On this page
Key takeaways
- Integration can mean anything from a live two way connection to a nightly file uploaded by hand, so a logo grid tells you almost nothing.
- Ask what data moves: daily totals support reporting, while transaction level data with timestamps makes shift and section analysis possible.
- Ask the actual delay between something happening on the floor and it being visible in the tool.
- An integration on a supported public API is a different proposition from one built by scraping a reporting screen.
- Ask where your data is stored, who can read it, how long it is kept and whether you can get it back.
Integration appears on every vendor page in hospitality software, usually as a grid of point of sale logos. The grid tells you almost nothing, because the same word is doing very different work in each case.
The difference is not academic. In our hotel bar case study, two week revenue moved from $45,000 to $50,000 up to $80,000 to $90,000, and one of the changes behind it came straight from transaction level data: three distinct demand peaks against a staffing plan built for a flat evening. Daily totals would have shown one number per night and no shape at all.
Four questions separate the versions. They are worth asking on a sales call, and the quality of the answer is itself informative.
1. What actually moves, and in which direction?
The weakest version is a periodic export: sales totals, once a day, one way. That supports reporting and nothing else.
Stronger is transaction level data, meaning individual items with timestamps, which is what makes shift level and section level analysis possible at all. If a tool receives daily totals, it cannot tell you that comps clustered between nine and ten, no matter how good its interface is.
Two way integration, where the tool writes something back, is rarer and mostly unnecessary for analysis.
2. How often, and how late?
A nightly batch and a live feed are both called integration. For anything intended to change what happens during a shift, a nightly batch is by definition too late, and no amount of processing quality recovers that.
The question to ask is not whether it is real time. It is what the actual delay is between something happening on the floor and it being visible in the tool. Vendors are often vague about this and the vagueness is usually informative.
3. Who maintains it when the point of sale changes?
Point of sale vendors update their systems. Integrations break. The question is whose problem that is, and how quickly it gets fixed.
An integration built on a supported public API is a different proposition from one built by scraping a reporting screen, even though both are described identically on a website. The second works until it does not, usually without notice.
4. What happens to the data
Where it is stored, who can read it, how long it is kept, and whether you can get it back if you leave. This is rarely on the marketing page and is always answerable if you ask directly.
Transaction level hospitality data is commercially sensitive: it describes your trading patterns in detail. It is reasonable to know where it lives.
What we can say about ours
CoreTAP reads transaction level data from the point of sale you already run. No register swap, no hardware on the bar, no change to how a bartender rings a round. That is the specific claim, and it is the one that matters for the analysis described across this site: shift level and section level findings are not possible from daily totals.
Where a comparison on this site says a competitor connects to something, it says connects to rather than replaces, because those are different claims and the distinction is the whole point of this article. The comparisons are written to that standard.
The short version
Ask what moves, how late it is, who fixes it when it breaks, and where the data lives. A vendor who answers all four plainly is telling you something. A vendor who answers with a logo grid is telling you something as well.
Frequently asked questions
What questions should I ask a vendor about POS integration?
Four: what actually moves and in which direction, how often and how late, who maintains it when the point of sale changes, and what happens to the data. A vendor who answers all four plainly is telling you something, and so is one who answers with a logo grid.
Is a nightly data sync good enough?
For reporting, it can be. For anything intended to change what happens during a shift, a nightly batch is by definition too late, and no amount of processing quality recovers that.
Do I need two way integration?
Mostly not for analysis. Two way integration, where the tool writes something back, is rarer and mostly unnecessary for that purpose.
Why does it matter how the integration is built?
Point of sale vendors update their systems and integrations break. One built on a supported public API is a different proposition from one that scrapes a reporting screen, which works until it does not, usually without notice.
Does CoreTAP need new hardware or a different POS?
No. CoreTAP reads transaction level data from the point of sale you already run, with no register swap, no hardware on the bar, and no change to how a bartender rings a round.