Retail Management Hero Promotional Pricing Extended to Microsoft POS 2007/2009/2.0 Users

A quick note that Retail Realm and Retail Hero have let me know that users of the Microsoft POS 2007, 2009 and 2.0 point of sale programs can also upgrade to the new Retail Management Hero point of sale software program at the $250/license cost (plus maintenance and labor/new hardware as required).

This is a really great opportunity for stores using these point of sale software programs to upgrade to a newer point of sale program!

Be sure to contact me at 208-340-5632 or kevinantosh@gmail.com for more information (US only please).

New Service Pack for Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009

For those of you using the Microsoft POS 2009 point of sale system, a new service pack was recently released. Note that you must be current on maintenance in order to download the service pack (you can do this via your CustomerSource account or by contacting your Microsoft Dynamics partner that provided your point of sale equipment.

Here are the service pack highlights:

New Features

• Detailed Sales report directly in Microsoft Office Excel with improved performance - You can now view the Detailed Sales report for all departments, categories, or suppliers, directly in Microsoft Excel with improved performance. For more information, see About Detailed Sales reports in the Manager View Help.
• Report viewing in Microsoft Office Excel - Certain additional reports can now be viewed in your choice of either the standard report window or Microsoft Office Excel. Simply select the new View in Microsoft Excel check box in one of these reports, and then click Refresh Report as usual. To view the list of reports that have this functionality, see List of reports in Manager View Help.
  Note Consult with your Microsoft Certified Partner to have this functionality added to additional reports.
• New configuration option to disallow manual entry of weights when a scale is in use on a register - The store manager can now configure whether cashiers are allowed to manually enter the weight of an item while a scale is attached to the register. For more information on this feature, see POS Workflow Options in Manager View Help.
• NCWM NTEP certification 13-005 - Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009 Service Pack 2 is compliant with National Conference on Weights and Measures, U.S. certificate number 13-005. For details, see About weighed items in Manager View Help.
  Note This is applicable in the United States locale only.
• Support for the Ingenico iSC350 payment device - We have completed compatibility testing and provided some code changes in support of the Ingenico iSC350 payment terminal. To set up and install the iSC350 device, follow the steps in the Ingenico iSC350 setup document available in the Download section of the Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009 SP2 download page.

Other Improvements

In addition to the new features listed above, Service Pack 2 includes fixes for the following issues:

• Payment processing settlement requests do not contain card-level information and could lead to higher fees.
• During label printing, long item descriptions overwrite the adjacent labels.
• The Sold Price values in the Detailed Sales report are incorrect.
• The days of the week headers in the graphs calendar in POS View display as Monday through Sunday instead of Sunday through Saturday. The days of the week do not line up with the correct days of the month.
• You receive the following error message when you try to tender a transaction with a debit card:
  A problem occurred during payment processing verification.
  Details: Error receiving response from Vital. Failed to Read SSL Stream.
• Credit cards that do not pass the Luhn algorithm fail to process. To resolve this issue, a new configuration option has been added to the Advanced Options dialog box for credit card payment methods.
• In limited scenarios, vouchers (gift cards) can be redeemed for more than their value.

Are you in the US and in need of no cost retail point of sale advice? I'm happy to help and can be reached on my cell at 208-340-5632 (mountain time) or via email at kevinantosh@gmail.com.

Microsoft Retail Software Conference

A quick reminder that sales of Microsoft Dynamics RMS and HQ to new users ends nest year (2016) so please keep that in mind if you are thinking of purchasing RMS or HQ as point of sale software for your business or organization.

I just received communication that Retail Realm and Microsoft will be hosting a conference in Las Vegas, NV on April 24th to April 26th, 2014.  The conference is slated to be dedicated to just the Microsoft family of point of sale solutions (RMS Store Operations, HQ, Nex Gen RMS, POS 2009, and AX for Retail).  Hopefully this will finally clear up what the future holds for current Microsoft RMS/HQ/POS 2009 customers.

You can read more about the conference by clicking here: http://www.rrdisti.com/blog/why-you-should-attend-the-retail-realm-2014-conference

In addition, it will be critical for Microsoft to communicate how they plan to update current software users for the upcoming MasterCard unique terminal ID requirement (being enforced in 2014) and the EMV requirements (being enforced in Oct 2015).

Are you in the US and in need of no cost retail point of sale advice? I'm happy to help and can be reached on my cell at 208-340-5632 (mountain time) or via email at kevinantosh@gmail.com.

Point of Sale Software Updates

Clover, our Android-based retail, museum and restaurant point of sale solution, now includes the ability to record customer information. This customer information  includes email addresses. We are also offering some flex-pricing on Clover for retail stores and restaurants who want to purchase the hardware versus paying an ongoing monthly fee.

NCR CounterPoint, our Windows and iOS based retail and museum point of sale solution, now offers a much more advanced online shopping cart (information can be found here: http://www.counterpointpos.com/ecommerce/pos-integrated-ecommerce.htm) and there are free trial offers for Customer Connect (automated/proactive email marketing) and Smart Alerts (email and texts alerts based on user-defined operation criteria).

Silver, our iOS based retail, museum and restaurant point of sale solution, has no major changes to announce.

QuickBooks Point of Sale, a Windows based retail point of sale software, has no major changes to announce.

Aldelo, our Windows-based restaurant/bar point of sale solution, has no major changes to announce.

Micros, our proprietary restaurant/bar/hotel point of sale solution, has no major changes to announce.

Microsoft RMS/HQ/POS 2009, our Windows based retail and museum point of sale solution, all have new enhancements and new features but I am waiting on definitive release dates.