BETA test version GIFT-E / 4-23-07

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BETA test version GIFT-E / 4-23-07

Post by daleadmin » Fri Feb 02, 2007 10:36 pm

As unbelievable as it may seem I have possibly finished adding two new payment methods to the program.

The first new payment method is gift cards. At this point you can only pay with gift cards. You can sell gift cards if you enter a stock number for them and they will be treated as any other product in your store. At the present time selling a gift card this way will count toward your sales, which will not happen in the next version.

The program will not keep track of the value of the card and it will not ask you to enter a card ID number when you use it for payment. If the value of the card is more than the amount of the sale the register will tell you the amount of cash to give back. While the "Payment methods" feature of the POSCONFG.EXE program allows you to set up the selling of gift cards it will really do nothing. All this will change with the next version of the program which will actually process the selling and using of gift cards.

The other payment method is "User defined" meaning that you can name it anything you want.

To use the new payment methods go to the "Payment methods" feature of the POSCONFG.EXE program and set "Gift cards" and blank payment method to "YES". At this time you can move the lightbar until it allows you to enter the name you want to use for the new payment method.

You MUST go to the "Receipt language" feature of the POSCONFG.EXE program and reset all the labels to their defaults, you can then change them back to anything you want.

Now you will have new payment methods for your customers.

"So", you ask, "That is all you have done over the last 6 months?"

To accommodate the new payment methods I have had to change the "Payment methods” and "Receipt language" features of the POSCONFG.EXE program. I have had to change the "Close" screen on the POS program and the opening and closing receipts. I have had to change the "payment" section of the sales screen. I have had to change the reports feature for the "Sales reports" so that not only would it read and display the new data but if you did a "sales report over time" it would still read the old sales format and properly add those figures with the new format figures to give you correct totals. I have had to change the file format of the ??????.POS file and other files so that they would have room for the new data but the program would know if it was reading new data or old data and format it correctly. But the toughest thing was getting the program to properly void out a previous sale no matter how weird and what multiple payment methods were used. I also had to change the format of the ??????.REC file to hold the new payment methods. So 90% of the time I was changing old code to do new things without screwing up something totally unrelated to what I was working on.

I have not been having fun!

I will probably NEVER add another payment method to this program.

The next thing for me to do is to add the feature to sell gift cards and keep track of their value. You can look into the "Payment methods" feature of the POSCONFG.EXE program and press [F1] to format gift cards so get an idea of how this will work.

Adding the rest of "gift cards" will go much quicker because I have already written most of it before I realized that I had to do the additional payment methods first. And since this will all be new stuff it will be FUN!

So I need some testing on this thing. This is a complete download of the program files only. You must create a new folder, copy your current POS folder to it, and then download this file there and unzip it. While this file is backwards compatible with previous data files the old versions of the program are not forward compatible with this version. HUH? Well this means that once you go to the new version you cannot go back to the old version or some of the figures you will get will be truly weird. You do not want to owe the IRS 10 billon dollars do you? So this is why you MUST do all your testing in the new folder.

There are many changes in many parts of the program that will not be apparent. The only way you will know that changes have been made is if the figures / data suddenly get strange. Which is what I have been dealing with for the last several months. It is hoped that you will never notice these changes because nothing will get strange on you. The program will look / work just like the previous version, except you have two new payment methods to use.

So ring up lots of sales. Open and close the register repeatedly. Print lots of reports. Do voids. And then check everything for weirdness. Report back here if you find anything bizarre.

Dale

Find the download link in one of the last posts in this thread
Last edited by daleadmin on Thu Apr 26, 2007 8:07 pm, edited 13 times in total.

lemon535
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...

Post by lemon535 » Sat Feb 03, 2007 4:48 am

Nice job Dale,

I have found that the columns in the reports are not aligned.

Mainly with the user defined method of payment.

This like it on yours???

cheers

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Non-aligned

Post by daleadmin » Sat Feb 03, 2007 4:38 pm

lemon535,

Works here as far as I can tell. How about some details? Like what report?

Dale

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Post by peewee3ie » Sat Feb 03, 2007 7:42 pm

I think you have funny error in your code that leaves a zero on the sreen. when the pos tell you the change to give back see the pic below.


http://got.myvnc.com/pics/pos.JPG

Image
Last edited by peewee3ie on Sat Feb 03, 2007 8:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Zero

Post by daleadmin » Sat Feb 03, 2007 7:43 pm

Yep, I fixed that today and it will be gone when I upload the GIFT3 version.

Dale

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small bugs

Post by peewee3ie » Sat Feb 03, 2007 8:05 pm

there is a 2 small bugs.
the first one is when you put a name on the 6th payment omtion it does not show when you do a sale and go to pay for it. and also there is a dot in the box just above where you enter the amount.

the 2nd one is the reports as lemon535 pointed out the 6th payment option is not inline with the others and when you give it a name it does not show on the report see the screen shot below

http://got.myvnc.com/pics/pos1.JPG
Last edited by peewee3ie on Sat Feb 03, 2007 8:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Andrew » Sat Feb 03, 2007 8:08 pm

Tony - could you possibly save your screenshots in GIF or JPG format, it's just that those BMP's are about half a megabyte to download. Many thanks.

If you need a freebie editor which can save as GIF or JPG I recommend http://www.photofiltre.com
Image
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Post by peewee3ie » Sat Feb 03, 2007 8:11 pm

Andrew

sorry about that will change them and i will be saving them as jpg any more.
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No zero

Post by daleadmin » Sun Feb 04, 2007 12:07 am

This version will fix the problem with the zero printed on the screen

It also fixes a problem on the sales screen in the payment summary in the lower right of the screen when the sale uses most of the payment options and tips and cash back. This requires more lines than are in the box so this version dows not display some of the lines.

As far as the userdefined payment options not lineing up the problem is cause by ASCII(0) being stored as the name instead of spaces which are ASCII(32) They look just like spaces but they do not print like them. The solution is to type spaces into the userdefined name.

Dale

Find the download link in one of the last posts in this thread
Last edited by daleadmin on Wed Apr 18, 2007 7:23 pm, edited 7 times in total.

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small problem in reports

Post by peewee3ie » Sun Feb 04, 2007 10:47 am

Dale

Is it posable to have the full word "return" instead of "RET" for the user defined payment. It would make it look better.
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RET

Post by daleadmin » Sun Feb 04, 2007 12:07 pm

peewee3ie,

Sure, not a problem if you can answer this question.

The name you may give to the userdefined payment method can be up to 11 characters long, and several people have all ready told me that it needs to be longer. " RETURN" adds 7 more characters for a possible total of 18. THe maximum length you can use in a label there is 16 characters.

So how do you fit an 18 character string into a 16 character space?

Dale

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Post by peewee3ie » Sun Feb 04, 2007 7:56 pm

Dale

I did not know there was a demand for the to be longer. So if that is the way it's going to be let it be that way. I don't have a problem with it, I thought it was a error in the pos.

To answer your question "I can't do it. If I could I would do it"
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Working?

Post by daleadmin » Tue Feb 06, 2007 11:51 pm

So can I assume that this is working now for everyone?

Dale

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Post by brucef2112 » Wed Feb 07, 2007 1:54 pm

I'm still banging on it. Looks great so far.
thanks dale,
bruce

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Selling gift cards

Post by daleadmin » Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:17 pm

Massive progress has been made on selling gift cards.

You must go to the "Payment options" of the POSCONFG.EXE program to set up gift cards. Set it up to print the cards.

From the sales screen in the POS.EXE program press [F10] to go to the screen to sell gift cards.

This is not even an ALPHA test version. Many things will not work, for example while it will print the gift cards it will not print the receipt from selling the cards. You cannot park the transaction, it will not save the transaction to the file, etc.

But at least you can see how it is going to work once I get it done.

Find the download link in one of the last posts in this thread.
Last edited by daleadmin on Wed Apr 18, 2007 7:24 pm, edited 6 times in total.

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