They say "A picture is said to be worth a thousand words" and over the years, I have seen planograms used by small to large retailers to show much about their shop and their plans. Even small retailers with tiny shops,

This discussion here should first be put in context that planograms are great tools also what I am talking about here is a proper planogram, not a drawing program.

For a small shop today, a large fit is often between $50,000 to $200,000 for a big shop fit, and it can knock the shop out for a while. When one retailer decided to use his stocktake data to look for places of high shoplifting utilizing a planogram, it took about a day and what was at stake was about $20,000 of missing stock that year, it did help a lot. Even just looking at a million dollar a year turnover in a shop visually, I have seen some great ideas for improvements in both turnover and reducing shoplifting.

I have seen people save thousands of dollars using planograms to highlight a variety of issues.

If you want to know more, please click here for a video explaining what a planogram can do for your shop.

Ownership

You can either buy it outright in which case the price varies considerably. Depending on whether you buy a simple drawing program to a full-blown system, as a punt, I would say an SMB business should budget between about $300 to a $1,000. This is very approximate as sometimes I have seen people spend $300 and it was too much, and sometimes I have seen much more spent and it was not nearly enough. The significant advantage to owning it is that you, in theory, you can play with a lot of options continuously. I say theory because one of the problems with owning a planogram software is that it takes awhile to figure out how to use it. A person needs about a week or two to figure it out to get to the stage they can be said to be commercially competent. The other issue is that although it is not hard, they do tend to need a few attempts at making planograms, in the beginning, to get it right on the third attempt they do a good job. So please do not be fooled if someone demonstrates it to you at a trade show and in a few minutes shows you a great planogram. It took them quite a while to get to that knowledge and what they show you are far away from being usable. The other problem is once they get to that competency, if they do not use the software regularly they tend to forget it and have to relearn it and so often what happens is that this person moves on?

The other alternative is that often if you are planning changes to the shop, the people doing the changes usually offer you the services of a planogram expert free who will naturally push their solution or you can hire a planogram expert to do the task. One advantage of this at least is often the planogram software, and the expert is excellent although in my experience overpriced.

Measuring

The person doing the planogram can tell you what details you require. They usually can get the information needed by going to your shop and measuring it up and then look through your point of sale software; this is going to be at least a few hours. If you are doing the measurements yourself, I recommend buying a laser measuring device which you can get from a hardware shop and a tape measure. Some planogram software can import data directly from our software through our ad-hoc reporting system.

Often it is a big job as you need product information that many suppliers cannot supply you although if these suppliers do supply major supermarkets they often can provide the information.

Doing it

To prepare the data you often need a working knowledge of excel better than basic. Your point of sale software will require ad-hoc reporting which unfortunately will knock out most POS software in our market space now.

Use

As I have never seen it work well on the first attempt, even if it does you want some variations to think about, so you will need a few tries.

Google just gave a stunning demonstration of their home unit making an actual phone call. I was blown away by the people on the other end not realising they were talking to a computer. 

We have seen technology like this with emails, but it was costly for an SMB business, a $1,500/month, nor is email the primary communication system in SMB, and it could not do anything like this, and so we moved on.

We thought when it gets released; we almost certainly can link our system into it as the APIs will have standard interfaces and give our clients a service like this.

If you have a decent computer, it can be very frustrating when you go to run a program; you get a message do you want to update? You generally want the upgrade, as everyone wants to run the latest software with the most recent improvements but NOW is often not the time.

If so this program would be of interest to you. We use it to upgrade our clients' computers often.

What it does it checks what you have, then checks if it is one of its 301 popular applications in its library, and if so will ask you which ones you want to upgrade, I generally go all and once I say YES it will in bulk update them all. It then installs and updates them automatically, while you are doing something else.

What is also useful is that if you do not have some of these programs and want them, you select them too and it will download and install them too automatically.

One point I strongly recommend before using this program in options set it to run a restore point first in options, just in case.

No one wants to wait so what you will notice in the new version of our software is that our reports in our POS Software besides giving more flexibility are now running faster, a lot faster. What we are doing is slowly moving over to the new SAS crystal reports. Which is a big job, so it is taking a lot of time.

What you will also find is that you will flexibility in what you can print, to what printer you can print and a lot more export facilities, you can now export much more detail.

Besides giving you more, it is going to save you a lot of time.

It is looking that the original concept most are saying that Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows, is a myth.

Microsoft has recently announced that the original Windows 10 version they launched in July 2015, will not any more receive security and improvements after May 9, 2017. So the original Windows 10 version, will soon no longer be supported. To be fair Windows 10, did get two major updates, namely the Anniversary Update and the Creators Update which is about normal for a windows system.
So soon I think we can expect new Windows maybe 11.

Microsoft will of course tell us about the wonderful new features in Windows 11 that they added to improve their system but they will of course fail to mention the older programs and most importantly the device when you upgrade that suddenly stop working as the drivers are no longer available as the supplier is not updating their device drivers.

Onwards and upwards.

Microsoft's plan is that Windows will no longer be Vista, XP, Windows 8, etc.; it will just be windows 10 soon. We are not expected to buy new versions of windows. What we will be getting are many updates to Windows 10 released over time. When Microsoft released Windows 10, they promised us updates for life.

As Microsoft has this rigid timetable of releasing major updates and security fixes on the second Tuesday of the month. They now have the next version of Windows 10 ready for release.

Unfortunately, nobody at Microsoft has a calendar, so they have decided to release it in April. The second Tuesday is the 11th of April. Next Tuesday, the Tuesday before Easter. However, that is Tuesday United States time, which is Wednesday Australian time for all extents and purposes.

That is when the Windows 10 update may start downloading; some systems may take longer to get the update than others. So if your Internet and computers are slow over Easter, they probably download and install a new version of Windows 10.

Then there is the inevitable restart, and something is bound to work longer afterwards. Murphy's Law will demand that your point of sale system will slow down right in the middle of a weekend when everyone does not need this headache too.

Thank you, Microsoft.

If you have a Professional edition of Windows 10. There is an easy way to stop this update being installed now and delay getting the update over Easter by setting the following option.

Details on how to check if you are unsure whether you have Windows 10 home or professional are here.

Video removed

If you have professional, please.

Click on Start
Settings
Click Update & Security
Click Advanced options
Tick the box “Defer feature updates.”

This option is supposed to defer new Windows features and upgrades for several months. How long several months is not defined anywhere, so I cannot tell you how long that is. You will still get the new Windows 10 Creators update version, just not over Easter.

If you have Windows Home, there is a hack that can stop the updates over Easter so that you can do it later. To use the hack, I do not suggest anyone tries this who is not an advanced user of windows. Details are available here.

This is a great program, and I use this software on my laptop so that Windows does not overload my laptop by doing updates when I need the computer for work NOW.

If you want to know what you have go control panel > system and you will get a screen like this one.

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Check the arrows for where you can get the specs.







Now assuming that its time for an upgrade, and you want to buy new hardware for your POS software, here is what I would recommend as your minimum specifications.



As buying a computer for business is not the same as buying a computer for home. At home, if my computer goes down tonight, and I have to wait until tomorrow for an engineer to fix it, is not serious. If a server goes down in the shop for a few hours, it can bring the shop to a halt. The other problem is that you are paying for time. Say, for example, a computer takes 3 minutes longer a day to do its work over four years that 3 minutes would cost you about



360 days x 3 minutes x $26 hour / 60 minutes x 4 years = $1,872.



Of course, modern computers are saving more than 3 minutes a day.

Now the operating system, I recommend is Windows 10. Not only does it run the fastest and latest SQL 2016. Its is also that Windows 7 is already out of mainstream support and has only about two years left of support which is not long enough as most of us buy a computer for 3 to 5 years. Windows 8, I do not recommend at all as do few others, which leave us with Windows 10. Plus of course, why buy something new, to have something old like Windows 7.



This does present a problem in that Windows 10 uses a lot more RAM than previous versions of Windows. I have noticed on a 4GB RAM computer about half the RAM is just being used by windows 10. However, it seems that extra RAM is required even by people now on Windows 7 as some of the updates have caused their RAM requirements to go up too, that is partly why the old computers are slowing down. So I would recommend as the price has dropped that you insist on RAM of no less than 16GB, and I would strongly recommend the new DDR4 RAM as its faster.



For the hard drives, it depends what important to you if speed is all powerful, then get the SSD, which will give you less space, then an HDD but faster speeds, if, however, you need lots of storage, then select the bigger mechanical HDD (Hard Disk Drive). On both systems, our software runs well.



As far as CPUs, I would not recommend anything under 3.30 GHz. Anything less is just too slow today.



Video card generally in point of sale is not so important as the graphics are rarely that demanding so I would not be so concerned about that.



Monitor size is a hard question, Often it depends on what can fit in a spot if it's too big, and it does not fit, then the monitor is useless. Another point I find is that people have very different preferences. It really worthwhile checking out a few sizes to find the one suitable for yourself. Now if you have older people that will be using the monitor, particularly if they are a bit of a distance from the monitor remember they have to read the screen too so maybe get something a bit bigger. Then the other problem you have to balance is that if it's too big, extended use can hurt people's eyes.



I hope this helps; any questions let me know.



 

A lot of you are starting to see messages like this; it's a free offer to upgrade to Windows 10 by Microsoft. The question people often ask now is why is the upgrade free? I do not know.

Currently, there are two editions of Windows 10 that are being offered free to Windows 7 & 8 users. Those with Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 or Windows 8.1 will be able to upgrade to Windows 10 Home. Those on Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate, and Windows 8.1 Pro systems will be offered Windows 10 Pro. There is a one-year limitation on getting this free upgrade which I find strange.

If you are on Windows 8, you probably cannot wait for jump on to 10.

There are several issues that need to be addressed before we can recommend anyone to move to Windows 10 for our software. For those of you that remember the problems with the earlier release of windows we saw such as the printer manufacturers were not ready for the changeover as a result people suddenly reported problems with their printers, for example, the statements were not printing the top correctly or pages were being skipped. There were also strange things happening in networks and modems. In my experience, it usually takes a few months for us to really test it, and in the meantime it takes about 12 months for Microsoft to get it working right.

My advice is that if you are looking to upgrade, I would suggest you have at least 2 GM RAM and 60 GB harddrive on your computer despite what Microsoft says.
 

Update: My advice is reserved your copy and then wait for user feedback before installing it. The offer seems too good to be true.

Less than a week ago, Google Earth Pro was $399. Now Google has announced that is going to be free.

So now people are ringing us up to ask us if our software integration with Google Earth will be affected if the update to Google Earth, so I tested it out and there is no problem in either the windows or DOS version. This is because the integration goes through Google Map.

If you do deliveries, house calls or pick up products, I am sure you will find the latest version of Google Earth Pro is a big improvement and well worth getting. I find it useful before going to an appointment in a new place to look at the address on Google Earth, so I know what the area and place will look like before I get there.
 

If you have not yet got it, Google Earth Pro is available here.

In the reporting section, you have a favourite's section on the top. This is so you can place your favourites reports all in one section. No more going from a screen to another screen.

To use it, right-click on any of the reports, then add it to the Favourites Section.

Now all your favourite reports will be in one convenient place!

Firstly let me say that I have experience with many accountancy packages. Overall I would say about 50% of our users use MYOB, about 35% use QuickBooks and the rest use a range of products.

Anyway today I was hit with several questions from our users about our accountancy link which is a free product with no cost to you.

Overall, I think this link is awesome, for example,

when you make a sale in our software, the following information is transferred by the accountancy link.
- The amount of taken for the sale and the payment type
- The Income you received
- GST collected on the goods sold
- The cost of the sale (the wholesale value)
- A deduction from the inventory (stock holding)

When you buy product
- The inventory account for the dissection of the item is increased by the ex-GST wholesale or cost amount which ever one you prefer.
- The GST Paid account is increased
- The Trade Creditors account is increased by the GST inc wholesale or cost amount
- The balance of the Supplier’s card is increased by the GST inc wholesale or cost amount

When an item is returned:
- The inventory account for the dissection of the item is decreased by the ex-GST wholesale or cost amount
- The GST Paid account is decreased
- The Trade Creditors account is decreased by the GST inc wholesale or cost amount
- The balance of the Supplier’s card is decreased by the GST inc wholesale or cost amount

It can handle gift vouchers, laybys and stockless sales e.g. Phone Cards.

And it can handle multishop and customers buying in one shop and paying in another shop.

If you have not got an accountancy system and want to try one out free. Most packages have a free trial period. Another alternative is Microsoft Office Accounting Express. I found it very good and it is free. In it I think you will find it a comprehensive small business management system. It does have a problem that it is American package and also that it is no longer supported by Microsoft..

From what I have seen overall I think the well-known ones are all fairly similar. They do the same thing. They use the same principals, etc.

But there are things I like in one and things I like in another.

For example, I do like very much is the flexibility of QuickBooks in reports. Its "Memorised reports” function which can save a lot of time and is extremely beneficial from a management perspective, which is why I use it.

If I was looking for an SMB business, I would budget about $200 to $450 for an accountancy system that would is suitable, and I think most would do the trick. Probably, what would swing me is the local support. This is where MYOB and Quickbooks are extremely strong in Australia.

It should be stated that most accounting systems have a cloud solution too which are worth considering. If pressed for a cloud solution, mainly because I am used to QuickBooks, I would recommend QuickBooks Online ("QBO"). It is an excellent product, with local support, is a fully functional QuickBooks Online plus version with inventory, budgets and payroll included. It's available from $12 per month here.

I hope this answers the questions.

Currently, we have been rather busy on our new computer vision system. What it does is take your footage from security cameras and our point-of-sale system and does automatic analysing in shops both in the shop itself and at the point of sale. This gives you among other things, the percentage of pedestrian traffic entering your store, which is probably a necessity if you wish to test a discount voucher system. It also gives you demographics information such as sex, age and even behaviour.

We are currently working on adding A/B testing for retail displays, path tracking through premises and customer/product interaction monitoring.

We are starting on theft analysis module, but the full version of this will not be available in the immediate future as it is proving to be the most challenging functionality we are facing. It will be a separate module. One of the problems here, for example, is imagine how difficult it is to detect stolen items. We need first to set up a video history as we are not looking for the presence of an object but looking for its absence.

In view of the direct integration into the point-of-sale system, I see this product as deeply applicable to the pharmacy and newsagency shops.

If you are interested please let me know.

This time of the year, while you are collecting information for the accountant, and you are in that frame of mind. It would be a good idea to check your sales security indicators. This is a good check and if something is wrong, you may find it there.

What these indicators do is gives you a detailed breakdown for each operator on no sale, voids, count, totals, refunds, negative items and discounts. In my experience, unusual no sale and voids for each operator are the most important of these indicators.

Go to cash register reports

Open Staff and click on "Sales security indicators"

Select required period, in this case the last twelve months.

See how you go.

The report comes out in excel so you can edit it.

Many of you who are now who are not sending sales data are being contacted to ask why not. Now if you refuse or cannot send sales data, then XChangeIT intends to increase your XChangeIT fees calculated from a backdate.

If you need to set up your sales data, we have an information sheet here. (Outdated file - decommissioned) It is quite easy to set up, but if you need some help, please contact us.

The latest update for our software has a new button in the “Convert XchangeIt EDI” section of Stock Received, called “Check New”. Clicking this button will check for any new invoices that have arrived, and process them automatically. This eliminates the need to go into the XchangeIT document and import the invoices separately! You can now import and process all of your XchangeIT invoices through one section of PosBrowser!

Regards
Garth

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Since we released the google map integration a year ago, much has changed. So recently, we upgraded our integration.

Now when you call an address in our software, you can see now, a directions box (see the blue arrow).

Once you enter your starting or ending point, up pops a screen with directions how to get there. This is handy for someone that is not sure of the quickest way to get there.

Now note you notice the little man in orange with the red arrow pointing to him. If you click the arrow and move him around, he shows you a picture of what the location looks like. I find it useful going to a place to see this so I know what my destination looks like.