Once again, NOAA is predicting a record breaking Atlantic hurricane season in 2021, with up to 20 named storms possible. Combine this with summer tornados, thunderstorms, and the potential for rolling blackouts caused by heat waves, and you get the potential for damage to your restaurant, including electronics like your SpeedLine POS system.
Read on for some tips on how you can prepare your POS for power outages and severe storms.
Do Regular Backups
Your POS system contains valuable transaction, customer, and employee information, but many people don't think about backing up that data until a disaster hits.
When the power suddenly goes off, your computer's uninterruptible power supply (or "UPS") is designed to give you enough time to safely shut down the station without data loss. However, most units will not give you enough time to do a complete backup of your POS database. This means you need to have an off-site backup as insurance, in case you don't have time or space to move your SpeedLine stations from harm's way.
Today is the time to put together a backup plan. In most cases, this involves assigning someone to do the backups on a regular schedule, and choosing a backup location: removable media like a USB flash drive, or to the cloud. Get more information in this PDF of a KB article we put together about Creating an off-site backup of your POS data.
Keep Supplies On Hand
If you're in a hurricane or flood-prone area, preparing to protect your computers from water just makes good sense. Stock enough plastic sheeting, tarps, plastic storage boxes, or garbage bags to completely cover computers and other electronics, and also heavy twine or duct tape to fasten it in place. To prepare for emergency backups, stock USB drives, or set up a cloud storage account like Google Drive or Dropbox.
During an Emergency
Download the emergency checklist from the SpeedLine Knowledge Base.
If you have enough advance notice of a power outage or impending storm, you can do a backup to supplement your off-site backup by copying all files in the C:/SpeedLine/Backup folder on the secondary station (usually Station2) to removable media, or to the cloud.
After any backups are complete (or as soon as the UPS starts beeping, if you did not have advance notice) shut down the computers and prepare to move them to a safe location if necessary.
For any electronics you are not able to move, unplug them to prevent power surge damage, and protect them from water by elevating them and wrapping in plastic.
Afterwards
If your store will be closed for some time, after you evacuate, post a notice on your online ordering site and prevent ordering until you're back up and running. SpeedDine users can do this by logging into SpeedDine Admin and adding a Special Day.
Once the emergency is over, SpeedLine Support can assist you with getting your system back online. Call 1-888-400-9185.
