Twitter & Facebook

How many of you are using Twitter and Facebook to communicate with your customers? 

Hopefully, all of you!  Why?  Because it's effective and free.  The only cost is in your time and while that is incredibly valuable, this is one area it's worth spending it. 

Aside from a great way to communicate with customers and promote your business, these social media tools have a way to help increase your speed of service through SP-1 with our new WebOrder Interface.   

With this, you can have a simplified Twitter and Facebook order system that allows your customers to place an order on Twitter & Facebook!  

This order is then directly transmitted to SP-1 for your staff to finish.  It's a great way to increase your speed of service with your customers!

Don't hesitate to call us for more information. 










Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

SCAA in Houston

SCAA in Houston TX

This week we will be at the Specialty Coffee Association of America show in Houston, Tx.


We will be gone from 4/27 to 5/2 and if you happen to be in town, come visit us!


Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

New Printer Options

Have you heard about our new "sticky" thermal receipt printer?  This is a great option for passing along a food or drink ticket to the appropriate person.  


The printer uses a special roll of thermal paper that has a "post-it note" gum on the back of the paper.  This provides a liner-less thermal ticket that leaves little to no residue! 


We have already seen uses for sticking this to a cup when passed to a Barista and on sandwich and pizza boxes! 


Call us for more information. 






Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Barcode Scanning in SP-1

Do you have a need for barcode scanners in your store?   Typically we get the request for one of two reasons:




Retail:  If you are carrying a lot of retail items, then a barcode scanner may make sense for you.  The barcode scanner in conjunction with our retail control system will give you the option of increasing your accuracy and speed when selling retail items.


With the barcode scanner, you simply scan the UPC (or user generated barcode number) and the item is instantly added to the ticket!  

Gift & Loyalty:  A barcode can be used as a customer id / gift / loyalty card.  The advantage of this is that you can then use a key chain style gift card that your customers can conveniently carry on them. 










Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Time Keeping Reports

Time Keeping

In this blog, I'll continue to take a look at some of the reporting features in SP-1.   This time, we will look at some of the Time Keeping reports that are built in. 


There are four key reports for the employee time keeping.  

Time Period for Employee:  This report will provide you with the hours worked and wage earned for one employee.  Typically this would be run when an employee is released or special payroll circumstances.   This report shows you the details of each clock-in and clock out period, the wage, hours worked and any overtime. 


Time Period For All Employees:  This is very similar to the above but it runs for all the employees you have clock in / out periods for.  Additionally, this report will allow you to run a summary version that shows you just the total hours and wage for a quick reference.  This is the report that you will typically run for your payroll period. 


Employee Listing:  This report will show you a simple list of all employees and their contact information. 


Job Classifications:   If you pay employees different wages based on the job that they clock in with.  This gives you a great way to see where your payroll dollars are going.


As usual, there are a number of different ways to show this data.  Also, there are some specific switches that determine how these reports (and others) function.  Don't hesitate to contact us for more details! 








Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Northwest Foodservice Show

Northwest Foodservice Show

This weekend we will be at the NWFS show in Portland Or!   


We will be gone from 4/3 to 4/4.  If you happen to be in Portland, look us up! 


Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

April Fools Day

Happy April Fools Day

Everyone knows that SelbySoft has been working diligently on  new enhancements recently. Here are some significant changes that will soon be implemented:

In an effort to help our customers, tech support will be provided from a continuously airborne 747 so we can eliminate time zone challenges.

To save money all our new versions will be in black and white. 

We have now convinced Coffee Fest, World Tea, Pizza Expo, Northwest Food Service, SCAA etc to combine into one super show so all of us in sales are only out of the office once a year.

To cut costs, we will stop providing a picture oriented order system.  (Wait - That makes us like everyone else!)

We are going to move our software to be a 100% Facebook application.  We all know that is where you spend the bulk of your time anyway right? 

We have finally created the fastest order system possible - Coffee will have one button that says COFFEE and the restaurant version has one button that says FOOD.  Pricing is optional. 


 Instead of providing sales numbers, COGS, labor cost etc to your email and phone via MobileDash, SelbySoft will now just send you your employees Twitter & Facebook streams so you really know what is happening in the store.

We have contracted with the American Psychic Association to provide tech support so we know about your problem before you do. 

Our Sales department will be shut down and moved to Taco Del Mar - That's we all know that is where I spend the bulk of my time anyway.

All of these should take place on February 30th 2012.  

Contact us at: 

SelbySoft

Mike Spence

800-454-4434

Sales@SelbySoft.com

WWW.SelbySoft.com

8326 Woodland Ave. E

Puyallup Wa 98371

Gift cards and Cash Drawers

Does your cash drawer open when you use a gift card?  It doesn't have to! 


Under the Cash Drawer options in System Setup | Cash Drawer, you can select to have the drawer   stay closed when a gift or credit card is used.  


This allows you to limit employee access to the physical cash drawer.

Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

NEW MobileDash

Thinking about our MobileDash Options?  You haven't seen anything yet! 




This new technology allows SP-1 to remotely communicate with you via email on a constant basis.

We started with being able to show you your:
Tostal tickets
Total sales
Average dollar per ticket
Total labor dollars
Labor percent
Total cost of goods
Total cost of goods percent

We then give you menu group breakdowns with totals!  This all is emailed to you on an hourly basis so you are completely in control of what is going on in your store. 


While all of this us pretty cool we decided that it could not stop there.  All of this was just the beginning of the reporting you receive from us.

MobileDash has been enhanced to provide new features as well! 

VoidTrack- Ticket voided?  You get an email!


TheftAlert- If an employee enters 911 as the password for no sale - you get an email alerting you to a potential robbery!

AuditTrack - When a void does happen you need to know what is happening. Audit track will show you what was voided who did it and when.

TimeManager- an employee clocks in? You get an email!

Nosale- No sale occurs? You get an email!

EmployeeMail. Are you familiar with our ecomm messaging system?  This takes it a step further so that your ecomms are automatically emailed to your employees

Do you use twitter ?  How would you you like to tweet specials from SP-1?  We have added this feature so that you can tweet specials directly from the system!

Don't think this is the end of this type of development....Keep checking with us for cool options to come!


Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Reporting - Daily Sales Recap

Continuing our introduction to SP-1 reporting. . . 

The Daily Sales Recap section of SP-1 reporting is where you can access most of the daily business reporting you will need to make intelligent decisions about your business.  

Think of this area as a 24 / 7 manager that can give you instant feedback on how the business is coming along.  Once you enter this area of reporting, you will see a number of report options:

Balance Till: This area is designed to do just that - allow you to balance a till.  This report shows every ticket that was added throughout the day.  You can provide an exception on the report for delivery tickets as those are handled through the driver.  This report can be run by the shift, the workstation or the day. The best use is to close out the actual cash drawer on a station and to close out a shift.   This can help you determine if you are over / short per drawer.  Keep in mind that this can also show and reflect credit cards, gift cards, tips, coupons and discounts.  This report should be run every day. 

Workstation Summary:  This report is designed to give you a picture of what is happening per workstation - including totals and menu breakdown. 


Employee Summary:  Use this to get a view of how well employees are doing from a cashier standpoint.  This report shows the total dollars that an employee sold, number of voids, number of tickets etc.  The great thing about this report is that the number of voids gives you a good indication of potential theft.


Shift Close - 40 Column:  This is very similar to the Balance Till but it is more of a summary.  You would use this report to print a receipt (on the thermal printer) for the shift.  This allows you to easily close out a till during your different shifts. 


Business Summary Recap:  This is the primary business report and is too large to go in depth with here.  This gives you a detailed listing of your day (week, month, year).  Labor percentages, menu mix breakdown down to the modifier level etc.  The important thing to remember here is that this should be run every day.  When this report is run, you have the ability to enter your cash, checks, credit cards etc for the day.  This will then compare those entries with what SP-1 has recorded.  You can then have an over/short to help see what is happening.


Hourly Recap by Week: This report is underused by most stores.  Basically this tracks, over a week the total number of tickets by hour and by menu group.  This is a great report because it shows you how many orders you had.  Use this to help schedule and plan your next week based on the last weeks sales. 


Credit Card Settlement:  This report allows you to reconcile your credit cards that were run through SP-1 with the credit card information reported by your processor. 


XML Ticket Summary: This is a customized export to an XML format.  This report can be brought into Microsoft Excel and used to provide full reporting beyond the normal reporting in SP-1. 

Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

New Table Service Option

Clock Out Options for Servers

If you have servers in your restaurant,  you will be interested in this.    I have occasionally heard from our customers that one of the issues they run up against is a server forgetting to close a table before their shift ends.  Now, the server collects the money but leaves that table on hold.  

This can throw a wrench in closing out the servers and reconciling the end of day paperwork.  

After thinking about this, our development guys decided to work on a new way of preventing this from happening.  


There is now a new feature in SP-1 that will allow you to prompt a server during clock out if they have tickets that have been left on hold.  This message will appear when you attempt to clock out.  

If you have a security level applied, a password will be required to select the "No Clock-Out" button.

Contact us at:

SelbySoft

Mike Spence

800-454-4434

Sales@SelbySoft.com

WWW.SelbySoft.com

8326 Woodland Ave. E

Puyallup Wa 98371

Reporting - Categories To View

In my last blog I wrote that we would be looking at what reports SP-1 has to offer.  More importantly, we will look at what you should use them for.


As I said last time, reports are something that people love and hate.  They love the fact that the information is out there and hate the fact that they don't use it.   Let's try and clear some things up here. . . 




In SP-1 we try to put our reports in some specific categories:


Daily Sales - This is the main business reporting section.  In here you will find the reports that impact your sales totals and menu mix breakdowns.  We will cover this more later.


Time Keeping - This is where employee reporting is.  Hours, time worked, wages etc.


Delivery - Here we cover what happened to the drivers you have on the road.


Mailing / E-mail -  Marketing is what goes on with these reports.  This area is incredibly important as it can help you directly increase your sales and customer retention.


Ticket History - Specific, surgical reporting on some certain categories of discounting, comments etc.


Account Billing -  If you run an accounts payable system for your customers, this is where you will see what is outstanding. 


Order Processing -  If you use our Order Processing module, you will get quote time breakdowns here.


Street Names -  For those of you that do delivery, you can find out about your delivery area here.


Inventory - All of the inventory and portion control reports are handled here.  Including the variance reporting on inventory.


Deferred Orders - If you handle timed or scheduled ordering, you will find it here.


Customer - Specific reporting regarding customers is located here. 


Now that we have that out of the way, let's start to talk about these categories in more depth.   My next blog will focus on the Daily Sales area. 






Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Reporting - What reports should you look at?

Reporting in SP-1

One of the lessons I've learned over the years is that store owners have different ideas about what is important for them.   It shouldn't come as a surprise that this is true - after all, it's why people open their own businesses. 

Everyone of these store owners that purchases a POS is to see the reporting capabilities that the system will bring to their store.  Once the POS has been up and running for six to twelve months, we see owners starting to dig deeper into the reporting aspect and really looking at  the numbers provided.

So what "typical" reports should you be looking at?   While there is no one answer for all, we do have some suggestions on what might help you understand your business better.

In this next series of blogs, I'm going to cover some of these reports more in depth and how they can be useful - both in what they were originally designed for and what they are actually used for. 

Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Labor Cost and the Business Summary

Are you tracking labor cost?

After one of the last trade shows, I came away realizing that there are a number of people that don't use our Employee Time feature.  I'm not sure what the thought is here as it is INCREDIBLY easy to track the employee time keeping in SP-1!

Once you have employees clocked in SP-1 starts tracking the time for each employee.  If you take the time to enter the wage per employee, then SP-1 is also tracking your labor cost!

Labor cost is automatically reported on your BSR (Business Summary Recap), Dashboard, as well as being reported on the MobileDash.  Having these numbers available to you are very important in controlling your costs on a regular basis.

One note, we do find people that are not tracking their salaried employees because they don't clock in / out.  We have the ability to enter the daily salary of those employees in one spot so that it is reported with our labor percentages!  This can be found in Reports | Reports Setup: 1

Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Technology behind SP-1

It appears that it has become a marketing technique for POS companies to report on how much data they can store and handle.  I guess we have always taken for granted that you "over program" based on customer needs.

Just to satisfy curiosity I thought I'd check our statistics and see what we have to show off!  

999,999,999 Total number of customers.

10 email addresses per customer.

10 phone numbers per customer.

4 addresses per customer.

9,999 Total tickets per day.

9,999 Total Menu Groups (Coffee, pizza, ice cream, smoothie, sandwich etc.).

999 Active specialty or signature items per menu group  (Latte, Mocha, Meat lovers, Veggie etc).

999 Active modifiers per menu group (Vanilla, pepperoni, wheat, hot, cold, extra shot etc).

99,999,999,999,999 Inventory items.

99,999 Total employees.

9,999 Active employees at a time. 

5 Cash drawers per workstation.

30 workstations per store.

195,000 Unique price tables as well as flat $ pricing ($1.00, $2.00 etc).

Unlimited Discounts.

Unlimited Coupons.

Total tickets, customer order history and reporting all based on the size of the physical hard drive.

Other neat statistics:  SP-1 has many installations where the customer has been using our software for over 15 years!

Updates?  SP-1 has gone through over 87 version releases (free when you are on support) and over 500 minor program revisions since 1994.

Stability?  Over 6 of our employees have worked for us over 10 years.  Total combined SP-1 experience through Customer Service & Tech Support  is over 80 years!   

How Order Types work in SP-1

How Order Types Work

Order types are an interesting concept in SP-1.  Basically they give you the ability to assign a station to the type of order that will normally be accepted on that station.

This really comes in handy in environments with multiple stations.   For example, in a typical shop you may have:

In this scenario, you have two stations for the front counter and two stations that are used to take phone orders.  By using a default order type we can help speed that service.  So, the phone stations would automatically be set to show the caller id or phone number screen and at the end of the order the type would be pre-set to "Pickup" or "Delivery" (depending on the type of business).    The order type can be changed on the fly as well.

Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Pizza Expo - Las Vegas!

Pizza Expo! 

This week we will be at the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas!  


We will be gone from 2/28 to 3/4 for the show.  If you are in town, stop by and see us!




Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Forced Modifiers (how to up sell)

Forced Modifiers, Up Selling and New Product

Let's start by making sure we understand what forced modifiers are.  A forced modifier is used when a specialty item is ordered and SP-1 then requires the order taker to pick an ingredient or modifier from a list. 


For example, in the picture below, we have a whole garden sandwich ordered.  The forced modifiers in this example is for a side choice. The employee would then be forced to select one of those side choices. 

Because you can assign a charge to a forced modifier, this can work as an effective up selling tool.  For example, if I select chips - there is no charge.  Pasta, potato salad or macaroni salad are all items that would have a charge. 


There is another use for forced modifiers however.   Introducing a new product or method of preparation to a customer.  In a sense, educating the customer on your store and menu.

In the picture above, we have an example of using this for education in a coffee shop.  In this example the customer asked for a brewed coffee.   The first forced modifier was the type of coffee being used and this is the second forced modifier.  This is a prompt for what the brew method should be.


What we are trying to accomplish here is the is both up selling our customer and also providing a tool to help your staff introduce new items to your customer.

Contact us at:

SelbySoft

Mike Spence

800-454-4434

Sales@SelbySoft.com

WWW.SelbySoft.com

8326 Woodland Ave. E

Puyallup Wa 98371

Interested in Gift Cards?

Custom Gift Cards

Interested in ordering gift cards?  Don't forget to think about custom gift cards.  Too many people go with a  generic card that does not remind the customer of your unique business. Having your logo on the card increases the likely hood that they will remember you.


What if you don't have artwork for the logo etc?  There are other ways to target your customers with the gift card design without having to spend a ton of money on graphic design.   


One common method is to put a high quality picture of your primary coffee or food on the front.  Nothing reminds us better than an image of the product we love.   There are even plenty of websites that offer royalty free pictures for anything from $2.00 to $50.00 for the pictures.  These are usually really high quality digital photos.

Other customers have simply taken a high quality picture of the location itself and used that for the front of the card. This is a great way to promote your cards as your customers recognize the building and the signage.


The back of the card is a great opportunity to market and promote as well.  Don't be afraid to wrap the color that you use on the card around to the back of the card as well.   When a customer looks in their wallet, we want them to associate the color on the back of that card with your location.


Don't hesitate to look at www.facebook.com/selbysoftinc for some examples of custom gift cards! 






Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Coffee Fest Chicago

Coffee Fest Chicago!

This week we will be traveling to Chicago for the Coffee Fest at Navy Pier!


We will be at the show from Feb 16-21.  If you are in town, stop by and see us!


Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Pre-Load Gift Cards

Have you ever thought of your gift cards as a marketing and fund-raising tool?  If not, I feel you might be missing the boat on one of the unique advantages to plastic gift (pre-paid, loyalty, rewards, customer profile) cards.  


Most stores receive at least a couple fund raising requests a year.   You may offer a discount, cash, free food etc on occasion to help out your local charity or non-profit organization.    Using a gift card may be a better way to go however.


Because you can pre-load gift cards with a dollar amount, you can easily setup a fund raising card system when asked.  The scenario would play out like this. . . You offer to sell the organization gift cards at a discounted amount.  So, maybe $20 cards for $15.  They then sell the cards for the face value of $20.  They make $5 on each card and you make a potential new customer and goodwill in the community. 


Another great example of using gift cards as a marketing tool is to keep some pre-loaded cards on you as a business card.  A $1.00 pre-loaded gift card works great for friends and associates.   It's an easy way to introduce people to what you have to offer. 

By the way - we have a number of example gift cards at our Facebook page - Don't forget to "like" us while you are at it!   Sample Gift Card Pictures

Contact us at:

SelbySoft

Mike Spence

800-454-4434

Sales@SelbySoft.com

WWW.SelbySoft.com

8326 Woodland Ave. E

Puyallup Wa 98371

Credit Card Processing?

Who handles your credit card processing? 

Good question isn't it? There are many payment processors to choose from. If you’re not sure which company is the best for you, we can help! SelbySoft has some preferred relationships with credit card processors that can save you money and help streamline your business operations. 

One of our relationships is with Mercury Payment Systems®.  Mercury® offers several  advantages that make them a great choice for our customers and a great partner for SelbySoft. Here are some of the reasons Mercury is one of our preferred processors: 

Customer Service. This is the most important thing we consider when evaluating partners, since it matters most to our customers.  Mercury offers free, live customer and technical support, 24/7. They have shown a dedication to customer service that has helped our merchants maintain a reliable credit card processing system.

Mercury Stand-In. This service is unique to Mercury.  If there is an outage within the authorization network, Mercury implements their stand-in service that allows merchants to continue credit cardprocessing. Mercury “stands in” so business continues as usual for our merchants.    

Direct Integration. SelbySoft and Mercury have a direct integration which  eliminates the need for a third party system like PC Charge. A direct integration helps cut future costs since no updates or support are required., Gift Cards. Mercury has a cross-store gift card program that supports pooling of gift card funds – ideal for merchants with franchises or multiple locations. Mercury also offers their customers free, unlimited gift card transactions.

Lastly, Mercury can be very competitive with their rates. They also offer month-to-month contracts for merchants who prefer less commitment with a payment processor.

I invite you to find out more about Mercury Payment Systems online at www.mercurypay.com

Contact: 

Bill Downey 

Sales Executive

Phone: 800-846-4472 ext. 4247

Email: bdowney@mercurypay.com

Fax: 970-335-4059.

Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371