Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Operation Educate - Helpful Reports - Mac

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.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

ASTRA Get Together

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.

Monday, May 18, 2009

New Webinars

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!

Monday, May 11, 2009

Operation Educate: Supervisor Tools (Mac version)

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.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Diamond 4.6 and Premier 8.3 Releases

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.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

ASTRA Toy Fair

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!

Thursday, April 9, 2009

International Spring Quilt Market

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.