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

Automatic Discounts

Automatic discounts for customers

Here is a neat feature that we have in SP-1.  A lot of our customers offer a discount for seniors, fire, church, police, teachers etc.  One of the benefits of having a POS is to make life easier for your staff and for a more convenient order process for your customers.


If you offer any of these customer specific discounts, you can assign them to the customer profile.  In the example below, David gets the "Fire Dept" discount of 10% whenever he orders.  

If the customer comes in, your clerk can simply swipe the gift card and the discount is automatically added to the ticket.   If it's a phone order, then simply enter the phone number and the discount will be added to the ticket.

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

Why update?

Why Update?

I am asked this on a fairly frequent basis.  With all the computers and software that we use on a regular basis, it seems like there is always something that has changed or needs updating.


It's enough to make you think that you spend half your time updating!


The answer (speaking of POS software)?
Do you have to update?  No.  
Should you update?  Yes, Yes and Yes.

If it were only that simple. . . 

Why?  Why do we create updates and why do we ask you to install them? 

First and foremost it is done to enhance your software.  No industry or product can remain the same over the years and still be pertinent.   Let's face it, are you still operating your store exactly the same way you were in 1990 or even 2000?   That's before Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Social Media, Free Marketing online, and a ton of other things. 

Over the years we have learned that our customers needs and the industry itself changes - we try to change with it.   These changes to our software help you remain current and provide you with tools to help compete.
Examples of this are:
Revamp of the gift card system - Easier to use, redeem up to 5 gift cards, etc.
Birthday notifications - alert the staff that the birthday has come up. 
Hands Free marketing - automatic email marketing on a monthly basis. 
MobileDash - receive sales numbers directly in email or on a smartphone. 
Increased social media marketing - neat stuff coming soon!
FAST order system - take orders the way customers say it. 
Enhanced reporting - custom exporting to manipulate data. 




Security is another reason to update.  Every year SelbySoft works behind the scenes to enhance the security of our software and to help keep you secure.
Examples of this are:
SelbySoft Transfer program for secure backups - remote backups automatically. 
Enhanced employee log ins - secure passwords. 
Fingerprint id systems - secure logins.
Theft and Employee Audits - controls to alert you to theft. 




What about the legal ramifications?  We all know that tax's, overtime regulations and PCI / PA-DSS all change over time.  Don't be caught with a system that is not calculating your numbers correctly because the law or regulation changed!
Examples of this are:
PCI changes - Credit Card industry standards.
Overtime changes - changes to overtime laws in places like California.
Tax changes - multiple states now have updated taxing situation. 


So there you have it. . . A couple of reasons that updating makes sense.  For those of you not maintaining updates on your system, call us - we would love to tempt you with all the new features we have since your last update! 

Contact us at:

SelbySoft

Mike Spence

800-454-4434

Sales@SelbySoft.com

WWW.SelbySoft.com

8326 Woodland Ave. E

Puyallup Wa 98371

Delivery Systems

How do you handle delivery?

For those of you that offer delivery service, you have had some big questions you had to address.   It seems like such a simple situation when you open a store but delivery is actually a very complex affair.

SelbySoft has some solutions for you however!  Today we will talk about the different ways that stores charge customers for delivery.

Most of our delivery customers choose to have a minimum delivery amount.  With SP-1 this can be based on the ticket or a menu group.  An example of the ticket amount would be that you may want a total ticket dollar amount of $10.00 in order to deliver.  An example of the menu group would be to only deliver if they order $10 of pizza, regardless of how much they order otherwise.  This stops the an employee from taking a salad delivery only.

Once a minimum charge is setup, you can choose to allow the customer to pay the difference between the minimum and the ticket total in order to meet the requirement!  For example, if a customer buys $8.00 of product, then SP-1 will add $2.00 to the ticket to meet the $10.00 minimum.  You can also add an option for overriding the additional charge if needed.

If the customer meets the minimum delivery requirements, then we get into what and how do we charge them?

With SP-1 you have four main methods of doing this. . .

Per ticket - With this you can add a charge per ticket for the delivery.  For example -$2.00 per delivery.

Per item - A little more complex.  In this method, you are charging based on the menu item and / or the order type.  So, if a customer orders 1 pizza for delivery, you may charge $1.00, 2 pizzas, $1.00, 3 or more would be $3.00 for the charge.  This can be used for a variety of different charges as well.   There is another method of doing this as well by using the accumulation switch.  With that turned on, the per item charge is accumulated.

Street Names:  With this activated, you can set a delivery address based on the specific street a customer lives on.

Map:  With this optional software, you can setup a delivery based on the range.  So under 1 mile is free, 2 miles out and more is $2.50

All of these options allow for delivery charges based on the time of day or day of the week as well!

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

Server Close Out Reports

Server Close Out

The server close out report was created for those of you that operate a table service environment.   This report is great for the "server banking" aspect of a table service restaurant.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the "server banking" concept. . . It's a method of having your server carry a "bank" of change with them in order to cash out tickets table side.  The server is then responsible for maintaining their own cash accountability.  

The Server Close Out report is used by the server once they are done with their shift.   The server will select the Server Close Out button in order entry to print the close out to the receipt printer. This gives a full reconciliation of the servers bank. 

As you can see by the example, this has a full list of all the tickets with totals, tender type, amount collected, tips and table number. 

We then take that amount, subtract checks, credit cards, accounts, gift cards, and gift certificates and report the cash sales.  

Next we take the cash sales and deduct any tips and check overages (writing a check for cash back).  That provides you with a total dollar amount the employee owes the house! 

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

One Touch Scroll

One Touch Scroll

Here is a simple but neat new feature.   You already know how to scroll through reports using the up and down arrows on the screen, scroll bar or your mouse wheel. 

We have a new way to view reports now.  Those of you with touch screen phones might find this easier!  

When viewing the reports to the screen, simply hold your finger on the screen for a little over a second and you can now scroll up or down by moving your finger on the screen!  

By the way - it also works with a mouse. 




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

Gift Card Reminders

Have you ordered gift cards?

Typically the holiday season is the busiest time for gift card sales to your customer.  How is your stock?  Are you prepared?

Every year we have customers that order gift cards at the last minute, hoping that they will be printed by Christmas.

Don't let this happen to you!  Most of the gift card companies that are out there have a couple week turnaround time from receipt of artwork to shipping of the cards. 

Here are some of the other blogs on gift cards for more information! 

http://selbysoft.blogspot.com/2010/07/gift-card-questions-and-information.html

http://selbysoft.blogspot.com/2010/09/holiday-customer-rewards.html

http://selbysoft.blogspot.com/2010/01/pre-load-gift-cards.html

http://selbysoft.blogspot.com/2009/10/gift-card-promotion-and-marketing.html


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