Spirit Publishing suddenly changed their stock files. If you try to import it what will happen is the retail price will be set to zero and the wholesale will have the retail price.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

The Financial Review is going up in price to $3.00

We are now releasing information sheets in our newsletter on how to handle it.

Faced with cut in revenue from falling newspaper circulation in the United States, the cure seems today to get rid of journalists. It is similar today to modern hospitals administrators getting rid of doctors to make budget.

An interesting discussion on this subject is available here.

Some points I thought were interesting in no particular order.

* A widely honoured rule of thumb in that a newspaper should employ one journalist for every 1,000 in daily circulation, this figure is falling.

* For every three people needed to put out a print edition, you need one for an on-line news site.

* A printed newspaper subscriber is worth much more than an on-line user.

* Many papers in the US are inflating their circulation numbers and it is difficult for a subscriber to stop a paper over there.

Can you please email us your details if you have installed E-Pay and would like to be able to sell phone cards directly from the register (integration).

Please this is very important to us!

Bill Express

With the demise of Bill Express many services you currently have will need to be replaced. We have put together a list of our recommended options.

EFTPOS

For EFTPOS, we recommend the Tyro EFTPOS unit which can be integrated into Posbrowser.

The Tyro unit connects via the internet and is fast and efficient, processing transactions in under 4 seconds. It really is a pleasure to use at the front counter.

For more information you can contact Tyro direct
Anthony Haddad
Payment Solutions Sales
Tyro - Level 2, 125 York St,
Sydney NSW 2000
T: 02 8907 1726 F: 02 8907 1626 M: 0403 3475 74
E: [email protected]

or email them at [email protected]

e-pay

Newsagents should consider e-pay for their phone re-charge services. e-pay can offer the full range of cards, including Optus and Vodafone.

We have been working on integrating e-pay phone recharge into Posbrowser but to date it has not been finalised and approved. We do suggest for the time being that you sign up with e-pay and use the terminal.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

As a special arrangement with e-pay, given the circumstances of the last few days, if you sign up then please let us know by sending an email to [email protected]

Please include your business name, address and phone number in this email so that we can correctly identify you.

We can then notify e-pay that you are a POS Solutions customer and therefore they can note this against your account so that your contract can be reviewed when the integration into Posbrowser is complete.

You can contact e-pay either by phone on 02 8297 2888 or via email on [email protected]

For further information about E-Pay visit their web site here.

Internet

Many of our customers are still using Bill Express for their internet service. It is not clear how long this service will continue to operate.

If your internet is cut off you will loose email, XChangeIT invoices, Web browsing, automatic updates and possibly your EFTPOS as well.

While we do not provide internet services, you can contact our preferred Internet Service Provider (ISP), echoNX networks on their Bill Express transition hotline 043 035 3604 or email [email protected]

echoNX networks are more than just another ISP, they offer and more importantly support a complete network solution, are posbrowser certified and have proven experience with posbrowser clients, servers and multi-shop installations including wired, wireless and remote networking.

Generally ISP product offerings are marketing driven and little or no attention is given to the support of their installation. ISPs are dedicated to the general internet user and often treat retailers as residential users when something goes wrong. echoNX networks differ from all other internet service providers in that the echoNX network is built to serve retailers.

If you do order another internet service, make sure you order an ADSL connection and not an ADSL2 connection. It has to do with the changeover. If you swap from the Bill Express ADSL internet connection to ADSL2 they have to make changes at your telephone exchange and you may loose the internet for several days and not several hours.

Regards
Phil Doensen

We are looking for newsagents willing to work in a development project to verify this section of our system.

Now our estimation program can calculate publications sales values in subagents to within 22% accuracy for an individual item. But I do believe as there are many items we can overall get a required return rate of 7% with better sales figures then now. The arguement is if I said one head, and you threw a coin in the air once, I would be 50% wrong. Say I said 500 heads and you threw 1,000 times a coin in the air, I would be pretty close to the result. The more times you are going to throw the coin, the more accurate I can be.

The reason for this belief is that years ago, I discovered that most newsagents would be better off inflating the subagents orders by far more then they do now. My computer results suggested that often newsagents were losing many sales by dramatically and unintentionally undersupplying. Interestingly HWT did a detailed survey in the industry with the public and came to a similar result. Many subagents were not getting enough supply.

Until now the problem with these tests we did because if a newsagent thinks that 15 will sell in a subagent. No matter what the computer said 20, 12,17 10 etc, the newsagent will deliver 15. So the computer is not given a chance.

So recently I took it to HWT. Please let us do a proper test. We know how the newsagent is doing now. Let the computer do a few weeks and let see how it does. Recently HWT have expressed some interest in this project. So we are looking to get a project going that hopefully will prove it way or another.

If anyone is interested in working on such a project DOS or posbrowser, please let me know.

Readers here will know of Corie and Tammy Schwarzl of the newsagency at Tuggerah. What happened is they took a franchise with Supanews and it did not work out! So now there is a massive court case in progress.

Corie just emailed me that they have added some comments.

It seems to be getting some comments now.

You can read their notes and people's comments 

Supanews is the largest newsagency in Australia. They have 41 goods shops or which they own all but 18 which are franchised. You can read about them online

We have just released a new version of POS DOS with the new Queensland delivery scale.

It also has a new nifty report that shows you how accurate you are in estimating your subagents' orders.

Well stock take season is upon us again so it's time to get ready for the big count.

We have updated the help documents in posBrowser's help files so press F1 while in the register and check them out.

There are four documents:

Stocktake = Standard stock take doc using Posbrowser on it's own to run the stock take.

Stocktake with a PTD = Stocktaking with the help of a PDT

Stock take with the stock management system = Stocktaking using the mobile PDA browser program.

3rd Party Stocktake guide = A guide on how to upload stocktake data to and from another program.

Whatever way you decide to run your stocktaking try it in training first to get familiar with the process. Better to know the process ahead of time instead of having trouble when trying to run the real thing

Regards

Paul Luecke

The current practice of newspaper returns should be reviewed. The rule that most publishers make is the newspaper returns should be about 7% of the number of papers they deliver.

An example here is say a newsagency gets 100 papers.

Now say the newsagency has only home deliveries. Since their computer should be able to tell them almost exactly the figures. They should have no problem getting to 7%.

Say 70 of those papers were home delivery and 30 are the estimated shop sales. Then to get to the publishers 7% limit they need to get the shop sales right to plus or minus seven. That means they needs to be within (7/30) = 23%

If this newsagency does no home deliveries and it is all shop sales then they need to estimate the shop sales to 7%.

This is crazy and we have been talking to the publishers about this. Today when newsagents are selling rounds and dividing into wholesalers and retailers the publisher's requirement of keeping to 7% needs changing.

As I said earlier, possibly Bill Express will continue. Here is the announcement where they claim they can do it.

If they do continue, I do know many newsagents that intend to keep Bill Express!

It could happen as parts of it are profitable. So what creditors usually do is agree to take the profitable parts of the company and dispose of the rest so they can get something. However here the creditors have a vested interest in this network to continue! For example about 70% of newsagents because of Bill Express are on an ANZ EFTpos deal. That EFTpos is worth a fortune to the ANZ. Think how quickly they could lose that, if the Bill Express terminals closed? Also ANZ have admitted in their announcements that this issue is really worrying their shareholder so they want the Bill Express matter resolved AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Similarly Optus is losing thousands of dollars a week because these terminals are not working. Worse for Optus would be if the network continues they stay out and Vodafone comes back.

How does this affect the class actions by newsagents? Probably zero. I am sure the new financer of this new Bill Express will make sure that their funds and this new organisation is safe. These newsagents are looking at years in courts, by then many of them will be long gone from the industry. Then whatever monies is left after the lawyers and the employees’ goes to the secured creditors and so on till finally to them where if anything is left it will be shared out with the others such as the shareholders who will argue that they are unsecured creditors too, Optus, ANZ etc.

What do you do when an armed robber comes into the shop? Do you stand up or just give him what he wants? It is probably a question you will not know the answer till it happens.

Well one of client's Beechboro newsagency decided to stand up. When a gunman came in with a sawn off rifle into this newsagency, the employees wrestled the gunman to the ground in the process gave him a blood nose and held him till the police came. Details are here.

In the last few days, newsagents all over Australia started reporting a new low. They were receiving an anonymous plain letter with only their address on it. Inside was an advertisement attacking POS Solutions. Obviously someone is concerned about our windows program - posbrowser. It soon became clear the circulation included thousands of newsagents Australia wide.

However that someone clearly was professional.

They had a newsagent address list that was current as one newsagent had recently moved his shop and he received it in his new address. In this case, it was more up-to-date then many of his newsagent suppliers. Whoever it was, has an up-to-date mailing list of thousands of newsagents’ addresses.

They used the services of a graphic artist as you could see a wide ellipse drawn clearly with an expert hand. Across the road from us is an art shop, the artist who runs the shop needed several attempts to make something as good. I could not do such a nice drawing of an ellipse.

You could see when you compared several different letters that they were all folded the same. Clearly they used an expensive letter folding machine for folding, inserting and sealing this mail-out as the cheap ones do not do such a professional job.

Looking at it, I estimate that they would have cost about $1,300 without labour costs. That is because the paper and labels would have cost about $40. Then for each of letters, they used a 50 cent stamp. An envelope would be worth about 5 cents each. Then they photocopied each page and printed a label so add at least another 5 cents each in ink.

When I showed it to the authorities they pointed out that this someone picked an unusual type of paper for the advertisement. This is because it does not handle well so making sure that it will not last. I thought that was quite clever.

Also they used stamps rather then a franking machine, clearly to make it difficult to trace. All we know now is it was posted in the South-Eastern suburbs of Melbourne late on the 17th or on the 18th June.

If anyone has any information to what in the newsagency industry is a new low, please let me know.

PS I am not quite in a position to comment on the contents of this advertisement as I am still waiting for a person’s statement when I receive that, I will comment on the contents.

We been hearing now for the past month that Bill Express announcement will be forthcoming which will tell all. When that day arrives, all comes is another Extension of Voluntary Suspension announcement.

The last one was on the 20th June. Then we were told that yesterday Monday 23th June, we would get an announcement of what is going to happen. Yesterday we got nothing, not even the usual Extension of Voluntary Suspension announcement. This for an ASX company, even if it is in voluntary suspension is a shocker.

The facts are there are 1400 Bill Express terminals in shops now. To those shops, unless Bill Express get their terminals running with Telstra, Optus and Vodafone it is of little use them. So many of my clients have already moved from Bill Express and many of those that have not, are now making a plan B.

"" />

GNS is holding a series of market fairs for 2008 throughout Australia.

Sat & Sun August 9th & 10th - Melbourne
Sat & Sun August 23rd & 24th - Sydney
Sat & Sun September 13th & 14th - Brisbane
Sun October 5th - Perth

In previous years, the technology on our stand has always generated much interest. It has proven to be a great opportunity for us to meet with our clients and help others to upgrade in technology.

Here was the scene last year with standing room only as people packed in the corridor queuing up.

We hope that we will be this busy year this year too. After all, we do have some incredible new technology this year to display.

Switching on the computer is cute. It must have been done by someone that knows how newsagencies work.

[youtube]mqy_2tv4O8Y[/youtube]

Much of today, I spent going back and forwards with newsagents concerned about the new changes to the connect system and Fairfax trying to get clarification.

Fairfax assures us that all subscription stop notifications will continue to be provided for several days out on Connect. However despite what many newsagents seem to be thinking for the short term, offer codes will continue but soon no subscription offers will have expiry dates. This is because Fairfax feels that they are irrelevant and often wrong. The example quoted to us was a 10 week offer. It finishes after the paper has been delivered on 70 occasions. A stop for one day changes the expiry date but not the number of deliveries. I agree with them.

The good news is that both POS DOS and posBrowser are not affected as they use for newspaper subscriptions the number of issues not the dates.

However it produces a problem for magazine as they use dates. We are shortly going to have a meeting with XchangeIt and it will be brought up.

It is a terrible mess Tasmanian’s newsagents are about to loss almost 10+% of their lottery sales with nothing to replace it for some weeks. Tasmania will soon have no scratchies. In Victoria, it is late and only now starting to happen.

To help with the change-over we are putting together some information sheets on Intralot. We do not see any problems as it is similar to Tattersall. Our suggested method will need two new departments to be created - a standard and a payout.

Tuesday, 17th June 2008, 7:00pm
New Lambton Newsagency
2/52 Regent Street
New Larmbton NSW 2305

POS Solutions is holding an information evening to demonstrate how POS Browser can help your business with its unsurpassed quality and usability!

Stock Ordering Setup
Cash Register Security
Wireless PDA
Using X-Offs to Balance Tills
Ordering
Useful Reports
Stock Take
VIP Systems
Printing Labels
Questions & Answers

We would love to see all of our PosBrowser users in the area attend! If you would like to attend, please let us know.

You can find it here. {link has been removed}

I did not like the bit that we had checked the Mid Year Big Stationery Sale promotional file by Tuesday, June 3, 2008. We certainly had not!

On the other hand, the stuff about Morwell is great.