DHES

Here is a new proposed feature that was recently discussed in the chat room.

How would you like to be able to program "reports" that the POS program would automatically create whenever you close out the register.

The deal is that you would be able to tell the program that you are going to program a report. Then you go to the "reports" feature and do anything you want, even multiple reports. However instead of the program producing the report your keystrokes are saved to a file.

Now whenever you close the register, and before you are asked if you want to reset the merchandise data, the POS.EXE program will run "reports" and open & read the file of keystrokes creating the reports that you had programmed. When the reports are done you will be returned to the POS.EXE program to finish closing out for the day.

By using this proposed new feature you do not have to worry about the person closing out the register and forgetting to create the report and then resetting the merchandise data possibly making it impossible to create the report.

Comments?

Sounds awesome Dale, it's almost exactly the way the systems @ my place of main employment works. Not only does this feature help out the managers, but sometimes non-intelligent employees (we'll call them 'The Zoo Crew') forget to do these things. At my main place of employment I'm an assistant manager, and I take those work habits over to my part-time assistant manager job @ a gaming store.

Sounds like another of your great ideas, Dale

It would however have to be quite a big variety of reports with a lot of different options in order to cater for everybody's needs.

Most people are not able to closely watch thousands of stock items and will prefer to have a report on certain items only.

I would like to test such a feature.

Regards

ToPS

ToPS,

The proposed auto reports feature will create any report you want, or even multiple reports using the "Reports" feature in the POS.EXE program.

You enter the reports you want and the options you want and then when the program closes out the register it will generate the preprogrammed reports you created using the current data. And it will do this every time you close out the register.

Your sales person's only concern is to make sure that there is plenty of paper in the printer. I haven't found a way for the POS program to put more paper in the printer yet.

Great Idea,
I do 7 reports everyday, will be a great time saver!!!

Robert Nel
South Africa

Dale,

Would it at all be possible to add a report where only certain items (or specific categories) can be specified for a specific date?

That would be like option C but for a specified date or maybe in the automated report feature for every day.

Such a report could be of much help in a number of situations e.g. suspected thefts.


Regards


ToPS

ToPS,

The "History" report will tell you what merchandise you have sold over the last ?? months, up to 12 months back.

I made quite a lot of progress with this feature today and it will probably be ready for beta testing this weekend

Yes Dale, I know about the history report and it is great.

I do however feel that it will be even better if it can be done for one or more days or so.
This would be similar to the total sales report.


ToPS

P.S. Enjoy the fishing - we all need some relaxing!!

ToPS,

Well the main problem with that is that the merchandise data is not saved by day. The history file saves data according to what month it was sold in, Jan - Dec and then overwrites after 12 months. The other merchandise reports use the data saved in the columns in the stock table (# amount, $ amount, inventory) and the amount figures are reset to zero whenever you close the register and choose to "Reset merchandise data."

So there is no file that saves the information on what was sold on any particular day, so there is not way to compile that informations since it does not exist.

Here are the latest instructions for this feature, they have changed from yesterday's instructions.
<hr>
Automatic reports

Afraid that your employees will forget to make a report before closing out the register for the night and resetting the data? It is possible to set up "automatic reports" that will execute whenever the register is closed with option "2 Close register /print / erase / exit." You can even have the auto reports printed or saved to a file.

To do this, from the main menu of the Cash Register program go to the "Reports" feature and press [F1] to read the instructions for this feature. If you have entered and activated a "master" password you will be required to enter it before you can see the instruction screen. If you then press [F1] again the program will return you to the Reports menu and you can start creating your automatic reports. As you create one report after another, including printing and saving the reports into a computer file, the program will save each key press into a "keystroke" file. When the Cash Register program is closed out it will look for this keystroke file and if it is found it, will return to the "Reports" feature and execute the keystroke file recreating the reports you are programming now, and then finish closing out the register.

While you are programming the automatic reports the program will not actually print or save the reports although it will allow you to set them up to do so. When you reach a point when you have told the program to print or save it will do nothing.

Automatic employee reports will make a report for every employee that has data, not any specific employee. This allows you to only program one employee report (for each type of employee report) instead of having to do so for each employee. The program does this by putting the "employee report" key strokes into a loop. The maximum number of key strokes in a loop is 100.

If you save automatic reports to a file they will use the following type of filename, example BT122306.TXT, where the first letter is the report type as selected in the "Reports" menu, the second letter tells you if the report is (T)ext or (D)ata, and the following 6 digits are the date in MMDDYY format. Automatic report files are appended to any existing report file with the same file name so if you close out the register several times in the same day the saved report will contain all of the reports from each close-out for that day.

Automatic reports saved to a file will be saved to a sub-folder with the same name as your register file. For example if your POS files are in the folder C:\POS and your register file name is KEYSHOP then the automatic report files will be saved in the folder C:\POS\KEYSHOP. If you are saving the file to another drive, like A:, then the files will be saved to the folder A:\KEYSHOP

When you have finished programming the creating/printing/saving of all the reports you want, and you are at the main "Reports" menu, press [F1] to save the keystroke file and return to the instruction screen. At this point you can press [ESC] to return to the main menu, [F4] to delete the keystroke file you just created, or [F3] to test your new reports.

If you choose to test your reports the keystroke file will be opened and one keystroke at a time will be read and executed. Press any key to read the next keystroke or hold a key down to auto-read keystrokes. When testing the file the program will actually print out and save your reports. When the last keystroke in the file has been executed you will be returned to the instruction screen.

When testing or actually using the automatic reports feature you will be warned to have plenty of paper in your printer and have the disk drives and other storage devices ready, i.e. stick a disk in them, plug in the RAM drive, etc. Device errors may cause the program to crash. If you are printing and saving reports to your C: drive, SAVE FIRST so that if the program crashes when printing you will still have the report saved as a file.

On networked computers the only report than can made automatic on a LOCAL register is the "A. Total Sales" report. All other automatic reports must be programmed on the GLOBAL register. The keystroke file is LOCAL and must be programmed on each register.

The automatic "A. Total Sales" report is limited to the current values only which will make it identical to the closing receipt. However unlike the closing receipt an "A. Total Sales" report can be saved as a file.


<hr>
The beta test file below does now link with the POS.EXE program so it will actually do automatic reports when you close the register. What I need beta testers to do is to program reports and then test the feature to actually produce some reports. Then check to see that they are accurate. I also need for you to make the old style standard reports to make sure that they have not changed.

This version has been released at....
<center> http://keyhut.com/pos3.htm </center>

Download this file to your current POS folder and then extract / unzip the file.

As everyone can see the beta testing of the "auto reports" feature is proceeding extremely not well, i.e. absolutely nothing so far.

I have added something new. If you have entered and enabled the register's "master" password you be required to enter it before you can create / alter the keystroke file. This will prevent your workers from accidentally screwing it up. The link in the post above will download this latest beta test version.

As soon as I get a couple of positive reviews of the beta version I will upload the full release version.

Hi Dale,
I downloaded this earlier today and just now got around to trying it out. I was going to mention something about the password thing but you beat me to it by posting another beta which I have not tried out yet but will. I am however comming up with Bad record number in line 2 of module FILINFO2 at address 1C:289B28 when trying to program the auto reports for History by category. I'm about to try the latest Beta and will report back later.

Tina

I got this one time after a fresh setup and tried to run reports before any sales transactions were entered. Mine showed up trying to run the History reports. "Bad record number in line 2 of module FILINFO02 at address XXXX and ended the application. I guess because there were no sales entered in the db or no records met the date range requested so there was nothing to find @ line 2 so the program ditched itself.

Later,
bruce

Thanks brucef2112!

That did the trick. This beta was installed after hrs in a test folder on an already closed computer. After a couple of test sales were rung, it found the data it must have been looking for. I'm liking this alot!!

Thanks again for the tip.
Tina