XpertMart^TM -- What's New

March 2003

• Automatic Purchase Orders triggered when Stock On Hand & Outstanding Orders fall below a user-defined Maximum stock level for each item.
• Synchronization process made more efficient and reliable. Older files in the  In and Out folders as well as on the FTP Server  can now be automatically erased. 
• Customers can be classified as tax exempt and no tax will appear during transactions.
  

February 2003

• Fully integrated, multi-protocol credit card processing module gives users the freedom to choose among dfferent credit card processing services. The user is not tied to any one processing service.
• When a Purchase Order is referenced in a Receipt, the original PO items and quantities appear in the Receipt, as well as a column indicating merchandise that has been previously received. This makes it easier to handle partial shipments from the vendor and receive against Purchase Order multiple times.
• Report Tree can be synchronized out to the stores. Any report designed at the Main office can be sent out to every store or a to a particular group of stores.
• Address labels for Customers, Vendors or Employees can now be printed on a bar code printer.
  

January 2003

• Vendor Allowance catalogue created. Can enter start and end dates for vendor promotions and the per-unit rebate being offered by the vender. Reports summarize total vendor allowance due from each promotion.
• An item's cost can be printed on the bar code in encoded form.
• Employees can belong to a Discount Group. The Discount Group determines the maximum percentage discount this group can give on a whole invoice. Or you can assign discount percentages per department of merchandise that this group of employees can give. Thus you can limit all discounts based on type of employee.
• Customers can belong to Discount Group. The Discount Group can automatically get a certain percentage discount on all their purchases or receive different discount percentages per department of merchandise. For example, a customer can receive one discount if she buys sandals and another discount if she buys a winter coat.

December 2002

• X-Out Reports added to Processes allow user to quickly monitor sales for a specific date or even time range for any station (cashier) or salesperson at any store. Can also run a "Blind X-Out" report which asks the cashier to report all payments by type received before seeing what sales have been registered in that period.
• Box quantities can now be used in any transaction such as Receipt, Invoice and Purchase Order. Once the user specifies the number of items per box, merchandise can be counted both  by boxes and by individual items.
• Speed improvements to the synchronization process. The system now erases old files more efficiently.
  

November 2002

• Beta version of XpertMart^TM in Japanese. 
• Can save start and finish dates for each season in the Seasons Catalogue. This allows the user to run reports comparing sales from two different Fall seasons,
• Receiving module can be configured to restrict changes to item cost or quanitites received if these are different than the Purchase Order being referenced.
• System can be configured to require that a salesperon be specified in the Invoicing module to better track commissions.
  

October 2002

• Price changes can be programmed by date and time. This way the user can schedule a special price, for example Mother's Day weekend) to take effect during the period chosen. 
• Volume pricing is now activated. The user can define a special price for an item if a customer buys a certain amount. For example,  a retailer can sell a suit for $200 or $150 if the customer buys more than three. 
• Conditional printing created in the report designer. The user can link boolean formulas to the properties of any component of a report. This way a stock report can be designed that automatically displays positive quantities in blue, negative quantities in red and zero stock in green.
• Improvements to the way the report designer creates and displays bar graphs, particularly when dealing with negative amounts. The output is a lot easier to read now.

September 2002

• Unlimited number of price lists can now be created at the Main and transmitted to the stores. Users with the appropriate security clearance can switch between price lists (for example from retail to wholesale) at the point of sale.
• Customers can be assigned to a price list. When entering a customer's name at the point of sale XpertMart^TM will automatically recall that customer's prices regardless of the price list currently in use at the store. 
• New process created to simplify Mass Changes to Prices or Costs. For example, if a certain vendor anounces a 5% increase in the cost of all of their merchandise, the order cost can now be modified (mulitplying by a factor of 1.05) through a simple screen. In each case, a Merchandise Filter will pop up (powered by our XpertQuery^TM technology) to quickly select by parameters such as style, brand, color, vendor, collection, department and so on. 
• Report designer now stores in each report the dates and author whenever a report is modified, as well as any comments.

August 2002

• XpertMultiReports^TM allows the user to group a battery of reports, for example the end of day point of sale reports, so that they can be run in one report. Parameters (such as date and store) are only entered once and apply to all reports. 
• Physical Inventories have been sped up with a configurable option that disables the entry of quantities in Count Sheets and Receipts. The system will use one piece as the default quantity and move on to the next barcode. 
• A new document type, Correction Slips, was created to correct discrepancies that arise during inter-store transfers between Out Slips and In Slips. These Correction Slips are consistent with our philosophy that all changes to inventory should be done through a document that can be audited. Access to Correction Slips is controlled through the security module and only existing Slips can be modified.
• The handling of images during Print Previews in the report designer has been made a lot faster.

July 2002

• XpertTrend^TM integrated into the Styles, Brands, Stores, Departments and Vendors catalogue. Dynamically displays unit and value (dollar) sales for the last week and four weeks, allowing the user to serendipituosly spot trends quickly. XpertMart^TM is now "pushing" useful information before the user without the user having to ask for it. 
• Discount reasons can now be captured at the Point of Sale. When a cashier gives a customer a discount, a (configurable) drop down menu appears with a list of possible reasons. Discount types and maximum discounts are password controlled and can be over-riden by managers with the appropriate password.
• XpertRestore^TM process created. In the (unlikely) event of a total loss of a data in a store, this process can automatically extract and restore a given store's database from the central database at the Main.
• Several improvements in the graphical user interface of the report design module.

 

• Store Credit module created. Customers can receive a store credit when returning merchandise. Module keeps track of customer's available credit balance and purchasing history. 
• Sales tickets can now be configured to automatically display maximum date that returns or exchanges are permitted (for example, by always adding 14 days to the date of the sale).
• Sales tickets can also be configured to display total amount customer saved at the bottom by adding up item and global discounts. If there were no discounts, the "You Saved" line does not appear on sales ticket.
• XpertImage^TM revamped. The system can now be configured to warn the user when an image exceeds a definable maximum file size (in order to execute image-rich reports quickly). The system can also be configured to automatically shrink an image to meet the maximum allowable size.
• Photos previously saved in an XpertMart^TM catalogue can now be exported to outside files.