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The OTMS Liquor Dispensing System Interface was one of the first Simphony extensibility products we developed following the Oracle acquisition of Micros.  The interface was necessary for the gaming market as many casino clients use liquor dispensing hardware to help manage liquor costs or to track usage for taxes on comp drinks.

Liquor dispensing interfaces typically work over a serial connection between the liquor dispensing system (LDS) controller and the POS terminal.  The basic operation is that a liquor, beer or wine pour is selected on the LDS system and the controller sends a message to the POS with the corresponding product look up (PLU) code and the POS system searches for the code and rings the associated item on the check then responds to the LDS system that it is good to pour the alcohol.  If the item can’t be found or the POS system is not in a valid state to ring the item the interface will respond to the LDS system that it cannot pour the item.  This configuration is known as direct mode.

The OTMS system was designed to be flexible and can operate with several different variations on the basic LDS protocol via configuration options.  It also implements controls, such as not allowing LDS entered items to be voided from a check without a manager's approval.

With legacy POS system implementations of the LDS interface, making sales reporting work correctly for operations with servers ordering drinks was occasionally complex.  Typical solutions involved setting up two different alcohol menus, one priced and one without prices.  The servers rang up the non-priced drinks to indicate to the bartender what drinks needed to be poured on each check, then the LDS interface items would be rung as the drinks were poured and those items were priced.  The non-priced drinks were typically set not to print on guest checks.

A variation on this used options in the POS system to allow a server to ‘swipe over’ signing into the bartender POS terminal over the bartender to ensure that the drinks were rung under their ID for reporting purposes.

The OTMS Liquor Dispensing Interface has a separate mode (precheck mode) made possible by some of the API flexibility offered by Simphony.  Servers can ring up normally priced drinks from a single bar menu, then the bartender can pick up the check.  As the bartender selects the alcohol pours on the LDS system the interface looks at the items on the check and either allows or rejects the pour requests based on if the corresponding item is on the check and has not already been poured.  The system uses Simphony data extensions to attach a pour record to each of the alcohol check detail items so that it can only be poured one time per item.

Bartenders can change modes through touchscreen keys to allow them to switch between direct mode and precheck mode as needed.

Interested in the OTMS Liquor Dispensing System Interface for Simphony? Email Sales@onthemarksolutions.net for more information.