The Login Screen

Screen 1 - Select Your Store

Screen 2 - Find A Customer

For many retailers Mac is a great option over PCs due to shop aesthetics and the user friendliness of the system. Also a number of people use Apple already and don’t want to get a PC just for their point of sale system.

The people over at Apple made some significant improvements in how a Mac prints. Most notably they have done away with using an extremely old version of the print system they used in OSX Tiger. This means setting up the MerchantOS recommended point of sale label printer is now a snap as the drivers are already included in the default install of Leopard. The recommended receipt printer is equally improved in ease of setup requiring only a small download of the drivers from the printer manufacturer.

Leopard overall seems to behave faster than its predecessor running the MerchantOS recommended browser Firefox while at the same time a lot smoother in appearance. We highly recommend Tiger (OSX 10.4) users switch to Leopard (OSX 10.5) based on the printing updates alone.

If you’re not a Mac user, there’s no need to worry. We still support all the other major operating systems including Windows XP and Vista.

Zebra LP2824 Setup on Leopard

Star Micronics TSP100 Setup on Leopard

List of MerchantOS Video Lessons

Layaway and Deposit Video - Check it out if your having trouble understanding layaway deposits.

Incremental Improvements

The first thing we are concentrating on is making some incremental improvements to the new register, reports, purchase orders, and multi-shop transfers. You’ve given us some great feedback and we’d like to incorporate it into the system as quickly as possible.

Integration of Purchase Orders with Vendors

We’re hoping to get integration with with Quality Bicycle Products going very soon. We’ve been planning on this for a long time and the system is finally getting in good enough shape to take on this extra task.

Ecommerce

We’d love to stop all other development and just work on Ecommerce. Unfortunately it’s been too big of a project and there have been too many smaller issues that needed immediate attention. That being said it’s at the top of our “would really love to get going” list. I’m optimistic that we will be able to start development on Ecommerce in the next couple months. We just don’t want our core mission of providing great point of sale and inventory control to suffer as a result.

Here’s some specific issues that are on our list (I can’t guarantee they will all get done in short order but they are high priority).

Continued incremental improvements to the new register.

• The ability to set an employee for each sale, layaway, and special order line. This will help you find out who to talk to if you need more information about a special order or layaway, and also enhance the ability to give commissions to sales staff.
• For multi-shop accounts break up special orders, layaways per shop.
• Some other minor changes.

Improved Reports

• Remove all the $0 sales created by doing layaways, special orders from the Sales Totals report.
• Create a new report that just shows deposits and charges/withdraws from credit accounts and give cards.
• Sum the layaway, workorders, and special orders reports
• Some other minor changes.

Purchase Orders

• Add vendor account number and discounts.
• Vendor integration (starting with Quality Bicycle Products).

Multi-Shop Inventory Transfers

• Ability to archive transfers.
• Lock transfers after they are complete.
• Create a lost in transit report inventory transfers.

We’re happy to announce our point of sale software now has touch screen compatibility and we are now selling touch screen monitors. Touch screens make MerchantOS even easier and quicker. The screens will also help you eliminate the need for a mouse and soon the keyboard. If your interested, give us a call at 866 554 2453.

ELO1515L 15″ Touchscreen Monitor - $569.95

ELO1517L 17″ Touchscreen Monitor - $709.95

Don’t forget to let us know how we can help your business move forward. Your feedback has been a crucial part of our success. Without it we would be left guessing at what features to add to the system, and in what ways we need to keep improving what we already have. So please drop us an email, feedback message, or give us a call with your suggestions and comments about the system, good or bad!

Thank you to the 100 retail locations that are now using MerchantOS!

Visit us next week at Interbike in Las Vegas and get a sneak peak at the new version of MerchantOS.

We have been working hard for months on a new version of MerchantOS. And it’s almost done! It’s a complete over-haul of the point of sale interface. It adds the ability to do more, while making everything easier. Here’s a couple of the enhancements the new version will introduce:

• Easily make refunds to gift cards or store credit.
• Seamless integration of work orders, layaways, special orders, and credit accounts.
• Easier layaways, special orders, work orders, and refunds.
• Simplified customer credit accounts.
• Faster
• And much more.

Sound too good to be true? Come by our booth #4804 at Interbike and see for yourself. We’ll have two demo stations setup. One using a Mac Mini and another with a Touchscreen monitor.

We’d love to see you, get your feedback, and hear how things are going for you. So please stop by!

-Ivan and Justin

p.s. For those of you who can’t make it to Interbike we’re hoping to let you see the new version of MerchantOS some time in October. We’re working as fast as we can to get it done and make sure the transition from the current version to the new one is painless.