When you first start the new version there are five things you must do.
1. You MUST go to the “Receipt labels” feature of the POSCONFG.EXE program and press the [F5] key to return all of the labels to their default values. You may then change them back to anything you wish. (Although there are some rules when changing labels that have “####” fields in them.) In version 6.40 there are new labels that are mixed in with the old and loading the default labels will straightened the labels out.
2. You MUST go to the “Payment options” feature of the POSCONFG.EXE program to re-choose the payment methods that are allowed in your store. There are two new ones and the “cash back” options have been moved.
3. If you are using “automatic reports” when the register is closed out, you MUST erase the current automatic report file and create a new one. The new reports have changed the order of the reports and your old auto-file will select the wrong reports.
4. You should go to the “Tax rates” feature of the POSCONFG.EXE program and make sure the settings are correct.
5. You should go to the “Rounding” feature of the POSCONFG.EXE program and make sure that the rounding factor is correct.
And that is it.
Now lets see if I can make this hassle worthwhile.
NEW FEATURES
Version 6.40 has two new payment methods, gift cards and “user defined.” Gift cards can also be used for “prepaid accounts” and store credit. The user defined payment method is up to you. You can use it for food stamps, EFT, whatever you want. You also are able to rename it to anything you want.
To accommodate the new payment methods the opening / closing receipt and the closing screen have been changed.
There are 3 new reports, hourly readings, profit, and gift cards.
When you are in a sale and are asked for the quantity you can press [F12] and enter the total value of the items being sold, the program will figure out how many you would have to sell to equal that amount.
========== Documentation of the new features =============
GIFT CARDS
To sell gift cards, or use them to purchase merchandise, you must first allow gift cards to be used in your store by going to the “Payment options” feature of the POSCONFG.EXE program. Once there you must set “Accept gift cards.” to “YES”. Just as important while you are in this feature you must also press [F1] to configure gift cards. You will have 3 options.
1. Do not sell gift cards.
2. Gift card number is typed, scanned, or swiped.
3. Randomly generated gift card numbers.
If you choose option 1 you will not be able to sell or use gift cards in your store. If you choose option 2 then to sell a gift card you must either type in the gift card number, scan the barcode on the gift card, or use a card reader to read the magnetic stripe on the gift card. These last two options would require that you have obtained actual gift cards to use in your store with either, or both, magnetic stripes or barcodes on them. Option 3 will generate a random number for each gift card however when you are asked to enter the value of the card you may press [ESC] to go back and type in a number. Gift card numbers must be at least 6 characters long and up to 20 characters.
There are three options you may choose to utilize...
“Allow payouts to cash out the gift cards.” If this is set to “YES” and payouts are also set to “YES” (from the main POSCONFG.EXE program menu) then from the POS.EXE program you can choose option “2. Returns – Payouts” then from the sale screen press [F10]. You may now choose to return to the customer the remaining value (or partial value) of the gift card as any form of payment. Normally this feature is only used when gift cards are used as “Prepaid Accounts” to return unused value at the end of the season / year. NOTE: If you do not setup “Payout” stock numbers in the stock table then you will only be able to use “Payouts” to cashout gift cards.
“Allow zero value gift cards” If this is set to “YES” then you may create gift cards with a 0.00 initial value. This is used if you want to issue gift cards instead of cash when there is a return, make some up and keep them handy. It can also be used to pre-register “Pre-paid Accounts” Another use is to give store credit like in a game cartridge swap store.
“Allow money to be added to an existing gift card.” This also should be allowed if you are using gift cards for “Pre-paid accounts.” NOTE: You can always added value to a card on a “Return”
The next set of gift card options are...
1. Print a certificate to use as a gift card.
2. Do not print a certificate to use as a gift card.
If you have obtained actual gift cards to use in your store then you would not want to print out a certificate to use as a gift card. If you have no actual gift cards then you must print a certificate to use as a gift card. If you choose to print a certificate to use as a gift card you will be able to enter up to 10 lines of text to print on your gift card certificates. Or the text will be printed on the receipt issued when the gift cards are purchased if certificates are not printed. This text may be used to explain any conditions on the use of the gift cards. While typing the text you may also use the up or down arrow keys to move to the labels GIFT CARD, NUMBER #, ADDED VALUE, and CURRENT VALUE,. If you type in new labels they will be used on certificates and receipts. In addition if you change the “GIFT CARD” label it will be used in many other parts of the program.
If you sell more than one gift card in a single transaction then a certificate to use as a gift card will print out for each gift card. You can sell up to 30 gift cards in a single transaction.
OTHER USES FOR GIFT CARDS
PREPAID ACCOUNTS
Gift cards can also be used as prepaid accounts. For example, let’s say you run a cafeteria or day camp and you want the kids to be able to purchase stuff but not have to carry cash. You can have their parents open a prepaid account by purchasing a gift card for each child. Since the gift card number may be up to 20 of any keyboard character you can use the child’s name as the gift card number. If you use their student ID number as the gift card ID number then their student ID card can serve as their gift card. You can add additional money to the card at any time.
STORE CREDIT
You can use gift cards for an “exchange” type of business. For example if your store allows customers to bring in old game cartridges for credit to use the credit to purchase new or additional used game cartridges, you can buy back the old game cartridges by putting the value that was credited to a gift card. Then the money can only be used in your store. Redeeming merchandise from a customer is handled as a “2. Return.” NOTE: To use store credit for a new returnees you must have previously created some zero value cards to be kept by the register. Old returnees can use their current gift cards.
SELLING GIFT CARDS
Once you have set up gift cards you can sell them by going to a “Purchase” transaction and pressing [F10]. This will allow you to sell up to 30 gift cards in one transaction. Gift cards are not taxed and cannot be discounted or reduced.
When you sell a gift card you are not actually selling anything. A gift card is actually an interest free loan from your customer to you. If the card is lost or otherwise unredeemable then the gift card is a tax-free gift to you. (Not really, you still owe the money to the customer, he just has no way to ever collect it.) Therefore if after you sell a gift card and then check your sales on the closing screen you will notice that you have not sold anything in your net or gross sales. Your payment method sales will increase because the program has to account for money in the register but your actual sales will be unchanged. This also means that the “Z” reading for your register will also be unchanged. On the closing screen will be the total number of gift cards sold and their value.
INCREDABLY IMPORTANT
The current value of each gift card is not kept in the card, it is kept in your computer. There is a master index file for all cards on your hard drive and also a file for each card. This means that if anything happens to these files, or your computer, that the value of all outstanding gift cards will revert to NOTHING! Your customers will be VERY unhappy! Backups of your gift card files are essential. When you close the register at night you must backup your gift card files. This will probably require a high volume storage device such as a CD or RAM drive. To backup your gift card files you must make a copy of the subfolder that has the same name as your register files. For example, if you named your register data files MYSTORE then in the folder you keep your POS program files there will be a sub folder named MYSTORE, this is the folder you must back up. If you are using this software over a network then the subfolder will be on the server drive only.
Since the card value of each card is stored in the register that sold it (or the store network) this also means that if you have two or more stores, that a gift card can only be used in the store that issued the card unless you have somehow networked together the computers in multiple stores.
The program keeps a transaction file of each gift card. These files can be accessed through the “Reports” feature of the POS.EXE program. You select the gift card you want by entering the gift card ID and the report will display a list of every transaction made with that card.
Code: Select all
GIFT CARD NUMBER 26512254844
BALANCE 79.31
TRANS TYP DATE TIME AMOUNT BALANCE
2563A + CASH 08-24-2006 12:21:02 +50.00 50.00
1547C SALE 08-31-2006 16:12:15 -5.36 44.46
2837A SALE 09-01-2006 08:42:03 -.82 43.64
8517B SALE 09-01-2006 12:02:34 -6.87 36.77
1785C SALE 09-01-2006 15:52:41 -18.85 17.92
3011A SALE 09-02-2006 08:21:17 -8.25 9.67
8678C + CASH 09-02-2006 10:52:12 +75.00 84.67
3112A RETURN 09-02-2006 12:04:43 5.36 79.31
Sample gift card report.When purchasing, you can use gift cards as a payment option (if you have allowed gift cards.) When paying by gift card you will be asked for the gift card number. You will not be allowed to enter an amount. The program will charge the remainder of the amount due to the gift card. So if you wish to charge only part of the sale to the gift card you must enter the other forms of payment first. If the gift card does not hold enough value to cover the sale the gift card will be cleared out and the value subtracted from the amount due. You will then be asked for an additional form of payment even if you have not allowed multiple forms of payments for a single sale. If you have zeroed out a gift card by tendering it for a sale and the amount on the gift card did not cover the total of the sale you can use up to two additional gift cards (3 total) to try to cover the amount of the sale.
VOIDING GIFT CARDS
If for some reason you have sold gift cards in error and completed the sale, you cannot void the transaction. The only way to void a gift card is to use “Payouts” to cash out the individual cards one at a time.
USER DEFINED
The sixth form of payment is “User defined.” Some stores take “who knows what” as a form of payment, such as food stamps, EFT, etc. In the “Payment options” feature for the POSCONFG.EXE program you can use the up or down arrow keys to eventually get to the “USER DEFINE” label and change it to anything you want. Then you can ring “who knows what” as the sixth payment option.
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SALES REPORTS
A. Total by Sales
B. Employee Sales
C. Hourly Readings
MERCHANDISE REPORTS
D. Total by Stock
E. Total by Category
F. Total by Vendor
G. Employee by Stock
H. Employee by Category
I. Employee by Vendor
J. History by Stock
K. History by Category
L. History by Vendor
M. Inventory by Stock
N. Inventory by Category
O. Inventory by Vendor
P. Profit
Q. Gift CardsAn hourly report will print the total sales and total transactions for each hour of the specified day. Also for each hour it will calculate the sales per transaction.
When you have a sales, return, or void transaction the date/time and net sales for that transaction are recorded in a ??????.HR file. This is a permanent file and will grow without limit. This means that at any time you can make an hourly report for any day that is in the file no matter how far in the past. Since this file date/times each entry from the system clock it is again very important that your computer always has the correct date / time. If your clock is incorrect and a transaction is saved it will then be recorded in the day / time from the clock even though this may be hours, days, or years from where it is supposed to be.
In the sample print out you will notice that there are no figures for any hour that did not have sales. This means that there will be no lines for early in the morning or late at night when your store is not open. Also if there are no sales during an hour when the store is open there will be no line displayed.
Since returns and voids count as negative sales and negative transactions it is possible to have an hourly reading with negative sales and/or negative transactions. It may also be possible for the sales or transactions to cancel out so you could have sales but no transactions or transactions but no sales.
The time stamp at the left of a line indicates when the time period began. So the line for 09:00 records the sales from 09:00:00 to 09:59:59.
Actually you can set this feature to show time readings for several time intervals. An interval of 60, 30, 20, 15, 10, or 5 minutes may be selected.
Code: Select all
TIME SALES TRANS SALES/TRANS
09:00 410.56 8 51.32
10:00 878.78 10 87.88
11:00 420.15 9 46.68
12:00 490.48 8 61.31
13:00 388.47 9 43.16
14:00 501.76 8 62.72
15:00 276.64 8 34.58
16:00 278.09 7 39.73
17:00 272.79 9 30.31
18:00 239.43 9 26.60
19:00 377.21 7 53.89
20:00 208.01 7 29.72
TOTAL 4742.38 99 47.90
Hourly ReportProfit report.
For each line in your stock table a profit report will multiply the pieces sold times your current cost for each item. It will then subtract that from the “Value sold” for that line to calculate the profit for that line. It will not take into account that the cost for an item may have changed over time, it will only use the current cost for each line. The Value Sold figure takes into account price changes, discounts, and reductions.
Returns will count as negative sales, which means that for individual lines you may have negative values or values of zero if sales and returns cancel out. Only lines that have a non-zero value for Value Sold and / or Pieces sold will be on the report.
The “Value sold” and “Pieces sold” amounts are the values currently in the stock table. These values are reset to zero when you close out the cash register and choose to “Reset the merchandise data.” This means that a profit report can only be generated as far back as the last time you reset the merchandise data. If you reset it daily then you can only generate daily profit reports, if you reset weekly then you can only generate weekly profit reports, etc.
Each column (except “Unit cost”) will be totaled and a total profit figure will be provided.
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| | VALUE | PIECES | UNIT |TOTAL |
STOCK NUMBER|DESCRIPTION | SOLD | SOLD | COST | COST | PROFIT
657135|COLOR KEY ONE| 454.48| 152 | .19| 28.88| 425.60
2416541644|PERSONALI KEY| 117.49| 31 | .31| 9.61| 107.88
TOTAL PROFIT| | 571.97| 183 | | 38.49| 533.48
Sample Profit ReportLINE TOTAL
When in the "Enter Quantity:" box you can press [F12] and you will then be able to enter the total price for the line. The program will then calculate the number of items needed to account for that price. For example if you had a 5.00 coil of wire that sells for 0.29 per meter the program would calculate that there must be 17.241 meters of wire in the coil. Pressing [F7] will switch the currency amount you are entering from “with tax” to “without tax.”
Download from the usual place...
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