Point of Sale provides fully integrated cash register functions on a computer workstation. It also gives you a full complement of management controls and reports to help you operate your business profitably and securely. Point of Sale works well in a variety of retail, wholesale, and mail-order environments.

You can mix sales, returns, orders, special orders, backorders, and layaways on the same ticket. Associate image, audio, or video files with each item and/or customer, and CounterPoint can automatically display the image.

You can choose from either Regular Ticket Entry or Touchscreen Ticket Entry.

Regular Ticket

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.

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Touchscreen Ticket

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.

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.

You can also display "custom" action to display forms, run scripts, or print reports.

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  Passwords

Optionally password-protect ticket entry to ensure that access CounterPoint is restricted to authorized users. Through passwords, you may authorize a user for specific functions such as price overrides or the ability to void a ticket. You may also restrict a user to a specific store or location.

An authorized user can override another user's security settings and allow that user to void a ticket, change the tax on a ticket, reprint a ticket, etc.

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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, on any other field designated as a keyword search field New customers can be added on-the-fly..

For an A/R 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, detailed sales history, open orders, and more.

Enter 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.

Items can be identified by typing the item number, scanning a barcode, or by searching for keywords that match any portion of the item number, description, vendor number, vendor item number, category, subcategory, or any other field designated as a keyword search field.

Item Zooms display quantities for each location, recent sales, open purchase orders, monthly sales history, substitute items, images, and more.

Enter unlimited pages of notes for each item—item notes allow clerks to more fully inform customers about your products. Automatically display item notes to encourage the clerk to power-sell related items: "Would you like some tennis balls with that racquet?"

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

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Merchandise is priced accurately and automatically, based on list price, quantity breaks, customer discounts, a markup on cost, or a desired margin.

CounterPoint supports Promotional, Contract, and Special prices.

• Promotional prices can be date- and time-activated for limited-time sales.

• Contract prices are valid for certain customers for a group of items during a specific time period.

• Special prices indicate general pricing policies or for particular groups of customers and typically don’t have starting or ending dates.

Promotional, Contract, and Special prices can be based on a discount, markup, fixed price, or desired profit margin. Alternatively, you can simply pick the price. Prices can be based on relevant item, customer, or ticket information (e.g., the item's vendor, the customer category, or 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.

A ticket can be placed on indefinite hold, and then later recalled for editing or completion by document number, customer name, or other fields.

Customer quotes can be printed and retained indefinitely, and can be reviewed, edited, and copied prior to completing the sale. Holds and quotes do not commit inventory.

In ticket entry, you can mix sales, returns, orders, backorders, special orders, and layaways on the same ticket.

An order can be quoted, held, and recalled—just like a sales ticket. Plus, you can edit the order, accept a deposit, release the entire order or just specific lines, print a picking ticket, cancel an order, and reinstate a cancelled order. You can also view an order's history, including the original order, each time it was edited, each partial release, and the completed order.

CounterPoint's order processing works for pure retail as well as for retail-delivery, retail-assembly-delivery, retail-special order, retail-wholesale, wholesale, and wholesale-manufacturing operations.

A complete layaway processing system allows you to add new layaways, record deposits, view the status and history, and release completed layaways. Layaway processing is similar to order processing.

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Order and Layaway Deposits

You can define minimum deposit amounts based on a dollar amount or a percentage of the order, backorder, special order, or layaway. For example, the minimum deposit amount can be $5 for an order, 20% for a backorder, 50% for a special order, and $10 for a layaway.

Multiple payment types can be accepted for each deposit. For example, you can accept a $30 deposit with $10 cash and $20 credit card charge.

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Customer Specific Purchases

CounterPoint makes it easy for you to take a customer’s order from the point-of-sale, place a purchase order with a vendor, track and receive the PO, and fulfill the customer's order.

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Gift registries (Enterprise only)

In this version of CounterPoint SQL, you can create and manage gift registries for your customers, allowing them to request and purchase gifts for occasions such as weddings, baby showers, and so forth. This feature enables you to offer a valuable and commonly-used service to your customers while driving traffic to your store.

Use the Manage Gift Registries window to define and maintain gift registries. You can specify up to two registrants for each gift registry, one of whom must have a customer record on file. Each registry must also be associated with a specific, user-defined Occasion code (e.g., WEDDING, BABY, BIRTHDAY, and so forth). In addition, you can specify the date of the occasion, the city and state in which the occasion will take place, and the shipping address to which gifts purchased from the registry can be sent. Finally, you can make each gift registry available to online customers in your CPOnline store.

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.

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Taxes

Taxes are calculated automatically based on the taxable status of the merchandise and the customer. Tax calculations can be overridden by authorized users on a per-ticket basis, or individual line items can be set to "no-tax." An entire ticket can be non-taxable by entering a tax registration (tax exempt) number. Tax can be a percentage of the sale amount, an amount per piece, or a combination. An item's tax can be different for each location. Tax figures are printed on end-of-day reports and are retained for historical purposes.

Surtaxes (taxes on the tax) and Canadian PST/GST calculation is also supported.

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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.

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Multi-Currency

Multi-currency allows you to define foreign currencies with associated exchange rates. Accept multiple foreign currencies on a ticket. Issue change using the home currency or foreign currency.

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Commissions

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

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Ticket Numbering

Ticket numbers are normally assigned sequentially by CounterPoint. Alternatively, user-assigned ticket numbers may be entered. Each station can have an independent series of ticket numbers, or all stations can issue tickets from a single series of numbers for the store. Order, layaway, hold, and quote numbers offer similar capabilities.

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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.

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Daily Reports

Multiple daily reports (including X-tape and Z-tape) can be generated for each drawer and run at any time. Each report's parameters are user-specified and provide end-of-day balancing, summary sales reporting, and sales and profitability analysis by department, user, and salesperson. Additional analysis is available by tax code, sales rep, store, station, user, and payment type.

Sophisticated exception reporting allows a manager to monitor danger zones without having to pore through voluminous reports. Exception reports are available for critical areas such as tax overrides, voids, merchandise returns, and others. The Price Exceptions report allows you to review price overrides on unposted tickets before you post them.

Payment overages and shortages are reported in daily reports, and you can optionally create accounting distributions. The Ticket History report offers a view of sales across multiple stores.

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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. Drawers can be counted by currency unit (e.g., 4 fives, 7 ones, 2 quarters, etc.).

Managers can reconcile drawers during the end-of-day process to verify the closing amounts and correct any mistakes made when the drawer was counted. Drawers can optionally be auto-reconciled.

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.

CounterPoint retains complete history for management reporting in detailed (line-by-line) format.

Detailed history by customer and item can be retained indefinitely and is limited only by disk space. A complete history of a customer's sales activity can be printed or viewed, showing every item purchased, transaction dates, and prices paid. Similarly, you can review an item's detailed history.

In addition to detailed history, summarized history can be printed for item categories, users, salespersons, stations, etc. Historical reports can provide valuable information such as a comparison of sales for Easter week this year with Easter week last year.

More information regarding history is provided under Sales History.

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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:

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.

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Form Printing

Multiple printers can be defined for each station, including 40-column receipt printers, full-width invoice printers, warehouse picking printers, check validation printers, admission ticket printers, etc. An unlimited number of forms may be printed for each sale, quote, hold, or order. Forms may include tickets, sales drafts, invoices, or even special forms such as Material Safety Data Sheets.

CounterPoint includes pre-defined forms for receipts, picking tickets, and invoices. You may define new forms or customize existing forms. Individual form layouts may be Crystal .rpt files, OPOS .xml files, or static documents (such as Word or PDF files). Graphics, such as your company logo, may be printed on receipts or invoices.

Multiple forms can be grouped together, and the group becomes active under certain, user-defined conditions. For example, when a ticket is completed, the pre-defined group "TICKETS" will print a receipt and a credit card sales draft, and, if appropriate, a gift certificate.

You can also:

• Automatically print forms at ticket completion

• Use a single button to print one or more forms

• Let the clerk choose which form(s) to print from multiple buttons

• Print all forms to a single printer, or print different forms to different printers

• Define which printer the forms will print to, or let the clerk select the printer in Ticket Entry

• Require certain forms to be printed and/or limit reprints

• Automatically display messages, for example, "Would you like to print the Material Safety Data Sheet?"

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Peripheral Devices

A Point of Sale station (or register) is actually a computer workstation. Each checkout station can support optional peripheral devices such as:

• Receipt printers

• Invoice printers

• Combination invoice/receipt printers

• Electronic cash drawers

• Barcode readers and scanners

• Magstripe readers (for credit cards or ID cards)

• PIN pads (for debit cards)

• Check (MICR) readers

• Customer pole displays

• Customer display using a second monitor

• Programmable keyboards

• Touchscreen monitors

• Weight scales

• Handheld data-collection terminals (can also be used for physical count)

To simplify setup for commonly-used devices, a series of pre-defined Express Certified device definitions are installed with CounterPoint. CounterPoint works with any of the Express Certified devices as well as other OPOS devices.

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Customer Display Using a Second Monitor

Windows supports multiple monitors which you can use to display a separate screen image to your customers during checkout. The customer display monitor can show ticket information including item descriptions, quantities, prices, item images, document totals, customer information, and so forth. You can also display advertisements in the form of images or animations.

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Special Functions

In addition to sales, returns, orders, holds, and quotes, Ticket Entry also handles:

• Adding and changing customer information

• Adding and changing inventory items

• Locking (and unlocking) stations

• No-sales (authorized users can open cash drawers)

• Pay-ins and pay-outs to add or remove money from a drawer

• Payments on customer accounts

• Price, tax, and quantity overrides for authorized users

• Ticket reprints

• Reason codes for returns, overrides, and voids

• Voiding tickets

Ticket Entry also includes:

• Age-restricted items (for alcohol, etc.)

• "Discount" items (to track coupons, trade-ins, or other sale reductions)

• Fractional prices (e.g., $1.375 per LB)

• Fractional quantities (e.g., 1.625 feet)

• Free-form comments

• Item and serial number prompts for requesting additional info (such as a monogram or permit number)

• Maximums for change, refunds, and overtenders

• Minimum price restrictions based on the item's price level ("don't allow a price below Price-2") or a profit percent ("don't allow a price with less than 20% gross profit based on Average-cost") with optional security overrides

• Miscellaneous charges (amount or percent)

• Predefined ship-to addresses (addresses can also be entered at the time of sale)

• Random weight barcodes

• Ticket profile tracking fields for collecting additional information

• Weighed items (with scale support) and tare weights (container weights)

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Credit Card Processing

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

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

CounterPoint can optionally retain a customer's credit card number for future purchases. 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.

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Debit Card Processing

Complete debit card processing is provided (with DUKPT support) and requires the use of PIN pads and magnetic stripe card readers.

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EBT Processing

EBT food stamp processing is available when processing with CMP, First Data North, or TSYS. EBT requires the use of PIN pads and magnetic stripe card readers.

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Check Authorization

CounterPoint includes check authorization capabilities compatible with TeleCheck and Certegy (formerly Equifax, formerly Telecredit).

NOTE: CounterPoint supports check processing with CMP, First Data North, First Data South, and TSYS. (All processors other than CMP require the Credit Cards Option).

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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 quantities and customer information

• 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 process credit cards, debit cards, EBT, and checks

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