Regular Ticket Entry

The heart of Point of Sale is Ticket Entry. Because the screen is designed to look like a sales ticket, training your clerks is quick and easy.

You can associate image, audio, or video files with each item and/or customer that can automatically display each time the item is sold or returned or the customer is referenced.

Touchscreen Ticket Entry

CounterPoint also provides a simplified Ticket Entry user interface based on large buttons suitable for touchscreen, mouse, keyboard, and scanner input. A touchscreen monitor is not required.

Touchscreen Ticket Entry is user-configurable, so you control the screen layout, button behavior, button colors, button text, and even the graphics that appear on each button. You can set up one touchscreen layout to be shared by all stations, or create unique layouts for particular stations.

You can associate image, audio, or video files with each item and/or customer that can automatically display each time the item is sold or returned or the customer is referenced.

To further customize Touchscreen Ticket Entry, you can create buttons that run custom actions or RunPage actions. Custom action buttons can display forms, run scripts, or print reports. RunPage is a powerful and easy method to perform multiple actions from a single button. For example, you could simplify the steps a clerk must perform when entering a Point of Sale order by defining a button called New Customer Order. When New Customer Order is pressed, the following actions would be automatically executed: Start Order, Enter Customer, Enter Sales Rep, Enter PO Number, Enter Shipping Information, and Enter Ship Via.

Customers

Customers can be selected by entering the customer's number, scanning a customer ID card, or by searching for keywords that match any portion of the customer's name, company name, telephone number, ZIP code, or any other field designated as a keyword search field.

A sale to a walk-in customer (any customer for whom you don't retain individual customer information) can be initiated with a single keystroke. New customers can be added on-the-fly in Ticket Entry.

For a charge sale, CounterPoint checks the customer's credit limit, and only an authorized user may override credit limits.

Zoom in on the customer's account to see balance owed, credit limit, last payment date, up-to-date account aging, images, and even detailed sales history and open customer orders.

Access unlimited pages of notes for each customer—customer notes allow you to store additional information. You can automatically display specific notes specific to a particular customer: Your special order is scheduled to ship next week.

Notes can be automatically displayed based on the individual customer, or on the customer category.

Pricing

Merchandise is priced accurately and automatically, based on list price, quantity breaks, customer discounts, or a markup on cost.
Promotional prices can be date- and time-activated for limited-time sales.

Contract pricing gives special prices to certain customers for groups of items during a specific time period.

Promotional and contract price rules can specify prices based on a discount amount/percent, a markup amount/percent, a fixed price, or by choosing a price level. Prices may be based on relevant item, customer, or ticket information, such as the customer category, the item's vendor, or even the time of day.

Items can be priced and sold by using the stocking unit or up to five alternate selling units. For example, you may stock golf balls by the EACH, and sell them at one price by the BOX and at another price by the SLEEVE.

Grids and Apparel

Full support is provided for soft goods and one-, two-, or three-dimensional grids for color/size (or length/width/height, etc.).

Payment Types

An unlimited number of payment types (e.g., cash, check, A/R charge, or credit card) may be defined. Each payment type may be defined to open the cash drawer, allow change to be given, and to require validation (such as a credit card or driver's license number). An unlimited number of payment types can be accepted on a ticket, including multiples of a single payment type (such as two Visa cards).

You can also specify restrictions on each payment type. For example, you can require a $10 minimum on all Visa cards, or set a $5 maximum

cash back amount for gift certificates.

End-of-day reports provide reconciliation information for each type of payment. Historical data is retained and reported for each payment type.

Store Credits, Gift Certificates, and Shopping Cards

Store credits and gift certificates can be issued, printed, partially redeemed, reissued, and voided. Rechargeable gift cards and shopping cards with magnetic stripes are also supported. Certificates and cards may be redeemed at any store or restricted to the issuing store.

Commissions

Optionally calculate sales commissions for each item on the sales ticket based on either sale amount or gross profit. Commissions are tracked by ticket and are reported in detail or in summary on the Commissions Due report.

Orders

A complete ticket can be placed on order for later delivery. You can optionally accept deposits or print a customer receipt, picking ticket, etc.
Both sold and ordered lines may be entered together. When the sale portion of the ticket is completed, an order is created for the pending order lines.

Full support is provided for orders, backorders, and special orders.

Orders can be retrieved by order number or by searching for keywords

that match any portion of the customer's name, order number, customer's PO number, or a portion of any other field designated as a keyword search field. Once an order is retrieved, you can process the order, accept deposits, print copies, change the lines on the order, or cancel the entire order (with or without a refund).

Entire orders can be released, or just selected line items can be released. An individual line may be split to allow a partial release. New orders can be automatically released so you can take a single payment for the total balance of the order and immediately process the order as a sales ticket. After releasing an order, you can optionally retain a copy of the original order for customers who use standing orders.

Open orders reports can be organized by order number, customer, inventory items, ship dates, and full order details.

Drawer Readings
An instantaneous summary of store-level or drawer-level activity is available. Drawer readings display the day's sales activity and show the exact amounts of cash, checks, and other tender expected to be found in each cash drawer.

End-of-Day Processing

The end-of-day process (counting and reconciling drawers, posting tickets, settling credit card transactions, etc.) can be run for any station while other clerks continue to ring up customers. End-of-day processing updates inventory, customer history, and financial records.

End-of-day reports may be run automatically during the end-of-day process or at any time in the future.

Retail Kits

You can use Touchscreen Ticket Entry's RunPage capabilities to press a single button to process a retail kit. Retail kits are useful when the sale of an item causes multiple component parts to be deducted from inventory. A kit is made from a set of components (which may be substituted at the time of sale).
The sample kit below illustrates some of these features:

Deluxe Stereo Package
Acme stereo 1 Each
Grade B speakers 2 Each
Installation 3 Hours
Extended warranty 3 Years
Speaker wire 20 Feet
Warning: Loud music causes hearing loss

In our sample kit, the clerk is required to enter a serial number for the stereo. The shopper may choose from three speaker grades: A, B, or C.

The stereo package also includes 20 feet of speaker wire, a 3-year extended warranty, and three hours for the installation. All quantities can be altered, and the price is adjusted accordingly. When sold, the speaker wire is deducted from inventory, but not printed on the receipt (using conditional printing). Other components, including the environmental impact warning, are printed on the customer's receipt.

Credit Card Processing
Credit card processing under the Synchronics Merchant Program (SMP) is included in the CounterPoint Base System and is more fully described under Credit Cards (SMP). SMP processors will transfer settled charges to your local bank. Other compatible processors are described in Credit Cards (non-SMP)).

Full support is provided for multiple industry classifications, including Retail, Mail-order/Telephone-order (MOTO), and Ecommerce.

Credit card processing allows you to swipe a credit card through a magnetic stripe reader, automatically authorize a credit card sale from the Ticket Entry screen, verify an address, electronically capture the customer's signature, and settle funds to your bank.

You may also retain a credit card number for a customer to be charged at the appropriate time. For receipts and invoices, you may print just the last four digits of the card number.

Multiple stations share a telephone line and process multiple credit card transactions more quickly by maintaining an active phone connection to the processor.

An optional CPGateway service is available for fast (2-second) Internet credit card authorizations.

Benefits
Point of Sale provides valuable benefits to any business that desires to:

• Simplify and accelerate checkout
• Reduce costly checkout errors and shrinkage
• Provide clerks with up-to-date inventory and customer information
• Keep up-to-the-minute inventory quantities
• Keep track of what's selling and what's not
• Update customer balances automatically
• Improve audit controls and accounting efficiency
• Improve timeliness and accuracy of sales analysis reports
• Electronically authorize credit cards, debit cards, and checks
• Automatically calculate commissions due
• Operate profitably and securely