, and pricing tiers for different service periods. 

If you're running Christmas party packages with pre-selected courses, set these up as fixed menus in your EPoS so kitchen orders fire correctly from the start. The same applies to any festive cocktail lists or limited-edition items: get them in the system, priced correctly, and visible to your floor team before they're needed. 

Hotels running multiple F&B areas should configure each one separately within their hotel EPoS system, with the correct pricing tiers and menu items. A festive afternoon tea in the lounge and a Christmas party set menu in the events space are different products so your EPoS should treat them that way. 

If you're using Procure Wizard Evo, link your stock management to your EPoS data before the season starts. When a dish sells out, your system knows before your staff do and you can update your menu in real time rather than apologising to tables. It also means your supplier orders reflect actual consumption rather than last year's guess. 

Checklist: menu and promotions: 

• Festive menu items, modifiers and allergen flags added to your EPoS  
• Set menus and Christmas party packages configured correctly 
• Pricing checked across all service periods 
• Procure Wizard Evo stock management linked to EPoS data (if applicable) 

3. Train and empower your staff 

Your EPoS system is only as good as the people using it. Run training sessions before the season starts, not a five-minute briefing on the first busy Friday, but proper time with the system while things are still quiet enough to ask questions. 

Cover the basics: how to split bills, how to apply discounts and promotions, how to handle voids and refunds and how to use the kitchen display correctly. Then go further: configure your EPoS to prompt staff with top upselling techniques in restaurants: a suggested wine pairing, a dessert prompt, a festive cocktail recommendation. Done well, these prompts pay for themselves in the first week of December. 

For hotel teams, training should also cover how to post charges to a guest's room directly from the EPoS system that eliminates manual inputting between the restaurant and front desk. Staff who understand the full process from order to invoice to checkout will handle the Christmas rush with far less challenges. 

If your EPoS integrates with Rotaready Evo, use that connection now. Scheduling accuracy during peak periods depends on knowing your transaction volumes, and your EPoS data is the most reliable source you have. Match your staff rota system to your busiest service windows rather than guessing, and you'll avoid both the cost of overstaffing and the service failures that come from being caught short. 

Checklist: staff training: 

• Full EPoS training completed for all front-of-house staff 
• Bill splitting, discounts, voids, and refunds covered 
• Upsell prompts configured and tested 
• Hotel teams trained on room invoicing  
• Rotaready Evo rota matched to EPoS transaction data for peak periods (if applicable) 

4. Prepare your payment processing 

The festive season brings every payment method at once: cash, cards, contactless, Apple Pay, Google Pay, often in quick succession at the busiest point of service. Your EPoS needs to handle all of them without slowing the till down. Over 74% of hospitality customers now prefer contactless payment methods, so when guests want to carry on the festive cheer it’s best to have an EPoS system that can keep up.  

Check that your card readers are updated and working. Test contactless limits. If you're running Christmas party bookings with deposits, make sure your EPoS is set up to record and reconcile those payments correctly so nothing falls through the gap between what was taken at booking and what's owed on the night.  

Hotel EPoS systems should support multiple payment options, including the ability to post charges directly to a guest's room. This ensures that guests dining in your restaurant or drinking at your bar don't need to settle a separate bill at all. That smooth experience is increasingly what guests expect, and it removes any delays from your front desk at checkout. 

Checklist: Payment processing 

• All payment methods tested and working (contactless, Apple Pay, Google Pay) 
• Card readers updated 
• Deposit reconciliation configured for Christmas party bookings 
• Room charge invoicing tested and working for hotel guests 
• QikServe Evo pay-at-table or kiosk ordering configured and tested for peak service (see Point 5) 

5. Take payments away from the main terminal 

The main EPoS terminal is the bottleneck you can't afford at Christmas. When every table wants to pay at the same time, a queue at the till costs you covers, tips, and the goodwill of guests who've otherwise had a good night. 

QikServe gives guests a way to order and pay directly from their phone: scanning a QR code at the table to open a tab, add to their order, split the bill, and pay without waiting for staff. Orders and payments feed directly into your EPoS Evo, so your kitchen and your reconciliation stay in sync. For high-volume festive services, it takes the pressure off your floor team at the exact moment they need it most, and it keeps the till queue from becoming the thing guests remember. 

For hotels, mobile ordering is particularly valuable if you need to cover multiple areas. A guest who orders a drink at the bar, moves to the restaurant for dinner and then wants a quiet drink in the lounge shouldn't need to settle three separate bills. A hotel EPoS configured with QR ordering and room charge capability means all of these orders flow to one place. 

Self-service kiosks are worth considering too if your site runs a quick-service or counter model: they capture orders and payments independently, freeing your team to focus on the floor rather than the queue. 

Checklist: Digital ordering and pay-at-table 

• QikServe QR code ordering tested at tables 
• Pay-at-table configured and staff briefed on how it works alongside the main terminal 
• Room charge via QR ordering tested for hotel guests 
• Self-service kiosks set up and tested (if applicable) 

6. Integrate your bookings and pre-orders 

If you're using Collins Evo for Christmas party bookings and pre-orders, the integration with your EPoS Evo is where the real  timesaving happens. Once you select the booking on your EPoS, pre-orders sync automatically to the transaction pane: you can amend or add to the order and send it straight to the kitchen without any manual re-entry. During a busy December service, that's the difference between a kitchen that's ahead of the room and one that's constantly catching up. 

Use your pre-order system to capture course selections, dietary requirements, and any special requests before the night. The more your kitchen knows in advance, the smoother the service runs and the less your floor team has to manage on the night itself. 

When running a hotel, your guest booking data from your hotel PMS can inform your EPoS about who’s staying, what packages they've booked and what's already been pre-paid. When your systems share that information, your restaurant team can greet a Christmas party group knowing exactly what they've ordered and what's included in their package without any confusion.  

For more on why this integration matters,  see 8 benefits of integrating hospitality POS with CRM. 

Checklist: Bookings and pre-orders 

• Collins Evo integration with EPoS Evo tested and working 
• Pre-orders syncing correctly to the transaction pane 
• Dietary requirements and special requests visible to kitchen staff 
• Hotel PMS guest data informing EPoS of hotel stays and packages 

7. Use your data to plan ahead 

Your EPoS system holds more useful data than most operators realise. Before the festive season starts, pull your data from last Christmas, your busiest service windows, your highest-selling items or your average spend per cover and use it to plan this year's operation. 

Use it to forecast your busiest days and adjust your prep accordingly. Identify which menu items drove the most margin and make sure those are prominent in your festive offering.  Forecast staffing requirements so your rota reflects reality rather than optimism. 

For hotels, combining your EPoS data with your PMS occupancy data tells you how much of that revenue came from guests staying at the property versus walk-ins, and which guest segments spent the most on certain F&B services. That data shapes everything including your Christmas package pricing or your upsell strategy at check-in. 

If you haven't been tracking this data systematically, now is the time to start. The operators who go into Christmas with last year's numbers in front of them make better decisions than the ones who go in on instinct. 

Checklist: Data and analytics 

• Last year's Christmas data reviewed: busiest periods, top sellers, average spend 
• Forecasts built for staffing and stock 
• Reporting dashboards set up and accessible to management 
• Hotel EPoS data combined with hotel PMS occupancy data for F&B planning 

8. Stress-test your system before the rush 

Don't wait for a full house to find out your EPoS can't handle the load. Run a stress test before the season starts: simulate a busy service, process multiple transactions simultaneously, and check that your system responds without slowing down. 

Test your Wi-Fi and network connection too. A dropped connection during a busy service is one of the most disruptive things that can happen to a hospitality operation, and it's almost always preventable. Make sure you have a backup plan, whether that's a secondary network, offline payment capability or a clear process for your team if the system goes down. 

In a hotel, a system outage during peak Christmas service doesn't just affect the restaurant but it can break the link between your hotel EPoS and your hotel PMS. This means room charges can't be posted and your front desk is manually handling charges late at night. Test that your hotel EPoS maintains its PMS connection when there is a weak signal, and confirm what happens to invoice posting if connectivity drops temporarily. 

Checklist: Stress testing 

• Full system load test completed before the season starts 
• Wi-Fi and network connection tested under load 
• Offline payment capability confirmed 
• Hotel EPoS and PMS connection tested under a weak signal for hotel operations 
• Staff briefed on the process if the system goes down 

9. Work with your EPoS provider, not around them 

Your EPoS provider should be a resource during the festive season, not just a support line you call when something breaks. Before December arrives, speak to your account manager about what's coming: your expected cover volumes, any new menu configurations, any integrations you're adding. 

If you’re adding new F&B areas to your hotel, launching a Christmas events programme or integrating your hotel EPoS with a PMS for the first time, this conversation is even more important. A hotel EPoS implementation that's been properly planned and tested before the season starts is a very different experience from one that's being configured too late in December. 

Ask about support hours over the Christmas period. Find out what the response time is for critical issues and make sure your team knows who to call and how. The operators who have this conversation in October are the ones who aren't scrambling for a support number at 7pm on a Friday in December. 

Checklist: EPoS provider partnership 

• Account manager briefed on festive season plans and volumes 
• Support contact details confirmed and shared with the team 
• Support hours over Christmas and New Year confirmed 
• Any new hotel EPoS integrations with PMS, payments or digital ordering planned and tested in advance 

10. If you run hotel dining or bar service, post charges to the room automatically 

For hotels running festive dining, bar service or Christmas events, the EPoS integration with Guestline PMS Evo changes how the whole evening works. Rather than guests settling a separate bill at the end of the night, charges post automatically from your EPoS to the guest's room  so there is no manual reconciliation at checkout and no errors between what the restaurant recorded and what the front desk sees. 

When hotel PMS and EPoS systems aren't integrated, restaurant charges and other additional services must be communicated to the front desk and added to the invoice manually which will throw up errors, delays and billing disputes that leave guests frustrated and confused. Automating your room invoice posting makes that risk disappear entirely. 

It's particularly useful for Christmas party packages where guests are moving between dining, bar, and accommodation, and where the last thing anyone wants is a billing conversation at midnight. If you’re using our hotel EPoS software, it is built specifically for this with agentic AI integrations that integrates with Guestline PMS to automate the time-consuming manual tasks across F&B, events and bar services. This enables your team to focus on delivering exceptional guest experiences rather than chasing manual paperwork. 

Checklist: Hotel EPoS: 

• EPoS-to-PMS folio posting tested and working 
• Christmas party package billing configured correctly 
• Front desk and restaurant teams aligned on the process 
• AI reporting dashboards set up for real-time F&B visibility 

Your pre-Christmas EPoS checklist 

Here's everything in one place. Work through this before the festive season starts. 

Hardware and software 

• All terminals, printers, and card readers inspected and working 
• Software updated to the latest version 
• Kitchen display screens and table management connected and tested 
• Integrations with other systems confirmed and tested 

Menu and promotions 

• Festive menu items, modifiers, and allergen flags added to EPoS Evo 
• Set menus and Christmas party packages configured correctly 
• Pricing checked across all service periods 
• Procure Wizard Evo stock management linked to EPoS data (if applicable) 

Staff training 

• Full EPoS training completed for all front-of-house staff 
• Bill splitting, discounts, voids, and refunds covered 
• Upsell prompts configured and tested 
• Hotel teams trained on room invoice posting (if applicable)
• Rotaready Evo rota matched to EPoS transaction data for peak periods (if applicable) 

Payment processing 

• All payment methods tested and working 
• Card readers updated 
• Deposit reconciliation configured for Christmas party bookings 
• Room charge posting tested for hotel guests (if applicable) 

Digital ordering and pay-at-table 

• QikServe Evo QR code ordering tested at tables 
• Pay-at-table configured and staff briefed 
• Self-service kiosks set up and tested (if applicable) 
• Room charge via QR ordering tested (if applicable) 

Bookings and pre-orders 

• Collins Evo integration with EPoS Evo tested and working 
• Pre-orders syncing correctly to the transaction pane 
• Dietary requirements and special requests visible to kitchen staff 

Data and analytics 

• Last year's Christmas data reviewed 
• Forecasts built for staffing and stock 
• Reporting dashboards set up and accessible to management 

Stress testing 

• Full system load test completed 
• Wi-Fi and network connection tested under load 
• Offline payment capability confirmed 
• Staff briefed on the process if the system goes down 

EPoS provider partnership 

• Account manager briefed on festive season plans 
• Support contact details confirmed and shared with the team 
• Support hours over Christmas and New Year confirmed 

Hotel EPoS (if applicable) 

• EPoS-to-PMS folio posting tested and working 
• Christmas party package billing configured correctly 
• Front desk and restaurant teams aligned on the process 
• AI reporting dashboards configured for real-time visibility 

Get your whole festive operation ready 

Your EPoS Evo is one piece of the picture. For everything else like your booking strategy, staffing guides, marketing ideas and more, our festive hospitality hub has you covered.