Next week we plan to change how discounts work in MerchantOS. After the update, when you apply a transaction level discount, every line on the sale will receive the discount. Discounts will only be able to be applied at the transaction line level.

Why we made this change

• Approximately the same level of sophistication but easier to use: Most users won’t have to change the way they ring up sales or how discounts are configured. You can still apply/remove a discount to every line on the transaction in one shot.
• No accidental double discounting: Several customers have given transaction level discounts after having already given line level discounts. This update eliminates that possibility.
• Easier to use: There are only line level discounts now. This is less complicated than having transaction level and line level discounts. Fewer mistakes will be made and it will be easier to understand how the system works quickly.
• It’s easier for us too: Having only transaction line level discounts makes it easier for us to improve the system more quickly. Removing transaction level discounts is one less thing to always consider as we develop.

What’s an API?

API stands for Application Programming Interface. It’s a way for programs to communicate with each other. You’ll need some programming skills to use the API but our hope is people will create and share/sell applications that integrate with MerchantOS. For example a company that has web based rental software could integrate their application into ours and you could then use their product if you wanted to add rental capabilities to our point of sale system.

Getting Started

We’ve created a developers page and a set of API documentation. If you have any questions just call or email support and we’ll be happy to help out.

Some Examples Of How The API Could Be Used

All of these will require a programmer, but for someone who has experience using web service APIs, this should be fairly simple.

• Display stock levels and price on your website.
• Build a web application for customer’s to look up their workorders or sales history.
• Synchronize your MerchantOS items with your Ecommerce site.
• Build a utility to import your purchase orders into MerchantOS.
• Create a custom integration with an accounting system.

What The API Can’t Do

The API can be used to do an almost unlimited number of things. But it isn’t magic. Here are some things it can not do.

• Change the interface to MerchantOS. The API only works with the data from your account. It can’t change how MerchantOS itself looks.
• Get notifications of events in MerchantOS. We hope to add this at some point.

We are now able to automatically send your customer list and sales data to The Bike Cooperative. Setup is easy and you’ll never have to hassle with sending information to The Bike Cooperative by hand again.

The Bike Cooperative improves retailers’ profitability and quality of life through its exclusive buying, marketing, cost savings, and training programs. If you’re not already member of The Bike Cooperative, you can check out their offering here.

Do you have multiple printers all plugged into the same computer? Do you ever send your receipts to your label printer or vice versa? We’ve just made a huge improvement to help stop that from happening!

What it does

After you install and configure a special printing add-on for Firefox, print jobs will be automatically sent to the correct printer on Microsoft Windows computers. If you print a receipt, the receipt printer is automatically sent the print job (no print dialog necessary). If you print labels, you’ll be warmly greeted by the whirring and clicking noises of the correct printer as well.

If you’re a Mac user, sadly you can not take advantage of this feature. The printing functionality in Firefox for Mac is different and will require an update of that browser.

All you need to do is follow the setup instructions in our manual to start taking advantage of this now

We slowed things down a bit for the month of November and October so that several of us could cycle out for much needed vacations. This has given those who took a break some time to recollect and prepare to push MerchantOS forward. Here’s what we’re working on right now…

Application Programming Interface (API): There are many features and functionality we would love to add to MerchantOS but simply don’t have the resources to do on our own. Also there are many customers who have very unique needs from their point of sale system. The API will allow any programmer to write an app that works with MerchantOS. You could for example hook your homegrown order fulfillment system into MerchantOS or create mobile device apps that interact with your point of sale.

Before you get too excited, this is a fairly sophisticated feature that will require the skills of a programmer to utilize. Our hope is some programmers who write integrations would share or sell their integrations. Also other companies with complimentary products could now integrate their product with our own instead of waiting for us to integrate with them.

The API is available in a limited form and we are currently adding more functionality to it. You can read about it here.

Just wanted to let you know that we’ve redone the Quick Add Item feature. The new interface is similar to the normal item record view. It works in the same general way the old Quick Add Item worked:

1. Use the search field to search for an existing item or catalog item.
2. Or you can directly start typing in the details of a brand new item.
3. Enter a quantity (optional) you want to add to inventory for the item.
4. Press “Add Inventory and Start A New Item”, to start the process over.

We have merged this functionality in with the “New Item” feature. So whenever you are creating a new item you get the Quick Add Item interface. We’ve removed the “Quick Add Item” button from the menu because it’s now the same as that “New Item” button.

If you are having trouble give us a call. If you have feedback about this feature you can submit it through Help->Suggestions & Feedback or just leave a comment here.

An article came out in the most recent issue of Bicycle Retail And Industry News regarding how retailers are trying to reduce their costs by encouraging customers to pay via PIN based Debit instead of Credit Cards. In a nutshell PIN based debit transactions have a flat fee, usually less than a dollar, to process the transaction. Credit cards, particularly those with rewards paid back to the cardholder, take increasingly higher percentages of the whole transaction. This has lead to a push by some retailers to encourage the use of PIN based debit by their customers.

How We’re Trying To Help

Before you get too excited, we don’t (yet) have a way to process PIN based debit integrated into our system. Users who are accepting PIN based debit and using MerchantOS right now are using side terminals which are not integrated.

We are working rigorously towards offering integrated PIN based debit to our customers. One of our new recommended processors Element Payments is working with us and some newer hardware technologies to make this ability available within our system. We can’t guarantee this will lead to a working solution at this time but things are looking good so far. As soon as we are able to offer this feature, we’ll have a post about it.

Another less popular approach we may have for retailers is ACH. This is basically instant payment by check.

Has your shop been affected by the payments industry?

Please comment below on how you’ve coped or if you have ideas, we’d love to hear them.

We’ve taken a bunch of your feedback and put it to work. It should be a lot faster and easier to fill out a workorder.

Here are some of the changes we just did:

• No need to open an editing area to change the workorder status, employee, item, etc. Edit away and your changes are saved instantly.
• Added Save Parts check box.
• Added “Assign To All Lines” next to the employee selector at the top of the workorder. This assigns the employee to all lines on the workorder.
• Arrange the order of all workorder statuses, including the built in Open, Waiting, Estimate, Finished, and Done & Paid.
• You can assign custom colors to all workorder statuses.
• Plus some other tweaks we hope you like.

How did we do? Please let us know. We’ll keep making tweaks to workorders for a couple more releases before we move away to other areas for a while.

You’ve given us some valuable feedback on the new workorder interface. Here’s a run down of some of the changes we are planning to implement that you’ve suggested:

While Editing A Workorder

• Add “Parts” and “Labor” subtotals under the workorder $ Total.
• Add a “Save Old Parts” check box.
• Add a Price column to labor tasks that shows calculated price if hours/minutes have been entered and the shop has a service rate set.
• Have the add “Labor” dialog have the same fields as when you edit a Labor task. So you can do things like set the employee while you’re creating the task.
• Add a way to set the employee for the entire workorder and all lines at once.
• Set colors on your custom statuses, highlight the workorder with that color when you’re editing it.

Workorder Listing

• Custom workorder status colors will be displayed here as well.
• Add columns for Hook #, Total $.
• Add color to item description.

Future Planned Changes

Better Tag Printouts: we know the “Tag” print out needs a lot of improvement. We’d like to make something that resembles a traditional workorder write up.
Remove the Misc. Button: we are either going to completely do away with Misc. charges or at least make having the button optional (and off by default).
Custom Quick Add Menus: these menus would give you a quick way to navigate to commonly used parts and services. The main register interface is going to get these as well.

Removing Cost From Labor

We’d like to remove cost from labor. I know a lot of you are going to say “no, we need cost on our labor to see our profit and margins!!” Here’s the thing: Putting in a cost estimate on your labor is going to really mess up your books, and give you incorrect information. Here are some examples of why putting costs on your labor is a bad idea:

• Double Entry Of Labor Costs: When your information from MerchantOS is imported into your accounting software (probably QuickBooks) it’s going to enter costs associated with your labor sales. Then when you enter your employees payroll, your rent, utilities, etc, you are double entering your labor costs.
• Fake Profits and Margins: You can’t exactly predict the cost of your labor before hand. What if your mechanics are especially slow or fast this month? That will change your labor margin.

In short labor costs, profits, and margins should be calculated after everything (payroll, rent, utilities, tool purchase, etc) is entered into your accounting software.

Keep The Feedback Coming!