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New Version 4.0 now available! *Full screen
shots are viewed best at 800 by 600 resolution. The General Store 32 Bit point of sale software for Windows(95/98/NT 4.0+, and 2000) is an entirely new system with an enormous number of new features, yet it is extremely easy to use. This document contains feature descriptions and screen shots from most of the new system's modules including: | |
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Inventory Control | |
| As you will
see, all back-office functions in the new General Store will make
use of a standard navigation bar. This leads to simple, quick, and
consistent navigation under all back-office functions. Although the
new General Store will contain an abundance of reports (on-screen,
printed, or both), all data in the system is ODBC compliant, making
it a snap to port General Store data to popular off-the shelf spread
sheet, office suite, and report writing software. The sky is the
limit in terms of custom reports and graphical analysis, and you
will no longer need to rely on expensive, proprietary, and often
difficult report writing software.
Below is a screen shot of the inventory maintenance screen. The inventory maintenance screen consists of the item description tab, shown below, and the store detail tab. | |
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| The item
description tab allows you to enter the item number, now up to 20
digits, alpha or numeric, the item description, and the type of
item. The General Store for Windows can support matrix items,
serialized items, bill of materials, or kit items, tag-a-long items
and manufacturer's coupon type items.
You can also notice that we have added sub-category to the traditional department and category. Pull down lists are provided for each, allowing for easy entry when creating new items. When creating matrix items, you can select from an available style sheet or you can create one unique to the item you are creating. | |
| Item Detail - Page 1 Once you click on the store detail tab at the bottom of the inventory maintenance screen, you are provided with a wealth of information on the item, beginning with the item detail tab. Item cost and retail, tax status, and discount status are just a few of the properties that you can set from this screen. We have also included 2 alternate look-up numbers. This way, you can have an item number, a bar-code number, and a third number if you desire. However, we still recommend using the bar code number as the item number in most cases other than matrix items(discussed later). Notice the "delete when out" check box? This feature was put in for clothing stores that carry merchandise that only sells through once. In other words, they order one time and that's it. When the item sells out, they will never re-order it. When this field is checked, the system will automatically place the item in a deleted items bucket, so that it will never accidentally be re-ordered. This also cuts down on the size of stock status reports, because you are only looking at the items you have on hand as well as those that you plan to re-order. | |
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| Min/ max control has been greatly enhanced with an improved Ordering Control section. You can now set min/max levels by month. This is especially handy when dealing with seasonal items. You can also click on "Sales/Purchase Review" and get a history of the item's movement by month for the current year, previous year, average over the last 2 years, or average over the last 5 years. A sample of this history is shown below. | |
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| Inventory Maintenance - Detail Tab
2 Detail page 2 contains information pertaining to quantities, action dates, and commission data. You will notice that the new system now keeps track of committed inventory that results from special orders. In addition, inventory on layaway is also maintained in addition to quantity on hand. The new General Store also maintains action data on last sale, last return, last maintained, and last added. This information ties directly into audit data that the system maintains so that you can always go back and look at the history of an item, seeing everything that was done to an item, when it was done, and who did it. | |
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| If the item is
also sold in cases, you can link the item to the case item number
with the case break number, and you can even attach a picture of the
item in the product image field.
We have also added a substitution number field, so in case you run out of the item, the system will automatically suggest the sale of the substitution item number. | |
| Vendor Data The major addition to the vendor data section involves last order and last received quantities and dollar amounts, as well as year to date information. In addition to the sales/purchase history section discussed earlier, this data will help you determine turn rates for specific vendors. This data will greatly help both you and your vendors in determining proper stock levels in your store. | |
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| Inventory Maintenance
- Vendor Data Click On The Screen For A Full Screen View Then Click Back On Your Browser To Return To This Page | |
| Adding vendors to an item is a snap. Simply click on the "Find" button on the navigation bar to access the Vendor lookup screen listed below. | |
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| Notes A new feature that has been added to The General Store' inventory maintenance function is notes. You can have an unlimited number of notes on an item. This feature is especially great for antique stores(history of item), art galleries(artist, completion date, series), book stores(author, publisher, etc), and music stores(artist, record label). Any store that takes trade ins can also make good use from this feature. | |
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| POS Sales Links - Sales Tippers For
Salespeople/Clerks This is an exciting new feature that will be a big hit with computer, stereo and appliance, clothing stores, and any other store that sells medium to high ticket items. Basically you can set up suggested add on items for any item in you inventory file. This list of suggested add on items will display at point of sale whenever the base item is sold. This gives the cashier/ salesperson the opportunity to make add on sales. For example, in the screen shot below, our base item is The General Store software package. Our suggested add on items include point of sale peripheral devices and support contracts. | |
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| You will also notice that you can put a clerk message on this screen that will displayed at point of sale. You can enter a new message, or you can select an existing message from the dialogs pull down list. | |
| Customer Instructions BIG! BIG! BIG! This is one the best features we have added to the inventory system. In looking at the screen shot below, you can see that you can enter basic information, return policy information and warranty information for any item in the inventory file. You can also select from pre-existing dialogs for quick entry when creating new items. You can set printing options for point of sale as well. | |
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| For example, if you run a pet store, can can set up care instructions for different types of pets. A jewelry store could set up cleaning instructions for different types of jewelry. Warranty and return policy information can be set up in the same manner. | |
| Serialized Items Serial number tracking has been enhanced in the system to included notes on every serial number, the customer's in-house account number, and the vendor number of the vendor which the serialized item was purchased. This feature is important for warranty issues, especially when you may by the same item from multiple vendors. | |
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| Serial number lookup has been enhanced as well. Simply click on the "Find" button on the navigation bar to bring the serial number lookup screen. Shown below, this screen allows you to look up all serial numbers, or only sold or un-sold all serial numbers. | |
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| Matrix Items - Apparel If you sell clothing, then you will want to make use of the matrix. In our example, we have style R1234, cordovan wing tips. Our item number is R1234, and under that item we have attached all the sizes and widths through the matrix function. Each size has its own alt. lookup numbers. In our example the first lookup number is the individual sizes bar code number and the second is the manufacturer's order number for the size. You can also see that the navigation bar changes to allow you to move between sizes and widths quickly and easily through the use of drop down boxes for each. Here, we are looking at size 9 C. | |
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You will also be able to apply different costs and retail prices to individual sizes in a much simpler manner as shown in the screen below.
The same holds true for min/max
quantities for each month. | |
| Inventory Lookups Inventory lookups are a snap in the system. Simply click on the "Find" button on the navigation bar to access the "Find it" pop-up screen. Here, you can look up items by item number, description, department and category, and by vendor. | |
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Purchase Orders The purchase order screen function has been enhanced for easier use with the complete navigation bar at the top of the purchase order screen. Much like the DOS version, the new General Store will suggest order quantities based on current on-hand, on-order, order point, and order-up-to quantities. A sample purchase order screen is shown below.
As in the DOS version, the new General Store will contain an instructions tab. Here, you can enter any special shipping instructions, reference numbers, or other miscellaneous information pertinent to the purchase order. You can also select from a list of predefined shippers and you can enter the receipient's phone number. An example is listed below.
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Inventory Control / Customers / Accounts Payable / General Ledger / POS / Employees / Store Controls / Station Controls | |
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Customers | |
| Customer Maintenance has been enhanced to include more information such as e-mail, notes and security photos. In the customer data screen below, you can also see that for commercial customers, you can maintain their tax exempt i.d, as well as last maintained, last sale, and last layaway dates. | |
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| Sales Options The sales option tab is where you set up discounts, salesperson tags, and tax exempt status. Discounts can be by percentage, price level, preset discount tables, and customer discount tables. Discount tables come in handy especially when dealing with commercial customers. For example, if you run a hardware store, you may want to give plumbers a 10% discount on everything in the plumbing department and only 5% on everything else in the store. An electrician may get 10% off on everything in the electrical department and 5% on everything else. If you give your employees a discount, you may want to make sure that they even get that discount off of sale priced merchandise. The new General Store system will let you do this. | |
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| Mail order businesses can even keep 2 credit card numbers with expiration dates on file if the customer o.k.'s it. A 30 character pos clerk message can be entered here for display at point of sale, and you can flag the customer as a no check customer if need be. | |
| Accounts Receivable In addition to giving you a quick snap shot of the customer's balance information, the accounts receivable tab allows you to freeze charge privileges and set the customer as late charge exempt if need be. | |
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| Ship To: Bill to ship to has been added to the system, and you can even set up a default shipping method and special shipping instructions in the comment section. | |
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| Notes The customer section now boasts an unlimited number of notes per customer! | |
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| Transactions Accounts receivable transaction information is now broken down by sales and returns, payments, and adjustments. And, this data is maintained indefinitely, or until you decide to delete it. | |
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| Recurring Charges For those businesses that have recurring charges(marinas with slip rentals for example), The General Store offers a recurring charge facility. | |
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| Security Photos The security photos section allows you to identify those employees of your a/r customers who have and do not have charge privileges. You can have up to 99 photos per customer, each with its own comment section. | |
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Inventory Control / Customers / Accounts Payable / General Ledger / POS / Employees / Store Controls / Station Controls | |
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Accounts Payable | |
| Vendor maintenance and payable transaction entry have been consolidated into one function in the new General Store. Shown below is the vendor data screen. In anticipation of future edi and intranet/xtranet functionality, we have added e-mail and ftp address fields. | |
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| Invoices Creating new invoices and editing existing invoices is a snap in the new General Store for Windows. Notice the invoice table on the left side of the screen below. It contains all invoices for this vendor, and these invoices will stay on file indefinitely, or until you decide to delete them. Under the DOS version, running the vendor history report would delete any paid invoice that were a year old or older. This is no longer the case in the Windows version. | |
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| Notes You can now enter an unlimited number of notes for each vendor, and each one is time and date stamped. | |
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Inventory Control / Customers / Accounts Payable / General Ledger / POS / Employees / Store Controls / Station Controls | |
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General Ledger | |
| General Ledger
Maintenance The general ledger maintenance function has been improved with the use of navigation bars at the top of the screen. You no longer need to print out a chart of accounts when editing existing accounts.Simply click the appropriate navigation button of the "Find" button to locate an account. | |
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| Journal Entry File
Maintenance Journal entry maintenance has been enhanced to allow viewing of all historical journal entries by date, store, and voucher. Simply click on the journal entry set you wish to work with and its detail is displayed on the right hand side of the screen. Add and delete vouchers by simply clicking on the "Add' or "Delete" buttons on the navigation bar. | |
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Point Of Sale | |
| The Point Of Sale function has been greatly simplified
and provides for selection of payment at the end of the sale. The
first screen below allows you to select the type of sale.
The second and third screens below allow you to select salesperson and customer i.d..
Press F10 to finish, and the tender screen below appears, allowing an unlimited number of payment methods.
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Inventory Control / Customers / Accounts Payable / General Ledger / POS / Employees / Store Controls / Station Controls | |
Employees
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Inventory Control / Customers / Accounts Payable / General Ledger / POS / Employees / Store Controls / Station Controls | |
Store ControlsBasic Information The Control Maintenance section(formally called Store Station Maintenance) has been greatly enhanced and simplified. The basic information tab below now includes access type, station based or user based, and you can set the beginning purchase order number to match your preprinted forms.
POS Controls The POS controls tab below allows you to set point of sale options for all the pc's in your network. You can also set your return, warranty, inhouse charge, and credit card policies from this tab as well. These policies will print on the bottom of the receipt that is printed at point of sale.
Store Closing Reports The store closing reports tab allows you to select the reports that you wish to print at the end of the day.
MultiStore Controls The MultiStore Controls tab is used to enter download settings for chain store environments. The General Store for Windows has been enhanced to include Email and FTP as methods of downloading.
Ledger Post/Paid Out Accounts The Ledger Post/ Paid Out Accounts tab allows you to set up the default ledger posting accounts and paid out accounts that the system will post to in the general ledger. This screen has been enhanced to include a look up tree in the lower right hand corner of the screen for selecting account numbers.
Tax Tables The tax table tab allows you to set up to 4 tax levels, and shows you your taxable sales, non-taxable sales and total taxes collected for each month in the current fiscal year.
Passwords The Passwords Tab allows you to set passwords for each of the major functions in the system.
Inventory Control / Customers / Accounts Payable / General Ledger / POS / Employees / Store Controls / Station Controls | |
Station ControlsDevices The Devices tab allows you to set up the point of sale and other peripheral devices that you have attached to each computer in your network.
Function Access The Function Access tab allows you to set security levels for each station. Under function access based security, you set permissions to each of the functions in the General Store at the station level. User based security can also be used, where you set permissions to each of the functions in the General Store at the user level.
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Inventory Control / Customers / Accounts Payable / General Ledger / POS / Employees / Store Controls / Station Controls | |
| Reports Print Preview! Most of the reports in The General Store for Windows will feature print preview, with the option to print the reports to the printer if desired. Accounts Payable Reports
Accounts Receivable The Customer List and Labels selection screen
has been dramatically simplified and enhanced. All selections are
done from one screen! You can now search for customers based on a
particular item purchased, date last purchased, or year to date
sales range. Sort codes and zip codes are automatically displayed
for selection.
Inventory Control
Inventory Adjustments
Report Daily Closing
Reports General Ledger and Financial
Reports
Employee
Reports | |
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Call B & C Data Systems at (541) 601-8282 for more info. | |
