QuickBooks Point of Sale

Q: I am trying to get pre-POS sales history into POS so I can get total and dept. reports including all store history; and pull up sales by dept. by customer. Is there a way? We currently keep this info on excel spreadsheet of inventory.

EMS: Do you have an inventory for when you want to start your sales.  If not, it will be almost impossible.  If so, you could put your beginning inventory into POS and then create sales receipts for each sale.  Additionally create receiving vouchers for all of the new items.  If you are using QuickBooks merchant services, you would need to turn them off.  You may want to consult with an expert during this process as I can see lots of problems if it is not done right.

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Response: Thanks. I do have my info on my inventory file and had already tried to download a small portion in test mode a couple of different ways to see if that would work. I’m doing something wrong though. I was showing the quantity in stock as zero. Your method would require an item “in stock” so I could “sell” it. Right? I haven’t tried that yet. I can do that easily, though.  Since my inventory is all one-of-a kind items, it doesn’t matter about historical cost or cost averages for my purposes. We use QuickBooks financial, but won’t link to POS until after we move in a couple of months and start actually using POS.

Q: Is there a way to apply a discount for the cost of an item? For example… If I want to sell an item from my retail store at cost, do I have to apply a manual discount for that amount or is there anywhere I can just click to make the sale price the same as my cost?

EMS: Use Price manager.  In price manager you have the option to select cost and apply a discount against your cost. Use the change item price or automatic discounts.  It will step you through a wizard to set the pricing.

Q: I have tried to use discounts and price changes. Both only allow a formula to calculate the new price. For example, divide the regular price by X, or subtract X%, etc. Since our prices vary by item and don’t necessarily follow the same pattern for pricing (for example, we didn’t calculate price based on cost X 2.5. Some are different.  I just want to ring up a dozen items, and click a button that instantly changes all the regular prices to cost and close the sale. That’s it. Please tell me there is a simply way to do this.

EMS: Sorry, no easy way.  What you can do is add the cost field to the sales receipt screen, but click on view and customize columns.  Then at least, you can see the cost to manually change the selling price.

Q: I have 2 multi stores at 2 different locations. I want to know if it’s possible to have a warehouse inventory at each of those stores/locations.  I want that inventory separate from the store inventory and be able to transfer to the store inventory when I need it.

EMS: You can create virtual warehouses by increasing the number of locations at HQ and naming them.  You can then transfer out of the warehouse to the store at HQ.  We do this quite a bit in the winery industry as they have bonded storages, etc.

Q: Can you please tell me how to create virtual warehouses?  I love the idea but can’t figure out how to do it, it’s exactly what I need.

EMS: Sure, go to company preferences and click on multi-store/store exchange.  In that box you can select the number of locations.  Select 4 and then you can set up codes etc. for the 2 new locations.

Q: We had a customer who paid with a credit card and then returned an item the same day. They wanted us to leave it as a store credit until they came back today. Now it showed credit but then I took off from purchase and it says we gave cash back? Is that right?

EMS: If you use the on account function, it will create a store credit.  When you rang up their purchase, did you put the payment on account and some other form of payment?  If so, it would want to refund the balance and most likely selected cash.  This is not a common as it used to be, as POS defaults to the proper area, but if you click in the wrong area, you can get yourself all confused.

Q: Running Point of Sales R7. We have a client/server setup in one location. Server is running POS and QuickBooks.  We're going on the road with a laptop to shows and would like to be able to use POS on the road. The documentation says we can run the client on more than one machine, but only one can be up at a time. The server hands out the licenses. Can anyone suggest a good inexpensive VPN to use?

EMS: It will be almost impossible to run POS across a VPN connection in the way you suggest as there is a ton of data been sent and the client needs to be part of the same subnet as the server.  I have two suggestions.  One of which is to use POSPDA.  This offers POS on a handheld connected to your database via cellar or Wi-Fi.  A better solution is to go to multi-store.  Then the laptop becomes its own "store" with the data local and then at the end of the day you send the data back to HQ.  Contact me if you wish look at multi-store as we offer the software at a discount

Q: Need a template for Avery 6570 inventory tag? Is this possible?  This template has 32 tags per sheet and 4 columns.  It is the Avery Tag listed for Bar Code Printing.  It would only make sense for QuickBooks to add this Template to the selection of Tags to print in Point Of Sale.  Does anyone know how to make this happen???  

EMS: In V9 of the software, you can customize the Avery labels sizes in the Pro product using print designer.  Go to tools and then print designer.  Select an inventory tag open it.  Once open, you can use the customize size button.

Q: Hello, I need to be able to connect my cash drawer directly to the PC via serial 232 or USB without a receipt printer. We don't print receipts, and buying a receipt printer just to enable QBPos to talk to a cash drawer doesn't sound right. If there are any internal workarounds to this please advise.

EMS: If you have a serial port on your computer, you can order a serial cash drawer and set up a generic printer to send the signal to open the drawer.  Contact us and we can sell you the drawer and help with set up.

Q: Does anyone use POS in a garden center?

EMS: I have several clients using POS in a garden center setting. The main concerns are the tags. Need to get a thermal transfer printer, no support for stake tag printing. If I have a garden center that also has a landscape division, there can be complications with trying to "Sell" to yourself and properly job cost product coming from the garden center.  There are NO problems selling to public.

Q: How can I sync my QuickBooks PRO inventory with my QuickBooks POS inventory? I'm trying to use pro as my central inventory spot, as I have my online store already connected to it, is there any way to have POS just sync its inventory with pro?

EMS: We have a number of web stores connecting to POS.  POS is built from the group up to manage inventory.  QBfin has item limits that you can run into very easily.  That being said, we have clients that manage services in QBFin (pool service) and inventory in POS (storefront) Also best practice is NOT to push all of the sales receipts over to POS as it will increase file size and again problems with list limits.  If you use payment on account, you can create invoices over in QBfin.

Q: When I am modifying the inventory tags to customize the bar code to pick up the ALU not the Item # I receive an error stating: Check input data and adjust properties (wrong character) error code: 8007000D - check out documentation! What is wrong here and how do I fix it?

EMS: The bar code format most likely will not accept your ALU.  If you are using alpha, POS will not allow this as it requires all numbers. Q: Thank you for your quick reply. Is there a work around for this? What do you recommend me to do? I want to use the ALU with alpha characters in it because it is easier to identify than not.  For example: I sell cording, different colors, different lengths. My preferred ALU is PURP-1, PURP-10, PURP-100   which is easy to identify that the color is purple and the length is 1 yard, 10 yards, 100 yards.  Do I have to use a outside program that creates barcodes? Do you recommend me any? I'm not using POS pro yet- but looking to convert over soon, because I want this feature so please help me if you can! EMS: I would allow POS to use the barcode based on the item # that is created when the item is created.  You can customize the tag to print the ALU so it can be used as a quick reference.  Also, if you have UPC's for the items, you can enter the UPC and use those to scan.  If I understood why the standard bar code will not meet your needs, maybe I could be more help. Response: I would use the item # for the barcode and have the tag print the ALU on the bar code as a solution, however I would use the Units of Measure feature in QuickBooks POS Pro, which does not assign Item #s to each individual unit of measure, so that will not work. I tested it in the 30 day trial demo. As far as UPC codes, the products do not have any. So that’s why I need the ALU to be the barcode. Seems silly that the bar code creation can not contain any alpha characters but I am new at researching this whole thing, so maybe that is normal? So then, are there other programs that are compatible with POS pro that could create barcodes for me using the ALU that has alpha characters in it?

EMS: I think it is great to see POS in action.  I understand about your UOM problem.  It is possible to find a barcode program that will allow you to turn the ALU into a bar code which should solve your problem in that a barcode is simply a font, so scanning that bar code would be like typing the ALU into the lookup.  Check marketplace.intuit.com for bar code programs.  As for purchasing, we would love to give you quote as we are resellers and have worked with hundreds of business.