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CONAN Software For Antique and Consignment Shops CONAN Copyright (C) 1991 by A&E Enterprises, Inc. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION................................... 1 GETTING STARTED................................ 3 TUTORIAL....................................... 4 THE STARTING MENU.............................. 4 THE CONSIGNOR DATA ENTRY SCREEN................ 6 THE ITEM DATA ENTRY SCREEN..................... 10 AFTER SALE INFORMATION......................... 14 RECEIPTS....................................... 15 REPORTS........................................ 16 CONSIGNOR, POST PAYMENT........................ 18 DELETE ITEMS................................... 19 REFERENCE...................................... 20 INDEX.......................................... 21 CONAN - A PROGRAM FOR ANTIQUE AND CONSIGNMENT SHOPS Welcome to CONAN, a program to make life easier for the proprietors and employees of antique, consignment, and thrift shops. Actually, CONAN is for any business that has a unique inventory, or takes items on consignment to sell for other people, or both. A unique inventory is one in which every item is different. Most retail establishments sells many of the same thing. Clothing stores, for example, might have dozens of the same shirt or suit, newspaper and magazine stores might have many copies of each item they sell. Such businesses can easily use one of many inventory or accounting programs available to organize their business. Certain types of businesses, however, carry many "one of a kind" items. They may also sell items for other people, taking a commission for doing so. They require a special kind of software, to work best for their unique needs. It was to help organize these businesses, their record keeping, information retrieval, and reports and statements, that CONAN is designed. FEATURES OF CONAN > Completely menu driven, easy to use > On line help at the touch of the "help" key <F1> > A complete inventory system, capable of distinguishing between inventory and consignment items > Can be used as a Point Of Sale terminal (electronic cash register) and will print receipts (single or multiple copies), and mark items in the system as sold. Allows changes prior to printing receipts. > Prints reports on activities for the day (sales, items purchased and received, consignors paid), or any other time period (week, month, year, etc.) Great for looking at how you are doing week, month, year to date. Reports may be full or summary (totals only). > Prints consignor statements, both store and customer copies. Can print all items or only those where consignor has not yet been paid. > Can store commission rate for consignment items. This can be changed "on the fly" by hitting a hot key at any time. It can also be input on an item by item basis. > Has Consignor Payment Quick Post feature. Simply type the consignor's name, and the date paid, and all items not previously paid but sold before the post date will be marked paid with the date paid. - 1 - > Has Quick Delete feature for unsold items returned to consignor. An undelete feature helps correct mistakes. > Will print reports of all or unsold inventory purchased in a specified time period. Good for generating lists for physical inventories, determining purchases for given periods, making inventory lists for your records > Allows saving or changing sales tax rate. > Any item may be specified taxable or non-taxable at time sale is entered. Sales tax is automatically calculated. > Has quick look-ups of items by number, and consignor by name. Other criteria may be used to find items, such as full or partial description, price, etc. > Virtually unlimited number of records. Would accept up to 1 billion items if hard disk space were large enough. THE SHAREWARE CONCEPT CONAN is not free. It is a copyrighted program, distributed as shareware. Shareware allows users to "try before they buy". Shareware is generally devoted to the concept of distributing reasonably priced software to people that want to know that the software will fit their needs before they buy it. If you like CONAN, and want to use it, we expect that you will pay the registration fee of $49.00. In return you will receive: 1. A printed manual. 2. The most up to date version on a new disk. This will not display the shareware notice when it starts up, and a serial number will replace the "unregistered copy" on the logo screen. 3. Unlimited telephone support. 4. Notice of upgrades, available at very nominal prices. Upcoming enhancements include printing labels, and bar code labels. 5. You can decide to purchase network versions. (See Invoice.doc). You can register CONAN from: A&E Enterprises, Inc. 104 Meyersville Rd. Gillette, NJ 07933 Phone (908) 647-7852 - 2 - GETTING STARTED What You Need: Computer: You need an IBM PC, A,T or PS/2 computer, or equivalent. It should have a hard disk. While it is possible to run CONAN on a floppy drive with 1.44 meg or even 720 meg floppy disk drives only, it is not practical. Not only will the program run very slow, but the number of records possible would be small indeed. It is suggested that you have at least 4 megabytes of free disk space. This is not required initially, but will be necessary as your inventory increases. As an example, the program files and about 6500 items would occupy 3.4 megs of hard disk space. The computer should have a minimum of 425 K available memory. It may run on less, but some operations may give a low memory message if memory is too low. The program will any computer within these limitations. If you have expanded memory, the program will take advantage of it, but it is not required. Printer: The program will use any printer that can be attached to a PC. Installation: Make a backup disk of the original CONAN distribution disk. (See your computer manual or DOS manual if you are not sure how to do this). Place the backup copy in whatever floppy drive that you have available. Type the drive letter followed by a colon, then press <Enter>. You should see the prompt indicating that you are in that drive. For example if your floppy drive was A you should see "A>". Type "install" followed by <Enter>. This starts the installation program. Follow the directions on the screen. The drive that you are installing FROM is the drive you are in. Enter the letter when asked. You are installing TO your hard drive. Usually this is C. If you wish to install the program in a specific existing directory, enter that directory's name when asked. If not we strongly suggest that you use CONAN as the directory name. It is distinctive and you are not likely to install the files into a directory already used for something else. The install program will create this for you. - 3 - TUTORIAL The Starting Menu You are now ready to start. Get into the directory that contains CONAN. Type "conan". In a few seconds you will see the title and copyright screen. (Unregistered copies will display the shareware screen first). Press any key. The first time you run the program you will go directly to the Setup module. The setup module allows you to enter the name of your business or company, the current sales tax rate, and the initial commission rate you want for all modules. Enter the name of the business in the first block. This will be used on statements and receipts that you print for customers. Now press <Enter>. This moves you to the next block. (You may also use the up and down arrow keys to move from block to block). We call these blocks where data is entered "fields". It is not necessary to enter any information in these setup fields, but it is convenient to have this information stored on disk so that you will not have to enter it each time. The setup module may be called at any place in the program by pressing the <F9> key. When you press <Enter> to leave the last module you will see the Starting Menu. It is really a kind of main program menu, but the menus in the data entry windows (described later) are called Main Menu, because there are other menus used as well in these windows. One thing you should know: If you need help, you can pop up a help window from most places in the program by pressing the <F1> key. This is called the "Help Key". Try it now. You should remember that returning to this menu from any place in the program will automatically save your data. YOU SHOULD MAKE IT A PRACTICE TO ALWAYS RETURN TO THIS MENU IF YOU ARE NOT USING THE PROGRAM FOR LONGER THAN A FEW MINUTES. OTHERWISE IN CASE OF A POWER FAILURE OR ACCIDENTALLY TURNING OFF THE COMPUTER WITHOUT QUITTING THE PROGRAM YOU MAY LOSE OR CORRUPT DATA. You may make a selection by either typing the first letter of the menu item (<Enter> not necessary in this case), or moving the highlight to your choice with the arrow keys and pressing <Enter>. The following choices are available: ENTER DATA - Opens data entry window to allow input or modification of information about consignors or items for sale. - 4 - AFTER SALE INFORMATION - allows you to enter sales of items, the sale price and date of sale, as well as sales tax. If this information has already been entered by printing a receipt at the point of sale, this option is not necessary. RECEIPT - At point of sale, enters items as they are sold,views items, allows review and modification, and prints a receipt. Items sold are marked as sold, with the actual sale price,any sales tax, and the date sold. PRINT REPORTS - Prints, from a menu,inventory, activities for a day or time period, or consignor statements. Activity reports can be summary or detailed. DELETE ITEMS - A quick delete for items. Items are displayed by consignor, with the unsold items shown first for each consignor. They are displayed in a tabular format which makes it easy to find the desired record. One simple command deletes the selected item. Undeletes are possible. CONSIGNOR POST PAYMENT - Allows semiautomatic filling in of the date a consignor was paid for a particular item, with manual overview to prevent errors. All items sold on or prior to a given date for the specified consignor will have the paid date filled in with the specified date. SETUP - Allows entry of sales tax rate, the company name, and the starting rate for consignments, which are used by the program. The first time the program is run, SETUP is run automatically. Sales tax data also may be modified at the time the receipts or after sale information is entered. That modification is only for the duration of that particular module use. Setup may be invoked anytime by pressing <F9>. - 5 - The Consignor Data Entry Screen Select Enter Data. The Consignor Data Entry Screen will appear. This is a window that lets you view, enter, copy, find and edit (modify) information about your consignors and your own business. Think of this information as a kind of master list or database which stores 4 pieces of information about each consignor or business: name, address, city/state, and phone number. Each set of information which you can see on one screen is called a record. Within the record the pieces of information are called fields. The field is seen as the light colored blocks after the words "name", "address", etc. This is where you enter information. There is another database which you will see later which contains the items which you have for sale. Since you enter many more items than consignors, we need a consignor master list containing information which is common to each group of items belonging to specific consignors. CONAN copies the name and phone number to each record in the item database. This saves work since you only have to enter the consignor data once. On the right of the screen is the menu. the menu choices are: Add - Adds a new record, then goes into edit mode to allow info entry Copy - makes an exact copy of record on the screen, then goes into edit mode to allow changing selected fields - very useful, really saves keystrokes for repetitive data. Edit - Allows modification of data. Delete - self explanatory - BE CAREFUL WITH THIS! Actually the records that are deleted are just hidden, not permanently removed. They can be recovered from the Delete module at the Starting Menu. Because these hidden records slow down the program and take up valuable disk space if there are many of them you should periodically Pack them. (See Maintenance). Once packed the records are gone forever. View - lets you find and display a different record. Zoom (when available) - Moves to the database containing items for sale. Unzoom (when available) - The opposite of Zoom. Starting Menu - Go back to original menu shown at startup for selection of another function. TO AVOID LOSS OF DATA, ALWAYS GO TO THIS MENU WHEN PAUSING FOR MORE THAN A FEW MINUTES. This saves all work to disk. - 6 - List - Quickly browse through the records which are displayed in a tabular form. Maintenance - Has three options, PACK and INDEX are the most important. Pack permanently deletes those records that have been DELETED. Delete only hides records that have been so designated, for the purposes of editing, copying, or printing a report. A build up of deleted records slows down operations and makes the database files larger than they need to be. Packing permanently removes them. Packing takes considerable time in a large database, so only start it when you do not need to use the program for anything else. Should the power go off during packing, the data may be corrupted. It is wise to back up your data before packing. Indexing rebuilds index files that may have become damaged. It should not be necessary to use this option unless the database starts acting peculiar or records are mysteriously missing. This does not often happen but the option is included so that you can help yourself should disaster strike. Now let's add a record. Select Add. The menu disappears and the cursor is blinking at the first field. You are in the edit mode. (Add, Edit, and Copy all put you in the edit mode. This is the mode where you may enter or modify data). Enter the name of a consignor or your business. A suggestion, always enter the last name first, a comma, space and the first name or initials. CONAN searches from the beginning of a field first when it is looking for a record. Many first names are the same, so you would have to type the entire name. Since searches may be made on a partial name if a last name is unique you sometimes need only type that. Of course if you have two consignors with the name "Smith" you will have to type a little more than that to get the correct record. Note: CONAN will not let you enter more than one record with the same name. Also, searches are case sensitive. Here are some directions for navigation: Go from field to field with arrow keys. <Enter> goes from field to field only in the downward direction. Use <Esc> to abort. To save and leave edit mode hold down both <Ctrl> and <End>. Within a field, to go to the end of the field press <End>. To go to the beginning, press <Home>. To delete all after the cursor, hold down both <Ctrl> and <End>. When done at the beginning of the field, this deletes the entire contents of the field. Fill in all the information. Then press and hold down both <Ctrl> and <End>. The menu will appear. You have left the edit mode. - 7 - Copy is most useful when there are many records to be added where some of the information is the same. This saves typing the same information over and over again. Since it is used most with the Item Data Entry Screen, it will be discussed there. Add several records. Include your own business as one of the records. Items for your business are treated as inventory rather than consignment, so you should have some records for this type of item. Of course your business may not handle any consignors, or have only consignors. CONAN will work well with any of these businesses. Now purposely make an error with one of your records and leave the edit mode. Edit allows you to get back into a record for the purpose of modifying it. Select this now. Once again you are in the edit mode. Correct the error and leave the edit mode. Now let's look for a record other than the one on the screen now. There are two ways to do this. With only a few records List works well. It also allows you to view records in a convenient column and row format, so that you can view more than one record. Select list. Depending on how many records you have and whether you are at the beginning, middle or end of the records you may see one or more records on the screen. You may browse the records with the arrow keys, use <PgUp> and <PgDn> to scroll up or down a screen at a time, or <Ctrl><PgUp> or <Ctrl><PgDn> to go to the beginning or end of the file. <Esc> or <Enter> leaves List and displays the record that the cursor was on in the table. View has more options. Select it now. A view menu pops up. Edit is included for convenience. You can find a record and edit it without going back to the main menu. However when you leave the edit mode you will be back in the main menu. Index set allows you to change from records sorted by name to a sort by the order in which they were entered. it is not very useful. The Next Record, Previous Record, Top Record, and Bottom Record choices are obvious. Skip n Record allows you to skip forward whatever number of records you wish. Negative numbers will move you back. - 8 - The most useful choice is Fast Find using index. This is extremely fast. Try this now. Select one of the names you have entered. You need not enter the entire name, only enough of the first letters to have a unique entry. For example, if you have one "Palmer" on file and no other name similar, it is enough to type "Palm". The record you want appears almost instantly. Locate using criteria is much slower. If you use the full screen mode you need to enter the information for the entire screen, exactly as it is in the record. This is of limited use since you can find a record much easier if you just know the name. There is one very handy use of this option discussed under the Item data entry. Main Menu brings you back to the main menu. Use it now. When you are done you may quit from the main menu or the starting menu. If you quit from the main menu and have deleted any records in this session you will be asked if you want to pack the database. If you don't have much time to spare answer no. - 9 - The Item Data Entry Screen Select Zoom to go to the Item Data Entry Screen. A New window will open. This is for entry of information on items belonging to the consignors or inventory. Before we discuss entry of these items you should understand that all items entered are "linked" to a specific consignor or your business name in the master list. When you zoom from a specific record in the Consignor Screen, all records you enter are linked to the consignor through the name field. You can't even enter another name for these items, nor with the exception of list, see or move to the records of another consignor. This is to prevent accidentally entering the wrong records for the wrong consignor. This is only true of data entry. Some other modules in this program can look at or act on all records. To avoid eyestrain it was felt that dark characters on a white background would be best. However if the entire screen were white, it would be impossible to see how large the field was and how much space was left. The screen background was made pale blue, and the field background white with black characters. Let's add a record. Select add. Enter an item number. We suggest several things in making up or using numbers. 1. Use several letters in the field. These should be the first characters. This gives you more available numbers, and allows you to use distinctive numbers for each consignor, for example their initials. If 2 consignors have the same initials us 2 letters, then "a", "b", and so forth. 2.Use all the spaces. To make sure the numbers display in sequence, use leading zeros. For example the computer would sort these numbers as follows: ab1000 ab998 ab999 It does not know that 1000 comes after 999, only that 1 comes before 9. The way to make sure that numbers are in sequence is: ab0998 ab0999 ab1000 Similarly, if you are starting with your first single digit records: ab0001, ab0002, etc. - 10 - Skip the entries in the box. CONAN will add them automatically. You may not see the additions now, but when you go to another module and come back they will be there. If at some future time you change the name on the master list, CONAN automatically changes all the names on the item. (Misspelled names, people getting married, etc. can require this). Phone numbers will NOT be automatically be upgraded. Why? Well CONAN needs to link on names, so records need to be automatically upgraded. Phone numbers are optional. Inventory or consignment box gets lower case "c" or "i". You will not be allowed to make any other entry. Enter the date received. All dates must have leading zeros. For example must July 4, 1991, must be entered as "07/04/91". It is not necessary to enter the slashes, the computer will do that for you. Enter the asking price. You may or may not actually sell at that price, but this is a reminder that this is the price that you want to get. Enter the description. It is good practice to leave a space after any commas. CONAN, when printing reports will try to fit whole words into the existing columns. If a word is too large it may be split in the middle. The program only knows the end of a word when it sees a space. The only information below the line that you might want to fill in now is the commission rate. If you have entered an initial rate in the Setup module, this is not necessary unless you want to enter a different rate. When you are finished press <Ctrl><End>. Now let's see how useful the Copy command can be. When you have added the first item belonging to a consignor or your business, you usually want to add more at the same session. This is where the Copy command saves work. Usually the numbers are entered in order. Also, many fields will be the identical for each record. Select Copy. You should be in the edit mode with exactly the same information on the screen. This is not the same record as that which you just entered. If you saved it now you would have 2 records which were identical. If you aborted by pressing <Esc> you would have only one record. You should be at the number field. Press <End>. Now enter the next number. For example if the first record were ar0001, the next record should be ar0002. When you press <End> the cursor is at the last digit of the field, "1". Press"2". Notice that the number is now ar0002 and the cursor has jumped to the next field. This is the name field. Don't make any changes here or in the next field, the telephone number. These should be the same for every record of a given consignor. Likewise with the consignor or inventory field. - 11 - The price for the new record may or may not be the same as the previous record. If it is different, enter the new price. The description may or may not be the same as the previous record. To save keystrokes some people enter all items of a similar type in a group. For example, if you had a large number of rings, you might enter them at the same time with the description starting with the word "ring,". Record one might read "ring, 14K gold, simple band". Record two might be "ring, silver". At least some of the description need only be typed once. Remember the default mode is overwrite. When you type a character you replace the character that was in that position. If you left anything out in the middle of a description, go to the insert mode by pressing the <Ins> key. This inserts characters you type at the cursor position. This is the normal mode of most word processors. For a database program the overwrite mode is best. You can return to it by pressing <Ins> again. In other words the <ins> key is a toggle that toggles the insert mode on and off. Why is the ovewrite mode more useful? Well suppose you want to copy a new description when using the COPY command. You don't need the old description. Just type the new description. If it is longer than the old one when you have finished the old description is completely replaced by the new one. You don't have to do any more work. If the old description is longer than the new one, some of it will still remain. Just press <Del> a few times and all trace of the old description is gone. There is an even faster way. When you have typed the new description, press and hold down the <Ctrl> and the "Y" keys. From the cursor on the rest of the field disappears. There is one more thing that you should be careful of in copying records in the Item window. If the first record that you copied was not an item that had been sold, the Description field is the last field you need to enter. (You may want to enter a different commission, if this varies from item to item). However if the first item had been sold, you will need to erase ALL THE FIELDS BELOW THE LINE THAT HAVE BEEN FILLED IN WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE COMMISSION RATE. This can be done by pressing <Ctrl><Y> with the cursor in each field. Save the record. Now copy a third record from the second. See how much typing the Copy command saves? Remember, periodically go back to the Starting Menu to save to disk. You can easily find the last record when you wish to resume again.. Zoom from the correct Consignor, select View, and select Bottom from the View Menu. This will display the last record in numerical order, presumably the last record that you saved. If you were working on another record, use the Fast find selection. Press Main Menu to leave the View menu. - 12 - You can leave the Item window in three ways: Select Starting Menu to return to that menu, select Unzoom to go back to the Consignor window, or select Quit to quit the program completely. - 13 - After Sale Information This module, selected from the Starting Menu, allows you to enter or modify information that is normally entered after an item is sold. if you are using CONAN directly at the point of sale and printing receipts for your customers, you may never use this option. On the other hand, if you write receipts by hand and/or have your computer at another location. this module would be the way to enter information from your receipts. You might also use it as a quick look up for an item by it's number, without having to know the consignor's name. lastly, if there are any changes that you wish to make in a record after the sale has been "rung up" and the receipt printed, this is a way to do it. Select After Sale. The sales tax percent will display on the screen (zero if you have not entered it in the Setup module). You can change it for this session only if you wish, or press <Enter> to leave it as is and continue. Next you are asked for the item number. At this point if you enter a number that does not exist, you will be told so and given a chance to enter another number. If the number exists, you see the record displayed on the screen and asked if this is the correct number. If it is press "Y" or <Enter> to allow data entry. If it is not, or you just wanted to look up the record, press "n". This module only allows you to edit fields below the line. Enter a record number for an existing record, and answer "y" to the question "Is this the correct record". Enter the date the item was sold, and the price it was sold for (which may or may not be the asking price). Now you answer "y" if the item is subject to sales tax (or press <Enter>, yes is the default setting). Now you can only edit the commission rate and date consignor is paid. If you need to change the sales price or date sold you will need to re-enter the number after you have finished entering the last items. Note that the sales tax and the amount the consignor is paid are calculated automatically. Skip over the Date Consignor Paid field. There is a separate module that does this quickly and automatically. Just press <Enter>. You will be asked if you wish another item. Answer yes if you do, and repeat the process. If you answer no, you will be asked if you want to see an on-screen list. If you answer yes to this a row and column display of all items will appear on screen. The last item will be on the screen and you can use the cursor and page keys to scroll up and down. If you answer no you will be returned to the main menu. - 14 - Receipts The Receipt module is similar to the After Sale module. However it also allows you to print a receipt, and to edit the receipt and delete and add items before printing, in case the customer changes their mind. With the computer located as would a cash register in a retail establishment, it allows the computer to function as such, with the added advantage of validating prices and tracking inventory. Items that are selected and printed on a receipt are marked in the records as sold on a given date. Select Receipt now. The first inputs, selecting sales tax percent and item number are identical with the After Sale module. Select and enter information as you would have in the After Sale module. After each item is entered, you are asked if you want to view the receipt. Enter several items, then answer "Y". A row and column display will appear on the screen. Note that the last record entered is where the cursor appears. You will have to scroll backward to see the other items. At any point you have the option to delete an item. This allows for the customer to change their mind or you to remove items included by mistake. IN THIS MODULE, DELETING AN ITEM ONLY REMOVES IT FROM THE RECEIPT, NOT THE DATABASE. When you are finished adding items answer "n" the the question do you want another item. You will be asked how many copies of the receipt you want. If you want one for your customer and one for the store records, enter 2. (1 is the default number). The computer will always print a receipt even if no items were entered, UNLESS you enter 0. Note that if you enter 0 but have selected items for a receipt, they will be marked as sold in your records. To prevent this, delete them from the receipt as described above before you reach this point. If an item is mistakenly marked as sold, the error can still be corrected. Simply go to the After Sale module and select the item that you want to change. Delete the date sold and the price paid. That's all there is to it! - 15 - Reports Conan prints a variety of reports selectable from a simple menu. By answering one or two questions after the type of report is selected, reports for many accounting or information needs may be printed. Chose Print Reports from the Starting Menu. You will see the following menu selections: Inventory Activities Statements Return to Starting Menu Choose INVENTORY. This prints reports on inventory items only. You are then asked if you want items for today or a period of time. Normally you would want items purchased over a period (day, week, month, or year) rather than the day you are printing the report. Choose period. You are next asked for the starting and ending date. CONAN lets you select any period between two dates, rather than having to select a day, week, or other fixed period. This can be useful in checking activity for partial weeks, weekends, etc. You can still get your information for the normal periods you need, such as week, month, year. Enter the two dates. Next you are asked if you want all or unsold items. If you needed a check list to do a physical inventory, you would select unsold inventory. However if you wanted to determine what you purchased over a time period, you would select all. CONAN will print a report giving the date purchased, date sold, purchase price, description, sale price and sales tax. Totals on all numeric fields are printed. Subtotals by date are also printed, so that you can print out a month, for example, and be able to see your purchases by day as well. ACTIVITIES are selected if you need a report on items sold, items purchased, consignments accepted, or consignors paid for a time period. Detailed reports, which list every transaction, or summary reports which list only totals, may be printed. The most common report is to print sales for the day. This is very fast because it uses a technique called "indexed searching". However to save disk space, the less commonly needed reports on items purchased (which you can get by printing inventory for the period anyway) or consignors paid do not have an index, and are much slower. - 16 - Let's print sales for the day. First of course, you must have marked a number of items as having been sold on the day of interest. Now select Activities. You are asked if you want a full or summary report. Select full. Next you are asked if you want a report for today or a period of time. If the items that were sold are for today, AND YOUR COMPUTER HAS A CLOCK CALENDAR THAT AUTOMATICALLY SETS THE DATE (most do) or you have set the date yourself, choose today. CONAN automatically asks the computer for the date set on the system. This is the day that CONAN considers as "today". If you want any other day, choose "period of time" and use the date that you want as both starting date and ending date. Next you are asked if you want items purchased or received. Answer no. Once you answer no the report for items sold for the day immediately starts printing. This is because THIS report always prints when you select Activities, while the other two are optional. When the report is finished, answer no to the question about consignors paid. Usually a full report is wanted for daily sales, to spot errors and reconcile the receipts or cash, while summary reports are used for week, month, and other periods. The full printout for these periods might be very large, and take much time and paper. STATEMENTS are reports of activities involving a specific consignor's account. You may print reports listing all the items a the business has received from a specific consignor (except those returned and deleted), or only those which are unsold or sold but for which the consignor has not been paid. The latter is used for statements to a consignor or to determine how much is owed a consignor. There are two possible forms: a Store Copy and the normal copy given to the consignor. A store copy has one more column, not needed by the consignor. Make sure that you have several items belonging to one consignor in the system. Select statement. Answer the first question with "c" (Consignor statement). The second answer should be "s" (statement retained by store). Answer "y" (yes) to the next question. You will be shown a table of consignors. Place the cursor on one which you know has several items belonging to that consignor. Press <Enter> If some items are still not marked as paid for this consignor, choose "unpaid"; CONAN will print only those items where the Date Paid field remains blank. Otherwise choose "all". Now repeat the process, but choose "customer statement" for the second question. Compare the two statements. Note that the Asking Price column is missing from the customers copy. You may not wish your consignors to question why you had to lower your price, since the statement is only to inform them - 17 - what items were sold, how much they sold for, and what they are being paid. On the other hand you probably want to have a record of what was asked and the ultimate sale price. Note also that the store copy has the last record listed at the end WHEN YOU PRINT ONLY THE UNPAID RECORDS. This is handy if you have repeat consignments from the same person, and need to know the next number to assign. This will only work if the numbers are in numerical order. The program assumes that if you print all the records you can see which is the last record, but if you print only unpaid records, one of the previously paid items may be the last number assigned. In that case it would not show up on the current print-out and you might assign the same number to a second item. Also note that the phone number and address are at the end in case you need to call or write. When you receive a new lot of items from a consignor you will probably want a complete list of all items. This is also useful later if you need to check items which have been paid for, since they will not appear on the unpaid list. Consignor, Post Payment After you have sold some of the consignment items, and paid the consignors, the date you paid for each item must be entered so that you have a record of the payment having been made. After all, you don't want to pay for the item more than once. Entering the date in each item one at a time is too time consuming to be practical. The Consignor post payment module makes it simple to mark the records yet allows some control over which record gets marked (to prevent errors). Select this now. You are asked for the consignor's name. In this case there is no scroll list of names, since presumably you have a statement from which you can copy the name. You are then asked for the date. Enter the last day that you have included in the statement. Now you will see the Item screen appear and the records flash by until one that was sold on or before the date entered and not previously marked as paid appears. To prevent errors (for example you typed in the wrong consignor, you are asked if you wish to mark this record. If you answer "y" the date you selected will be entered in the date paid field, and the process continued. This will continue until the last record for the consignor is reached. Then you are returned to the menu. - 18 - Delete Items Often when you have paid a consignor, you return some or all of the unsold items. It is just as time consuming to delete these records manually from the data entry module as it would be to mark records paid that way. However it would be too dangerous to delete records automatically. Also you should have a chance to restore records accidentally deleted. The Delete module takes care of all this. It is advisable to run the Consign module first. Why? Because the records in the delete module are arranged with the unpaid items first, on the theory that you will not want to delete the record of a paid item. Select Delete now. You are asked for the name of a consignor. Enter one. The records on the screen are displayed in a scrollable tabular form, by number. Put the cursor on a record that you want to delete. Press "d". The full screen display of the record appears, and you are asked if you want to delete it. Press "y". Notice that the words "This is a deleted Record" appear. Whenever the cursor is on a deleted record these words will appear. You can reverse the process. Press "r". If you answer "y" to the question the record will be restored. NOTE: WHEN YOU PACK THE FILES ALL DELETED RECORDS ARE PERMANENTLY DELETED AND CAN NOT BE RESTORED. Why pack the files then? Because too many deleted records will slow down the program quite a bit, and will take up room on your disk. Packing takes time, and does remove records permanently, so be sure that you have not made any errors before you pack records. - 19 - REFERENCE CONAN uses the universal DBase files with the file extension dbf. There are three such files: Names for the consignors' names and master consignor information, Item for individual item information, and Receipt which is a temporary file for printing individual receipts. Indexes, which are essential for sorting and locating records, have the extension ntx. The use of a universal database file format provides the ability to use data in other programs. A&E welcomes inquiries concerning the use of your data in other types of programs. CONAN will run on almost any computer which is IBM compatible, providing DOS 3.1 or higher is used. Conan takes advantage of expanded memory on those computers equipped with it. It requires about 425 K of conventional memory. During operation CONAN will "swap" portions of the program to and from disk. Disk activity during operation is normal. It is compatible with programs offering real time compression to save disk space. It is recommended that sufficient disk space be available to allow for a large number of files, since in the antique and consignment business many records may be created within a reasonably short time. The stand alone version of CONAN will not work on a local area network, and indeed may not even boot on some networks. If you intend to use the program on a network, please order the network version. - 20 - INDEX Activities, 1, 5, 16 Add, 6, 7 Address, 7 Bottom, 8, Browse, 8, City, 6 Commission, 1, 4, 11, 12, 14 Company, 4, 5 Consignor, post payment, 18 Copy, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12 Date, 1, 2, 5, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 Delete, 2, 5, 6, 7, 17, 19 Description, 2, 11, 12 Edit, 6, 7, 8 End, 8 Field, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20 Find, 6, 8, 9 Indexes, 20 Insert, 13 Installation, 3 Inventory, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12 List, 7, 8 Locate, 9 Main Menu, 4, 9, 9, 14, 16 Maintenance, 6, 7 Name, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 Next, 8 Non-taxable, 2 Number, Item, 10, Overwrite Mode, 12 Pack, 6, 7, 9, 19 Paid, 14, 17, 18, 19 Payment, Consignor Post, 18 Printing, 1, 5, 7, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20 Purchase, 16, 17 Rate, commission, 4, 5, 11, 13, 14 Receipt, 5, 14, 15 Received, items, 1, 11, 17 Registration, 2 Reports, 1, 2, 5, 11, 16, 17 Restore deleted items, 19 Searches, 7 Setup, 4, 5, 11, 14 Statements, 1, 4, 5, 16, 17, 18 Tax, 2, 4, 5, 14, 15, 16 Taxable, 2 Undelete, 2 Undeletes, 5 Unzoom, 7, 13 Validating, 15 View, 6, 8, 13, 15 Zoom, 6, 7, 10, 13