| Term | Definition |
| Labor Cost | Total dollars or percentage of sales used to pay employees salaries. Usually divided into Kitchen Labor (based only on food sales) and Service Labor (based on total sales, food, liquor, beverage, retail combined).Example: A restaurant does a total of $6,000.00 in food sales for a particular day. On this day, they had 10 cooks and 2 dishwashers work a total of 8 hours each, at $9.00 an hour each. The kitchen labor for that day would then be $864.00. The kitchen Labor Percentage for that day would be $864.00 (total labor dollars spent that day) divided by $6,000.00 (gross food sales for that day) which equals 14%. Therefore, 14% of this restaurant's total food sales for that day will need to be used to pay for the kitchen staff they had working that day. |
| LAN | See – Local Area Network. |
| Last Current Reset | A database field that keeps track of the date and time of the last reset of the current totals in the system.Example: Daily sales would be a current total, and the last reset (probably reset daily at the end of the business day) of these totals would be tracked by the last current reset function. |
| Last To-Date Reset | A database field that keeps track of the date and time of the last reset of to-date totals in the system.Example: Month-to-date sales would be a to-date total, and the last reset (probably reset monthly at the end of the business day on the last day of the month) of these totals would be tracked by the last to-date reset function. |
| Line Printer | A high speed impact printer that prints an entire line of text as a unit. Different from the dot matrix printer because the dot matrix printer prints each character as a unit. The laser printer because the laser printer prints each page as a unit. |
| Line Printer Port | See – LPT1 / LPT2 |
| Liquor Cost | The percentage of an establishment’s total gross sales that is used to purchase liquor, beer, wine, and (usually) mixers. The formula for calculating this the liquor cost is: Beginning inventory (or last inventory) dollar amount, plus purchases since last inventory in dollars, minus new inventory (the one you are doing now) in dollars, equals the amount of dollars spent on liquor between your last inventory and today’s inventory. Take this dollar amount and divide it into the total gross sales accumulated by the establishment over the same time period, and you get the liquor cost percentage.Example: Robert’s last inventory showed that he had $15,000.00 worth of liquor related products on his shelves. Since then he has purchased $6,000.00 of product, and today’s inventory is showing that he has $7,000.00 worth of liquor related products on his shelf now. His liquor cost is, therefore, $14,000.00. In other words, for this period, the restaurant has spent $14,000.00 of it’s total sales on purchasing liquor related products. Since his last inventory, the restaurant has done about $50,000.00 in total sales. By dividing $14,000.00 by $50,000.00, Robert knows that his liquor cost percentage is 28%. So for this time period, the restaurant has spent 28% of all it’s sales on the purchase of liquor related products. |
| Liquor Dispensing System Interface | Connects the POS to a liquor dispenser at the bar. This allows the POS to post a charge each time a drink is poured.Also See – North American LDS and International LDS |
| Local Access | Allows a change or update in the POS system to affect only the location assigned.A security level setting that allows a user access to only the levels of the system assigned to his revenue center and to function only within that revenue center. |
| Local Area Network (LAN) | A network that links together computer and devices within a limited area, such as a building or group of buildings. |
| Local Mode | A method of storing guest check totals that allows them to be recalled only from the revenue center in which they were opened |
| Local Printer | The printing device that is physically connected to (and usually physically located adjacent to) the user workstation. Opposite of “Remote Printer”. |
| LPT1 / LPT2 | A type of input/output port that transmits data in an 8 bits (a single byte) at a time format to/from another device. |