Sale Parking
Ever come to the end of a sale and when you tell your customer the total she decides that then is a good time to start looking for her checkbook or the customer has left his wallet in the car and will be, "Right back," or the credit card machine has determined that your customer is from Mars and needs to check a database on Vulcan before it will validate his card? Well, bunky, until those other people get it together, YOUR STORE IS CLOSED! Unless you have another register in your store you could not ring up another sale until the first one was completed. (Or your voided it out and had to start over.) You have six other customers in line but can't ring up any of them. Bummer.

Well with this program you can park up to 255 pending sales and ring up those six other customer's. Use the "Sale parking" feature in POSCONFG.EXE to allow 0 to 255 sales to be parked. It's almost like having a second register.

Sale Parking can also be used to run a "tab" in a bar or restaurant. As consumables are delivered to the customer you recall their parked sale and add to their transaction. When the customer wishes to pay his check, you recall his parked sale, give him his total, and finish ringing his sale.

To actually park a sale, or retrieve a previously parked sale, press [F6] from any current sale transaction. (Returns may not be parked.) There are 3 options...

You may park the current sale in progress and begin a new sale.

You may park the current sale in progress and retrieve a previously parked sale.

You may void (erase) the current sale in progress and retrieve a previously parked sale.

To park a sale you must give it a 4 character code. In a restaurant you would probably enter the sales person's number and the table number. 0425 would be for sales person #4 on table #25. If you are more interested in the table than the sales person then enter the table number first, ie. 2504. Your code may contain letters or punctuation.

When you wish to retrieve a parked sale the parking codes will be sorted and displayed. This is why you always enter the sales person's or table number as two digits, "04" not just "4". The program uses an alphabetical sort, not a numeric sort. In a alphabetical sort 23, 15, 2, 18, 1 would be sorted as 1, 15, 18, 2, 23. But 23, 15, 02, 18, 01 would be sorted as 01, 02, 15, 18, 23. To retrieve the sale, enter one of the codes listed and press [ENTER].

Parked sales are written to your drive. Parked sales will not be lost if there is a power loss, or if you turn the register off, or even if you close out the register. To clear a sale out of the parking lot you must retrieve it and then either finish the sale or void it out.

Sale Recording-VOIDS
You may have the register record 0, 10, 100, 1000, or 10,000 of your last sales. After recording the maximum number of sales new sales will overwrite the beginning of the file. For example if you are recording 100 sales the 101st sale will overwrite sale #1.

Actually, all transactions are recorded including opening, closing, no sales, and voids. From the "Void" function of the register you may call up and view any transaction, even the non-sale transactions. You may page through the transactions by pressing only one key. It is sort of like being able to view your journal on the screen.

Your sales record file will have the extension of .REC If you named your register file MARTHA then the sales record file for your register will be MARTHA.REC Please be aware that a sales record file can be very large, one with 10,000 transactions will be over 19 Megabytes!

VOIDS
Only sales in your sales record file (not refunds or anything else) may be voided and then only if they are from the same day. You may also require a password before a sale may be voided.

A voided sale will be totally erased from the register. The sales will be removed from the sales totals, the pieces will be returned to the inventory, even the transaction count will be reduced by 1. The transaction type in the sales record will be changed from "SALE" to "VOIDED SALE". However the amount of all of the voids and the number of voids will be recorded in the daily sales report as a separate number, ie. not added into the daily sales.

Sales History - "Z" Readings
To use "Sales History" your cash register must have a stock table and you must be keeping track of your inventory in the stock table.

Use the POSCONFG.EXE program to turn "Sales History" to ON. A history file is over 600,000 bytes. Consider this fact before deciding to turn "History" on.

Sales History is updated at the end of each sale so it is always current unless turned off using the POSCONFG.EXE program.

From the 'Reports' feature in the POS program 'Sales History' will tell you how many pieces of, and the dollar amount, you have sold for any item for up to one year. You may specify 1 to 12 months of history. You may show one item or all items sorted by stock number, category, or vendor. The history rolls over after 12 months, i.e. the 13th month will overwrite the first month.

Displaying the History file from the POSCONFG.EXE program will only show the raw data in the file. Use the POS program to display a more usable format.

When using the "Reports" feature in the POS program, month #1 is the current month. If it is the 3rd of the month a "one month" history will show only the sold amounts for the 3 days of the month so far. A "two month" history will show you the sales for all of last month and for the 3 days of this month so far.

"Z" readings
A "Z" reading is a tally of your sales from the first sale ever rung up on the register when it was just taken out of the box. It cannot be reset. They are usually used in malls to keep track of the sales of their cart and kiosk vendors.

The point of this is that the mall can take a "Z" reading from each of the cart registers once a week, or once a month. Then they subtract the previous "Z" reading and they will then know what the cart sold in the time period without having to worry about how many times the daily sales were reset.

The "Z" reading works like an odometer. When it reaches its maximum it will "turn over" to zero. For the POS program the maximum is 999999999999.99 and if you add 10¢ to that you will get 000000000000.09. Got the concept? It is not likely that you are going to reach 999999999999.99 in sales too often and this point will probably not come up in your lifetime.

The "Z" reading is displayed in the upper left corner of the "Close" screen of the POS.EXE program only if the display of the "Z" reading has been turned on. You turn it on using the "Sales history - "Z" reading" feature of the POSCONFG.EXE program. The POS program will update of the value of the "Z" reading even if the "Z" reading is not displayed.

When the "Z" reading is displayed on the screen and if your register prints receipts, you can print out the "Z" reading by pressing [F1]. Printing out the "Z" reading will also give you additional "Z" readings for total returns and total voids. While sales add to the regular "Z" reading, returns and voids will of course subtract from the "Z" reading. The mall management can use the return and void "Z" readings to see if the volume of returns or voids are way out of line.

So what if a user has two (or more) register files on his computer. They could be identical except for the file name. On the first half of the month the user could use one of the files and on the second half of the month the user could use the other file. Since they look and work the same the mall would have no idea that different files were being used at different times of the month. When the mall takes the "Z" reading only the sales from the register file currently being used would be included. The sales from the other register file would not be in the "Z" reading that was just taken by the mall. The mall is being cheated.

To prevent this from occurring all register files on the same computer use the same "Z" reading. This means that all register files, in any folder, on any drive, on the same computer will share the same "Z" reading. If you have register files for "JEWELER" and "KEYSHOP" on the same computer then a sale rung using the JEWELER register file will increase the "Z" reading for both the JEWELER and the KEYSHOP registers. So it would make no difference how many register files the user used to ring up sales for the month, the "Z" reading would be increased on every sale.

The downside of this is that if you do use the "Z" reading then once a computer becomes an actual register in a real store you cannot use the other register files to "play" with or for other vendors, or for other purposes. However if you do not use the "Z" reading (meaning that you do not keep track of it, the register always keeps track of it) then this will not apply.

Remember that if you turn the display of the "Z" reading off, the register file will still update the "Z" reading on every transaction, only the display of the "Z" reading has been turned off.

Deleting and reinstalling the POS software on a computer will not affect the current "Z" reading. Wiping the hard drive and then reinstalling the operating system and POS software will reset the "Z" reading to zero. Replacing the computer with a new one will reset the "Z" reading to zero even if the current POS files are copied to the new computer. Resetting the "Z" reading to zero will cause the mall to ask you some interesting questions, you would probably want their representative to be there when you do it.

Scales
This program will support scales that produce a barcode label that contains the stock number and the price in the barcode. The POS program will then read the barcode and separate the barcode number back into the stock number and price. This program will not support scales that weigh the item at the checkout counter and then transmit the information directly into the POS system.

Many scales will produce a barcode label to attach to a package that contains the stock number for the item and the price for the package (price per unit weight times the weight, i.e. 1.30 per pound at 4.5 pounds = 5.85. The price for the package printed on the label will be 5.85.) If the stock number for the item was 75698 then the barcode printed on the label may have this number encoded 275698405853. As you can see the digits 2 - 6 are the stock number and digits 7 - 11 is the price.

Scale barcodes must contain 3 things, a 'flag' to tell the POS program that this is a scale barcode (which is the same on every scale barcode,) the actual stock number for the item, and the total price for the package.

Use the "Scale" feature in the POSCONFG.EXE program and enter a sample barcode number printed by your scale. If the stock number is less than 14 digits long then enter leading zeros to make it 14 digits long. If you compare several barcodes printed by your scale you will see that they all begin with the same digits or at least will have the same 1 - 3 digits printed in the same place on each label. For example you may have scale numbers like 234242111422, 216985412578, 269856475124, each one of these numbers begins with the digit "2." And, importantly, no other 12 digit stock numbers in your stock table will begin with "2." Now from left to right, under the stock number, place "F" under the part of the stock number that holds the scale flag (including any leading zeros) or just those digits that are the same on every "scale" barcode but different on all non-scale barcodes.

To mark the location of the stock number, place the letter "S" under the stock number digits. To mark the price, place the letter "P" under the digits representing the price. Be careful, one or more of the digits in barcode will be used for a parity check or other purpose and not be part of the flag, stock number, or price. Do not place any letters under them. For example if flag is '2', the stock number is 56987, and the price is 23.56 then you should enter...

00256987223561
FFFSSSSS PPPP

Pressing [TAB] will also show you the stock number that you must use to enter the stock number for this item into the stock table. This will usually consist of the flag plus the stock number followed by trailing zeros. In the sample above the stock number for that item would be 256987000000. When you enter the item into the stock table you must enter the price per unit weight as the price. For example if the price were 2.98 per pound then you would enter 2.98 as the price. If the price were 8.45 per kilogram then the price entered in the stock table would be 8.45.

Now when you scan a scale barcode into a sale it will recognize that the item is from the scale. It will look up the item in the stock table by 256987000000 (NOT 00256987223561), and use the description entered for that item. The POS program will use the price in the stock table for the price, and calculate the weight of the package as the pieces. For example if the price in the stock table is 4.30 and the price on the scale barcode is 12.36 then the weight (pieces) must be 2.874. NOTE: I do the best that I can but your scale and the POS program may round off differently and there may be a rounding error of .001 on the weight (pieces) or .01 on the price.

For this feature to work properly it is absolutely required that the scale and the POS program have the same price (per unit weight) for the same item. If they are not the same, then you will have to ring up the package by entering (for example) the 256987000000 number as the stock number. Then manually enter the price and weight (pieces) so that the total price for that item comes out to the same price that is on the scale label.

Scanner
You may use a "keyboard wedge" or most scanners that plug into the computer's USB port to read bar code stock numbers into sales. Serial scanners MAY function, see below.

"Keyboard wedge" and USB scanners fool the computer into thinking that the stock numbers being read by the scanner from the barcode are coming from the keyboard.

If you enter a stock number into a sale using the keyboard the program will then ask you for the price and the number of pieces that are being sold. If you scan the stock number from a barcode the program will fill in the price from the stock table for that item, use '1' as the pieces, and ask you to scan the next item. So the program needs a way to tell if the stock number came from a scanner or the keyboard.

There are three options for the program to determine if a stock number has been keyed in or scanned. You must choose one.

1. Stock numbers greater than 99999 entered in less than 1 second were scanned all others were keyed. Note, with this option if you key in a stock number and then press [F8] instead of [ENTER] the program will assume the number was scanned.

2. All stock numbers are assumed to have been keyed.

3. All stock numbers are assumed to have been scanned.

Normally the computer will beep when a barcode is scanned into a sale. Pressing [TAB] here will turn off the BEEP.

Termination character.
When the scanner scans the barcode it will send the resultant digits to the POS program. However the scanner must also tell the program when the last digit has been sent. It does this by sending a "termination character." The POS program requires that [ENTER] be used as the scanner termination character. This means that after scanning the barcode that either you must press [ENTER] on the keyboard or it is possible to program the scanner itself to send [ENTER] to the program.

The manual that comes with the scanner will tell you how to do this, usually by scanning a special barcode printed in the manual or through the software that came with the scanner.

The scanner manual will list several options for the termination character. The one that you must use is [ENTER] however the manual may identify [ENTER] as [RETURN], LF, LF/CR, CR, 13, or ASCII 13. These are all different ways of saying [ENTER] and you may use any one of them.

Serial scanner setup.
If your computer is running Windows versions '95 or after you may be able to set it up to be able to take input from a serial scanner. You will need Windows Accessibility Options installed (See below on how to install them if they are not.)

From the Windows desktop screen click on [Start] then [Settings] then [Control Panel]. Now click on [Accessibility Options], then the [General] tab. Now click on [Support SerialKey devices] and then [Settings]. Select the serial port to which you have connected the barcode scanner and set the "Baud rate" to 9600, or whatever your scanner outputs as (Usually 9600). Now click on [OK] then [Apply] then [Ok]. You may need to reboot your computer to have it take effect. This may allow any barcode scanned using a serial scanner to go directly to the application running just as if you had typed it in via the keyboard.

Installing Accessibility Options
If the "Accessibility Options" are not in your "Control panel" you may install them if you have the "Windows" CD. Put the Windows CD in the drive and then from the Windows desktop screen click on [Start] then [Settings] then [Control Panel].Click [Add/Remove programs]. Choose the "Windows Setup" tab at the top, tick "Accessibility", click [OK]. It will then copy files from the CD (or the hard disk!)

Screen Saver
You may enter 2 lines of text that will bounce around the screen as a screen saver for the register. You may also set the time delay in minutes before the screen saver kicks in. If you are running Windows and are using the Windows screen saver, it will over-ride the screen saver of this program.

SoundScan
If you sell music CDs, cassette tapes, VHS tapes or DVDs you may want to participate in the Nielsen SoundScan rating service.

This service tablulates the number of CDs that are sold. For example when you hear that a particular CD has sold 2 million copies that information comes from Nielsen SoundScan.

To participate in the Nielsen SoundScan you will need a POS program that records each CD, cassette tape, VHS tape or DVD as it is sold, which my POS program will do. It must also produce a weekly file of only the CDs sold in the past week in a very specific format. That is what the program SoundScan Filer will do. SoundScan Filer is part of the "Cash Register" download file. You will also need any commonally available FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software to actually transmit the CD/tape file to Nielsen SoundScan.

If you wish to submit your sales to Nielsen SoundScan the first thing you must do is to contact them at http://www.soundscan.com/ to register. They will give you information that you will need. Make sure that you get...

1. Chain number.
2. Store number.
3. File name. (The name of the file you will be transmitting.)
4. FTP site address.
5. User name or ID
6. Password.

You may also obtain free FTP software (FTP Commander) from http://www.vista.ru/2inter.htm, there are instructions on using this software at the end of this section. Of course you may also use any FTP software that you already have.

SoundScan Filer (SONDSCAN.EXE)
This program comes with my POS software version 6.05 or later. The purpose of this program is to take the sales data of the CDs, cassette tapes, VHS tapes and DVDs that you have sold in the last week and transmit that information to Nielsen SoundScan.

To do this you will need a computer with an internet connection and an FTP program that will actually transmit the file created by this program over the internet to the Nielsen SoundScan FTP site. Since this program will save the file to a floppy drive your internet connection does not have to be on the same computer as your cash register.

How SoundScan Filer works.
This program requires that you are using the Dale Harris Cash Register software version 6.05 or later. In that program you must be using the stock table to track the sales of each item that you are selling and you must be using the UPC barcode number printed on each tape or CD as your stock number for each item.

If used on a network this program must be run only from the cash register's GLOBAL folder.

Since only the sales of CDs, cassette tapes, VHS tapes and DVDs are to be transmitted to Nielsen SoundScan there must be a way for this program to tell if an item sold is a CD, cassette tape, VHS tape, DVD or something else. It does that by using the 'category number' that you assign to each item. For example let's assume that in the Cash Register program that you use the following categories for your merchandise.

1. ROCK CD
2. COUNTRY CD
3. RAP CD
4. ROCK CASSETTE
5. COUNTRY CASSETTE
6. RAP CASSETTE
7. VHS TAPES
8. DVD'S
50. CANDY
51. SODA
52. CD PLAYERS
53. HEADPHONES
54. CELL PHONES
55. PHONE CARDS

Obviously only those items that are in categories 1 to 8 should be transmitted to Nielsen SoundScan. This program will ask you which categories from #1 to #??? you wish to transmit. Using the above example you would fill in '8' into the field.

This means that while you can place the CDs, cassette tapes, VHS tapes and DVDs anywhere you want in the actual stock table, the categories for those items MUST be the first several items in the 'Category list.' Notice in the example that while those items use the first 8 slots in the category list (except for slot #0 which should always remain blank) that there is a big gap from slot 9 to 49 before the non-tape/CD categories are entered. This allows new tape/CD categories to be entered later. So using the above example you could actually fill in '49' for the cutoff where tape/CD categories end. It is up to you to decide where non-tape/CD categories will begin.

IMPORTANT: Since this program uses the category number to report sales to Nielsen SoundScan, if when entering a new item into your stock table you omit entering the category number, or enter the category incorrectly, then while you will be able to ring up sales of that item, the sales of that item WILL NOT be reported to Nielsen SoundScan.

On the main screen of this program there are several things that you will have to fill in.

1. Automatically load this program when the cash register closes.

If you enter 'YES' then when the POS program closes instead of asking you if you wish to 'Reset the merchandise data' it will start this program. You do not want the POS program to reset the merchandise data because if it does then that data will not be transmitted to Nielsen SoundScan. After this program creates the file to transmit to Nielsen SoundScan it will automatically reset the sales merchandise data in the stock table.

It is also possible to manually run this program no matter if you have set this feature to 'YES' or 'NO' And of course you will have to manually run this program the first time to set this feature to 'YES'

2. Sales of all items in categories 1 to ___ will be included
The categories of the items that you wish to transmit to Nielsen SoundScan.

3. Register file name.
When you created your cash register using the POS software you had to give your register files a file name, that name is what is displayed here. If this program is automatically loaded when the POS program closes then the file name will be filled in for you. If you have run this program directly then you must select the file name from the list of register files on the disk. You cannot change the filename here.

4. SoundScan file name.
This is the file name you must use when this program creates the file to transmit to Nielsen SoundScan. This filename is issued by Nielsen SoundScan for your store to use. The file name will always end with the extension '.TXT' You may also enter a drive letter if you wish to create the file on a floppy or other removable media drive to take the file to another computer to transmit it.

5. Chain number.
This number is issued by Nielsen SoundScan and is part of the file that is transmitted to them. Make sure that it is correct.

6. Store number.
This number is issued by Nielsen SoundScan and is part of the file that is transmitted to them. Make sure that it is correct.

7. Date.
This is the date that the file to be transmitted to Nielsen SoundScan is created, usually a Saturday. When this program is run it will fill in today's date. Change it if it is not the date you wish to use. The date must be in this format YYMMDD so May 8th 2004 would be entered as 040508.

8. Password.
This is where you enter the password for this program. If a password is set then you will need it to access this program even if it is set to load automatically. The 'master' password from the POS program will not override this password. If the correct password is not entered when this program is run then it will simply close.

9. PATH and name of FTP software.
It may be possible for this program to load and run your FTP software when you exit this program. You must fill in the file name of your FTP software and if it is not in the same folder as this program you must also enter the PATH to the folder that it is in. NOTE: When this program runs your FTP software this program will not close, you will have to return to this program to close it.

Once the data above has all been entered there are several things that you may do.

[F1] Help.

Show these instructions on the screen.

[F2] Calculator.
I have no idea why you would need a calculator to use this program but here it is anyway.

[F3] Display categories.
This feature will display the categories of your cash register to help you fill in #2 above.

[F4] Load settings.
When you run this program it will automatically load the settings used by this program. However if you make changes in the settings, and you do not wish to use the changes, you may press [F4] to reload the original settings. NOTE: This program's settings are saved whenever this program is closed.

[F5] Create Nielsen SoundScan file and then erase sales data from the stock table.
If you do one of these functions you must do the other also. Make sure that your parameters are correct because you can only do it once.

[F6] Run FTP software.
After you have created the Nielsen SoundScan file you may run your FTP software to transmit it. If you choose to run your FTP software without creating a new Nielsen SoundScan file then it will transmit the old Nielsen SoundScan file that you created last week. Not a good idea.

[ESC] Exit. Quit this program.

FTP Commander software.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software and an internet connection is required to actually transmit the file created by SoundScan Filer to the Nielsen SoundScan FTP site. You may use FTP software you already have to do this or you may obtain FTP software. Free FTP software (FTP Commander) may be downloaded from http://www.vista.ru/2inter.htm Download the file ftpcommander.exe to the same folder in which you have the POS program. Double click on the ftpcommander.exe to run it and it will install in the POS folder. A new icon will appear "Ftpcomm.exe" which is the actual FTP program and is the icon you click on to run FTP Commander. The path and FTP program name that you will enter into the SoundScan Filer program will be ftpcomm.exe You will not need a PATH because it will be in the same folder as your other POS programs and do not forget to add the .exe extension to the file name. It is a good idea to setup FTP Commander before you will be using it the first time to transmit a file. Run the program. Click on [New server]. Fill in the following information.

         Name = SoundScan
   FTP Server = The FTP site address you received from Nielsen SoundScan.
     FTP Port = 21 or whatever is filled in for you.
      User ID = The User name or ID you received from Nielsen SoundScan.
     Password = The password you received from Nielsen SoundScan.
Response Type = Default
Note: the password is case sensitive, "Hi There" does not equal "hi there"

Now click on [Save] (To test your connection, you must be connected to the internet.)

In the FTP Servers list find SoundScan and click on it ONCE. Now click on [Connect] The FTP Servers list should be replaced with a list of file names or a blank square. If this happens you have connected to the Nielsen FTP site, congratulations. If it does not happen make sure that you have correctly entered your information. Click on [Exit] to close FTP Commander.

To actually transmit the file created by SoundScan Helper connect to the internet then run the FTP Commander program and connect to the SoundScan FTP site. Use the "Local computer" side of the screen to find the POS folder and click on it. Now find the file created by SoundScan Helper and click on it. At the middle of the screen there will be an arrow button pointing to the right, when you click on it the file will be transmitted and the file name will appear in the file list on the right of the screen. Click on [Exit] to close FTP Commander.