Switching provider without closing for a day

The reason most people stay on a bad deal is not the rate. It is the fear of a day without being able to take payment.

That fear is reasonable and it is also avoidable. Here is how we sequence it.

Before the day

Everything that can be built in advance, is. Menu or product list, prices, modifiers, staff logins, printer routing. By the time we turn up, the system already knows your business.

We also check your notice period. Most agreements need thirty to ninety days in writing before the renewal date, and missing it rolls you for another full term. That is the single most expensive detail in the whole process, and it is the one people find out about too late.

Choosing the day

Never a Friday. Never the day before a bank holiday.

For a pub or restaurant, we go in on a closed day or a quiet morning. For a shop, first thing before opening. For anywhere with a real lunch trade, we are out before eleven.

The changeover itself

The old system stays plugged in until the new one has taken a live payment. There is no window where you cannot take money, because both exist at once for the half hour it takes to be sure.

Then we train on the real menu, during real service if there is one, rather than handing over a manual.

Afterwards

We stay on the number. The questions that matter never come up on the day, they come up the following Saturday when it is busy and something is not where somebody expected it.

What it does not involve

Closing. A gap in taking payment. Learning a system from a PDF. If a supplier is proposing any of those, that is a choice they are making, not a constraint of the job.