Sorry - this one really IS a problem

[RollerBall]

Still in this area of price and tax. System is set up for tax (at 17.5%) to be included in product price. All works well if you give % discounts but there are logical errors in the tax computations when you give per unit and coupon reductions.

Here I've scanned in a sale for 10 golf balls at £1.45 each

http://x402.putfile.com/3/5904033713.jpg

I give a discount of 10%

http://x402.putfile.com/3/5904050597.jpg

The numbers all look right and the receipt prints correctly as well

This time I give a per unit price reduction of £0.25 - I expect to see a total deduction of £2.50 but in fact I see £2.94. The system has ADDED tax to my price reduction when it should have been included.

http://x402.putfile.com/3/5904053984.jpg

I give a coupon reduction of £2.00

http://x402.putfile.com/3/5904060487.jpg

I expect to see the bill total reduce from £14.50 inc. tax to £12.50 but I don't as tax has again been ADDED to the value of the coupon

http://x402.putfile.com/3/5904063148.jpg

What is needed is for the same logic that has been used for the % discount calculation to be applied also to per unit and coupon price reductions.

Any chance that this small mod can be made Dale? It's the only thing now preventing me making use of the system.

[RollerBall]

Do I take it from the lack of response that nobody else thinks this is a problem, or people just think that it isn't important?

[Dukane]

You should send Dale a message by e-mail with this one, since it is a bug!

[Peachey-Notloggedin]

Dale said he will look at it during the week, I notifyed him about the topic in the chatroom because no one had replied.

-peachey

[RollerBall]

Thanks a lot for the replies guys. I dropped Dale an email but I don't want to be too pushy. I know what it's like to have a family and a business to run and then have something like this dropped on top as well.

[Dale Harris]

Ok, ok, ok, already, here I am.

The thing about the reductions is intentional. The concept in the U.S. is if you get 1.00 off on something then you get it off on the PRICE of the item, not the price plus the tax. Therefore if something is 10.00 with 1.00 tax for a total of 11.00 and you take of 1.00 then the price is 9.00 + .90 tax for a total of 9.90. If the price with tax was 11.00 and you gave 1.00 off and then charged 10.00 you could go to jail for false advertising.

But what you are telling me is that when you get 1.00 off on something that you do not get it off on the price???? Wow, what a raw deal.

However they way it is now is the way it has been for many years and people have apparently been able to deal with it successfully.
Right now I am finishing up the "auto report" feature and I am working on the gift card feature. The last time I counted there was still only one of me which means that I can only concentrate on one feature at a time. I did promise to look at this next week and I will but that is only a promise to LOOK at it. I would still have to budget some time to actually DO anything about it.

One other point, boy those are some REALLY BIG graphics. How about next time opening POS in a window (a small window) before doing the screen capture and the editing out the not-POS portion?

[RollerBall]

Thanks very much Dale. Appreciate that.

boy those are some REALLY BIG graphics. How about next time opening POS in a window (a small window) before doing the screen capture and the editing out the not-POS portion?

The graphics are just POS in small window. But they are actual size small window - guess they could have been reduced a bit to be a bit easier on the poor old eyes

[daleadmin]

RollerBall,

I did a lot of work on this today. This file http://keyhut.com/pos638x.zip will replace your current POS.EXE file when you download it to your current POS folder and unzip it. So it will be a really great idea to backup your current copy of POS.EXE first. This also assumes that you are currently running version 6.38 of the POS program. If you are not, you can download the current version here http://keyhut.com/pos3.htm

Please try this out and report back.

Dale

[RollerBall]

Hi Dale, thanks for that.

I've just checked this part of the sale sequence out and the 'per unit' reduction works great now for the way we do it over here. I see that you've left the 'coupon' process as it was and that's still not quite the way we do it. I think places like Australia and NZ are like us as well but I'm not 100% sure (can anyone confirm?).

Unlike in the US where people are familiar with prices being quoted ex tax, over here the actual prices people pay inc tax are displayed in stores (which is why the 'per unit' process in version X is now perfect for us). So when they are given 'money off' coupons they expect to get the coupon amount off their bill, not the coupon amount plus tax. OK, we could work around by calculating the coupon amount less tax and inputting the reduced figure so it's no big deal but another possibility (it's a little bit more work for you, but not too much) would be to change the dialogue in the coupon value entry screen, as follows.

Enter amount of coupon or unit reduction: ______._
Amount entered above includes tax (Y/N): _

Then you do the tax calculation accordingly. At the moment the coupon value entry screen includes a line that shows the tax rate but it seems pretty irrelevant and you can't do anything with it on that screen anyway.

It also just occurred to me while I was typing this, if you added a similar dialogue to the 'per unit' reduction entry screen ie

Enter reduction amount on each piece. ______._
Amount entered above includes tax (Y/N): _

That would make the 'standard' version cover all eventualities and then there would be no need for a version X. Just a thought.

[Dale Harris]

RollerBall,

I did not do anything with the tax on a coupon / unit reduction because the program will already do what you want.

You say that there is no way to change the tax. However you will notice at the bottom of the screen it says [F7] Change tax. If you press [F7] when it is possible to enter the amount of the coupon / unit reduction the program will flip through all the tax rates you have set and 0% tax. If you only have one possible tax it will toggle between that tax and 0% tax.

Ok, so does it work the way you want now. Am I done here so I do not have to come back and see those really huge graphics?

[Andrew]

In New Zealand - when I worked in the store, a 60 cent coupon deducted 60 cents off the total of the sale, no more no less.

We couldn't do % discounts on the till, they were usually done automatically or if we did - it was off to the old calculator, figure out how much to discount (off the tax inclusive price) and coupon that.

It is illegal in NZ to advertise prices as excluding tax (GST) without a footnote or some kind of notice saying that you're doing so. 99% of businesses advertise including GST as a result, and NZ'ers don't even think about the tax really.

Am I done here so I do not have to come back and see those really huge graphics?

Fixed, Dale.

[RollerBall]

RollerBall,

I did not do anything with the tax on a coupon / unit reduction because the program will already do what you want.

Am I done here so I do not have to come back and see those really huge graphics?

....... not quite.....as you can see from the following graphic



Got you there

Actually, here's the real one. I've scanned in a sale of a golf glove - as you can see tax at 17.5% comes to 1.48 on a sale totalling 9.95

http://putfile.com/pic.php?pic=3/8212273726.jpg&s=x10

I now reduce the per-unit price of the item by 1.00 and, with the new scheme, the total price goes down to 8.95 and the tax figure falls to 1.33 as I want it to.

http://putfile.com/pic.php?pic=3/8212271648.jpg&s=x10

If I put through a coupon reduction of 1.00 instead, in this simple case I want the result to come out the same. The first thing I notice is that the Price and Amount figures are different and also, as we know, as standard tax is added to the coupon value.

http://putfile.com/pic.php?pic=3/8212265589.jpg&s=x10

Right, so I now do what Dale suggests and change the tax rate on the coupon screen (didn't realise you could do that) - the only way I can reduce the price by the actual coupon amount is by making the tax rate 0.0%. This is what I then get.

http://putfile.com/pic.php?pic=3/8212263494.jpg&s=x10

Yikes - the tax figure for the sale stays at 1.48. That means I pay 0.15 MORE to the tax man than I need to under our system here. I hate being that friendly to the Tax Man.

[Dale Harris]

RollerBall,

Just like when I was in the Air force, everything comes in two sizes, too large and too small.

Since I do most of my coding at work I have to print out the notes here and take them with me. Also it is much easier to be able to see all two or more images at the same time. So I have printed out you graphics and tomorrow I will take them to work and tape them to the wall. Then of course go to the store to purchase another ink cartrage to replace the one that you used up. Next time how about an image this size

<CENTER> http://keyhut.com/sample.jpg </CENTER>

You can read it, print 2 on a page, and still have ink left.

I will look at your thing, once I find a wall large enough to tape the printouts to, and see what I can come up with.

[daleadmin]

The "amount reduction" samples that I provided, while I did say that they were at 10% sales tax, were actually at a different tax rate, namely 9%. So that feature is correct if anyone had taken the time to actually run the program and then check the math.

As far as rounding up or down so that you do not charge 10.000001% on an item instead of 10% or less, I do not see that as a problem. If a country wants to throw DHPOS users into into the local sales tax lockup for taxing an item an additional tiny fraction of a penny, then there will be just that many fewer people (since they will be in jail and I assume therefore have no access to a computer) who will be sending me emails or posting on the forum insisting that I spend an endless amount of time and code space chasing vanishingly insignificant amounts of money in order to satisfy their local tax gods who obviously are insane.To placate them you can have a "tax error" day once a year where every customer who enters your store is given a dime (0.10) to make up for all the money that you have embezzled out of them in the past year.

That said, in version 6.38c I have reworked the "Coupon / Unit reduction" feature to maybe work properly, I hope. Give it a try and report back here.

Also in version 6.38c, in another pathetic attempt to cut down on my email, I have changed the wording in the "No sale" feature from "Cash pull" to "Put cash in the drawer" and "Cash drop" is now "Remove cash from the drawer" in a vain effort to prevent people from telling me it is backwards, that they have it correct, and I am stupid. Or at least they will have to find something new to complain about.

I am now going to try to take those huge graphics from Rollerball that I had to print out and try to scrape off the ink to put back into the cartridge.

Download from the usual place...

<center> http://keyhut.com/pos3.htm </center>

[RollerBall]

It's 2am here (really!) but I was hunched over my computer just waiting for this posting and I wasn't disappointed.

Have downloaded and given the new version a spin already - looks outstanding so far but I'll confirm tomorrow (today for me).

But I just couldn't stand the protestations and pleadings of a desperate man any longer - so I cracked and PayPal'ed a $5 contribution towards a new ink cartridge.

I'll regret it in the morning I know - and next week when I have to tell the kids we can't afford to give them breakfast and that it's all down to Dale Harris. But otherwise I just know I'll never sleep tonight.....