New feature BETA test.

[Dale Harris]

Well gang I have another nifty new feature for you to test.

While this program cannot use a touch screen it can do something just as good. Normally when you are in a sale and press [F1] the stock table will pop up and you can look through it, or search it, to find the item that you want to ring up. Not convenient if you have dozens or hundreds of items that are not labeled with stock numbers, like food for example.
However by using the GROUPS feature you can have the program display a menu of up to 20 'groups' like....

A¦BREAKFAST ENTREE
B¦LUNCH ENTREE
C¦DINNER ENTREE
D¦DRINKS
E¦DESSERTS

If you then press 'D' a list of drinks will appear...

A¦LARGE COLA
B¦MEDIUM COLA
C¦SMALL COLA
D¦LARGE DIET COLA
E¦MEDIUM DIET COLA

If you then press 'C' a SMALL COLA will be rung into the sale. If the item you want is not on the displayed page you can [PAGE DOWN] through DRINKS until you find the one you want. Up to 20 items per page.

You can even set it up so that this method is the default way of entering items into a sale rather than entering in stock numbers. This means that you can find and enter hundreds of different items into a sale by pressing only 2 keys on the keyboard.

For the program to actually do this you MUST arrange your stock table with all the items from the same group together. For example you would list all BREAKFAST ENTREES on lines 1 to 100, all LUNCH ENTREES on lines 101 to 200, etc. You can use any line to start a group that you want to but during a sale the program will always begin displaying the group with a line that follows this formula "n X 20 + 1" in other words 1, 21, 41, 61, 81, etc. If you have many items in your groups it is best to spread the start lines out like 1, 81, 161, 241 etc. Put your most popular items at the beginning of the group.

To set up GROUPS go to the stock table feature in the POSCONFG.EXE program. At the bottom of the screen it will say [F6] = Groups. Press [F6].

I need your feedback on the concept, the instructions, is it easy to figure out and use, and does it work.

Remember that this is a BETA test and may not work or totally screw up your POS data files so make sure that you create a NEW FOLDER on your hard drive, copy everything in your current POS folder to the new folder, and then download ((this feature is now part of the current program)) to the NEW folder. Now anything that goes wrong while testing this BETA version of the program will have no effect on your regular folder.

[Dale Harris]

This feature is working really well. But not so well that I could not improve it slightly. Here is the link ((this feature is now part of the current program)) to what I hope will be the final BETA test version.

How about some feedback?

[PosMan]

Excellent Feature for people who can't shell out money for a Touchscreen.

I love this feature because

1. Easy to setup
2. Easy to use.
3. Doesn't take much time to get used to it.
4. I didnt find any bugs yet.

[bob5731]

Hi
It work good.

Thank You!!!!

[Bobby]

This is a great, long awaited feature. Just one suggestion (isn't there always?). How about incorporating the categories into this feature. For example, instead of having to pick a start line, how about picking a category. That way you would not have to be so choosy about where you place your items in the stock table. Now, with 13000 items, it could be a real chore to rearrange the items when you get a new product in and such, but if you could just put in a group, attach it to a category, then all of the items you put under that category, would come up under that group?

What do you think.

Later,
Bobby

[Dale Harris]

Bobby,

I purposely made groups different from categories. A category is an accounting thing once the item has been sold. A group is a logical grouping of items that are sold.

For example. Lets say you had a category of "meat." At the end of the accounting period you want to know how much meat you have sold. If all meat is in the "meat" category it is simple to get a "meat" total.

However when you sell the meat you want to break it up into meals. Pork sausage, bacon, and ham steaks would be in the "breakfast" group. Sliced ham, beef, baloney, chicken and other lunchmeat would go in the "Lunch" group. Steaks, ribs, lamb roast, etc. would go in the "dinner" group.

I am sure that there are other things that would work like this even in a non-restaurant business.

Plus the way this works is that the "group" feature jumps you to the section of the stock table that begins a group, it does not search out things that belong to the group. Once in the group using [PAGE UP] and [PAGE DOWN] will page through the stock table from that point even if you leave the group. The "stock table lookup" feature does not know which items are in the group so it cannot "find" items in a group and clump them together. I could change the program to "find and clump" but this would require a huge amount of programming code and there would be no way to order the resulting group except by placing the items in the stock table in order (although spread out) and that is what I want you to do (and you are trying to avoid) anyway.

I guess that I could have included this feature in the program from the beginning so that it would have been there when you originally created your stock table so that you would not have to re-order it now but I did not think of it. I guess that makes me scum sucking slime. I will try to do better next time.

[Bobby]

Hi Dale,

No, you are not scum sucking slime, that does make sense. And, I guess with being able to add and delete lines in the stock table, it is not that bad to arrainge your items when new items appear.

Thanks again,
Bobby

[Dale Harris]

Ok, here is something new. This program ((this feature is now part of the current program)) will allow customers to look up prices and quantity in stock on networked computers on the sales floor.

How about some beta testing? Check it out, report back.

[peewee3ie]

Hi Dale

Works well but when you set the password it does not stop you from going back to the menu

[ChrisKraus]

Ok, here is something new. This program http://keyhut.com/lookup.zip will allow customers to look up prices and quantity in stock on networked computers on the sales floor.

How about some beta testing? Check it out, report back.

<HR>
It Works Great For A Beta Version.
I Would Love To Test It.
One Suggestion: You Really Don't Need The 'Quantity In Stock' Field In There.

Thanks,
Chris

[Andrew]

I think displaying the quantity in stock is a great idea - particularly for staff use.

[eureka8888]

what did u use to arrange stock table? tnx

[Dale Harris]

eureka8888,

What did I use to arrange the stock table how, when and for what?

[eureka8888]

i used stock.exe using my .tbl file and garbage appears in all fields, i wanted to arrange my stock table to use your groups feature but don't know how. for exmaple item in line 22 to move to line2. thanks

[Andrew]

Stock is not compatible with the new versions of the stock table - hasn't been for sometime.

You use the stock table editor in DHPOS POSCONFG to insert new lines and cut/paste lines into those blank ones.