[WheresTheDog]

I would like to enter in 20 for $20.00 instead of $0.20. It's faster and easier to enter in 20, 25, 155, 36.50, etc for the change a customer give for a sale than it is to always have to enter, 20.00, 25.00, 155.00, 36.50

Using those examples, it takes 12 keystrokes in the first example and 17 keystrokes using the current behavior in RetailEdge.

[RetailEdge Moderator]

This is an interesting suggestion.

What criteria would you like to use to allow the user to know that you want to do $20 vs. someone who is selling something with $0.20. So the person selling items with non exact dollar amounts and accepting less than a dollar are penalized and would actually have to press more keys.

I assume that you would have something like 20 enter or 20. to tell the program that it is done accepting data? I think the original intent was that if you are entering 20. vs. 2000 (for 20.00) it is just as fast to do press the two 0s as it would be to reposition your finger and press the "." Also if you are accepting 35.50, then pressing 3650 is quicker than 36.50. In addition many businesses are accepting credit cards. In this case the credit card uses exact change. The exact change key is the "+". Pressing the plus (+) key will put the correct amount in an complete the sale.

But this is not the first time we have heard this concern. If you can clarify it for us this would help.

I would like to enter in 20 for $20.00 instead of $0.20. It's faster and easier to enter in 20, 25, 155, 36.50, etc for the change a customer give for a sale than it is to always have to enter, 20.00, 25.00, 155.00, 36.50

Using those examples, it takes 12 keystrokes in the first example and 17 keystrokes using the current behavior in RetailEdge.

[WheresTheDog]

The criteria I would use for $20 vs $0.20 would be this:

20 = $20

.20 = $0.20

2000 = $2000

20.20 = $20.20

It never assumes cents until you press the decimal point.

The only people who are penalized are those who are accepting anything that is not a full dollar amount (or checks). I've found people rarely give exact change or even for the $0.20 or $0.63 purchases they will still give you $1.00. So entering 1 and Enter (or F9 in RetailEdge's case, which is bringing up another feature request I'm working on) is much faster than hitting 100 and F9.

I haven't done any sort of official study, but I got an immediate impression of having to hit 2 extra keystrokes on almost every transaction.

This is one area of QBPOS I like over RetailEdge. Performing the actual sale.

In QBPOS, here is the process for doing a sale.

Scan UPC, tab, tab, enter customer name (though RetailEdge excels here, as QBPOS you can only choose to enter First or Last name and their screen makes it hard to dig through the 100 Jones or 200 Smiths).

F12 to popup the transaction screen. The amount of the sale is already pre-filled in at cash (this is configurable to have different payment methods in a different order). If someone by chance happens to give you exact change you just hit Enter to accept the cash and press F12 to print the receipt. If someone gives you $20 for a $15.76 purchase, you just enter 20 and enter to accept and press F12 to print receipt. The cash draw then pops and a dialog then pops up displaying the change amount if any, done.

If someone gives you a credit/debit card, you just down arrow to that, again the amount is already filled in. You hit enter to accept amount, a dialog pops up, swipe the card, F12 to print receipt, done.

I'll grab a screenshot of the payment screen in QBPOS and post more explanation if needed, but their payment screen is pretty slick.

[RetailEdge Moderator]

Good suggestions and these provide some insight into pain points that I am sure many of our customers have when ringing in a sale. We are considering creating some training videos just about how to speed up the sales process because we feel that our sales process is pretty fast once you know how to do it.

A few clarifications about the sales process that might help.

1. I rarely ring in a sale using the F9 function key (yes we use our own program to process sales). We usually tell most people using RetailEdge to become familiar with the numeric keypad on their keyboard. Sounds like you are doing this, but this is something most people don't know about. The see the F9 key or the button on the sales screen and end up doing some mix and match at best (enter number on keyboard even sometimes using the numbers at the top of the keyboard instead of the numerica keypad and then clicking the button). If you ring in a sale using just the numberic keypad, you can type in just the amount, then enter (to let RetailEdge know that you have entered all of the amounts and is useful when doing split media) and then enter again to post.

2. You can reorder the payment methods. So if you are a business that mostly takes cash, move this to the top. If you take VISA or MC most of the time then move this to the top. This will save you from having to move the cursor to the correct payment method all the time.

3. You can set the sales screen up so that it starts on the Items or Customer Tabs. So if you are a business that typically just scans items and rarely enters customer information with a sale have RetailEdge start on the Items tab. If you want to prompt your clerks to add customers to the sale (very important in most of todays businesses), then have RetailEdge start on the Customer Tab.

4. You should become familiar with the Page Up and Page Down functions to move between tabs and the up and down arrows to move between grid rows. These keys are typically located between the QWERTY keyboard and the numeric keyboard. Very easy to use these keys if you are already entering information using the numeric keyboard.

5. Turn off the Receipt Options screen. RetailEdge will automatically print the receipts with no prompting and will default to whatever count you want (when using a tape style receipt printer). So when you post a sale, RetailEdge prints the receipt, tells you the change due. Pressing any other key gets the next sale ready.

6. Probably the most abused keystroke that people fail to use is using the plus key (+). Most people who are using RetailEdge are processing using credit cards. So hitting the plus key enters the exact amount of the sale and prints the receipt and displays the change due. One keystroke does it all.

That being said, there are always ways to speed things up, and I will add the suggestions to the list. It sounds like businesses that are mostly accepting cash could benefit from some of these.

One question, if QBPOS is prefilling the amount in some payment method, what do you do if you want some other payment method or split media? I would think that an autofill would be prone to making mistakes or make it harder if the amount was not correct (backspace, cursor down, enter amount?)

The criteria I would use for $20 vs $0.20 would be this:

20 = $20

.20 = $0.20

2000 = $2000

20.20 = $20.20

It never assumes cents until you press the decimal point.

The only people who are penalized are those who are accepting anything that is not a full dollar amount (or checks). I've found people rarely give exact change or even for the $0.20 or $0.63 purchases they will still give you $1.00. So entering 1 and Enter (or F9 in RetailEdge's case, which is bringing up another feature request I'm working on) is much faster than hitting 100 and F9.

I haven't done any sort of official study, but I got an immediate impression of having to hit 2 extra keystrokes on almost every transaction.

This is one area of QBPOS I like over RetailEdge. Performing the actual sale.

In QBPOS, here is the process for doing a sale.

Scan UPC, tab, tab, enter customer name (though RetailEdge excels here, as QBPOS you can only choose to enter First or Last name and their screen makes it hard to dig through the 100 Jones or 200 Smiths).

F12 to popup the transaction screen. The amount of the sale is already pre-filled in at cash (this is configurable to have different payment methods in a different order). If someone by chance happens to give you exact change you just hit Enter to accept the cash and press F12 to print the receipt. If someone gives you $20 for a $15.76 purchase, you just enter 20 and enter to accept and press F12 to print receipt. The cash draw then pops and a dialog then pops up displaying the change amount if any, done.

If someone gives you a credit/debit card, you just down arrow to that, again the amount is already filled in. You hit enter to accept amount, a dialog pops up, swipe the card, F12 to print receipt, done.

I'll grab a screenshot of the payment screen in QBPOS and post more explanation if needed, but their payment screen is pretty slick.

[Little Mountain]

If one is good on the number pad I can't imagine how it would be worth the update to simply save 5 steps?

[fwhorch]

We'd be happy with requiring a decimal point for entering cents.

But, we would want to know in advance that this feature was coming so we could retrain all our sales clerks before installing the update.

In our experience, the + key short cut works well for us.

Just our $.02!
Fred

[hdavisson]

Any way we can override the decimal point (floating) change? we don't use VAT and it is a huge issue for us... we are ringing up sales in the thousands instead of the tens... it's a BIG problem. any way we can get it back to the way it was, like i said, we aren't using VAT.