Microsoft RMS Stores Operations (SO)

Unique Feature

Store Operations is packed with exciting advanced features that dramatically boost sales and improve back-office and POS efficiency

Net Display Channels

Net Display enables you to showcase advertisements and websites on a second monitor for customers at your point of sale. You might put these monitors around the store or display them to customers awaiting checkout. This replaces the pole display and can show websites and webpages you pre-select or ads from your local CD-ROM or DVD. Net Display supports multimedia, so you can include sound and action clips. It’s entirely programmable and interactive, so entering the customer’s name can trigger personal greetings, reminders about customary items and other persuaders. Purchases in one category can trigger notice of specials or mix ‘n match offers for similar items.

Shipping and Tracking Over the Internet

If you use UPS or FedEx, Store Operations streamlines shipping. No need for a dedicated PowerShip or other machines. Customer name and address—even product weight—plug in automatically. Store Operations transmits data to FedEx or UPS websites for shipping documents. Store Operations maintains shipping documents and will track shipments. Manage your account from the browser screen. Know and tally exact costs from the shipper’s on-board schedule.

Empowering the POS With Corporate Information Via Internet or WAN

Store Operations is your total, two-way, instant information conduit between your point of sale terminals, your back-office computer, your IT system and the outside world of consumers, suppliers and partners. Under security rules you set, you and your store associates can access, display and work with any file or any program, on any accessible computer in your network.. You can run those applications and use the output instantly with no delay to the customer. You pre-set the only websites, files and programs that customers and sales associates can see and access. Stores connect to corporate via Internet, VPN or WAN. Information from corporate can be “pushed” to the POS or “pulled” by the POS using standard Internet protocols such as HTML, HTTP, HTTPS or server-side scripts. The built-in web browser displays acquired information on the POS screen. Text, graphics and multimedia information can be displayed and heard.

Advanced Security Features

Store Operations incorporates tight security controls and restricts employee access to sensitive information. It includes a built-in security system with 31 security levels (security definitions or profiles). These protect web access features, programmable POS keys, screens and fields, report writing—every sensitive area of your system and confidential data.

System administrators define each security level to grant specific access privileges. You can assign the behavior for every screen feature, defining if that field or control can be viewed—and/or edited—by that level of employee. After you define the security level, assign it to the appropriate employee(s). You dictate precisely which data fields each employee can view and/or change.

Active Reports

Quick Reports is one of the fastest report engines out there. Once, it may have taken you over twenty minutes to calculate reports on tens of thousands of items.. Optimized for speed, Quick Reports calculates the worst of them in literally seconds.

With point-and-click speed, you can find and compare key information easily. Generate a wide variety of consolidated reports to obtain instant sales figures, identify slow-moving items and see sales for any day and any register. Then customize each report to visually emphasize crucial data.

Advanced sorting and filtering tools enable you to fine-tune your reports. You can pinpoint the exact data you need to realistically project future sales and make effective management decisions. Incorporate your company logo or other graphics into reports for presentations. Then store these parameters for easy and regular use

Change Database Items From Any Report

These are known as “Living Reports.” Wherever Store Operations’ “Show Me” icon (magnifying glass) appears on screen, click the item to see its detail. Users with the appropriate security access can change database definitions directly from a report. You can rearrange column sequence, show or hide any columns—even grant or lock out access to certain people printing certain reports.

Custom-Build and Reorganize Reports

After you generate the report, Store Operations gives you a vast variety of ways to view and reorganize your data. You can even custom-build and organize your reports directly on the report preview screen by:

• Adjusting and moving headers and columns
• Sorting report data
• Filtering report data
• Refreshing report data
• Accessing detailed information directly from the report

Store Operations’ Efficient Assistant

The traditional downfall of other retail systems is the requirement to change things in three or four places. Besides being time-consuming, that weakness spawns inconsistencies, data entry errors and long hours of corrections. In Store Operations, your own personal automated assistant helps you change properties in your database all at once—eliminating the need to manually change each individual item. You can update item prices, costs, reorder information, sales tax assignment, and can even put groups of selected items on promotion.

Label Designer and Wizard

You may need to print labels in different sizes and shapes to accommodate different products and printers. Store Operations’ new features speed up the way you process and print labels. Label Designer lets you easily design your own WYSIWYG label templates. You can add and position graphics and text. Save time when you print labels. Use Label Wizard to select one of your customized templates, then specify filter criteria. Print only as many as you need. No need to manually create and adjust labels every time you want to print a label.

Receipts with Logos and Graphics

You can completely customize point-of-sale receipts to display your company logo, address, phone number, and graphics. Whether you want to promote your company name or highlight a holiday sale, you can program the software to custom-build the receipts that best relay your message(s). Store Operations Commerce can print graphics directly on the receipts, including barcodes, logos and pictures. It can include text in your preferred font and format. You can size and position your graphics and text.

Gift Certificates, Gift Cards and Vouchers

Store Operations has always handled gift certificates and vouchers. Now gift cards offer gift-givers a dynamic gift certificate that’s tied to your store. The gift-card holder can spend any amount up to the card’s limit, and the giver can renew the card repeatedly. Clear receipts, which document every purchase, are printed at the time of purchase and are retrievable at any time. Store Operations can tally cardholder purchases against a pre-purchased amount, then recharge the gift card against a credit card, a store account or other tender.

Customizable POS Buttons

Store Operations lets you program a button on the POS screen to access other software files and webpages on your computer or via Internet. It can invoke programs, information and capabilities on the POS screen, or send them to the customer’s monitor. Buttons are normally displayed on the right side of the POS screen, but you can reposition and size them as you choose. They give you one-step access to as many as ten programs, reference pages or websites. This feature gives your store associates immediate access to worldwide computing power while the customer checks out. However, every employee’s web access is totally under your control.

Accounts Receivable Feature

Accounts Receivable offers many flexible new search and payment options. Rather than requiring a customer to pay an entire account, you can process and track customer payments by individual invoices and statements. The Aged Receivables option lets you select the specific invoice a customer wishes to pay. In addition to setting up revolving accounts, you can also bill payments for net terms.

New Item Wizard

Use the New Item Wizard to quickly add items to your database and it’s automatically added to other parts of the program. The New Item Wizard enables you to set up item types, define kit and matrix components and set standard properties. This feature is especially useful when creating assembly, kit, matrix, and/or lot matrix items. For example, rather than manually entering each component of a matrix item, you can use the New Item Wizard to automatically add all components to the database at once.

Enhanced Journal Viewer

Store Operations enhanced journal capabilities enable staff with security rights to view and print any journal from any register in your preferred format. This can be done at the point of sale or in the back office.

Customizable POS Screens

You can customize the look and functions of your POS screen with the field displays you want. Pick and choose from several display features, including status bar, HTML status bar, custom buttons, totals, function keys and NetDisplay. You can resize and reposition the transaction screen and all of your screen settings with be saved.

Unlimited Line Item Entry

Whether your customer wants five items or thousands, Store Operations lets you sell unlimited items in one transaction. Other products limit the number of items per transaction. Grocery stores and other large-client enterprises need voluminous item lists, and these big-purchase customers are just the ones you want to impress with fast service.

Detailed Customer Information

When you select a customer, you will immediately see “Bill To” and “Ship To” information. You can see detailed customer information right on the transaction screen, including account number, total sales, number of visits and date of last visit. Having pertinent customer information at your fingertips helps you retain repeat customers and build new relationships.

Orders, Quotes and Layaways

This POS program introduces new features to improve creating and processing work orders, sales quotes and layaways. You can view and edit detailed information directly on the transaction screen, assign a reference number and accept payment(s) towards a work order or layaway.

Depending on whether you create an order, quote or layaway, on-screen information can include comments, on-deposit amount, deposit payment, order balance, due date, reference number and expiration date.  Associates with the required security level can edit these fields on the transaction screen.

Store Operations allows unlimited flexibility when dealing with orders, quotes and layaways. Rather than requiring customers to pay for all items on an order, Store Operations enables customers to pay for any combination of items and allows you to add/cancel items at any time.

Editable Time-Clock Entries

Store Operations has incorporated a number of new employee time-clock capabilities. You can now edit time-clock entries in the manager program. As an administrator, you can view a particular employee’s clock-in and clock-out times. The Time-Clock window displays all cashier names with time in, time out and time elapsed.

Store Operations includes handy tools to allow authorized users to edit time-clock information, including clock-in date and time and clock-out date and time. Editing is useful when cashiers log in under the wrong name or forget to clock in or out. Of course, you can restrict employees’ access to time-clock edits.

Assembly, Matrix and Lot Matrix Items

Store Operations neatly organizes all of your assembly, matrix and lot matrix item information into an easy-to-use grid. You see all your items and their related attributes at once. You can edit item attributes directly on the grid. You can assign/barcode each item with a separate lookup code. To quickly add matrix items to your database, let the New Item Wizard define matrix components all at once. Store Operations adds the matrix item and its components to the database. You can sort matrix items by dimensions and view selected (or all) individual components (item lookup codes) of the particular item matrix.

Informative Graphs

Store Operations can display your revenues, sales and inventory data in a variety of ways. Drop-down list boxes let you generate a variety of graphs that you can further customize. Select different time periods. Group related data. See numerical and graphical versions. Print it, store it, or email it. Make templates of your favorite graphs and reuse them at will. It’s another powerful Store Operations tool to give you the visibility you need to manage your store

Support for Data Warehousing and OLAP

The point of sale is where customers “vote with their wallets” on where they buy, what they buy and how often. That’s why customer data, buying histories and preferences are vital to the survival and expansion of a store. Store Operations captures detailed customer data in a Microsoft SQL Server™ database for analysis. A growing number of retailers are turning to data warehousing and on-line analytical processing (OLAP) to maximize customer spending and bolster customer service and repeat business by personalizing the shopping experience. Store Operations makes that data immediately and accurately available.

Retail Rounding

Store Operations introduces new global pricing features that enable you to perform retail rounding. When you use the Store Operations Assistant to change item prices, Store Operations includes an option that allows you to round all updated prices to customary retail values based on rounding rules that you specify.

“Buy X, Get Y” Discount Capability

Sell a specified quantity (“X”) of items at full price and give the customers a certain number (“Y”) of items for free or at a discounted price. For example, if customers buy three T-shirts, they can receive another T-shirt for free. Or, if they buy four pairs of socks, they receive the next three pairs at 50% off. Pick and choose your desired discounts.

Multiple Foreign Currencies

Store Operations allows you to handle multiple foreign currencies and exchange rates. You can set up each desired currency with its associated exchange rate and locale. New features include the ability to assign these currencies to applicable suppliers to handle purchase orders and inventory transfers. Use Store Operations Label Designer to customize labels to display multiple exchange rates and even graphics of associated International flags.