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Thread: Moving into the 21st Century

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    Alexandria VA
    Posts
    15,890

    Default Moving into the 21st Century

    I'm very excited! Today I got all my hardware up and running, and software installed, for a new Point of Sale system for my store. All computers have fresh Operating systems in them (Vista) and every device works as intended.

    We've been using hand-written invoices and sales slips since 1979, and my parents (who used to help in the store and were computer-adverse) objected to modernizing. They no longer come to the store (both now in their 80's) to work so I decided to invest in Quicken's Point Of Sale system. Comes with scanners, barcode makers, label printers, and more software than I can ever use. Once I get it set up and running, It should ease my paperwork load considerably, and it will track orders and inventory far better than the spreadsheets I now use. Best of all, year end inventory time and accuracy will improve be a factor of five. It will also have customer history in the program, so if you call me five years from now and want to know what leather and color you had on your H&M September sofa I can call it up in seconds.

    I almost didn't want to come home from work tonight, I was having WAY too much fun exploring all this new software can do, and printing out barcodes, reading them with the scanners.....WOW.

    Now the very tedious task will begin of entering every item in the store and printing a bar code for it. That's going to take a month of work.

    I know, I know...boring for computer gru's, but for a non-IT guy I was pretty jazzed to finally get everything working today in spite of Vista 64 bit drivers.....
    Duane Collie
    Straight answers from thirty-six years in the business.
    My Private Messages are Disabled - Please ask questions here in the forum.

  2. #2
    Bigwaved Guest

    Default

    Way to go, Duane! I think I just received one of the very last hand written receipt/invoice in the mail today. LOL. BTW, everything is spot on correct. I cannot wait to have HDS knock on my door in a few months.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    Alexandria VA
    Posts
    15,890

    Default

    I'll be hand-writing for at least another month, I imagine. Steep learning curve on the new software, but I'll eventually figure it all out.

    Yours was my first Councill order on your Rivoli sofa (yeah!) and I just had a Councill table sale come in yesterday, so I'm excited to get that line for the store as well.
    Duane Collie
    Straight answers from thirty-six years in the business.
    My Private Messages are Disabled - Please ask questions here in the forum.

  4. #4
    Bigwaved Guest

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by drcollie View Post
    I'll be hand-writing for at least another month, I imagine. Steep learning curve on the new software, but I'll eventually figure it all out.

    Yours was my first Councill order on your Rivoli sofa (yeah!) and I just had a Councill table sale come in yesterday, so I'm excited to get that line for the store as well.
    Have fun with the new software.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Location
    NW Pennsylvania
    Posts
    216

    Default

    Duane,

    Glad to hear you finally updated your system and I hope it all goes well!

    One word of advice, backups, backups backups (one word x3). Your system should be pretty nice but you never know when a snafu will hit it and data may need to be restored.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Location
    Lakewood Ranch, Florida
    Posts
    243

    Default

    I agree with the backup suggestion, especially with the business records. There are online services or external drives with automatic backup features. After loosing a hard drive a couple of years ago I will never be without my backup system.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    Alexandria VA
    Posts
    15,890

    Default

    I do backups off premise via the internet. Safer for vital records that way, in case the computers get stolen or burn up in a fire.
    Duane Collie
    Straight answers from thirty-six years in the business.
    My Private Messages are Disabled - Please ask questions here in the forum.

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