Our support manager Phil, after looking into it has decided the best solution to audit the subscriptions is to follow the check Subscriptions process as outlined  here.

While this may take some time to get the subscriptions aligned initially, once completed there should be very little variation when you run the report in the future. Delivery agents will benefit as in the long run they will be able to use this process in their weekly routine to quickly audit their subscriptions and make sure variations are not creeping into their system.

The alternate process some have suggested of running the Customers / Customer Reports / Customer Standing Orders / Order Enquiry with criteria  of publication, special offer, charge delivery=N depending on your setting up your deliveries appropriately so although it is quicker at first, is not that accurate.

 There are problems in checking publisher subscriptions' credits. The main two problems are: 

1) Newsagent is delivering to addresses they should not be and are not being credited.
2) Publisher details are incorrect and newsagents are not being credited correctly.

Please click here (link removed) for details.

Note we now have a program to automatically check these details with News Limited.

The Saturday Herald Sun and Geelong Advertiser cover price will rise on 9th August 2014. An automatic patch has been sent out to update the prices and commissions.

1) Checking your News Limited Subscriptions

This one is to handle shows how to audit your subscribers from the News Limited iServices web site to your records.

2) Managing News Limited subscriptions

News Limited has implemented a common computer system in all states of Australia. This document describes how best to manage your News Limited subscription customers using iServices.

One department that I believe my clients are doing much worse than they should is in drinks. Almost invariably when I do a big data analysis on one of my clients' shop data, what is clear is that the drink department is doing worse than it should. So what I do notice  when I go overseas, is the drink departments in many shops there in stores similar to my clients' stores in Australia are much bigger.  It must mean something.

I realise that it is for many a small department but still that is no excuse for not getting better value.

Another problem here, I think is that the mix in the drink department is fast changing, yet many of my clients are stuck on the old drinks like Coca-Cola and Lemonade. This is often due to your history files telling you what did sell but not what is selling outside your shop. As a result many are neglecting the growing functional beverage market such as health, energy and sports drinks all of which are rapidly growing.

Have a read here for more on this subject. [link removed]

A study was done of stock control and sales, which highlight the need for proper stock ordering.

Here are some interesting points.

1) There was minor effect of increasing stock holding compared to shop sales. Often buyers were just buying the wrong stock, e.g. they brought plenty of black and blue pens but not enough red pens.
2) Overall most stores had about an 8% chance of running out of an item yearly. 
3) A shopper with a list of ten items has only a 52% chance of finding everything on their list.
4) The retailers' ordering process was at fault for out of stock situations more than 80% of the time.
5) A typical retailer loss was about 5% of sales for each year because they are out of stock.

I was thinking while reading this report that as far as I know in our market space we are the only ones with a demand forecasting system.

The owner of a restaurant in America for over 40 years is claiming in court that because Google allowed someone to hack his restaurant's listing, so it destroyed his business.

What happened was the opening hours in his Google Maps listing was changed to show that he was closed on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. As such he claims that the business takings were reduced by 75 per cent.  He probably has little hope of winning as in the US, crowdsourced websites such as Google Maps are immune from prosecution because the content is not provided by the company, but by users of the website or service. 

Apparently this restaurant  isn’t the only business that has reported problems with its Google Maps and Places listings. How true it is, I do not know. I noticed the reviews of the restaurant do not look that good and you would think after 40 years, the regulars in the restaurant would know better. Still, it shows the importance of checking your online profile.

If they are not already you can make your GNS stationery families and classes into meaningful reporting categories in minutes! You can then use this to compare different "sections" of your stationery

dissection. For example, you could compare sales of felt-tip pens to sales of ball-point pens!

As new products arrive, then our software will automatically put them into the correct Family and Class.

This is probably the best report on what businesses in Australia are using social media like Facebook.

Today over 40% of Australian small to medium-size businesses use it as almost 70% of Australians use social media, with Facebook having about 95% of this. So for many of you, it will be a cheaper and better option than several other options such as loyalty and discount voucher's schemes being offered.

You can download a copy of the Yellow Social Media Report 2014 here.

A few people have enquired as to how PayPal works.
 
Several of my clients AS IS use PayPal now. It works fine and for anyone who wants to do anything serious on the web, it's a must. For many people that is enough.
 
Nevertheless, we are always looking forward to making things better and expand our software so for well for over a year we have had several discussions with PayPal about their smart phone system that would be integrated into our software direct.
 
Firstly, PayPal Merchant rate is 2% flat.  That has to be notified to the customer before purchase or absorbed for reasons that will become clear shortly.
 
From the merchant perspective, PayPal would be another payment type. It has the advantage that the customer does not need to be anywhere near the card reader.  That is why it is particularly of interest to people in the hospitality industry as people do not have to get up to order.
Here is a video of a well-known  bakery using it now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do4yp_pGnLg

If you are interested in proceeding, please let me know.

A few people have enquired as to how PayPal works.
 
Several of my clients AS IS use PayPal now. It works fine and for anyone who wants to do anything serious on the web, it's a must. For many people that is enough.
 
Nevertheless, we are always looking forward to making things better and expand our software so for well for over a year we have had several discussions with PayPal about their smart phone system that would be integrated into our software direct.
 
Firstly, PayPal Merchant rate is 2% flat.  That has to be notified to the customer before purchase or absorbed for reasons that will become clear shortly.
 
From the merchant perspective, PayPal would be another payment type. It has the advantage that the customer does not need to be anywhere near the card reader.  That is why it is particularly of interest to people in the hospitality industry as people do not have to get up to order.
Here is a video of a well-known  bakery using it now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do4yp_pGnLg

If you are interested in proceeding, please let me know.

I would like to welcome you to our new website.  We have been hard at work on this and hope that you find your experience with it both user-friendly and enjoyable.

Our goal with the redesign of our website was to make the information that we give to you easy to find; no functionality in your software is lost. However, with the new platform we will be able to offer you more.  If you have any questions or comments about the site in general, or anything, in particular, please let me know.

I would like to welcome you to our new website.  We have been hard at work on this and hope that you find your experience with it both user-friendly and enjoyable.

Our goal with the redesign of our website was to make the information that we give to you easy to find; no functionality in your software is lost. However, with the new platform we will be able to offer you more.  If you have any questions or comments about the site in general, or anything, in particular, please let me know.

For the last six months since we had issues with Network and their week 1 so we have requested that the magazine distributors use the same week number. Now it appears that GG have agreed to standardised on the ISO week standard.

As a result of this, GG will change their week one. This will make the GG week one consistent with the Network and IPS week 1 and will make life easier in the long run. As an added benefit, it will align the return week numbers with most diaries, the Australian government and businesses too.

The ISO standard defines week one as the week that contains the first Thursday of the year.

For the last six months since we had issues with Network and their week 1 so we have requested that the magazine distributors use the same week number. Now it appears that GG have agreed to standardised on the ISO week standard.

As a result of this, GG will change their week one. This will make the GG week one consistent with the Network and IPS week 1 and will make life easier in the long run. As an added benefit, it will align the return week numbers with most diaries, the Australian government and businesses too.

The ISO standard defines week one as the week that contains the first Thursday of the year.

After looking at over 280 plus applicants, we have selected two new people, one Kevin is already doing support calls, the other is getting trained up now.

After looking at over 280 plus applicants, we have selected two new people, one Kevin is already doing support calls, the other is getting trained up now.

Enabling comments

Because of the attack on this website, I had to remove the commenting except for registered users. I did not like this and have decided to take a chance and enable it now. We will see how we go.

Because of the attack on this website, I had to remove the commenting except for registered users. I did not like this and have decided to take a chance and enable it now. We will see how we go.

I think this year, we will go though the same training course as last year as it was very successful. If anyone wants to change or add anything let me know.

So the plan is we will go through the various steps in doing an end of year processing, and then finish off with a general discussion to see what we will cover during the next financial year.

Stocktake

We will cover how to keep the stock you have in the store in check with Stock taking. Stock taking will let iron out the little differences you get with data and the physical stock because it can point out the items that have been wrongly over or under invoiced or of course stock susceptible to theft. We will cover the normal stocktake process and location stock take. Also taking a brief look at using the Stock management system stocktake on the PDA.

End of year financial reporting

This session will cover the basic of the end of year financial reports.

Spring Cleaning

What better time is there to clean up your data then now. Quick access to information Posbrowser depends on a clean database, one that is not full of duplicates incorrectly listed stock. This week we will look at some ways you can clean up your your system to get things running smoothly.

Comparative sales reporting

This is a key benchmark used where almost all businesses measure their financial performance over time. In this webinar, we show you how to compare the statistics to provide you both with an up-to-date report and at-a-glance view of how you are really doing.

Using the reports to change the shop layout

There are some extremely powerful reports that can help you to decide what products to put where. It allows you to do is find out exactly what products to place near an existing rage of products. This webinar will take you through these reports.

General Question and Answer session

A online user meeting with a general discussion on what new courses would be good to have. How we are going, what you like about them and what can be done better. You can of course use it to discuss what ever you like.