Garden Center POS Inventory Software

Touchscreen

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii's Touchscreen Functionality to Speed up Checkout time!

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii offers support for touchscreen enabled terminals through user-definable panels and floating windows. Touchscreen functionality is commonly used in order to simplify the Quick Cash interface at point of sale and therefore may not support certain point of sale features or advanced navigation. However, this touchscreen can fully customizable to fit your business needs accordingly to whatever makes sense to have immediately available at the touch of your finger.

With Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii POS software you can create either a global (system wide) or local (i.e. this workstation only) display button layout so that certain key features are displayed in an evidently obvious fasion. Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii POS software touchscreen technology allows you to have the features readily available at your finger tips, literally.

To help you, we have gained insights from of our clients and have highlighted the benefits of using our STA Module.

Using touchscreen technology will help you to check through customers quicker and more accurately. Again, this feature is is fully customizable!

For ease of use, you don't necessarily have to acquire a touchscreen terminal. The touchscreen functionality can be used by clicking through with your mouse as well - again this may be purposeful for your business to speed up check outs without investing in additional touchscreen hardware.

Note: The Touch Screen interface requires additional screen real estate so the minimum supported screen resolution is 1024 x 768.

• Allow Sales people to include Sell Through Allowance Tracking in Invoice costs and Margins
• Default Clearing Account - You should first create an asset account in the general ledge to post the Sell Through Allowance Tracking items to this account for efficient calculations (taxes, etc.) and billing processes.
• Manufacturer Billing Methods - Windward Software offers 5 different and unique methods to set up billing for your Sell Through Allowance Tracking items within your store.
• Lookup Words - During the set up of Sell Through Allowance Tracking you have the ability to enter Lookup words that will automatically be assigned to the Sell Through Allowance billing invoices when created. This gives you the ability to run A/R aging reports filtered by the lookup word to isolate just the Sell Through Allowance Tracking related billing invoices that are outstanding.
• Privilege rights to allow sales people to view costs and margins and if you want them to view the rebate on the invoice itself.
• Privilege rights to allow sales people to view costs and margins and if you want them to view the rebate on the invoice itself.
• Set up billing methods that work for your business needs and for reporting purposes.
• Specify what taxes to include on Sell Through Allownace items.
• View active and inactive sell through allowances set up.
• View sell through allowance items that are billed and not billed with invoice dates, numbers, the customer, quantity and amounts.
• Ability to view the rebate amount and profitiablity at the point of sale.
• Set up sell through parameters on retail discount costs $ or percentages %.
• Send billed invoices via PDF email or print and fax.

Kitting & Assemblies

Selling a Group of Items in a single Keystroke

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii POS software has a strong Kit System, also known as Assemblies or Bill of Materials. Kits are essentially a collection of items that can be sold at one time by selling just one part number instead of having to enter all the part numbers of all the items being sold. They can be used for small scale manufacturing businesses, to selling groupings of inventory in a store.

It can handle Dynamic Kits to remove all the raw materials as the kit is placed on the invoice, or Static Kits to remove the raw materials when the kits are manufactured and put in stock. There are also several options available on how to display the kit on the invoice and how to price the kit.

Kit Types

Information Kits

• The Information kit is only used to group similar items together.
• The Information kit allows for Disassembly of items on Purchase Orders.
• Information kits can be serialized.
• The Information kit type has no effect on Invoices.

Dynamic Kits

• Dynamic kit Parts do not have Stock Records. They are a Virtual Parts rather than a physical Parts in inventory.
• Dynamic kit item Parts are removed from stock at time of sale.
• Dynamic kit Parts cannot be serialized, but the kit item Parts can be ONLY on Exploding kits.
• The main kit Part Cost automatically recalculates when a kit item Part is deleted from the invoice and the ordered quantity is changed for the main kit Part or any of the kit item Parts.
• Dynamic kits can be either Exploding , (displayed on the invoice), or Non-exploding., (not displayed on the invoice).
• The kit price can be stored with the kit. Using this pricing method allows for manually control of the Retail Price for the main kit. Use this if pricing is different for the kit as a whole verses selling the individual Parts that make up the kit.
• Dynamic kits allow for Disassembly of items on Purchase Orders.
• Dynamic Exploding kits allow Alternate Parts or Modifiers.
• Dynamic Exploding kits allow individual item Parts to be removed from the invoice.

Static Kits

• Static kits have Stock Records and are used to manufacture items before the customer purchases them. Static kits are stored in the system with the quantity on hand. Raw materials are removed from the system and are not available to sell. A rebuilt alternator would be an example of a Static kit. The core, brushes and other items would be removed from inventory and installed on a new completed item to be put on the shelf ready to sell.
• The individual kit item Parts are removed from Stock at the time the kit is built. Static kits do not explode onto the invoice because, by definition they have already been assembled. By setting the appropriate switches in the invoice setup area, however, items within the Static kit will explode onto the invoice with the retail prices set to zero for information purposes. Work Orders (Pick Slips/Pick Slip Checker) can also be made to explode the kits for the technicians to assemble, but not explode the kits on the Customer's copy of the invoice.
• Static, Serialized kits can contain Serialized items.
• Gift Cards can be included in this kit type.
• Static kits allow for Disassembly of existing Inventory items and items on Purchase Orders.

Tag-Along Kits

• A Tag-Along kit can be added to another Tag-Along kit or Exploding kit. This is called nesting. Kits can be nested only one level deep and cannot be added to an item that is already part of the kit.
• A Tag-Along kit allows selling more than one item at a time. In general this 'kit' drags other parts onto the invoice when you sell it (Similar to an exploding dynamic kit, except that the main kit item is also shown, with a cost and retail price on the invoice). This is useful for selling a common accessories or bundles were the purchase of one thing triggers the inclusion of other thing.
• Tag Along kits can contain Serialized items.
• Tag Along kits can contain Gift Cards.
• Tag Along kits allow for Disassembly of existing Inventory items and items on Purchase Orders.

With Kit Options, you can sell one item and have the system place many items onto the invoice for you.

Dynamic kits remove the inventory (raw materials) from stock as the kit is sold. By definition, there are never any kits in stock, only raw materials, and when the kit is sold, each of the items within the kit has it's items removed from stock. If you explode a dynamic kit onto an invoice, it ceases to be a kit, but all the items are on the invoice. This will allow you to then substitute some items for others if required by the customer.

Static kits are built before the customer arrives. When you create a static kit, the system will remove the raw materials from stock and then add the kit into stock so that it is available to sell. This is useful for a small manufacturing operation that wants to record how many items have been built and are ready for sale, and to quickly view which raw materials are left over. The system can analyze the inventory and let you know how many kits you can build from the raw materials in stock, and/or which materials you need to purchase in order to build a certain number of kits.

Tag along kits are a variation on Dynamic kits, as the raw materials are sold as the kit is sold. However, if an item is sold with another item unconditionally, you can then build a tag along kit instead of having to build the item and insert it within a kit too.

As the word Explodes indicates, when you "explode" a kit onto an invoice, it will place all the individual items onto the invoice so each can be individually priced and will also allow you to substitute one item for another. If you explode the kit itself onto the invoice, it will normally be priced at zero and each item will instead be priced. This will give you the benefit of being able to see what is sold and keep track of how many package deals you sold over time. If you sell a static kit, you do have the option to explode it onto a work order, but each item will remain unpriced. This will allow the staff putting the order together from the work order to know which items to supply with the kit. The customer's final invoice can remain unexploded and not show the details. If you are selling serialized items within the kit, you must explode the kit in order to correctly select which serial number was supplied.

Modifiers

Need to specify item-specific options? Use Windward Software's Modifiers option

Modifiers are used to configure an inventory item so when you sell it you can specify item-specific options (for example, a 2-seat or 3-seat couch, it's color and type of wood trim or various cell phone/air time plans). Modifiers must be enable in the Setup Wizard before you can configure them for an inventory item that you can then sell.

You can have additional costs associated with specific options and specific options can have their own part number. You can link inventory items that have the same modifier options so if you need to change an option you do so once and it applies to all linked items. (Use caution when linking items; the only way to break the link is to delete linked inventory items and re-create them).You can also copy modifier configurations from another item which then appends that configuration to the current item (you can also modify appended configurations).

Modifiers are commonly used for parts such as furniture that you may stock a demonstrator model of, but you would special order the exact item with the options the customer specifies. Modifiers are useful for items that you manufacture. It is also commonly used for cell phone/air time packages.

There are two types of modifier options:

Integrated Selection - these items are contained within the item on the invoice. The descriptions show as comments and the cost and retail prices are included in the line Price and Retail Price.

Non Integrated Selection - these items show as separate items on the invoice along with any associated charges. There must be actual parts created for these items.

Barcoding

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii's comprehensive and easy Barcoding Solutions

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii POS software will handle all your bar coding needs. It supports bar codes at point-of-sale, receiving and when doing stock counts using manufacturer’s supplied bar codes, or generate and print your own unique bar codes at the click of a button. Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii POS software interfaces with most of the popular bar code scanners, but we recommend the use of the Metrologic Bar Code Scanners for their value and ease-of-use. If your business is new to bar codes, or your present Point of Sale software doesn’t utilize them as effectively as you would like, Windward Software can help. Our training and support people will work with you to fully integrate our POS software to the way you do business … and we’re not satisfied ‘til you are!

Introduction

Although the first patent for bar codes was issued in the early 1950's, it wasn't until June 1974 that the first bar code scanner, made by National Cash Register Co. (now called NCR Corp.), was installed at Marsh's grocery store in Troy, Ohio. (A bit of retail trivia - the first bar coded product scanned at a check-out counter was a pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum!) It quickly spread to other types of retail stores because of its overwhelming success in speeding up the checkout process. (Trivia #2 - NASA uses bar codes to monitor the thousands of heat tiles that need to be replaced after every space shuttle trip.)

Bar codes are machine-readable symbols made up of black and white lines (the white spaces in between the black lines are part of the code) of four different thicknesses. They are used in retail point of sale (POS) software systems for the identification, tracking, and inventory of products, but their primary gift is the speed and accuracy they bring to the check-out – basically, a bar code is just the item’s part number in a machine readable format. The UPC bar code (Universal Product Code) is the North American standard for the retail industry (the rest of the world tends to use the similar “EAN” Article Numbering System), although several other variations also exist.

Reduce Errors

Data entry errors at point of sale and receiving can be a significant source of costs and all the problems related to them, such as unhappy customers, extra freight costs, the time spent to track down problems, etc., etc. The use of bar codes effectively eliminates data entry errors. Bar code scanners are incredibly accurate, with error rates as low as 1 error per 36 trillion characters, depending on the type of bar code used. (The typical error rate for human data entry is 1 error per 300 characters). Reduce errors, reduce cost...

Save Time with Barcodes

Although obviously used at the check-out counter to help speed throughput (and thereby improve the customer’s experience), bar codes save significant time in other applications. A frequently used example involves the taking of inventory. One customer’s six-month inventory task that used to take a full crew of 25 employees about two days to complete (with the resulting lost productivity time and overtime expense) was reduced to four employees and a total of about five hours with bar codes. As an added bonus, this much-reduced task of taking inventory can be done more frequently, thereby improving the accuracy of your stock counts.

Similar savings in time can be realized when receiving purchase orders. Day after day, the small, incremental savings by being able to scan bar codes instead of writing down part and serial numbers can add up to substantial amounts. Save time, save money...

How Barcodes Work

Each character is represented by a pattern of these wide and narrow bars. An optical scanner, or bar code reader, uses a photo sensor to convert the bar code into an electrical signal as it moves across (called “scrubbing”) a bar code. The bar code reader measures the relative widths of the bars and spaces, translates the different patterns back into regular characters, and transfers them to the POS software. Every bar code begins and ends with special start and stop characters to help the reader detect the bar code and decide whether it is being scanned forward or backward.

One of the most common misconceptions is that people can load their inventory into the system by scanning the bar codes and the system would know everything about the item including it's description, supplier, cost price, suggested retail and part number. In fact, it only gives the part number. With POS software, such as Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii POS software, when you scan in the part number, the system can lookup the item from the database and display the extra information such as description, price, etc. (If you are adding brand new inventory items you must manually enter in these details in to the database).

Reduce Regulatory Requirement Hassles

Some regulatory agencies (FDA, USDA, EPA, etc.) may impose labeling requirements that you must meet. While it may be part of the cost of doing business, you can save time and money by using bar codes in your own operations. You can collect required shipping manifest information quickly and accurately by scanning the bar code labels that you printed to satisfy the Regulatory Agency. Less hassles, less heartburn...

History Tracking

Whether You're Looking for Warranty Tracking, Sales, Service or Invoice History - Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii has You Covered!

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii POS software will keep track of the quantity of items sold on a month by month basis for a 36 month period. This quick summary will give you a quick and easy view of the inventory movement. When printing inventory movement reports, you can ask for the sales for given set of months, or you can print a quarterly or seasonal sales report.

The system also stores the full sales history by linking the inventory item to each and every sale ever made. When printing a sales history, you will be able to view the date of sale, invoice number, customer name, quantity sold, and selling price. Optionally, the system can even print the comments associated with the sale of the item. If there is an item recall from the manufacturer, it will be easy for you to track down all the customers. But even more important, if you have an accessory for the item, you can mail or contact each person and let them know about the item, allow you to better sell to your existing customers.

Have you ever had a customer come into your store with an old item, without a receipt, and insist that it is still under warranty because they only purchased it last July. After spending hours in your hot attic or cold basement searching through old invoices, you discover that they purchased 3 years ago in October and their warranty is no longer valid. Isn’t there any easier way for warranty tracking?

With Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii POS software, warranty items can easily be tracked and stored in your customer record. Not only that, but all of their previous invoices and purchase history are available at your fingertips. Search for a specific product that they purchased or the invoice that it was purchased on. Either way, it's all interconnected and you can find the invoice within minutes.

Customer History

You can quickly bring up a list of all invoices on file, sorted by date and showing the current outstanding balance. By selecting an invoice, the system will bring up a list of the items sold on that invoice, compete with part number, description, quantity, and price sold for. You can then even select a given item, and the system will show you who sold the item, the date and time it was processed at the till, who you bought the item from, how much it cost you, and the profit you made on selling that item. It will even show any special comments or notes attached such as if the item was damaged when it was sold and cannot be returned. Or if they bought it on sale, you'll know not to refund them the full retail price.

This history is invaluable at point of sale, because customers will often come in and want to purchase an attachment for the item they purchased, but cannot remember the model number or exact item description. For example, if they bought a fax machine, you want to ensure that you sell them the correct paper to go with it.

• Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii POS software will keep track of the quantity of items sold on a month by month basis for a 36 month period.
• Flexible and powerful management report generation..
• Select the number of digits you wish to left-pad the serial number assignments with.
• Accurately Track Service History.
• Purchase history and invoice history for clients.
• Fully integrated with your software solution.
• View service history for repairs and services.

Easy to Use TouchScreen

A Powerful and Easy to Use TouchScreen empowers your cashiers to quickly help customers.

Integrated Credit, Debit and Gift Card Processing

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Furniture Software supports the authorization and processing of credit cards, debit cards and gift cards.

Credit Cards, Debit Cards and Gift Cards are scanned at the POS Terminal.

The authorization information prints on the customer receipt, as does the signature line.

An optional Customer Signature Pad eliminates the need to store signatures.

Instant Access to Customer Information

Customer name and address information can readily be accepted and entered at POS or in the back office. Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Furniture Store Software maintains a customer buying history which can be viewed at POS with details of every transaction and a dollar total of purchases to date. When a customer returns to a store, verifying customer satisfaction on former purchases or intelligently suggesting new purchases has great impact. A detailed purchase history is also invaluable for controlling merchandise returns or monitoring discounts.

Layaways and Special Orders

Why should a store lose customers and sales because clerks can't find an item or price? Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Furniture Store Software allows an instant view of whether an item is in stock at this store or any other location. It allows immediate lookup of the correct price of an item which may have lost its tag. The system can be used to identify and find items similar to what the customer is looking for, whether by vendor, price range, color, etc.

Estimates

Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Furniture Store POS software allows you to enter estimates using the customer and inventory items on file. Estimates will have no effect on the inventory on-hand, customer balances or the profit and loss statement. However, when the customer decides to make the purchase, you can convert the estimate into an invoice or work order without having to re-enter all the data.

Point of Sale Summary Reports (X/Z Out)

The daily X/Z Out Report from Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii Furniture Store POS Software provides a summary of all the day's activity at a POS station, or for a particular clerk, or for the whole store. It totals up sales, returns, tax, shipping, and sums paid in and paid out for each tender and each credit card. It lists and totals all sums in or out for special transactions, such as Gift Certificates. It totals all line item discounts by the reasons they were given. This report reconciles the drawer easily and swiftly, and its exact breakdowns can help isolate procedural errors for correction.

Payments

When payments are received, you can specify how much was paid against each invoice. This allows for better control of the system and easier reconciliation with your customers. Of course, Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii offers several shortcut keys to simply pay all the invoices in one fell swoop or to pay invoices up to a given amount.

Work in any month or year

You can enter invoices into any month in the current year or previous year, and reprint most reports for any given period. This allows you to continue invoicing first thing in the morning of a new month, even if the back office is not finished charging interest, adjusting accounts and printing statements. Many other systems require that you completely finish a month before being able to start a new month or year.

Customer Credit Control

On the customer account, you can specify the credit limit for the customer, in addition to the price schedule to use, charge type, and comments. If you try to create an invoice that will put the customer over their credit limit, the system will warn you. If you do not have the security clearance to override, the invoice can not be completed until the account is paid.

Collections

Collections on outstanding debts are never fun, but Akamai Point of Sale Hawaii can make them easier. You can print an aged A/R report, complete with customer name, phone number and a list of all the outstanding invoices. Optionally, this report can be configured to only include customers with balances older than a certain number of days, such as over 60 days or 90 days so that you don't have to manually skip over the current customers.

As you call each customer, you can enter your comments into the appointment scheduler and set a date to review their file and ensure they have paid, and if not, to call them back. By keeping track of all you customer contacts, it's easier to control when to call and remind them of their past promises.

Writing Checks

If you are entering information from a previously handwritten check, you can do that without having to print them. Incredibly, many other systems force you to print the checks, regardless. After creating a check, you can choose to post-and-pay it, or simply batch for later payment. This lets you spend some time setting up the checks. Once you are ready, you can load the checks into the printer and then print and post the batch at one time.

Time Payments

In some cases, you may get a large shipment of goods from a supplier and be allowed to pay in thirds, one month at a time. Windward System Five will allow you to enter·a time payment plan, with distributed payments. This information is used with the cash requirement report to determine which bills have to be paid.

Buying Group Support

If you deal with buying groups, then you'll buy the inventory and goods from a supplier but pay the buying group. This is because to get great discounts, the buying groups often pay the bills very quickly or at least guarantee payment.

When you use buying groups, you'll be able to report on all the purchases from a given supplier, even if you don't owe them any money, and be able to look at the buying group from a financial point of view to see what you owe.

You can even use this technology if you purchase goods with your credit card. There, you buy from a supplier but pay Visa, Mastercard or American Express.