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ProphetLine POS has been our lifeline for seven years in our four retail stores. The software is robust and offers many more functions and ...
Read MoreA small retailer should be worried about selling and not being an accountant. Seamless accounting that directly ties in to your income and cost of goods accounts, allows you to purchase, sell, update inventory in real time and send all the numbers back to your small business financial back-end freeing you of the cumbersome task of double entry by manipulating General Ledger code. You can then run your P/L’s for any period you want from one day, one week or any combination. With ProphetLine POS Software you can even run departmental or class P/L’s. Accounting is not just about taxes, it also goes hand in hand with your inventory stocking levels and future performance.
Having money in your checking account doesn’t mean you are profitable. It could mean you haven’t paid all your bills so you have a little left over cash. Cash and profit are two different concepts. Profit is the end result of using your P/L’s, retail stock ledger and open to buy planning wisely. So the next time you ask your POS Software provider how to squeeze a little more money out of your retail management system, you can ask them if they do all of these necessary functions.
The excerpts from this blog were written by Carrie Brenner in Entrepreneur.com.
I am a POS Software provider and it’s easy for me to preach to small retailers about hanging tough in these tough economic times, but sometimes the actions of one person can say it all. Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch said his last lecture, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams", was actually meant for a very small audience: his three children. But hundreds attended the lecture given last September, and millions have viewed the video online. It has since launched a bestselling book, The Last Lecture. Pausch died July 25 after a hard-fought battle with pancreatic cancer. Before he died, he admitted to being somewhat embarrassed by all the attention but pleased that his words have been able to help so many. Even if your dreams as an 8-year-old didn’t include being your own boss, Pausch’s lessons offer some entrepreneurial insight. So when you think things are really bad, there is someone else that has had it worse and found a way to cope.
1. When you hit a brick wall, consider another perspective. As an entrepreneur, you’re up against seemingly insurmountable obstacles all the time."Brick walls are there for a reason," Pausch says. "[They] give us a chance to show how badly we want something."Aaron Boyce, small-business consultant and author of Seize the Opportunity and Other Marketing Strategies, couldn’t agree more. He subscribes to what he calls the 80/20 rule. When people face a brick wall, 80 percent of them will try to force their way through it, eventually giving up. It’s only 20 percent who will step back to consider it from a different perspective."Often, when we step away from something, that’s where we find solutions," Boyce says.
2. Magnify the yeses in every situation. Joni Carley, founder of Wisdom at Work, an international coaching and consulting firm, points out that when Pausch confronted a brick wall, he chose to magnify the yeses instead of worrying about the nos. This kept him focused on the next steps that would open doors for him. As an entrepreneur, exploring the positives of every situation will keep your business growing.
3. You can’t get there alone. Carley also notes that Pausch often used his relationships to get over walls. Go to conferences, network with other entrepreneurs, get involved in local events and make connections. Boyce suggests also finding a mentor. Establishing and maintaining meaningful relationships will help you achieve your goals and provide a support group when times are tough.
4. Loyalty is a two-way street. Remember, what goes around, comes around. According to Pausch, it’s important to give as much as you get. Even if you don’t ask for anything in return, you’ll find that the people you help will probably be willing to help you.Additionally, Carley says that it’s important to support your employees in their endeavors, even if one day they could become your competition–or perhaps your next partner."One plus one in business doesn’t equal two–it equals 10," she says.
At the end of his lecture, Pausch says: "It’s not about how to achieve your dreams, it’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the dreams will come to you."
Small businesses comprise from 60 to 80 percent of all the new jobs created in the United States. When are the people in Washington D.C going to understand this? Their ideas are like throwing mud on the wall and what sticks they run with and the rest that is on the floor has to be cleaned up. If you ran your small business like this, you would be placing an out of business sign on your front door. This downturn in the economy forces many people that are laid off from their positions to start a small business. If you are one of these, remember that if you have your choice between luck, timing and brilliance, take timing first, making sure the idea for your new business is at the right place and at the right time. If you are certain the timing is good for this business, make a solid business plan and purchase the technology that is going to make it run efficiently.
If you are opening a specialty retail business, point of sale (POS) software can make even a large project easier to realize. POS Software will allow you to manage large databases in order to make your business more profitable. With POS Software, a small businessperson will be able to ring up transactions, manage purchases, make payments, and manage inventory and print reports. The life blood of your business is the real time reporting that allows you to make quick and informed decisions. The old pencil and paper does not work in today’s quick moving business environment. POS Software will save you time and paper work.
It’s getting close to the Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping season and with the economy in a state of flux, your retail business must be ready to take on these adverse conditions. How can good POS Software help you? By giving you the data to make good informed decisions. You need to market to your best, most affluent customers. Take your past history and buy the products they like and cater to their needs, not the bottom feeders of your clientele. Encourage your good clientele to feel like your retail operation caters to people like them and not the big box discount customers.
Now that you have established who your customers are and the products they want, keep your inventory lean with items that in the past have produced high turns, good sell through percentages and good margins. This can be easily accomplished if your POS Software has a built-in and automated retail stock ledger. This retail stock ledger can also identify your best vendors, allow you to cut back on the poorer performing vendors or negotiate better prices and terms. Your POS Software also needs a time analysis function to keep your employee staffing at the proper level. The more staff on the floor during peak business hours will convert to more dollars. Good luck with your holiday season and make sure you are a survivor that will be able to flourish when the economy is on the up cycle.
I encountered the above error when installing Ubuntu 8.04.1 Desktop version on a Windows Vista Ultimate host PC using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. To complete the install, I had to do the following…
Note – the only change that is required is the nonreplace-paravirt option, but the vga=791 entry will allow faster loading due to not having to scan graphic modes.
Another option is to use the Open Source VirtualBox which can be downloaded at VirtualBox.org. When using this virutalization program, which runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris, I did not have to use any parameters or optional settings.
ProphetLine POS Software Added an Import/Export Inventory, Customer and Vendor Wizard to simplify importing and exporting files for data movement.
ProphetLine POS Software now has a wizard for importing and exporting that simplifies the process of importing and exporting data. This process can be used to import data as a one-time process, when setting up your POS Software, and can also be used to export data to Excel, make changes in a familiar spreadsheet environment, and then import the changes back into ProphetLine.
This involves choosing a file format, the Type of Inventory you are wishing to Import or Export and choosing whether to import the data into Active Inventory or Offline Inventory. The system will remember your selections and default to them until they are manually change. You can then edit the fields you’ve selected, a group, to add/remove individual fields, or all fields using the custom option or browse to a location to save or read in a file, along with setting the file name. When exporting there is also a checkbox option to save these settings for the next Inventory Import. This option will remember where you saved the file, what you called it, and what fields you exported, so that no settings will need to be changed when you go to import the file, after editing.
You can then go to a Data Preview screen that allows you to verify values are in the correct fields before doing Data Validation or importing. On this screen you can browse all fields of a particular record, defaulting to the first record. There are buttons that will allow you to go to the Top of File, Previous Record, Next Record and Bottom of File. On the Data Validation screen we display total number of corresponding items in the import file that meet the criteria: New – The value is New and does not currently exist in the system, Updated – The value exists in the system and is being imported. Note that items will show updated even if there are no changes to the field or record. This criterion only determines that the value already exists. Total – Total number of each set of data in the import file, new and updated. Data Errors: Warnings – Data warnings are values that you may want to check, but that are allowed in the system. For example, if you include Short name in the import file, but one record is blank. This would display as a data warning. Just trying to make your POS Software easier to use.
Excel can be a bit too ‘helpful’ at times and once such case is with long numbers. If you have a number in Excel longer than 14 digits, Excel will display the number in Scientific Notation. To ‘fix’ this, you can format the cells as Numeric with 0 decimal places, but, what if you need the cells to be formated as Text? Again Excel tries to be helpful and puts the Scientific Notation back in the cells. Not what is desired.
If you only have a few row of values, you can press F2 to enter edit mode and then press ENTER to exit edit mode and the text is formated correct. This, however, is not a desirable way when you have many rows of text which needs to be ‘fixed’.
To ‘fix’ many rows, use the Macro feature of Excel to convert the values to uppercase. Yes, I know it sounds strange to convert numbers to uppercase, but this works. To create the macro do the following (based on Excel 2003)…
On the Menu go to Tools -> Macro -> Visual Basic Editor
This will open a new application.
Right Click on the VBAProject(Book1) entry in the Left Pane. Where Book1 is the name of you Excel file, so the entry may be worded slightly different.
Select Insert -> Module
In the right side, you will notice two drop down lists at the top with the labels ‘(General)’ and ‘(Declarations)’. Copy the text below into the right side pane…
— Copy Text below this line —
Sub ConvertToUpperCase()
‘ Macro to convert text in cell to uppercase
‘ change the value in the ‘Range’ entry to the desired range of cells
Range(“A1:A2200”).Select
For Each cellObject In Selection
With cellObject
.Formula = StrConv(cellObject, vbUpperCase)
End With
Next
End Sub
— Do not copy This line —
Once the above is copied into the editor and the ‘range’ value (you can change this later if needed) is correct, close the editor. If prompted to save the changes select Yes.
To run the Macro, go to Tools -> Macro -> Macros on the menu. Select the ‘ConverToUpperCase’ macro and select Run
Morton Golf, the leader in golf merchandising at public golf facilities in the United States, has implemented ProphetLine’s Point of Sale(POS) Retail Management Software in all of its Sacramento facilities. ProphetLine, a national retail technology solution provider and four-time Microsoft Developer of the Year award winner, was selected to bring standardization and control to Morton Golf’s retail operations.
ProphetLine for Windows POS Software, replaced existing retail systems at Haggin Oaks, Bing Maloney and Bartley Cavanaugh Golf Complexes. The implementation was started in 2006. Since then an advanced retail stock ledger, open to buy planning system and many other features to streamline the purchasing and receiving process have been added. ProphetLine will continue to work with Morton Golf to provide enhancements designed to save time and increase productivity as developments occur.
"ProphetLine’s continued customer support and updates keep our ever-changing software requirements in line," says Terry Daubert, President Morton Golf. "We have found ProphetLine to be very good at ‘personalizing’ each application with each location. Each facility usually has a different twist, and that’s where ProphetLine shines.
