RETAIL PLUS Version 5.6 Retail Sales And Inventory Management ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRUE NORTH COMPUTER SERVICES PO BOX 5101, HUNTSVILLE, ONTARIO CANADA P1H 2K5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TELEPHONE - (705)789-0928 INTERNET - 71223.641@compuserve.com WORLD WIDE WEB - http://www.brainlink.com/~north/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ FEATURES OF RETAIL PLUS If you have been looking at sales and inventory software you have probably voiced some of the following concerns: - Why is it so complicated? - Why is it so expensive? - Why does it take so many steps to create a simple invoice? The goal of retail management software should be to help you concentrate on your sales and your customers. Retail Plus serves that goal. It is designed for those who spend too much time making up purchase orders, counting stock, tracking sales, or preparing invoices. It is more than an inventory system with a point-of-sale screen. It is an organizer, an analyzer and a time saver. Retail Plus has the following features: > Easy to use with pull down menus and pop-up windows. > Built in help system - press the F1 key at any time for assistance. > Complete sales and inventory data for each item in each location. > Full-featured POS system with slip printer and cash drawer support. > Data imports and exports. > Multiuser, and also supports multiple points of sale without a network. > Weekly and monthly sales figures for each product. > History of daily sales and POS totals. > Sales tracked by product, department and client. > Accounts receivable/invoicing system with account statements. > Support for ICVerify on screen credit card authorizations. > Auto-generated PO's with five methods of calculating order quantities. > On-screen review and editing of purchase orders. > Customer's back orders. > Client database keeps a purchase history & mailing list of your customers. > Fast client lookups using name, company or phone number. > Set up 2 sales taxes and optional add-on charges. > Set up automatic discounts, tax rates or tax exemptions for any customer. > Set up a bonus points system to identify and reward your best customers. > Create, print and save price quotes that you can later process as sales. > Flexible sales and inventory reports with on-screen viewing. > Print price tags, bin labels, shipping labels and Code 39 barcode labels. > Print on U.S. or European (A4) label formats. > Print detailed invoices on fan fold paper stock or on your own letterhead. > Create catalogue output with product description, stock numbers, and prices. > Printer output transfers to your word processor for custom formatting. > Sales data exports to database or spreadsheet programs for further analysis. > Works with all barcode and credit card readers. > Compare stock across multiple locations and transfer from one to another. > Optional password system with three levels of access. > Inventory displayed by record view or table view. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS > Any MS-DOS / Windows microcomputer or microcomputer network. > A hard disk drive with at least 4MB of free space. > 640 KB of conventional memory. > A printer capable of compressed print (15 cpi), or a wide carriage printer (132 columns). For printing barcode labels you will need an HP LaserJet or work-alike printer. > Optional Accessories - a POS printer for sales slips, an automatic cash drawer, a barcode wand, and a credit card reader. QUICKSTART INSTALLATION OF RETAIL PLUS If you have been running a previous version of Retail Plus clear the Itemized Sales Log and the POS Exit Totals before upgrading to this version. Retail Plus version 5.6 is supplied as an archive file called "PLUS56.EXE". It contains all the files you need. Follow these steps to get a functioning system onto your hard drive: 1 - At the DOS prompt create a new directory on your hard drive or server and go to that directory: MD RETAIL CD\RETAIL 2 - Unpack the contents of PLUS56.EXE into the new directory: PLUS56 3 - Now check for a file called "CONFIG.SYS" in the root directory of the C: drive of your workstation. If it is there it should contain the following statements with the at least minimum values shown (they can be greater but not smaller): FILES = 99 BUFFERS = 10 INSTALL = C:\DOS\SHARE.EXE /F:4096 /L:50 You can check the contents of CONFIG.SYS just by typing: TYPE CONFIG.SYS If the above statements are absent you can use any text editor to insert them. The FILES statement determines how many files you can have open at once, the BUFFERS statement determines how much memory is allocated to file buffers and SHARE installs file and record locking capabilities on your computer. SHARE is required because Retail Plus is multi-user capable, whether or not you take advantage of that capability. You may already be using SHARE, and Windows 3.11 or Windows 95 load it automatically. If you run Retail Plus 5.6 under Windows you can load it twice and have two different screens open at once, such as the POS screen and the New Item screen. This will not work with any program that is not multiuser or on any computer with less than 8 MB of random access memory. INSTALLING RETAIL PLUS ON A NETWORK You can ignore this page if you are not installing Retail Plus on a network. Retail Plus 5.6 can be installed on a LAN server such as Novell Netware or on a peer-to-peer network such as Lantastic, PowerLAN, Netware Lite, or Windows For Workgroups. Getting the file and directory priviledges set up is important. Since the program routinely creates, updates and deletes index files, each user must be able to do the following: read, write, create, erase, modify, and file scan (list directory). This does not mean you must give them direct access to the Retail Plus directory where they may do some damage. The goal is to give all users the required rights, but allow them to exercise those rights only through Retail Plus so that their activities are effectively restricted. If you are using Windows 95 as the network system check to see that the drive mappings are configured correctly otherwise every computer may try to set up it's own inventory data files rather than working with the same one. NETWORK PRINTING If your users are printing directly to a port on their own workstations you should allow Retail Plus to check that the printer is ready before each print job. To do this, go to the Utility menu and choose the Get Info command. Enter a Y in the first field to enable printer checking. Leave it disabled if the printing is routed through a network print queue, in which case the network will look after any printer problems. NETWORK SCREEN UPDATES IN THE BROWSE WINDOW A good thing about networks and multiuser systems is that any additions or changes you make are available to all other users on the system. This ability does present new complications, one of which you need to be aware of. Under the Inventory menu you will find the Browse command, which allows you to see your data in "table" view, i.e. you see a window with multiple records on a grid. Suppose that two users both open the Browse window at the same time. They are looking at the same data and the display order is controlled by the same indexes. If the first of these users adds or edits something then the information on the second user's screen is out of date. It will not be updated until the second users scrolls the table. This situation is aggravated if the first user changes the field on which the table is sorted (the item name or stock code) and the indexes are changed as a result. The second user's screen is now out of date in two ways i.e. display order and the data itself. Many multiuser programs lack Browse windows for this reason, but we believe they are too useful to leave out. You need only be aware of the problem and be patient if you see unexpected effects in the Browse window when there is more than one user making changes. To make the problem go away you can restrict yourself to working in "record" view, where you see only one record at a time. STARTING RETAIL PLUS To start Retail Plus go to the directory where it is found and enter R56 at the DOS prompt: CD\RETAIL R56 Explanation: The installation process creates a file called R56.BAT that contains the following two lines: SET CLIPPER=F:30 RETAIL56 Retail Plus should always be started up with this batch file, otherwise your system may not allow it to open enough files. If at some point in the program you press F1 for help, and instead of a help screen you get a DOS Error 4 (too many files open), then you know that you cannot open enough files. If this happens try typing SET at the DOS prompt. You should then see CLIPPER=F:30 on the screen along with the other DOS environment setups. If it is not there the program was not started up using R56.BAT. If the file R56.BAT is missing you can create it with any text editor such as the DOS Edit command. If you are already using Retail Plus and want to run this test using your existing data then copy the entire contents of yor current retail directory to a new directory and install the test version over it. Do not install the test program in the same directory as your live data. Please note that once you have used your inventory data with the beta test version you cannot copy it back to an older version. The program is initially configured to start without requiring a password. If it does prompt you for a password just type "TEST" and press ENTER. You can remove this password later and set up new ones if you need security. If this password does not give you access then someone has already set up the system for security. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ FILES SUPPLIED WITH RETAIL PLUS RETAIL56.EXE - The executable program (version 5.6). RETAIL56.DOC - The shareware documentation. R56 .BAT - The batch file used to start up the program HELP .DBF - Help system file 1. HELP .DBT - Help system file 2. SL1INV .DBF - Sample data file 1. SL1INV .DBT - Sample data file 2.