I have been threatening to give you all 200 possible lines per sale and “sticky” descriptions and I am now making good on that threat. Well as far as a beta-test version anyway. This was not quite as much fun as I had thought it would be but it made for that by being a crushing load of endless details that had to be accounted for.
I guess I should start by listing all the new features.
1. You can set the program to allow a maximum of 60 or 200 lines in a sale.
2. Descriptions are now “sticky” meaning that if you set the program to allow you to change the descriptions, when you use the “5. Voids” feature to recall the transaction the new descriptions will be there.
That’s it. So what have I been doing for 2 weeks? There are two files that are dependant on the number of lines in a sale, the .REC file that stores past transactions and the .PRK file where you can park uncompleted transactions. Both files have to be reformatted to hold the new data. This is true even if you want to remain at 60 lines per sale because the .REC file now has to store descriptions. This would have been much easier if I had made the program just dump your current .REC and .PRK files but I do not want you folks to force me to hide in a rain forest in Bolivia when you come to seek your revenge.
Therefore there is a new program file RECONVRT.EXE. When you run the POS.EXE program it will detect your old format files and automatically run the new program. The new program will convert your old files to the new format. You choose if you want 60 or 200 lines. Depending on the number of transactions your .REC file holds the program may require up to 120 megabytes of free disk space if you choose 200 lines. You will get some of that back when the conversion is done.
If you are running a network you will have to manually run RECONVRT.EXE on the GLOBAL register first. The .REC file is LOCAL but .PRK is GLOBAL. However, all the registers must be set to the same number of lines? If they are not, you will be continuously sent back to the RECONVRT.EXE program until they are. Do the GOBAL register first whenever you want to change between 60 or 200.
When you create a new register it will always be created with a line per sale limit of 60 lines. However if you run the RECONVRT.EXE program directly you will be offered a choice of converting between 60 or 200 lines. Whichever one you have set now you can convert to the other one. If you go from 60 to 200 no data will be lost but your .REC file will get HUGE. (The same .PRK file is used for either 60 or 200 lines, but it must be in the new format.)
NOTE: While you can have up to 200 lines in a normal sale the number of gift cards you can sell in a sale will remain at 30 and the number of tickets will remain at 60.
If you go from 200 to 60 lines then the .REC file will get much smaller but you obviously will loose the data for items in each sale in lines 61 to 200. If the sale did have more than 60 lines then the description in line 60 will be changed to “NEXT ??? LINES NOT SHOWN” with “???” being replaced with the number of lines. While the lines will be missing the total sale, taxes, etc. will be correct.
So what took so long? Well the program had to be able to detect if the .REC or .PRK files are in the old format and what to do if they are not. Do you have one but not the other, what if you have neither? Once the files were converted the POS.EXE, GIFTCARD.EXE, and THEATER.EXE had to be converted to handle the new formats at either 60 or 200 lines. They had to be taught to make descriptions “sticky.” If used over a network they had to be able to tell if the local register was set for the same number of lines as the global register. The RECONVRT.EXE program had to be able to convert not only to the new format but between 60 or 200 whenever desired and to be able to write up to 120 megabytes of flawless data. FUN!
It is now time for YOU to test this out. You absolutely want to make a backup of your current folder and test this there. Download (new file, see below) to the new folder and run it to unzip the files. The version is 7.05F200. Would you also please make a new folder and try this there to make a new register.
If I did this correctly this should be easy for you, the program will do all the work. Let me know.
Dale
BTW, since this is a 7.05 version it will also do 26,000 lines in the stock table.
PS: I just had a thought (hey, it happens.) Since the descriptions are now sticky, and you can have 200 of them in a sale, how about if you were allowed to use some of those descriptions to put a note in your sale? Here is the deal. When in a sale you press [INSERT] and a window will pop up. You type anything you want into the window and press [INSERT] again. Your text will be formatted to 24 characters per line and inserted into the next lines of descriptions needed to hold the text you entered. You can then go back to entering items into a sale. Something like this…
Code: Select all
Line Pieces Description Stock# Price Amount Tax
1 1 BIT-FLAT-DRILL/STEEL KEY 60009 5.99 5.99 9.75%
2 2 COLOR KEY ONE SIDED 60000 2.99 5.98 9.75%
3 0 ***THE FOLLOWING ITEMS 0 0.00 0.00 0.00%
4 0 ARE BEING SHIPPED TO THE 0 0.00 0.00 0.00%
5 0 CUSTOMER*** 0 0.00 0.00 0.00%
6 1 30 KEY BOX 52895 76.00 76.00 9.75%
7 2 ACME SAFE 85214 99.99 99.99 9.75$
Well, how about it?