Studies are presently showing that 2/3 of all shoppers now use their smartphones during purchasing. The important point here is they have their smartphones and they are using them.

Furthermore, many, particularly older people and women, have expressed reluctance to supply email addresses to the retailer; plus, even if they do, it's an effort to collect an email address for just one receipt, so retailers often go back to issuing printed receipts. It's a waste of time and money. Now, with our system, you can immediately issue a receipt using Uniqode's QR codes to the shopper's smartphone with no privacy issues. Uniqode's QR code generator helps tailor marketing efforts by allowing businesses to create interactive, scannable experiences that instantly connect customers with personalized offers, detailed product information, and exclusive promotions.

Besides achieving the lowest possible OPERATING COST, you get many other benefits.

As these digital receipts WILL NEVER fade away and will always be available in “original quality," so people do not have to contact you to get another copy.

The free printing of promotional material and coupons, with these eye-catching receipts which the power to generate MORE SALES as it is combined with digital receipts. I WILL always BE legible and as your clients KEEP their phones with them, so they will have these coupons when they return to the shop – instead of what happens now they lose them so wasting your marketing strategies.

People can read these receipts as they CAN BE magnified on their screen a real if you have older people as clients who often have problems with eyesight.

Your clients will have a permanent record of their bills.

These receipts CAN BE shared easily with 3rd party applications, even at the end of the financial year for claiming business expenses, taxation, customer service, emailing, etc.

Our point of difference, is we are always a step ahead.

You probably do have in place a system by where stocktakes are done yearly, if you do not you definitely should.

What most people do is divide the shop into discrete locations (often by department) and stocktake each section separately. What we suggest is that you divide up the shop into many small manageable locations, so that one person can doa section in an afternoon. By keeping the locations to a manageable size, means you won’t be tempted to skip a large location because it’s too time consuming as all locations take the same time. It also means that if there is a slow period noon a spare staff member can be used to do a stocktake.

Now as the locations are slowly being counted, the stocktake is coming together. Another advantage of doing this although it makes the stocktake longer is that some locations should be checked more often then other areas. This method allows you to do that.

Furthermore, while you are counting you can also clean too, as you are doing a location stocktake beside checking whether or not the stock is there and fully accounted for by you in your point of sale. You are also checking other items in that location that aren’t supposed to be there. In a sense while you are checking one location you are checking other locations as well. It also allows you to systematically check the shelves and labels are correct. I suggest that you count from the top shelf and work your way down and work from left to right.

Now the locations should not be counted in a logical order but in a random sequence for each location. This has security advantages.

A well-planned stocktake done like this will result in minor disruption, give you accurate stock quantities, which can enable you to make informed business decisions.

Our point of sale allows you to do this.

In my experience, barcode scanners are very much, what you pay for is what you get. When you see cheap scanners with no instructions or what so often happens, written in Chinglish (Chinese English) if something goes wrong it may be impossible to fix.

Furthermore, what happens is with obscure companies often without a website if you need a driver to make it work, you cannot get the driver. This is a major problem if the user wants to change window versions. It is best to get a well advertised brand. Even though I have seen many have trouble with these too.

You need to listen for the noise. Some scanners are just noisy. After a while the sound really gets to you. Bee, bee, bee, etc.

Then check the range they scan, too much can be a problem. You want to scan an item, and it picks up another barcode from somewhere else. What you need to do is test over the range that you intend to use them.

While doing this check how long in time it takes to read, some read very slowly.

How accurately does it need to be aimed?

Determine if the scanner can read dirty and creased barcodes. If you sell drinks, you also need to check if it can read a dripping wet can.

Now check what they can read, I would suggest as a bare minimum you need a scanner that reads 128 (widely used in warehousing), UPC (supermarkets) , ISBM (used in books) and QR codes (modern barcodes).

Look at the size of the cable, I have never heard anyone complain if the cable is too long but I have heard complaints if it's too short.

Can it take a fall? Generally, the heavy ones go crash when they fall. In most shops in continuous use, it is only a matter of time before they fall.

Lastly check if it can take moisture. I have seen plenty of scanners after coffee was dropped on them.

This is one of the most common support questions we get; somebody goes to print something, and the printer does not work.

Try the following steps before calling for support.

) Check that there is paper in the printer.

) Turn the printer off, wait 20 seconds and then turn it on again.

) Turn the printer off, pull the power off, wait 20 seconds and then turn it on again.

) Check that you have enough ink and/or toner

) If you know how to do it control panel > printer

Now check the printer is functioning.

) Finally turn the printer off, pull the power off, wait 20 minutes and then turn it on again. I do not know why but sometimes a really long break seems to fix it.

If it still does not work, well call for support.

Recently, a well know EDI invoice supplier to our users; XchangeIT sent an email stating about Hallmark Cards.

"Hallmark will not be using the XchangeIT platform from the end of August 2015.........This also means that Delivery files, Sales data files, and Return data files using any XchangeIT file formats may not be used for Hallmark products, because this is XchangeIT Intellectual Property, which will no longer be allowed to be used after August 31st 2015."

This email brought up shock and a storm over who does own the copyright for these files.

What shocked me is this switch in XchangeIT policy. I have an old letter from XchangeIT committee that claims copyright on the delivery file format, but states that anyone is free to use this format.

The storm and what I find amazing is that this issue which XchangeIT claims a copyright and states "directly impact our income and our business, so we are obligated to take it seriously" is that this basic question of who owns the copyright on these formats is something they appear never to have established. Part of the reason I suspect this was not done is because much of what XchangeIT now claims copyright over is actually claimed by others too. For example, I remember listening to a heated argument between XchangeIT and Redstar ITC about 10 years ago over who owned what. For the record, our contention is that if anyone owns the copyright on these files, it would be us. We do have evidence that can support this view. However, it appears that others are making a similar claim to us as well. Still there are others who argue that you cannot copyright data formats and in any case, the files' format was released as open source. In reality, none of this mattered until now as no-one was interested in policing this claim. Although I do get a feeling talking to a few people that this view might change if XchangeIT does succeed in monetizing these file formats.

Still I think too many people have jumped in without checking on the facts.

The question is not only whether this claim is correct that these file formats are XchangeIT Intellectual Property? In this particular case, the situation may be more difficult as it is claimed that Hallmark Cards have signed an NDA that states in the event of termination, they are not allowed to use EDI using XchangeIT files specs or similar file types and also that Hallmark Cards have signed a License Agreement where they agree that the file specs and types are owned by XchangeIT. As such the claims over the discussion over the actual intellectual property of these files may not be relevant here. Who knows, perhaps Hallmark can claim that they signed this agreement thinking that XchangeIT did have the intellectual property, and they were mislead. Alternatively, possibly Hallmark has other file formats that they can quickly use. Alternatively, maybe they will drop EDI.

Another point which I do not know is important is that Hallmark were doing EDI before they joined XchangeIT.

So where this takes us, I have no idea. I suspect we need to wait on Hallmark lawyers.

Update: 25/8/2015

Readers here maybe interested that yesterday's post on the ownership of the EDI generated a fair amount of discussion.

I confess I do not know who owns the EDI formats (as several claim it), but I state that XchangeIT does not own them.

I queried this with several members on the pre XchangeIT board the ECG committee concerning these file formats.

Delivery Docket (DDO) V3.0.2
Sales Information Data (SLD) V3.0.2
Returns Form Notice (RTF) V3.0.2
Returns Information (RTD) V3.0.2

and I was told on 17/10/2007, quoting an earlier communication that.

"The Distributor Consortium is aware that there are other distributors who are sending EDI files to Newsagents in version 2.9.1 format. The Distributor Consortium will make the finalised V3 formats available to all these distributors to enable them to comply with the release of the Point of Sale software that supports the V3 format." so a distributor like Hallmark could use these latest formats.

I was also told that there was no copyright on these formats. I note that the attached specifications did not contain a copyright message on them either at that time.

The latest copy of Artwrap catalogue file, is now available for download.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

People ask us what cash draws, I recommend. Here are some of the points that I suggest you look at. No doubt others here can add their tips too.

Metal vs Plastic

The first point to check is that it is metal, heavy duty and solid construction. I know that some are now selling plastic cash draws. I really have my doubt about plastic ones. Here are some points

Most of my clients are high-volume retailers, and their draws get regularly slammed.

Occasionally when the draw gets jammed, in a high pressure environment like my clients are in, in an effort to get them going people often apply too much force in trying to open and close them.

The purpose of a draw is to keep the money in, and sticky fingers out. A plastic one, I think is just too easy to break open.

I think you need the strength. Sometimes like the draw in the picture above, the draw needs to carry a decent weight and on ocassions, I have seen people put a lot of weight on the draw.

After a while plastic loses its looks, if it is going on the front counter, it should look nice.

Flippers

Now check the flippers, do they look like they can take punishment? If they fall apart, can you get replacements?

Opening the draw

Now try opening the draw, does it open all the way? Some only open half way and the user has to pull it out, if they want to get the bills in the end.

Furthermore, while opening to listen to the sound it makes, you going hear that sound a lot. Make sure its something you can bear. Ding,ding, ding can after awhile get very annoying.

Coin slots

Another point is the coin slot, does it have slits underneath to let the dust fall through?

I prefer if these slots are horizontal but this really depends on your personal preference. Make sure you get the type that you prefer.

Furthermore, if it's a small draw, what happens with some draws if you put too many coins in the front slots when the register opens it loses its balance and drags down You need to check that. To some, this does not matter as they screw the draw down.

Note slots

On some draws the note slots, although adjustable, are too narrow for the number you need. You need to check that you have enough, and they are wide enough. Otherwise, what happens is the note tend to fold and not lay flat.

Feet

Check if you require feet that they are adjustable. Some made of cheap rubber are going to fall off soon.

Receipt driven.

I prefer the receipt printer draws. The only problem is that if the receipt printer runs out of paper, the drawer will not open. If so you need to make sure that you have spare rolls of receipt paper as you need to change the paper as soon as you see the red warning on the receipt printer.

Keys

If you are going to use the key, make sure you can get plenty of copies of that key.

Hope this helps.

This sort of adverting can be done by our software, but I do not recommend it. What is happening is that a small percentage of customers are getting confused and/or cannot add? As such it is causing arguments. A better solution would be either make a pack of two and sell the pack of two at a reduced price. This works well if you stick them so it looks and feels like a pack.

Another solution would be something like this by trying for three, so buy two and get one for free.

Having said this in general this form of marketing works well as if often you can sell someone something, it is much easier to sell them something else, and if they need one, quite possibly they will need two or more so you have an instant add on.

Furthermore, if you have a VIP system behind it with an email address, you can both offer them something else in a month's time when you send out a newsletter.

Looking at the latest report, digital has at the moment almost overtaken print. In some newspapers like the Sydney Morning Herald, it already has we are at 50/50 now. Compared to the same period last year, digital is approximately 10% up and print is 10% down. they are about equal. If this trend continues, how long do printed newspapers last?

You can see the numbers and discussion here.

Overall magazines are down about 6% which is better than expected.

Most of it in the weekly magazines where the fall is on the majors about 8%. You can find a discussion here.

The non-weeklies are all down with massive variations in circulations. You can see the figures in the ABC circulation report; I quoted earlier, and a discussion is available here.

What happened is that Network (the largest magazine distributor) announced that magazine People Bagged was sent out to retailers with an incorrect barcode. How did it get through we are not told? Was it checked by Network before it was sent, probably not? Is there any check done by Network to confirm the barcode, once more we are not told? It would be nice if someone checked this out and got back to us about how it happened and whether anything is going to be done to make sure that something like this does not happen another time.

What is clear is that now it is more important with the growth of point of sale is the barcode quality is greater than ever and if this is what happens, then barcodes should be tested before shipping by distributors because it clearly can slip past the printer. When I made some enquires, I was told that the retailer could check it when it arrived. I thought to myself what thousands of retailers have to check the barcode when the same process could be done once in the suppliers' location? This does not make sense. Although I did admit that those of our clients that used, our in house barcode would have been fine.

What is clear is that no-one bothered to notify us even though if we had known about it, we could have sent a patch to automatically correct the error. Probably the largest pool of magazine retailers could have been fixed immediately. What very likely happened is that many of these magazines were incorrectly sold, which will muck up the sales history and would have caused some loss of good will by the customer and by the retailer when they were made aware of this mistake.

Okay it happened, is anyone going to do anything about it?

We are currently looking for a new helpdesk support person for our Melbourne Office. We are for this position, particularly interested in someone who has SQL as well as point of sale experience.

Update: Details of the position are available here.

  
The Retail Price of The Australian will increase in price commencing from Monday 31 August, 2015 and the Weekend Australian cover price will increase commencing from Saturday 5 September, 2015.

Details

[2015-08-30]: The Monday to Friday, edition of the Australian will change from $2.50 to $2.70 GST inclusive from Monday 31st of August.
[2015-09-04]: The Weekend edition of the Australian will change from $3.30 to $3.50 GST inclusive from Saturday 5th of September.

Our program will automatically update the price in your system on that day.

These sort of short-lived items create a problem for many antiquated point of sale system. However, it is quite a common problem in many stores who need to handle perishable stock, and it does create a tricky stock management environment. The problem here are the losses in excess stock are irreplaceable once the stock goes over its use-by date as it has to be chucked. Often these losses are over 15%. Conversely insufficient stock leads to lost sales. Since the losses are potentially higher, this often results in these departments of much more missed sales then most other departments.

The other problem is that it requires a system capable of handling multiple often only estimated stock item costs.

Ours are one of the few fully integrated software applications that can handle this.

With our software, you can accurately forecast demand or get the computer to do it for you automatically taking into account the latest changes in demand.

Some advantages are

• Accurate stock management
• Reduction in out-of-stocks
• Enhanced sales
• Automatic ordering
• Real-time alerts

Then our reporting ensures that you will know your significant numbers, including the number of sales, the gross and net profit by stock item and the family and class of your stock in real time.

A question, I sometimes get is there any way of getting the current price points that sell in my shop? Most people think they know that implicitly but its nice to see what others in this case the computer thinks.

To do this go to register reports.

In sales, select "Turnover by unit price" (marked in red)

Now click Report Criteria and select the dates and departments you are interested in.

I recommend rather than doing all departments that you restrict it to a selected few so you can examine each department on its own merits. In this case, I picked confectionery.

When the report pops up in this case, you can see a definite bulge about $2.50 and another at $16.

If you want to study it farther, I suggest exporting it to excel for additional study.

The current BrownTrout catalogue file for calendars is now available for download.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

This is an extremely effective way to keep customers loyal to you and get many orders that you may be missing out on.

What happens is when a customer purchases a product you can put in when you expect them to run out of the product. The customer history or your experience with similar customers should be able to give you an idea. For example, a large dog food parcel generally lasts three months so say you put an automatic note to send an email to the customer in two months and a bit. Just before you expect it to run out. Similarly a box of pens you may expect will last them two weeks, so you would set the order for say 10 days.

To date, we see about a 35% open rate automated customer replenishment ordering.

This shows the importance of a VIP system.

Touch market, mainly Telco products but also a range of other products though electronic vouchers in the shop. Recently, they have gained some new products, including Transurban and Citylink which they are excited about. As such they are doing a promotion to our users in an attempt to win more over. In this market, they are probably the biggest player and have the greatest range.

Range is everything here. If people want an ABC voucher, and you do not have it, then they most likely going elsewhere, that is why people tend to have touch, they may not have anything else but they will have touch.

I decided to do an analysis of what a typical client of ours that uses touch product's part of the problem, here is always the same when you deal with an average, some people do very well out of it but many only use touch to buy discounts for what they and probably their family personally use and do not bother to market it. This of course mucks up the figures.

Still we have what we have and looking at it for 24 months from 1/July/2013 to 30/June/2015

What I can see that the growth in Touch in our client base is about 5 a month and on the whole people are spending more on these goods about 10% more. No surprises there are more people now prefer prepaid plus there are tourist who need to buy in a shop where someone can explain the situation to them.

The margins have dropped slightly over the period, mainly due to Optus.

Still the profit per sale over the period remains respectable.It is now about $1.40 profit per sale, which is not bad for just doing a quick transaction in the cash register.

The sales per shop have dropped a little over the period,

I think it's because more stores are selling it. Still it does bring into the shop over a 100 people a month and there seems to be a big increase during the summer as a punt. I would say the tourist who needs local telco products.

Overall though I think you can say this, it does pay its own way and there is nothing wrong with an extra 100 people in the shop every month, but it's not a game changer. It certainly worth getting before summer hits.

This will save many a lot of time and money.

A problem in a store is that their customers need another copy of a receipt which they have lost. They come in or call, and you have to hunt around though the transactions to find the one they need, you then have to print it or email to them. What we have is a solution now that means your customers can store and hunt themselves.

As you can see here is a simple receipt, Now look at the part circled in purple at the bottom.

Collect & store your receipts digitally

Now in their smartphone what they get without you sending is the receipt. You do not need their telephone number of email address to send it to them. You do not even have to know who they are. What they get is an electronic copy of the receipt listing who you are and when the transaction was done.

It is there whenever they need it and if they need a printed copy, they can now print it themselves.

It can save a lot of time with people that need the receipts for the ATO and with subagents. In fact many that just need statements.

With Windows 10 now released and available for free to users of Windows 7 or later, I was keen on test it out as a new user would. As I am not yet ready to upgrade my work computer, so I decided to try it out on my home machine. Because I am not waiting around until Microsoft gets around to giving me the upgrade on my home computer, I jumped the queue by going direct to Microsoft at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10. You can do it too if you have Windows 7 or 8 and if you do not mind the 3GB of download. Clicked and down it will come.

Then I started the upgrade on my personal computer.

This is where I held my breath! Will it work?

When it finished I checked it out.

The monitor lost most of it clarity, the second monitor did not work. I discovered the video driver it picked was incorrect for Windows 10. So I downloaded the Windows 10 drivers for the main monitor and tried to force it to accept it. It rejected it. After about an hour and a half solid work, I finally got it to accept the video driver. It was not easy. My wife did not make it an easier by continuously going on "I told you to wait until the problems in Windows 10 are worked out!" She is right, but I am not going to wait while the world moves forward.

After the video problem was solved I then tested a few other points.

I had a lot of trouble trying to get a virtual machine running, this maybe a big problem with people with old software, for example, I have a particularly good mortgage rate analysising software written many years ago that I could not get to work in Windows 10. If you intend to run old programs, I would not recommend upgrading.

I also found that the administrator accounts were on my computer deactivated, and now it was using my Microsoft accounts. I was quickly able to fix this problem but since people do use the administrator account for SQL, this will be another problem for people upgrading.

User access was turned on, again easy enough to fix but another point to watch.

Although I did not have this problem, a few people have reported to me that the time zone was changed during the upgrade, again not a big issue to fix but something to watch.

I then tried a few other software packages to see whether they worked. Many had small issues such as the sound system was changed, and my favourite video program had problems playing sound. It turned out to be an option in the video program, which I had to work it out myself as it was not documented on their website.

After a few hours of upgrading and a few more hours of fixing the problems, I was ready to tested our software. It worked like a charm not surprising as we have been preparing for Windows 10 for a while. While running I did notice a small but significant speed increase. Luckily I did not experience any driver issue with printers or scanners but to be fair I did not test many models. In the past, this has always been a major problem with windows upgrades. Our program works fine but some of the hardware, particularly if they are old no longer works.

Working Windows 10 after being on Windows 8 was a real pleasure. I really liked that the speed of starting up was faster.

Overall little has changed from Windows 7. Windows 10 is very much a return to Windows 7 from Windows 8.

My recommendation is that as there are still problems in doing the upgrade to hold off it you can, afterall you do have a year to do the upgrade.

If you do intend to upgrade to Windows 10 now, you do need to be or to have a window professional to do the update as there does appear to be problems. Furthermore, I expect that while running you will find some more problems too in using it as there are too many switches and options to check.

Having said that our software does run on the latest Windows 10 upgrade well.

Note: Although I do not recommend it, after upgrading from Windows 7 or 8 systems to Windows 10, if you do not like it, you can bring your old system back as Microsoft have made it easy to downgrade back.

The most popular method today for loyalty marketing is email and there are many ways and advantages of collecting email addresses from customers besides for sending people statements by email.

We have a large section for doing such marketing which you will find in register reports marked with a red arrow.

Once you click on it, you will see the following.

Now you can select the special categories you can set up, for example, here it is lotto mail outs, Facebook's clients etc.

Now you can compose say an email to these people advising people on lotto mailouts if say a big draw is going to be held this week. Actually today would be a very good day to have sent out a lotto mailout as tonight is a blue moon, something that is suppose to be very lucky and only occurs rarely. The next blue moon will be January 31, 2018. Many that play lotto might want to have a shot at the luck of blue moon.

The cost to you is nothing, and if anyone comes in, it has paid.