Zonal Retail Data Systems cut its losses last year following a third successive year of tough trading as one of the UK's leading suppliers of electronic point-of-sale systems to the hotel and leisure industry.
The Edinburgh-based company recorded a profit exceeding £1m as recently as 2002, but has found the going tougher more recently amid changes to the hospitality industry.
Latest filings at Companies House for the company, owned by the McLean family, show that it posted a pre-tax deficit of £92,906 in the year to June 30, 2006, compared with a loss of nearly £350,000 in the previous 12 months. This followed a £385,000 profit in 2004 and surpluses of £868,000 and £1.37m in the two years before that.
Turnover last year climbed from £11.4m in 2005 to £12.6m.
Writing in the 2006 annual report, which was signed off last week, the directors predicted a much-improved performance for the 2006-07 financial year that ended 12 days ago. This follows several new contract wins and customers upgrading to new software.
They added: "The hospitality industry is facing considerable uncertainties in the short to medium-term, specifically in relation to smoking bans and changes to licensing hours. In the last few years there has been a trend of consolidation which the directors believe will continue.
"Our core Aztec product has reached a high level of maturity and is now a turnkey solution for the hospitality industry."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article