Customer Purchase History
Ever wonder how often certain customers order? What about how much money they spend? If you have SP-1, you have access to as much as the last three years worth of customer purchase history right at your fingertips! Stored in the customer information, is the ability to see this information.
In the image below you can see that we track the following by month:
- Visits: Total number of times the customer visited.
- Amount: Amount of money they spent that month.
- Coup: How many times they used a coupon or discount on their transaction in that month.
- Pts: How many reward (loyalty points) they earned for that month.
- Redeem$: The value of items received through points redeemed.
Sticky Receipt Printers
We have been offering the Sticky Receipt printer for about a year now and thought it would be fun to offer a recap on how it works. This printer is pretty innovative!
The printer itself has the same footprint of most thermal receipt printers. Where the difference lies is in the beefed up cut mechanism. This allows the printer to cut through the special paper that is used for the receipt. This paper has two lines of sticky gum on the back of it. The key is that it does not require a backing like traditional labels. It’s more like a type of Post-It note gum on the back of the paper.
Once the receipt for the kitchen or barista has printed, it can be stuck to a bag or cup. This can used to keep orders together, call out the customer and to help the customer see which item is theirs.
Call us for more details!
MobileDash Recap
Our MobileDash system has been around for a couple of years now but there are still some of our customers that have yet to experience it.
MobileDash allows you to receive hourly sales updates through email on your phone, tablet or desktop. These updates are sent directly from the store to you. Your employees at the store level don’t even need to know that you can receive this reporting. That helps you stay on top of things.
New to 2012 is a column that shows the report from the last hour reported on. See the example below for some details.
Remember that MobileDash comes with MobileAlerts as well. MobileAlerts provides you with:
Notification on employee clock in.
Alerts if a ticket is voided.
Alerts if a no sale is performed.
Audit reports if an employee attempts to alter a previous ticket.
By the way, call us for a free 45 day trial of MobileDash if you are not already using it!
Customer Searches in SP-1
Hopefully you are aware that you can store a customers information in SP-1. Do you know all the ways you can bring that customer up?
With SP-1, you can search for a customer by:
- Phone number
- Id Number
- Name
- Address
- User Defined field
- Gift Card number
Fingerprint ID for Employee Clock In
How do your employees clock in? Code? Swipe Card? Neither of those are bad but they also are not the easiest or more secure way.
Let’s look at some pros and cons in four common areas:
| Employee Code | Swipe Card | Fingerprint ID | |
| Cost | Free | $50 for a 25 pack of reusable cards. | $125 for the unit. |
| Employee Sharing | Easy to do. An employee can give their code and password to anyone. | Easy but in a different way. Employees can give their card to a friend use. | Secure. Employees cannot share fingers! |
| Potential Theft | High. Employees can easily steal someone else’s code and either use that or even a managers code to void transactions etc. | High. Employees can pick up someone else’s card and use it. This can be done even without the original employee knowing about it. | Low. Employees cannot perform functions they are not supposed to without physically touching the right finger to the Fingerprint ID unit. |
| Ease of Use | Fair. Employee has to type the code and password when clocking in. | Good. Swipe the card when asked for. | Better. Simply touch your finger to the reader and you are done. |
5 Features You Might Not Know About In SP-1!
SP-1 has a ton of features. I thought it would be fun to list a few that many of you might not be aware of!
1) Cash In: Cash in a special transaction type that is found under Misc. Charge in SP-1. Essentially, it is the opposite of a paid out. When you select this option, you are telling SP-1 that you have put money from an outside source into the cash drawer. It can be used in a number of situations including: Recording money earned from a gumball machine or arcade game, putting extra change in the cash drawer and so on.
2) Gift Card Refund: Have you ever wanted to give someone cash back for their gift card? Hopefully not but if you have to, there is an easy way to do it. When you select Paid Out, there is a Gift Card Refund button. That button allows you to swipe a gift card and issue a cash (or credit card) refund for the amount. You can setup a maximum amount to refund in the system setup portion of SP-1. This allows you to issue refunds but only of a certain amount.
3) Use Foreign Exchange: Are you near the Canadian or Mexican border? Do you accept their currency? If you do, this is something you should be using. When this is selected, you can push a button and see what the balance due is in that foreign currency!
4) License Expiration: If you have delivery, then this is for you. In the Employee File, you can enter the date that the employees drivers license expires. When that employee clocks in, you can setup a custom notification if their licence is expired. That will help ensure that the driver is not out representing you with an expired license! As a bonus, those of you without delivery can use this as well for other items. Some people use it to ensure they have a health permit that is up to date for example.
5) Print An Employee Hours Summary: This feature allows your employees to print a slip with the hours that they worked since their last clock in.
There you go. . . five features that you might not have been aware of. Hope they help!