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