Card Present or POS (point of sale) orders

[rpb3]

Is there a good way to use Able to do point of sale transactions?

Obviously I know the merchant can log in as a particular user and create an order, but I have not found anywhere in the forums where anyone has specified a good (quick) way to do POS transactions. Is there a 3rd party add-on that will do this?

It would be nice if they could swipe the card and populate the data into the order. Anyone know how hard that would be?

I had a customer ask this question today. We are already working on his site for online sales but I don't know how to best answer this question.

Any advice or experience would be appreciated.

[mazhar]

AbleCommerce also allows the merchant to place order for customer instead of log in as customer and place order. Go to Administration > Orders > Create Order and then place order.
Read about AbleCommerce order manager from here
http://help.ablecommerce.com/mergedProj ... gement.htm

[William M]

Mazhar, this isn't the same as POS. At a physical store, you can have items that aren't in the catalog, and items that are discounted, on 'special sale - today only', scratch and dent, etc., most without a SKU.

Is there a way to add an item that isn't in the catalog to a POS invoice via the site - while the customer is standing at the counter with a credit card?

Is it possible to bring a blank order to the screen with open feilds for product, description, price, customer info. Now, if the product isn't in the db, you can't start a sale. As it is now, to sell something a product needs to be created first. For a one-of-a-kind product, once only sale...that's a PITA.

I'm sure Quickbooks or similar can do this, but we don't all need that level of complexity on a daily basis.

[kastnerd]

If they do a lot of POS sales they might look in to another order managing system that would integrate with able for online orders but have its own system for POS. Also see if they need Inventory, Warehouse, PO and ordering, accounting and reports. Able is a good website, but its cant replace everything.

[rpb3]

I have been looking over the "Order Manager" and giving this some thought. If anybody has any experience with this please let me know. Here is what I am thinking.

Through the "Create Order" interface, you can create an order for a "new customer", essentially an anonymous customer. You can then add your products and place the order.

This is where it gets a little tricky. You are now required to enter name, address, phone #, etc. If this is truly a "point-of-sale" transaction, none of that is required. So we could enter some default or generic data there, maybe even the store address, whatever.

So then you continue on. Now you have to choose to create an account (or not) and select a payment method. This is where it gets more tricky. Using the built-in options in Able I can choose "Mail", "Phone" or "Defer Payment" for the method and then finalize the order and it will show up with an unprocessed payment.

Now you can view the order in the order manager, go to the Payments section and from there you can add a new payment. But what you can do is to select the option to "record a payment" which allows you to specify the method, amount, ref #, notes and status. The method can be check, Visa, MasterCard, etc. (no cash though)

As far as I can see, that would accomplish what I need; it is cumbersome but it works.

My thinking is that I can develop my own Point-Of-Sale page, based on the Create Order pages and fill in the default generic data as I see fit. I could give them some other input options and create the "recorded payment" automatically. It would be nice if I could create a payment method of Point-Of-Sale or something so I don't have to use Mail (or whatever). I'll have to look into creating a new payment method.

Lastly, if the store has its own credit card terminal they can swipe the card themselves and then they could record that payment just as if it was a cash or check payment. I know the credit card data would not be stored in Able, but that gets wiped out anyway and these are anonymous users so we don't need that data (assuming the card was swiped and billed).

Anyone have any thoughts, comments, warnings or suggestions about that?

[combra]

I think you are better off using something like Quickbooks Point of Sale and then downloading your transactions into AC if you want everything stored in one place (would require customization). Or if you don't want to track inventory, then Quickbooks Cash Register Plus. Just my opinion.

-Brandon

[rpb3]

We do need to track inventory. My question about using a QB product is how does it stay in sync with what's in Able? How does the QB software know what products are available in the store (i.e. when products are added, removed or when they are sold out).

I looked at the AbleMod QB web connector but it looks like that is more for dumping your Able data into QuickBooks and that QB becomes your central data storage. What I would really need is for some QB product to interface with the Able database and record transactions (with inventory changes) in that database.

COMBRA: Is that what you were suggesting?

[combra]

We do need to track inventory. My question about using a QB product is how does it stay in sync with what's in Able? How does the QB software know what products are available in the store (i.e. when products are added, removed or when they are sold out).

I looked at the AbleMod QB web connector but it looks like that is more for dumping your Able data into QuickBooks and that QB becomes your central data storage. What I would really need is for some QB product to interface with the Able database and record transactions (with inventory changes) in that database.

COMBRA: Is that what you were suggesting?

For what you want to do, I don't think Quickbooks Point of Sale will work for you, especially with syncing inventory with AC. From what I know, people on here seem to use Stone Edge, which has a POS component. Otherwise you can use the 'create order' suggestion from Mazhar. The only problem is that it is a tedious process when you want to checkout a customer as quickly as possible, unless you really customize the feature. I'm sure others will chime in that use something like Stone Edge.

-Brandon

[kastnerd]

I use Stone Edge, I have not tested Quick Books, Stone Edge has a import orders button to download the orders from Able.

[AbleMods]

I looked at the AbleMod QB web connector but it looks like that is more for dumping your Able data into QuickBooks and that QB becomes your central data storage. What I would really need is for some QB product to interface with the Able database and record transactions (with inventory changes) in that database.

That's correct. I've spent a significant amount of time trying to come up with a "two-way street" between QuickBooks and AC7. From a development standpoint, it's certainly possible.

But the logistics of it from a deployment perspective are staggering. There simply isn't the proven technology available to securely and reliably integrate a far-away website with a local Windows application and maintain both data accuracy and performance. The closest way to reach a true integration between QB and AC7 (using the Intuit SDK) is by having QuickBooks AND your company file loaded on the same server or same LAN as your web store. Then you can use a Windows-based app to handle both sides of the data stream. It would still use XML to communicate between the two, but the overhead and encryption inherit to internet-based traffic would no longer be a factor. Most people would (and should) immediately shy away from the thought of their company financials loaded on their web server

Only then can you have the performance and reliability to accurately maintain data sync between the two systems. Given the overhead requirements of such a configuration, I opted for the one-way street approach so the product would be useable to a much larger base of AC7 installs.

Then you get into the AC7 side of things. there's no built-in triggers for stock value changes, so you'll have to load up your SQL database with SQL triggers to monitor every product change. Every order change. Every shipment change. Every user change. Then those changes have to be queued, reconciled against the QB counterpart and applied in a fault-tolerant manner.

That's why there are little "islands" of integration like Shipper, AbleMods and StoneEdge. None of them are complete because a complete one simply isn't feasible in an internet-based environment. Thus we all specialize in something and leverage our expertise the best we can.

[rpb3]

thanks for all the input.

Joe - yes, everything you said makes perfect sense and I had thought about those problems myself. That's why I was really looking for a POS type of interface for the web store. Doesn't seem like it would be that hard, the USB card swipers aren't that expensive and I have done stuff like that before with Win Apps, just not a Web App.

Stone Edge looks like it would have the same types of issues. I really want to stay away from the 2 system solution.

Brandon - you are also right, the create order option is probably the best answer but the tedium is what we are trying to avoid. Having someone hand type billing addresses and card info would be cumbersome and prone to errors.

I am going to look at a few options, I'll post back and let you know what I end up doing.

If anyone else has any suggestions I'm still open for them.

[jmestep]

Addresses- Card processors just need the numbers, not the rest of the address. That shortens it up some.

[vsammons]

I am currently building a POS module for Able Commerce. On the Credit card interface it has a checkbox for Card Present option in which you simply swipe the card and press the continue button. It will parse the data into AbleCommerce and use the Authorize.NET webservice to validate the response (Using the current Authorize.NET DLL not Commercebuilders).

I have a barcode printer for SKU numbers. So We can scan the barcodes in the POS mode for rapid entry of products to the order. Then we also built a cash method of payment for cash customers too. If anyone is interested in this module I can give more information on it. I am looking to integrate it more into AbleCommerce so it can become an addon module.

[Brewhaus]

Did you ever finish the POS add-on? We recently moved our warehouse, and unfortunately our new location is in a 'retail' type area, so we are starting to get walk-in traffic. In order to speed the checkout process for such customers we need to incorporate a POS system, but in order to avoid the possibility of overselling an item it needs to be incorporated into AC (if the last of an item is already ordered then we have to be sure that it cannot be sold to the walk-in customer, so we need to use the AC database for inventory control).