When POS-2200 is first installed you'll have a largely empty database. Your first job is to load some information defining your store then load some inventory that you can sell. The steps are not difficult but some of the ideas may be. Many people have the knowledge necessary to run a store but they may not have the organizational and accounting skills needed to keep good records. Computer software will insist that you get organized. If you do a little planning up front, the software will do the heavy lifting from then on.

This page is a general discussion of concepts. Each of the topics on this page has its own detailed documentation page. The links are in the contents on the left.

POS-2200 requires at least these things be defined to get started:

• Settings
  • Store name and address
  • Passwords
  • Sales Tax information
• Transaction Codes
• Vendors
• Product Codes
• Inventory Items
• Customers

That may sound like a lot to do, but it's really not. In most cases you can enter one little piece of data to satisfy the requirements. In other cases you can enter just a minimal amount of data to get started then add more as you continue.

SETTINGS

• Store Name and Address
  When your system is delivered it will contain the basic name and address. This is built into the software by MMCC. This is the only form of copy protection in the system. If you pass the software to someone else, they'll have to do business under your store name.
  
  
• Passwords
  POS-2200 has a complete password and security system built in. You don't have to use it! The minimum requirements are that the password system define a SYSTEM and at least one STORE LOCATION. That will have been done when you get your system.
  
  With the basic information defined, the password system allows you to turn on and turn off security. If you have it off then you won't need user ID's or passwords. That's the way the system is delivered.
  
  If you turn on security, each person who uses the system needs to be given a USER-ID. This can be the person's initials, part of their name, an employee number, or other identifier. You'll also enter their name and some information about how much access they are to have to the system. A supervisor can do anything, a sales clerk can do less.
  
  The security system allows you to also setup customers and guests. The idea is that it would be possible to set up a computer in the store where customers could search for items in your inventory. Their security level would limit them to only doing that type of function.
  
  The security system includes a PASSWORD to go with the USER ID. As an administrator, you don't set the password. It always starts as nothing and is not required. When a user logs on using his or her USER ID, the system will allow a password to be defined. Once that's been done, the user must use that password to log on. (NOTE that nobody can find that password if it is lost. The only way to change it is to delete the person and put them back into the system.)
  
  
• Sales Tax Information
  The only thing that you need to do for sales tax is to define the tax rate. This is a simple step. But sales tax can be more complex in use.
  
  The calculation of sales tax is based on a series of factors which are tested in a specific order. At the top of the list is the CUSTOMER's information. A customer can be marked as tax-exempt. A sale made to a tax-exempt customer will not be charged tax under any circumstances. The system includes a special "customer" called "NO-TAX" which can be used for all tax-exempt sales if you don't want to enter every customer by name. When you make a sale to a tax exempt customer, the system will ask you for some form of tax-ID which can be recorded with the sale.
  
  For sales to taxable customers, the system next looks at each line item to see if it's taxable. Items are identified by a VENDOR and an ITEM CODE. The system first looks at the vendor to see if tax is to be calculated. This allows you to turn on and turn off taxing for large groups of items.
  
  If the VENDOR for an item is marked as taxable, the system finally looks at the item itself. If the ITEM is not taxable, then it over rides the vendor's setting.
  
  To summarize: The customer's tax code controls the sale overall. If the customer is tax exempt then no tax will be charged regardless of other settings. Second, the vendor is checked on an item by item basis. If the vendor is not taxed then none of the vendor's items are taxed. Finally, if the customer and vendor are taxable, the individual item is checked. If it's marked as tax exempt, no tax is charged on that one item.

TRANSACTION CODES

Tansaction codes (TC codes) define ways that you can get paid. Things like CASH, CHECK, VISA CARD, CHICKENS, EGGS... whatever you take as payment. The system will rrecord the transaction code with every payment that is taken. At the end of the day you'll get a report showing the total payments taken for each type. For example: $50.55 in cash, $175.34 in checks, $1,323.73 in Visa Cards, (2 dozen eggs if you accept that as payment), etc.

The TC code is up to two characters and can be letters and/or numbers. For example, "$" might be used for "cash" (although "CA" is more commonly used for cash). "VC" could be Visa Card. "DC" could be Discover Card.

The system is delivered with a basic of transaction codes defined. Most clients modify that list for the types of payment they accept: cash, check, etc. When it comes to credit cards you could group all credit cards together as something like "CC", but most stores do better by defining each type of card that they accept so that each can be tracked individually.

Besides these obvious codes, you can set up codes for lots of other things. In particular, you may want to have some for various discounts and promotions. For example, you could have an advertising coupon good for $5 toward any purchase on a particular day. You could set up a "C2" TC code for this coupon. When a person presents the coupon with their purchase, you'd enter it as the first payment, then take cash, check or credit card for the rest of the amount due. You'd then have a record of how many coupons were redeemed.

You don't have to think of all transaction codes right at first. You can add more as time goes on. A list of the most common TC codes is given on the detail documentation page that talks about tranaction codes. The tranaction maintenance program can also load a set of the most common codes for you.

TC Codes define other types of transactions as well. For example, the system internally has a TC for tax, one for "change given", one for "credit memos", and some others. You don't need to worry about these since they're automatically defined and used by the system. You may, however, see them show up on reports and some screens.

VENDORS

Everything that you sell must be defined to the system as an "ITEM" (also called a stocking unit, SKU, or "skew"). Items are identified by a "vendor" and an "item code". The vendor is usually who you buy the item from. For example, you might buy cookbooks from the publisher "Cookbook Cupboard" and they may have a bunch of books. You could define the vendor as "CBC". Each of their books has a number printed on the back which you could use as your item number. In this scheme, item "CBC-597311" would be Cookbook Cupboard's "Party Snacks" book.

Defining items this way organizes your data in a logical way and provides the basis for many types of management reports. You might have several book vendors and at some time you might want to run a sales analysis report comparing how well each of these vendors is performing.

You don't have to do vendors this way. If vendors don't make sense, you could have a single vendor to satisfy the system then put everything you sell under that one code.

The first step in setting up your inventory is to identify your vendors. The software allows vendor codes to be up to FOUR CHARACTERS. These can be any combination of letters and numbers. When you come up with a vendor code, try to use something that makes sense and is easy to remember. Initials work very well as in the example of "CBC" for "Cookbook Cupboard".

When coming up with vendor ID's, keep in mind that there may already be a commonly used ID code that everyone in your store, or even in your industry recognizes. Of you might find that the vendor has initials or a code printed on all their products. It would make sense to use to use that code in those cases.

Things to avoid are meaningless numbers and codes. "K3" and "1653" would be ID's which are, on the surface, meaningless. ON THE OTHER HAND... if you are installing the POS-2200 software at a store which already has a numbering scheme, no matter how odd it might be, it may be best to continue using the old system. There's less new stuff to learn that way.

NOTE: Vendor names and addresses are stored in the same file as the customers. Vendors and customers are coded so the system knows the difference. A vendor can also be a customer but a customer cannot be a vendor.

PRODUCT CODES

POS-2200 includes an optional PRODUCT CODE which can be useful for sales analysis purposes.

A product code is used to identify large groups of products without regard to vendor or item number. For example, you might buy cookbooks, sewing books, magazines and other printed matter. And you may buy these items from several different vendors. A product code could be used to identify "cookbooks" as a group. You could later run a sales analysis report on cookbooks in general. The report would include the selected code, and only that code, regardless of the vendor.

You are not required to use product codes. If you're not sure, don't worry about it. If you know that you want to use the code it's helpful to define your main products before you start to load inventory. The code must be defined before it can be used in inventory. If you are loading a lot of inventory items, it's easier to identify the product code when you enter the item than it is to come back later and add the product code to all the items on file.

INVENTORY ITEMS

As noted above, everything that you sell should be defined in the system as an "ITEM". Items are identified by a "vendor" and an "item code". The vendor is who you buy the item from. The item number is unique to that one product.

Making up item numbers is different from vendor codes. In this case, the number (which can include letters), may not have any logical meaning. It's often convenient to use a number that the vendor has printed on the box or label for the item. In the cookbook example above, the number came off of the back of the book. It also happens to be included in the bar code on the back of the book.

Sometimes it doesn't make sense to use a vendor's number from an item. In the cookbook example, there are actually THREE numbers on the book and they're all long:
   ISBN: 1-885597-31-2
   90000
   9 781885 597311
The ISBN number is guaranteed to be unique since it's used by the Library of Congress. But it's not in the bar code so you can't scan it, and you sure don't want a sales clerk to have to key that long number each time they sell a book.

The second number is "90000". Looking at a bunch of the books shows that the number is the same on every book. It's not unique so it doesn't help us.

The third number is below the bar code and the format shows that it's the data coded in the bar code. It's also very long. Even if you're using a scanner, there will be times when you have to key the number by hand. You probably don't want to use the entire 13 digits.

By looking at a bunch of the cookbooks it quickly becomes obvious that the last six digits of the bar coded number are unique to every book. Those six digits are, in this case, the best number to use. It's unique, short, and easy to find on the books.

As a point of interest, some store managers feel that you should never use the vendor or manufacturer's number on your items. The idea is that if you use that code it's easier for a customer to price shop by phoning around. If the number on the item is unique to your store it makes it more difficult to find the number somewhere outside your store.

POS-2200 has a built in cross reference which allows you to sell using your own item number but have a record of the "real" item number.

It's often more difficult to identify an item that does NOT include a manufacturer's label of any type. In this case you have to come up with your own scheme. Use common sense. Keep the numbers short. Use letter codes if they make sense. For example, if you have a consignment craft store and a crafter sells pillows and towells, you could number the pillows with a "P" in front and the towells with a "T": "P-001", "T-001".

Item codes MUST BE UNIQUE. The code is made up of the vendor and the item number. You can have a "GE 123" and a "SBC 123", but you can't have two "123" items within vendor "GE" or vendor "SBC".

Item codes can be up to 16 characters long. It can include letters and numbers. When you combine this with the four character vendor code, you have a 20 character number available to identify items.

POS-2200 has a special rule for NUMERIC items number which are six digits or less. These are automatically RIGHT JUSTIFIED and ZERO FILLED. That is, if you enter "16" the software will automatically change that to "000016". This is done because it forces the computer to sort these numbers in numerical order. Sorting works from left to right. If the numbers are LEFT JUSTIFIED like "16", "21", and "161", they would sort as "16", "161", "21".

Numeric item codes longer than six digits, and any item code including letters, are left in the format that they are keyed.

There are two ways to enter items into your inventory:

• Inventory Maintenance is a screen designed just to maintain inventory. You are given a list of items on the top and a detail screen on the bottom. You can add items, change items, check history and do many other functions. This screen also gives you access to all of the data items stored with each item.
• Quick Add is a special screen that's part of the sales entry screen. This one asks for just the minimum information (description, price, taxable) about the item. You can do this right in the middle of an order without any special work.

If you want, you can enter all of your inventory before you ever start selling items. Many POS software packages require you to do exactly that. POS-2200's quick entry is provided because in real life it's just not possible to put everything in up front.

For most shops, the easiest way to get started is to enter a few of your most popular items into inventory using the maintenance screen. When things are slow you can enter more items. For most items, however, you can just enter them when someone buys them. A customer brings a handful of items to the counter. You try to enter them. If they're already on file the software is happy. If the software doesn't find the item it offers you the opportunity to add the item to inventory right then.

(Note that the sales entry program also has powerful search capabilities. If you enter an item and the system says that it's not in file, you can either add it then or you can ask the software to show you all the items which are similar. You may have just keyed the part number incorrectly.)

Items entered using the "quick add" method are marked as "quarantined". This means that the system only has the minimum information about that item. You can go back later and use the maintenance screen to clean up quarantined items by adding all the other information the may be required. Doing maintenance on an item, even if you don't change a thing, tells the system that you at least looked and that the quarantine flag can be turned off.

BAR CODES

Bar codes are a fact of life. Many items you sell will have pre-printed bar codes. This topic deserves some special attention.

Although many people know the term "UPC" code. In truth there are many different types of bar codes. Some are UPC codes and some are just manufacturer's internal codes. Just because a product has a preprinted code it doesn't mean that it will be useful to you in your store setting.

To be useful in a point of sale system, a bar code must be unique. If two items have the same code the software will not be able to tell one from another. Within individual industries there are standards for bar codes. These are generally adminisitered by "The Universal Code Council". Members of this organization use standard code formats and are assigned unique series of numbers which they use to guarantee that numbers are unique. This is the true "UPC" code.

There is no law that says a vendor or manufacturer must use a standard bar code. In fact, different industries may use different codes and, in theory, there could be a duplication of a number used for automotive parts and one used for a grocery item. Some companies will develop their own numbering and coding scheme with no regard to established standards. Their numbers could overlap with some other vendor's products.

There are practical limitations to bar codes as well. Some bar codes are short, some are very long. Some contain vendor information, some only have a part number. The size and quality of the bar code, and the capabilities of the scanner used by the store determine if the code can be read or not. Some scanners can automatically discriminate between the dozens of different bar codes; some can only read one type of code.

The bar code printing can also have an impact on the usefulness of a bar code. The cookbooks used in earlier examples are each printed with a distinctive color cover. The covers bar codes are printed over this base color without a white background. The covers are also very shiny. With a high end scanner most books scan just fine but some (like a particularly florescent orange one) simply cannot be scanned.

POS-2200 has special features designed to make bar codes easy to work with. The most important feature is that bar code numbers are kept separate from your own items numbers. A built in cross reference can take a bar code and look up the actual part number.

A special program is also provided to enter bar codes. A list of your items is presented on the screen. You click on the item that you want to bar code then scan the item itself. Whatever the scanner reads is automatically entered for the item. The system also checks to insure that the bar code is unique. If another item is already using that bar code you are informed and can decide if you want to use the bar code or not.

A bar code scanners is required if you are going to use the codes. There are many types of scanners and they have a wide range of features and capabilities. The most common scanner in small stores is the hand held scanner, which may also have a table top mount for hands free scanning.

Important features to consider with your scanner include:

• Reading distance. Some readers work from feet away from the code, others need to be right on top of the bar code.
  
  
• Minimum size of the bar code that can be read. Some readers can handle very small codes, other require larger ones.
  
  
• Minimum white space required around the bar code. Small codes on small labels may not have enough white space around the bar code to distinguish it from other printed data.
  
  
• Automatic discrimination of the most common bar code formats. The most common bar code is printed using the "CODE 39" standard. There are, however, many other formats. Some scanners don't recognize every type of code.
  
  
• Automatic sensing. Better scanners will detect when an object is passed through it's reading area and will automatically turn on and scan. These are important for hands-free operations. Others may require you to hold the scanner and pull a trigger to do the scan.
  
  
• Method of connecting to the computer. The most common connection used for PC systems is the "keyboard wedge". The bar code scanner is plugged into the keyboard connector on the computer, the keyboard is then plugged into the scanner. That is, the scanner is "wedged" in between the computer and the keyboard.
  
  With a wedge, when you type on the keyboard the letters pass through the scanner and into the computer. When the scanner reads a code it sends the code into the computer on the same path. The software may not know, and really doesn't care, where the keystrokes came from. (The scanner will typically append an "ENTER" key to the end of the bar code string.)
  
  There are at least three kinds of keyboard connectors in use. Before buying a scanner, be sure that it uses the same connector that your keyboard and computer use. Most current keyboards now use the USB connection.

CUSTOMERS

POS-2200 has the ability to maintain a list of all your customers. This is not required but it is useful. Maintaining a customer list has a number of advantages:

• It gives you a built-in mailing list.
• You can do sales analysis based on customers.
• You can see how frequently a customer visits and the date of their last visit.
• You can target customers based on their buying preferences.
• You can track specific items the custoer has purchased.

You are NOT required to enter customer information. There are two "built-in" customers, "CASH" and "NO-TAX". When you enter a sale you can just tap the "F1" key to start a cash sale or the "F9" key to start a tax exempt sale. The system won't bother you with account numbers, names, or any other customer related information. By the same token, the system won't be able to give you detailed history on customer buying patterns.

Having the customers on file does not require that you use their information when making a sale. For instance, a good repeat customer may come in and buy an expensive item. You want to track this sale for that customer. That same person may come in and just buy a candy bar. In that case you may just want to do a quick cash sale.

There are two ways to enter customers into your database:

• Customer Maintenance is a screen designed just to maintain customer information. You are given a list of names on the top and a detail screen on the bottom. You can add, change and delete customers, check history and do many other functions.
  
  
• Quick Add is a special screen that's part of the sales entry screen. This one asks for just the minimum information (name, address, phone, taxable, etc.) about the customer. You can also update this basic information from the sales entry program.

If you have an existing mailing list you can enter that list in the full maintenance screen. If you have your list on the computer in another software package it may be possible for MMCC to import that date directly into your database.

From a practical point of view, most customers are entered via quick add when they come in and buy something. Customers entered using the "quick add" method are marked as "quarantined". This means that the system only has the minimum information about the person. You can go back later and clean up the entry using the full maintenance screen. Doing that, even if you don't change a thing, tell the system that you at least looked and that the quarantine flag can be turned off.

POS-2200 has powerful customer search capabilities. You can find a customer based on name, phone, address and other factors. The various searches are built into the programs where they are most useful.

NOTE: Vendor names and addresses are stored in the same file as the customers. Vendors and customers are coded so the system knows the difference. A vendor can also be a customer but a customer cannot be a vendor.

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