POSIM Software

We are moving!!!

2009-08-17T09:34:00.000-07:00

The blog is moving to our new web site.

If you are coming here directly, you can now just visit www.posim.com. The blog is our "news" section and also displays as a rotating banner on the home page.

You can also find the News page at www.posim.com/news.

July 24th - Utah Holiday

2009-07-16T09:52:00.000-07:00

July 24th is Utah's Pioneer Day (basically Utah's Independence Day), which is a statewide holiday. Ensign encourages their employees to use this holiday to spend time with their families and enjoy the festivities. This means our office will be closed on Friday the 24th.

We will have a limited number of our technical support team available if needed. You will be able to leave a message by calling our normal business phone 801.546.1616 and they will call you back as they become available.

We will be back on Monday for business as usual.

Credit Card Processing Issues

2009-07-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

Dear POSIM Users.

As we all are painfully aware, Authorize.Net was down from midnight July 2 to noon July 3. They had a major fire in the building; even though they had a redundant backup in place the fire department would not let them have access to it until 12 hours later. When they got access, card processing was up in less than 1 ½ hours.

Obviously this was out of our control. We are thankful Authorize.net was prepared, and are looking at options that we can provide in the future to help if this may happen again.

What to do now:

NOWCHARGE Bypass Method. If you are using NowCharge and bypassed sales refer to the section below for instruction on how to capture payment.

Suspend Feature (for Windows). If you used the suspend feature in POSIM Premier and POSIM Charge, at the end of the day run the credit card audit report and activate the suspend feature. This will process the cards that were suspended for the day. See the section below for more info.

POSIM Charge (for Mac) If you selected the bypass option on the credit card process window to process invoices, then run the credit card audit report. Those transactions that were bypassed will be noted as such on that report. It will also show the token number and the amount. Next go the POSIM Charge and process the credit card transctions using the POSIM Charge virtual terminal. You will need to select the Process Exisiting Token option. See below.

Wrote CC Numbers down. Many of you just wrote the credit card numbers down. In that case simply go to your account in Authorize. Net and use their virtual terminal to process each of the cards.

We are truly sorry for this problem, even though it appears to be beyond the control of Ensign or Authorize.Net. We understand this has been a major issue for you. As you can imagine our phones have been overloaded on this holiday, but we are making every effort to contact you and assist. Check your emails for more information.

MAC (DIAMOND) INSTRUCTIONS:

NowCharge Bypass:

Bypassing a sale records the sale in POSIM but does NOT authorize nor fund the transaction. This is useful when your internet is down or when you need to enter a sale into POSIM that has already been processed in Authorize.Net. Bypassing records the transaction in POSIM only and does not fund nor authorize the transaction (YOU WILL NOT GET MONEY).

When you are ready to process the sale, e.g. your internet is now functional; retrieve the credit card information from the Credit Card Audit Report. Open Sales Point, click Reports, and then Credit Card Audit Report.

Note: The Mask CCs box will appear once you click Credit Card Audit Report. In order to view the full credit card number, your user account needs to be set to allow that privilege.

Print the report. To run the credit card transactions manually through Authorize.Net, click on Virtual Terminal (located under the Home tab).

Under Select Payment Method, make sure to select the Charge a Credit Card option.

You will only need to fill in the Card Number, Expiration Date, and the Amount. These are the only required fields for processing the transaction. You may want to enter the Invoice # and a Description, such as “internet down” so that there’s a record of what happened. All of the other boxes (i.e. Shipping Information, etc.) are not required in order to process the transaction. They are optional. After that, just scroll down to the bottom of the page and click submit!

POSIM Charge Bypass:

If you selected the bypass option on the credit card process window to process invoices, then run the credit card audit report. Those transactions that were bypassed will be noted as such on that report. It will also show the token number and the amount. Next go the POSIM Charge and process the credit card transctions using the POSIM Charge virtual terminal. You will need to select the Process Exisiting Token option.

1. To access the virtual terminal, click on Tools in the POSIM Charge menu bar. Then select virtual terminal.

2. Choose to either process a credit card or use an existing token and fill in the appropriate fields.

3. You can choose to either Authorize Only or to Authorize and Capture the credit card information. a) Authorize Only will simply approve the transaction without processing it. b) Authorize and Capture will approve and process the transaction.

WINDOW (Premier) INSTRUCTIONS:

NowCharge Bypass:

Note: The Do Not Mask CCs box will appear once you click Credit Card Audit Report. In order to view the full credit card number, your user account needs to be set to allow that privilege.

Print the report. To run the credit card transactions manually through Authorize.Net,
click on Virtual Terminal (located under the Home tab).

Under Select Payment Method, make sure to select the Charge a Credit Card option.

You will only need to fill in the Card Number, Expiration Date, and the Amount. These are the only required fields for processing the transaction. You may want to enter the Invoice #
and a Description, such as “internet down” so that there’s a record of what happened. All of the other boxes (i.e. Shipping Information, etc.) are not required in order to process the transaction.
They are optional. After that, just scroll down to the bottom of the page and click submit!

POSIM Charge Suspend Feature:

If you used the suspend feature in POSIM Premier and POSIM Charge, at the end of the day run the credit card audit report and activate the suspend feature. This will process the cards that were suspended for the day.

Suspended transactions can be viewed in the Credit Card Audit Report. The Reference Transaction ID number is normally followed by the POS•IM Charge transaction ID. If a transaction has been suspended the word SUSPENDED will appear instead of the reference transaction ID.

1. If there are suspended transactions a warning will appear when processing the ending tills.

2. To process suspended transactions, click on the Reports tab on the Sales menu bar and select
Suspended Credit Card Transactions. From this screen you can select the transactions you wish to process, and then click “Process All”.

3. Once a transaction is processed the Status column will change to “Complete.” If the process
was unsuccessful it will change to “Failed.”

4. When the transaction is successfully processed, POS•IM will automatically update the Credit
Card Audit Report and change the Reference Number from a “Suspended” to the actual reference number.

If you have ANY questions regarding this, please feel free to contact our credit card processing department at (800)553-9314.

Operation Educate - Helpful Reports - Mac

2009-06-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

Reports can help by decreasing expenses and increasing revenue. Let us help you understand a few:

Vendor Selling Report (Inventory >> Reports)

This report shows you what items for a vendor are selling and which ones are not. It is also helpful when negotiating prices with a vendor so you can try to meet your margin goals. This report is most helpful when ran by vendor or department.

This report lists: Item ID, Description, Quantity Sold, Quantity On Hand, Unit Cost, Unit Retail, On Hand Cost, On Hand Retail, Sell Thru Percentage, Margin Percentage, Vendor Item ID, Total Sales, and Total GM $.

Reorder Report (Inventory Reports)

Provides the suggested quantity to reorder based on the On Hand, Reorder Point, and Maximum Stock values that are defined on the Item card. The reorder amount for each item is calculated based on the quantity available and on order compared to the reorder point and maximum stock.

The report lists: Item ID, Description, Quantity On Hand, Quantity On Order, Remaining Backorder Quantities, Reorder Point, Maximum Stock Amount, Reorder Quantity, and Vendor ID.

Just In Time (JIT) Report (Inventory >> Reports)

This report provides inventory information to help you maintain your stock at optimum levels. The report bases its criteria on many factors generated from prior sales periods. You can update your max and reorder stock levels based on info from this report. This procedure is designed for commodity type inventory items, with a consistent sales and reordering pattern.

The report lists: item ID, description, vendor ID, period usage, daily usage, days on hand, lead time, lead units, cycle usage, safety usage, and JIT total max stock.

ROI Report (Return On Investment)(Inventory >> Reports)

This report calculates the annualized return on investment from your inventory. Factors of time, margin and turns are all built in to the calculation of this report. Return on Investment will calculate a percentage that tells you basically the rate a bank would have paid you if the margin earned on your investment was equal to the interest earned on money in the bank.

This report lists: Item ID, Description, Quantity Sold, Margin Value, Average Inventory Quantity, Average Inventory Cost, and Annual ROI. 999.9 will appear if the Return On Investment is unable to calculate, or the result exceeds 999.9. This report is typically run by departments to begin the analysis process.

The formula for calculating the Return On Investment is: Period Margin / Period Days * 365 days / Avg. Inv. $ = ROI.

Merchandise Report (Reports >> Reports)

This report is best used for seasonal or apparel type items. It shows receipts, sales and percentage of item sell through for those items received within the specified period. It is not a total item sell through report as it only computes sell through percentage for items received during that period.

This report lists: Department or Item ID, Received Quantity, Received Dollar Amount, Sold Quantity, Sold Dollar Amount, Sell Thru Percentage, On Hand Quantity, On Hand Dollar Amount, and Description.

Slow Moving Items Report (Inventory >> Reports)

Identifies those items in your inventory that are slow selling (sometimes called turtles, snails, dogs etc). This report allows you to evaluate those items and decide if they should be placed on clearance.

Note: If you specify a very large number for minimum quantity sold you can also utilize this as a Fast Moving Items Report.

This report lists: Item ID, Description, Quantity Sold, On Hand, Cost, Dollars, Retail Value, Sell Thru Percentage, Margin Percentage, and Vendor Item ID.

ASTRA Get Together

2009-06-09T10:19:00.000-07:00

We are excited about the upcoming ASTRA Show and hope to see you there!

You'll find us in booth 229.

For our existing POSIM Users:

We would like to invite you to a POSIM users get together Sunday, June 14th from 3:00 PM- 4:00 PM in the Astra Lounge.

This would be a great time to bring any questions or suggestions. We also will be going over a few new and exciting things that will be coming to POSIM. So please join us for a treat and get to know your fellow POSIM users.

Hope to see you there!

Please RSVP to polls @ posim.com, so we can have a general idea on a head count.

New Webinars

2009-05-18T08:37:00.001-07:00

Make sure you take a look at the upcoming webinar schedule.
We will be having an eCommerce webinar in June. This is open to all users and non-users. You will be able to see how ePOSIM eCommerce integrates with POSIM point of sale and get an idea what it would take to get an e-store up and running.

We also have another demo webinar in June. The demo is for non-users who want to see how POSIM Point of Sale for both Mac or Windows works. We will show the basic features and functionality.

All webinars are limited to a certain number of viewers. Register today to save yourself a seat!

Operation Educate: Supervisor Tools (Mac version)

2009-05-11T13:34:00.000-07:00

POSIM Diamond saves all of your daily activities to a single database on a server computer. After a few years of running your successful business this database will eventually become very large with a lot of history. It will cause your program and computer to run slower. For this reason, and many others (ease of reporting and faster access to historical data) there are advantages to keeping your Point of Sale database well managed.

Supervisor Tools:

Supervisor Tools is the back end program that has all the tools for database management. Supervisor Tools can be found in the POSIM Diamond folder on your hard drive.

Show File Sizes:

This window shows the number of records each table in your database contains. This is useful when deciding whether or not to purge or consolidate history or other data in your database.

Rebuild Database:

If you have been instructed by Technical Support to rebuild your database, you will be brought to this screen to complete the task. This is similar to doing a defragment on a hard drive.

Click on Rebuild All and it will ask you where to save the new database. Once it is complete you will need to copy and replace the new rebuilt database into the data folder in the POSIM Diamond folder.

This should only need to be done once a year. Every time we release a new version of POSIM we require a rebuild of the database. So if you are on the latest version of POSIM then you will not need to do this manually.

Consolidate History:

If your database has become very large and slow over the years, consolidating history is the first option to reducing the size and increasing speed. Consolidating history means taking all the lines from the invoices in a month and moving them to a single invoice with all the inventory and sales information on it. You will still be able to run reports for these periods of time - just not on a daily basis.

Purge History:

If you have data in your database from 4 or more years ago, you may consider removing it if it is no longer relevant. This will increase the speed of everything from reports to daily operation in POSIM. The Purge window will allow you to remove history such as Invoices, Purchase Orders, Receiving Logs, etc.

Erase Files:

The Erase Files option will delete an entire file in your database. To clear out all vendor or customers and start from scratch, select each one invidually and click "Erase."

It's important to understand that there is not an undo button here. If you accidentally erase something there is no way to recover that information unless you have a backup of your database.

Diamond 4.6 and Premier 8.3 Releases

2009-04-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

POSIM Diamond 4.6 and POSIM Premier 8.3 have been released!

Both versions have changes to assist users in their efforts to become PCI compliant. In order to do this, all credit card data has been removed from the Diamond and Premier database.

PCI DSS regulations are currently being imposed on anyone obtaining a merchant account. The regulations will be imposed on existing merchant accounts at some point in the future. You can find out more here.

If you want to store credit card data it can be done securely in POSIM Charge (replaces NowCharge), which has been certified as PABP compliant. Diamond 4.6 and Premier 8.3 will only work with POSIM Charge, so if you are updating you must also update from NowCharge to POSIM Charge.

Diamond 4.6 and Premier 8.3 are available to support contract holders. If you are interested in upgrading please contact your local sales rep or Ensign.

ASTRA Toy Fair

2009-04-14T15:21:00.000-07:00

We will also be attending the ASTRA Marketplace in June! Please stop by the booth and visit if you will be there.

2009 ASTRA Marketplace
Minneapolis, MN
June 14-17, 2009
Booth #TBD

POS•IM is a great solution for any type of retail store, but some of our specialty toy stores really like:

* Customer Tracking - also create mailing lists and labels
* Reward Program - track reward points (no more punch cards!)
* Gift Cards - tracked in your store, no third party fees
* eCommerce - upload inventory, download orders
* Multiple ID Tracking - track as many barcodes, ISBN #, etc as you want for one item.

Hope to see you there!

International Spring Quilt Market

2009-04-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

We will be attending the International Spring Quilt Market in May! Please stop by and visit if you are attending the show.

International Spring Quilt Market
Pittsburgh, PA
May 15-17, 2009
Booth #842

POS•IM is a great solution for any type of retail store, but we have some features that work particularly well in the Quilt/Fabric Market:

* Reward Program - track reward points (no more punch cards!)
* Kit Builder - useful for making fat quarters
* Event Manager - manage classes and attendees
* Gift Cards - tracked in your store, no third party fees
* eCommerce - upload inventory, download orders
* Cutting Table Solution - durable and user friendly

The booth at the Quilt Show is sponsored by Micro Solve Inc., the National Quilt and Fabric POS•IM Representative.

Help us pick a name...

2009-03-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

As previously mentioned we are currently working a new software product. It is a cross platform product that will allow you to mix both Mac and Windows workstations.

We are excited about it!!!

So excited that we have been trying to come up with a name for it. We have a few options we would like your feedback on, but we would also love to hear your suggestions.

Keep in mind... it must begin with POSIM. Just like our current products (POSIM Diamond, POSIM Premier, POSIM Charge, etc.)

The names at the top of our list are:

POSIM Core
POSIM Juniper
POSIM Sumo
POSIM Modo
POSIM KaChing

Take a minute... think them over. Which one stands out the most for you? Or do you have a better suggestion? Let us know in the comments.

(Oh yeah... want more info about the new product? We haven't released much yet, but you can find it here.)

Super Andrew Saves the Day

2009-03-05T10:13:00.000-08:00

The good thing about technology is that it is constantly evolving. Getting bigger and better. The bad thing about technology is that you must evolve with it or be left behind.

We love having the option for faster computers. When 64 Bit computers started becoming the standard we felt the excitement... until we realized our current windows installer didn't support 64 Bit.

Time to evolve.

Luckily we have Andrew.

Andrew was able to quickly create a new installer for Premier that not only works for 64 Bit, but is cleaner and easier. Hooray for Andrew. Hooray for technology.

It's not a fashion show...

2009-02-26T07:50:00.000-08:00

Many of you may not be aware of this, but we are currently developing a new software product. The new version has no scheduled release date yet... and we are also not releasing ANY info other than what is listed on next.posim.com. It will introduce a new look and feel inspired by leading GUI designers and actual users.

The current releases have been evolving over the last 20+ years. Our focus for those products have been to develop a rock solid, feature rich, intuitive product. This new release also has that same focus, but we are preparing to add even more features along with the new great look and feel.

Is it more important to have flashy software, or something that's intuitive and easy to use? A good question... we believe in solid and intuitive. Just because something looks good... it may not work well.

Other software packages may be more flashy than our current products, but they don't compare to POSIM's intuitiveness. We urge anyone who is comparing POSIM with another solution to download both demos and try to post a sale. POSIM was specifically designed to be easy... and yet still rock solid. We believe the new product will also offer the best of both worlds. Beauty and brawn.

Summed up by a POSIM user... "it's not a fashion show... it's what you use to run and grow your business." Choose wisely.

Best "schwag" at MacWorld

2009-02-18T09:18:00.000-08:00

POS•IM's handout at MacWorld 2009 was voted third best by Content NOW! You can see the article here.

Thanks for the consideration... although we thought the jelly bean rocks were pretty yummy (as long as you didn't eat too many of the fruity flavor ones).