Dear Retailer,

Due to a production error, the incorrect barcode extension has been printed on the current May21 issue of That's Life magazine, on sale today.

The human readable barcode says it is 9771321769006 21 which was also in the EDI file, however when scanned, this reads as 9771321769006 25.

Please ensure that when scanning sales and returns in your POS system, the current May21 issue code, issue and pricing details are retrieved.

These are:

Code 20706 or 10348 (TAS)

Issue 3850

Current retail price $2.80

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Regards,

Gordon and Gotch Australia Pty Ltd
 

If you have not already invoiced the That's life magazine this week you will be able to change the barcode extension on the entry grid while processing the invoice. Then you open the edit and come to the entry grid, highlight the box for Extra Description on That's Life and change the number to the proper barcode extension. You can then continue to process the invoice as per usual.

If you have already processed your invoices you will need to follow the steps below to change the barcode description.

SIDE MENU
CREDITORS
CREDITOR TRANS ENQUIRY

Search for an item by description or barcode between the dates of the 12th to the 15th. Make sure to select Entered Date for the date options.

When the search results appear select the INVOICE which contains the problem magazine by double-clicking on it.

This should now list the item on one of the lines in an entry grid format.

Click on any of the information for the item (It will not highlight in blue) and then press F3 button on your keyboard.

Type your staff initials and password.

You can now edit the extra description. The extra description is the barcode extension.

Click OK when you are done and this should fix the problem.

I arrived at VANA to take a training session yesterday morning to hear it announced at the door, it is canceled. It was a shock both to me and people waiting to do this session. I looked who was there and from what I knew we had enough! Murphy's law again originally we assumed that VANA would be handling the attendance as usual. This time, VANA told us that we should do it. So I did it with Paul. The day before I was sick, so not contactable when Michael was doing last-minute organizing for the meeting. He did not know of my list of people only there were two on Paul's list and thinking only two booked, Michael was shocked. We normally get ten, twenty is not uncommon so he decided to cancel it. So he rang up both clients to cancel. However the ones on my list, showed up. Since I was there and they were too, we carried on with the training.

These were experienced newsagents who knew the industry having been in it for years. They knew the program and they wanted to learn a little more. With me, however, it is full on

Unfortunately because all I had was one day, I had to skip much. In the morning, we did customers. What I stressed here is the need to do an audit on your customers. It is now so easy for someone to make a minor mistake in the computer so a newspaper is delivered free by the newsagency long after the subscription is over. We often find errors doing changeovers from other systems to ours. Roughly we expect to find in 200 accounts, one error. Since a typical error is about $10 a week or about $500 a year it is worth auditing the accounts. This can be done over time. Say the accounts starting with A tomorrow. Next week the B's then soon.

We then went to subagents and then stock. Here I spoke about the need to check slow and zero selling items. I showed them the reports on how to get that information out. Then suggested some work practices here that work. At this point, I did not have time to get into the “sigma six” ideas, which also includes the sales of fast-moving items.

We then moved into the cash register. Since everyone knew the basic functions here, I showed them the cash register department analysis. I covered many such reports. Then showed them how to handle the sales per linear feet and how to monitor it over time.

Then later we discussed some of the electronic data interchanges that is occurring now, they were surprised how much we had achieved here and finally, we discussed some of the new technologies now coming at which point we had to end as the day had ended

I am waiting to hear their feedback comments. Based on the comments when they left, I suspect they will be positive.

The Melbourne Age has a price rise coming soon. So we have put together for the price change, an information sheet.

It is available now.

Newcastle is now added to the current training sessions. It will be at New Lambton on Tuesday, 17 June at 6:00PM

When I get more details on it, I will blog it here. Anyone can attend. It is a great chance for you to meet other users of the software and see how they use the program. It is also a great chance to see some of the newest developments.

It will also be a great chance for you to hear about the latest generation in integrated computer and camera security. Something I am sure, you have never seen unless you worked in a major security organization.

The first is a well-known supplier of inkjets. We have told them 100,000 times of the problem with the files they have been sending out to newsagents. Yesterday they send another problem file to a client. After much frustration, the client rings us up, with a request “Just get it so it usable.” I am not surprised he had problems. What do you think of a barcode number 9.3E+12, it happens because someone in the supplier’s office has saved an excel spreadsheet wrongly. The supplier fixed that. We then patch this file so the computer can import. When testing the importing, we get warning that errors are everywhere. What do we find, duplicate barcodes everywhere! Heaps of products have the same barcode, with different prices. Newsagents are going to scan it and have wrong prices in the register. A barcode must have only one retail price. What am I suppose to do here? The newsagent is ringing us up every hour to tell us how frustrated he is that he cannot scan his inkjet. So I create a file talking out the low priced item if there are several barcodes. At least now, it scans. But I know what will happen when the higher price comes up. The customer will complain, the newsagents will look very bad. But it is that or no scanning.

The next that aggravated me was John Sands. They still do not have categories neither does Hallmark. Promises and promises and nothing from both to show for it after almost a year!

Yesterday a client rings up after importing John Sand’s electronic catalogue; his cards are now scanning with wrong prices. He has stopped scanning them. It turns out it is the file so we get another file from John Sands. It comes today. After importing this file more than 50% of the John Sand’s are not scanning. Patching up the file we get him scanning. Although some problems remain so we are too afraid to release the file to everyone.

The next one was another John Sands card file. A client rings up today frustrated. He tried to import in this file. It will not come in. We try many things but nothing works. So he sends us the file. I think it is special cards as it contains cards items that I have never seen. Again a file is wrong. I have to patch the file up before my client can import it in. Once he has this patched file, I am sure it will be fine.

Now, why do newsagents and we have to put up with this? I estimate that three newsagents, one support staff at POS and I have wasted because of supplier’s incompetence almost all of today and some of yesterday.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/new-scratchies-on-time-dont-bet-…

After following the Myki scandal in Victoria it appears that we have another exactly the same mess with lotto tickets. This time however it will cost my Victorian clients' money, if Intralot don't get their act together quickly.

It appears that INTRALOT, the global gaming company that in eight weeks will take over a $300 million slice of Victoria's lottery market, appears so behind schedule that hundreds of lotto agents fear they will lose revenue

If you want to read more go here.

A version of the John Sands electronic catalogue, released by them now is having issues reported. Some of the prices on the cards are being reported as incorrect. Please do not import it.

This matter is currently under investigation and we hope to have an answer soon.

These electronic downloads of suppliers are certainly a major time saving to our clients. That is why we are always working with suppliers to get more of these electronic downloads.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

I would suggest that anyone thinking of making a move with EFTpos and Bill Pay to make sure that they keep their options open as I can tell you that there will be some important announcements within a week.

On Tuesday, 13 May 2008 we will be doing another set of training courses at VANA starting off with a DOS course. It is open to all whether or not you are a VANA member. The course is free.

It will at 10:00am at VANA the newsagent association at
806-810 Nicholson Street
North Fitzroy Vic 3068

For advanced users after 3:00pm there will be a question and answers section with particular emphasis on the new HWT requirements.

The morning session will cover

Computer Maintenance
-Basic care
-Backups
-Virus
-Spam

Customers
-Accounts
-Newspaper deliveries
-Paypoint
-Charging
-Statements

Subagents
-Accounts
-Process
-Returns
-Charging
-Statements
-Automated ordering

Questions and answers section

The afternoon session

Cash register
-Operation
-Balancing
-Usage
-Reports
-Security

Stock
-Stocktaking
-Maintaining Stock Control
-Ordering
-XchangeIT
-Questions and answers

After 3:00pm discussions

-HWT automatic transfer
-Advanced Questions and answers

To register please contact POS Solutions on Ph: (03) 9597 7222 Fax: (03) 9532 2778

The training course on DOS system that was scheduled at VANA for next Tuesday date has now been changed to Tuesday, 13 May 2008.

We will be contacting the people involved to inform them of the change in date.

Optus/PPS have ended their agreement with Bill Express. From now Optus, Boost recharge vouchers and PPS Calling Card vouchers will no longer be available though Bill Express. This clearly is a huge blow to Bill Express and their agents.

This means that the only Bill Suppliers at present that newsagencies can do Optus is XPOS though CBA or e-pay Australia.

This has thrown all the industry including us into a major re-evaluation. Newsagents really need Optus! I know newsagents that have said to me "no Optus not interested".

If you want to know whether you can get a computer link into e-pay so person would not need a terminal. Not for awhile as they said to me that they were too busy, which I can believe as they are kicking goals at the moment. But I was a bit upset with that as I know they are doing one with Coles now.

The following letter is gong out to POS Solutions clients on DOS in Victoria today.

If you have any queries that you think can help you with please call me or Michael Varger on (03) 95977222

Dear Newsagent,

I refer you to previous correspondence outlining our requirements regarding the sending of home delivery customer data.

By June 30 this year, all newsagents with a HWT Territorial Distribution Agency Agreement are required to send a full customer list to HWT on a weekly basis by scheduling “automated file transfer” in their computer system. “Automated file transfer” means the ability for a newsagent to select an appropriate file from their computer and schedule it to transmit at the same day and time each week, without having to remember to manually do so.

As a current user of the POS Solutions “DOS” version of software, you can comply with the above requirement by selecting one of several choices;
1. Upgrade your software to the Windows-based “POS Browser”
2. Upgrade your software by moving to an alternative approved supplier’s product
3. Upgrade your current “DOS” version to the latest version which has “automated file transfer” functionality. Please note: To utilize this functionality your newsagency will need to have a broadband internet connection.

In regard to option 3. the automation function has now been developed and has been tested in selected newsagencies. Newsagents should update their software to this latest version by going to the POS Solutions website from Monday, April 28 and downloading version “36P”.

Easy Finance Offer
To assist you in the upgrade, HWT is willing to provide an interest-free loan to a maximum of $10,000 for the purchase of new software and hardware (if required). Should you wish to accept this offer, you will be required to repay the entire amount over the following 12-months via weekly debits on your HWT statement. This enables newsagents to upgrade their computer systems quickly without the cash flow issues that may normally be associated with such an expense. The HWT offer is however, contingent on the new software being installed and operational by June 30, 2008.

Don’t Delay
It is important that you take the necessary steps to upgrade as quickly as possible to ensure that you meet the June 30 deadline. This includes talking to your preferred software vendor about their ability to have the appropriate software installed in your newsagency by this date and whether there are any hardware requirements. I am obliged to inform you that failure to send through home delivery files to HWT each week in an automated manner from June 30, 2008 may result in HWT taking the appropriate action under the terms of our contract with your newsagency.

If you have any questions relating to these requirements or wish to receive the necessary paperwork for HWT’s easy-finance offer, please contact either myself, Mike Webster, David Ferriggi, or Brad Scouller in the Circulation Department.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Kaye
CIRCULATION DIRECTOR

http://www.newspaperinnovation.com/

Coming from a small-business background where everything is in short to the medium time frame, I find it fascinating to follow large corporations with their long-term time frames. One example is how much money the newspaper companies spend to make a newspaper. Years ago, I remember how the Australian ran at a loss for years, yet the publishers were willing to keep spending to make a long-term paper.

The reality it appears that few of these free papers make money.

Another disturbing trend coming out of this free paper model, not discussed here is that to remain competitive several paid newspapers overseas are using a semi-free model; they are free now in the metro areas and normal price in the suburbs. This is almost what is happening in Australia now in some universities.

The best site for studying the free paper model is here.[link removed]

Newspapers are now a great product, very important which is why we all spend so much time on them but I suggest that many of my clients should look at their business model at the long term like the publishers are here because it is going to change.

It is not complex just different adding bumper editions, so plenty of clients ring up just to make sure that they do it right. That I prefer to those that ring up after they get it wrong. Fortunately most of those are easy fixes but some can be bad. This work of fixing it is necessary but really frustrating as if we could only get all the suppliers to supply the information early we would automate the process.

At least we were ready for the Anzac bumper rush. We put on extra staff today as we knew it would happen. Still software support here got busy today.

Meanwhile our programmer in DOS (me) is working on an unrun bumper issue update for DOS like our windows version. It should be out on Monday.

On 25 and 26 April 2008, several newspapers will be making special Anzac Day Bumper Edition of their papers.

We are now distributing information sheets on how to handle them.

About the status of the News Corp home delivery data.

As far as I know the latest versions do all that is needed. HWT are having a meeting early this week then I will find out where we are up too. Then we want to roll it out.

Sometimes newsagencies are terrible gossipers!

Does our databases with more history cause users slower speeds? No, no and no.

Over the last few days the rumours have been flying around that one of our competitors’ can only store three months of data before the system runs slow. Him being the person he is, automatically assumed the rumour started with us. He then abused me. When I asked him to prove any of this allegation, thinking once done I could issue a denial to fix this problem I was told bluntly “It was none of my business!” Which got me wondering if it is none of my business, why contact me at all? Anyway it appears today he is still upset about this issue as he has decided to blog about it. Like me he wants to put it to rest. In a way I can understand that as it is an important issue.

If you do not understand what is the problem let me explain. Every system has two sections, one is the program which does the work and the other is the database which stores the data. The program asks the database say for stock item “NEW IDEA”, the database takes some time to wake up say X time. It then looks at its index to finds the stock item and then goes to the needed information. Obviously the more information you store the longer it takes to find the information. To simplify the problem say you have one month of history it will take X time to wake up plus Y time to find the NEW IDEA the time taken = X+Y. If you have two months it takes X time to wake up plus twice Y times to find it the time taken here = X +2 x Y. If you have three months it takes X time to wake up plus three Y times to find it the time taken here = X +3 x Y. Eventually in a retail environment where speed is so critical, you might reach a point where it just takes too long. All systems have this problem. Obviously if you are going to keep history you need to lessen Y time to the absolute minimum.

Still I suspect that this rumour has some truth to it as I do recall someone complaining here that to get a decent speed on my competitor’s system they could not store much sales history. I do know a developer that did some work on the same database. He stated that it was good but it was extremely delicate and to get decent speeds they continually fine-tuning the database otherwise the speed degradation was significant as conditions changed. Every system needed a different set up.

Since there are always two sides to a story it may not be the database! There could be many reasons that have nothing to do with the system at all. Maybe viruses or spyware. Maybe this complainer’s system ran slow with more data because the computers hard disk were fragmented and needed a defrag. Another possibility is that it was set up badly at the start with no plans for future growth. Maybe the data was full of errors. Another issue might be that his network was not properly tuned. I do not know all I can say it was the same complaint.

Anyway today I got clients contacting me with comments like “Does our system too slow down like that?” This is why I am writing this entry because obviously this rumour has spread to our clients.

Well the good news for our clients is that our software was designed to store large quantities of data from the start. That is partially why we adopted Microsoft SQL. This database was made by a huge development team. You just cannot match that effort. I could just go on and on about the advantages of this product. It was made to work in a huge organisation like government departments and banks. We are talking of the “Rolls Royce” database. The only product that I think comes close is Oracle. If someone said to me money is not an issue on a project what database would you use, I would say Microsoft SQL.

Another good piece of news because we often use servers, we simply send it to the server and your machine is ready to do the tasks you need now. Also we often scheduled many things of to run automatically at night when no-one is around. Effectively most the daily tasks take no time for you. Lastly as I stated Microsoft SQL is fast. That is why our databases can be so large.

However our old DOS system cannot do these automatic functions. On that we use an old Microsoft database which is extremely fast. On top of that we have added a QTREE. Knowing our clients often have large databases we set everything we could on that system to maximum for speed at the start. We wanted it to run fast.

With an average machine stand alone, a P4 with Windows 2000 with a database of six years of history with a large newsagency. I looked up a NEW IDEA history in less then a second. I did in the cash register sale of a “NEW IDEA” in a second. I processed 1300 customer statements in 15 seconds. I did a run sheet with 200 deliveries in fewer then 5 seconds. I processed an automatic order for a supplier with over 2000 items in fewer then 70 seconds. We do not clear old sales history from a client’s site to get faster processing speed. No-one wants to sit around waiting while the machine churns out, no-one.

So to reassure our clients we have already looked into this issue extensively.

There is a major shareholder conflict at the West Australian Newspapers Holdings Limited (WAN).

Kerry Stokes's conflict with the West Australian Newspapers has gone Cyber public. I never saw anything like it. Stokes has made a website ([Link removed]) which issues a steady stream of statements, interview transcripts and videos.

He claims to support the Western Australian newsagents’ recent arguments, among other issues. Does he think that newsagents have forgotten Canberra when he was there?

It is a great chance to read up on the conflict in a major newspaper from the top view. Enjoy.

There is a current catalogue file released by Simson cards for importing into our system. It is not correct. This problem, as in several other newsagent suppliers, is caused partly as each product has to be right even the obscure products rarely used and partly as these files are manually made and people make mistakes. So this is a recurring problem.

Normally this would be a major issue however we have been working with Simson on electronic invoicing (DDO) though E-mail. As those DDO files are made by a program not manually they should always be right. Plus it is easier on your end as electronic invoice files are commonly put into your system and everyone knows how to do it. So there will be, we hope no worries any more about the recurring problems with their files.

To register for their electronic invoicing please contact

Suzanne Fontaine
Sales Administration Manager
29 Westside Drive, Laverton North Vic 3026
Tel: (03) 9316 0700
Fax: (03) 9316 0701
E-mail: [email protected]

It is great too that they are sending by E-mail as many people don't use Xchangeit so they can benefit too.

I look forward to other suppliers following Simson's lead and going electronic!