I am slowly getting the new/updated register system at work back to a state of complete awesomeness. By the way kids, how are we doing? Just thought I would ask, you don't have to answer that. Consider it like an unwanted sexual IM and move on. Anyway, when last we left our little biblical saga regarding the registers, they were in the process of being fixed by the Ultimate Retailer people, with me lending what little assistance I could, given my overall unfamiliarity with the software in question. Sure, I have used it in it's previous form, but as far as actually crawling around the inner workings of it and why this system does this, and how to program it to do that, that I am not quite so good at.
I did learn that I was right about something, much of what was put in the system before I started doing it was done completely wrong, so I will have fixes with that until the cows come home. The software identifies products with two numbers, there is the bar code, which I am sure you are all aware of, having purchased items in the past. The other is called an SKU number, that number is a number explicit to the store that is selling the item, It allows the cashier the ability to add items to your inventory that might not have a bar code. For instance we have a soda fountain system, so people can buy beverages from it. Since the cups don't have bar codes on them, if we just relied on one number, we would have no way of ringing those items into the system, but because we have SKUs as well as bar codes, the item can be rung up simply by putting the SKU number in at the register. Well, before I started inputting items into the system, some people would use the bar code as the SKU number. This would create a problem because in theory the system isn't supposed to recognize the same number twice, so what would happen is either it would arbitrarily change the bar code so as to avoid a duplicate number, thereby making the item unscannable at checkout, or it would keep both numbers the same but create issues within the system itself. Shawn from Ultimate Retailer, who has played the role of my Mr. Miyagi in training me on the system (thankfully he hasn't told me to "wax off" yet) has been able to identify some of these items that have been causing the system problems, three pages of them so far, that I had to then go back into the system and redo or just delete altogether. So this has been a tag team effort of sorts, since he is doing his work off site, I end up being the hands on guy and following his instructions on how to do the fixes the system requires.
We have had some other issues as well, such as the coupon keys no working for everybody, in some instances they would only work for managers, in others they wouldn't work at all. We also had discounts popping up on the registers when the Misc taxable and non taxable keys would be used. Ideally those keys are used as a last resort, something doesn't scan for whatever reason, you can just use the appropriate key and if you know the price of the item and input it using those keys. But what was happening was that on a few of the registers, when the same Misc key was used twice in the same transaction, the system would running a discount. It was I who recognized that what was taking place was those keys were tripping some long dead promos that we no longer need, so I went into each specific register and deleted all existing promos. Taa daa, and now it works. While the system isn't perfect yet, it did get it's first workout today.
Ed wanted to change the prices on all of the regular size candy bars, increasing them from .99 to 1.09. This is similar to what occurred when the system was ground to an almost choking halt last time, when he wanted me to change all of the king size bars from 1.49 to 1.59. The more changes I made, the slower the check out registers ran trying to keep up with all of the changes. It got to the point where the registers would take longer than a minute to reset between transactions, if they reset at all. So today's project was going to put the new system to the test, me making multiple changes (as well as fixing many of those stupid SKU/bar code mistakes made by others). I was literally doing changes for better than an hour straight, changing SKU numbers, fixing bar codes that were edited and then changing actual prices. And guess what? No choking by the system. It is almost running swimmingly. I am sure there will be some bugs to fix yet, no system is perfectly running right out of the box and with my moderate skill set plus a lack of time due to other responsibilities at work, finding and fixing those problems will continue to be a work in progress. I know that all of our magazines and newspapers have to be redone, because none of the magazines were ever inputted properly and we just did price increases on all of the newpapers, but for now it works, which is more than we could say a few weeks ago. And that my friends is good enough for me. It makes me so happy that I think I am going to go "Wax off" now.
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