6.40k and Gift Cards

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RollerBall
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6.40k and Gift Cards

Post by RollerBall » Sat Jul 12, 2008 1:33 pm

Hi Dale, all

I've hung off experimenting with this because although this is a feature I dearly want to see, there seemed to be a few bugs still to be ironed out. Anyway, I've just been running a few transactions and this is what I've found.

1 Debit Cards - Cash Back
I've just got cash back allowed on debit cards (not credit cards). When you use a debit card to pay for a gift card it gets to the cash back section and if you enter nothing the program crashes

2 Paying by Debit Card
During the sequence the program asks for the amount paid in CASH. If you ignore it it shows the payment as by debit card on the receipt. I've not checked to see whether it does the same for credit card payments.

3. Paying by Gift Card
During the sequence it shows the amount of CHECK payment which is confusing as the payment is by gift card. If you ignore it it shows the payment as by gift card on the receipt though.

Unfortunately I had to stop there because I then found there's still no way of finding out the TOTAL FIGURE for all outstanding gift cards. This I think is a pity because in my opinion this makes the feature unusable in accounting terms. The fact is the oustanding gift card figure is a balance sheet liability and your accountant MUST know it to be able to prepare your business accounts.

I noticed on the opening and closing print that there is an entry for total gift cards and my heart rose when I saw it. But in fact all it is is the figure for gift cards sold during the session.

You might think ah... surely you can use that - take the the total figure from yesterday, add the new sales and deduct the total payments made by gift cards. Yes - in theory, but in fact the gift card payments shown in the closing print are EXCLUSIVE of tax whereas the amount deducted from each gift card INCLUDES tax. You'd therefore end up making manual calculations which would inevitably always be adrift from the real figures. Tax is like that, believe me.

So I'm afraid that as the system stands I'm still sticking with safe, solid and bug-free 6.39k.

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daleadmin
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Re: 6.40k and Gift Cards

Post by daleadmin » Sat Jul 12, 2008 7:24 pm

Rollerball,

Well you've got me mystified. I tried everything you said on both regular sales and selling gift cards and none of what you said happened. Maybe I am missing the point? However send to me as an attachment to an email your ???????.POS data file and I will try it here with your settings for the POS program and see if it will screw up then.

Right now I am working on integrating the Theater program and the POS program and maybe after that I will take a quick look at you total gift card thing. Try to remember that my entire team of programmers consists of just me. I cannot write different features with each hand even if my computer has 2 keyboards.

Dale

Bobby
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Re: 6.40k and Gift Cards

Post by Bobby » Tue Jul 15, 2008 8:53 am

RollerBall wrote: I noticed on the opening and closing print that there is an entry for total gift cards and my heart rose when I saw it. But in fact all it is is the figure for gift cards sold during the session.

You might think ah... surely you can use that - take the the total figure from yesterday, add the new sales and deduct the total payments made by gift cards. Yes - in theory, but in fact the gift card payments shown in the closing print are EXCLUSIVE of tax whereas the amount deducted from each gift card INCLUDES tax. You'd therefore end up making manual calculations which would inevitably always be adrift from the real figures. Tax is like that, believe me.
It is not necessary to have a gift card outstanding total. Currently you can pull it off the closing receipts as you described above. The taxes will not be a factor as everything in accounting is accounted for. For example, here the sales tax rate is 6%. For simplicity, let us say that the customer bought a gift card for $106. The customer gives this to a friend who goes to the store and buys $100 worth of stuff, which rings up $106 with tax. Here are how the journal entries would look:

Code: Select all

Account             Debit          Credit
SALE
Cash                106            
Gift Card                          106

PURCHASE
Gift Card           106
Inventory                          100
Sales Tax                            6
I do not see the need for this feature.

RollerBall
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Re: 6.40k and Gift Cards

Post by RollerBall » Wed Jul 16, 2008 6:05 pm

Look, let's cut to the chase on this one. When you 'sell' a gift card you are not actually selling anything. You are taking money from someone and holding it in trust for them. It is not your money. It is still theirs. Therefore you have a legal obligation to account for it. It's as simple as that. I think it's very likely that anyone selling gift cards in certain parts of the world would be committing a criminal offence if they were unable to account for the individual amounts oustanding and the total sum owed. Note the word OWED. It is a very important word with serious legal implications.

I would not personally be prepared to take the risk legally of selling gift cards in the UK with the system as it stands. The reason is that as I have said now on several occasions, the system does not contain or provide the information necessary to fully account for the monies you are taking from members of the public. If you want to take the risk and in the meantime you go bust for whatever reason while you are holding such monies and can't fully account for them then you deserve everything you get.

IAN
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Re: 6.40k and Gift Cards

Post by IAN » Sun Jul 20, 2008 1:58 pm

yup agreed, here in uk its a deadly shortfall trap!
IAN

(Everything i say is a lie! so am i telling you the truth?)

Bobby
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Re: 6.40k and Gift Cards

Post by Bobby » Sun Jul 20, 2008 9:11 pm

RollerBall wrote:Look, let's cut to the chase on this one. When you 'sell' a gift card you are not actually selling anything. You are taking money from someone and holding it in trust for them. It is not your money. It is still theirs. Therefore you have a legal obligation to account for it. It's as simple as that. I think it's very likely that anyone selling gift cards in certain parts of the world would be committing a criminal offence if they were unable to account for the individual amounts oustanding and the total sum owed. Note the word OWED. It is a very important word with serious legal implications.

I would not personally be prepared to take the risk legally of selling gift cards in the UK with the system as it stands. The reason is that as I have said now on several occasions, the system does not contain or provide the information necessary to fully account for the monies you are taking from members of the public. If you want to take the risk and in the meantime you go bust for whatever reason while you are holding such monies and can't fully account for them then you deserve everything you get.
What I am saying is that the daily closing receipts account for everything, so I do not see what the problem is.

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daleadmin
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Re: 6.40k and Gift Cards

Post by daleadmin » Sun Jul 20, 2008 11:35 pm

Bobby,

I think the problem is that after multiple cards are sold and most of the cards are used over a period of months or years or more, they need to know what the total value remaining in all the cards issued at a particular point, like when it is time to pay the yearly taxes.

This means that they want a feature that will poll all of the cards and report the total outstanding value of all the cards.

This might just barely be possible by going over the closing reports since the gift cards were first issued (comparing gift card sales compared to gift card use) but I sure would not want to do it.

Dale

RollerBall
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Re: 6.40k and Gift Cards

Post by RollerBall » Tue Jul 22, 2008 4:37 pm

Bobby, you're quite right of course. You can work out everything manually with a calculator if you want to. But surely that's the whole point of having a dang system in the first place.

Come on now - benefits of a system...

saves time and effort..
faster than manual methods..
able to handle large volumes of data..
not prone to human error..

Those are just the top 4 for starters. How the heck can anyone with an EPOS system be arguing that you should use it as the basis for manual calculations when it already contains the data you need (you can call off the balance of any individual gift card) and you just need a way of extracting it :roll:

But you're still missing the point. My guess is that if you are selling gift cards in the US and you you can't reliably account for the sums of money you are holding on behalf of your customers, you are probably breaking the law. And manual calculations after the event would probably not IMO be accepted as a reliable method in a Court of Law.

If you can't account for the monies you owe and you go bust you will be laying yourself wide open to an accusation of Fraud - least ways you would in the UK and I'll bet it's the same in the US.

Selling gift cards is a whole different ball park to selling products and at the moment the system is not geared up to do it. I'll stear clear of saying 'legally' but I suspect that to be the case in the UK

Now if you want to keep a little exercise book on the counter and enter every gift card transaction in it AT THE TIME IT HAPPENS then you may get away with it if you can demonstrate that the figures hold up. And if you like you can also keep an adding machine there, add up the amounts of the goods purchased and write out a receipt for each customer. That'll work too. But I don't really think it's moving in the right direction, do you ;)

Keep the faith!

Bobby
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Re: 6.40k and Gift Cards

Post by Bobby » Fri Jul 25, 2008 4:06 pm

What I am saying, is... I thought that this was a EPOS system, not an accounting program. The data from the closing receipt should be input into an accounting program. I do notice that the tax paid on the giftcard is not included on the closing receipt, or the actual total subtracted from the giftcard. I would like to see this information included on the closing receipt. If Dale wants to put effort into having an instant all out total on the report, that is his choice. I do apologize, as I did not realize that the taxes were not being included on the closing receipt. That feature I am all for.

RollerBall
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Re: 6.40k and Gift Cards

Post by RollerBall » Mon Jul 28, 2008 3:56 am

Bobby, we're all part of a big family here - we're not fighting or anything. The reason we talk about these things is because we're all after the same thing - to make the system better.

You're right - it isn't an accounting system and ultimately everything is having to be taken from the closing report and entered into your accounting system so why make an exception with gift cards? Why not have the gift card figures on the closing report or at least readily available from the system just like everything else? Why should you have to try to work backwards to them - that's how you get errors - because the point is the data is already in there.

Because you can call up the balance on any individual gift card it wouldn't take much for the system to keep a running total for all cards and to produce a printout of all oustanding gift cards wit the total. I really don't think you could reliably do that manually over a long period with gift cards being sold, partially redeemed, cancelled etc. And legally you must do.

Best wishes

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