Category: Order Entry

Online Ordering

Well, we are finally there! The last couple weeks have really been playing catch up after our couple of shows.

We recently started introducing our online ordering interface and have been signing people up! This interface works directly with the SP-1 to grab the orders off the online site and process them in the background. In otherwords, once you are signed up, the customer orders online and then it prints in the store.

So, why OLO? Because it will make you more money. . .

• Customers spend more time on your menu. . . How many people truly know all the items you sell now? We all know that customers feel rushed on the phone.
• Customer order more. . . Because they see your whole menu, they are more likely to order outside their typical comfort zone.
• Cut your labor costs. . . Imagine, your employees spending less time on the phone and more time focusing on the product.
• Decrease mistakes. . . The customer ordered it! They are ultimately responsible for the order. The misunderstanding virtually go away!
• Up-sell. . . Menu upselling is much easier with Online Ordering.

Please call us and ask questions! We can get you started in the process by putting you in touch wiht our online ordering partner and getting you signed up!

Contact us at:
SelbySoft

Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Posted in Order Entry, Uncategorized Tagged with: online ordering

Integrated Credit Card

Who doesn’t take credit cards in today’s world? We all know the statistics regarding how accepting credit cards will boost your sales and increase average ticket sizes.

So, the question is how can we make this more efficient at the store level? By integrating the credit card system and getting rid of those separate units.

With a separate unit, the transaction usually goes something like this. . .

Employee rings up the order, selects credit cards, selects visa and then swipes the card through the separate terminal. . . at that point the employee enters at least the total and possibly the last four of the credit card, expiration and possibly the cvv. End result? The line is waiting. If you have multiple stations, then you are sharing or buying additional terminals.

If it’s a phone or delivery order, it gets worse! The employee has to actually write down the information and hand key it in while the customer is on hold. Twice the work and twice the security risk!

Now at the end of the night, you have to hope that the totals match, that an employees did not select cash in the POS and then still take a credit card and so on.

So how can we make this easier?

With our Integrated Secure Credit Card Processing System activated, the whole process is simplified:

The employee rings the order up, swipes the card and is done. That’s it!

Multiple stations? The interface works on all the computers in the location, each station will just swipe it on the monitor.

Phone or Delivery orders? Simply type the credit card number directly on the screen and it will process.

So there you go. . . A couple ways that integrating your credit card system can make your store more efficient and eliminate headaches for you, your employees and your customers!

Contact us at:
SelbySoft

Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Posted in Order Entry, Uncategorized Tagged with: credit cards

Order Confirmation Monitors & Pole Displays

Let’s talk about a couple things that are optional (they require a hardware purchase) but that can help you in very significant ways!

First, what are they? A Pole Display is something we have all seen – it’s a simple display with 2-4 lines mounted on a pole and faces the customer. When items are entered into the POS, the pole displays that total price to the customer. Sometimes these allow for a message to display when the display is not being used.

Order Confirmation Monitors are the next evolution in this technology. They are a full screen (usually 15-17″) that sits on the counter and provides a full description, price as well as customized messages and pictures that display to the customer. Basically, this provides a more full featured method of showing the customer what they ordered.

So, why have them at all? Well, for a number of reasons. . . First and foremost is the perceived value as to employee theft and customer satisfaction. It’s hard for an employee to back out of a ticket, void it or change an item and then pocket the money when the customer sees everything that is being done.

Aside from employee theft, the OCM (Order Confirmation Monitor) has other advantages. Because it is a full monitor this system can display upsell options and even a slide show that displays when the customer is waiting for their order. These options allow you to market directly to your customer as they are ordering.

Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Posted in Hardware, Order Entry, Uncategorized Tagged with: order confirmation monitors, pole displays

Windows Settings for SP-1

Do you know what the Windows Settings section of SP-1 is for?

This is a pretty neat feature in SP-1 that allows you to dictate how SP-1 functions on your computer.

Windows Settings are located in System Setup. There are three switches available and these can be controlled by the station.

The thought behind this setting is that you may not want employees to have access to the Windows OS in the background.

The switches operate as follows:

Movable: If movable is selected, then SP-1 opens in the standard size and you will have the ability to resize the screen, move the window around, minimize etc. This is great for the office station or if you want to switch between SP-1 and another program.

Maximize: If this is selected, and we recommend that it is, then SP-1 takes over the entire screen. There is no option to move SP-1, shrink it or change it in any other way. This is the recommended selection because it does not allow your employees to exit SP-1.

Both: If you select both of these switches, then SP-1 will allow you to move the screen around but will start in the largest screen size possible.

Check Spooler: If you select this, and it should be checked, then SP-1 will make sure that the print spooling is currently running and attempt to sync the time between stations. If your print spooling is NOT running this switch will allow SP-1 to display a warning to let you know printing may not function!

So, there you go. . . A quick lesson on a slightly obscure (but valuable) part of SP-1!

Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Posted in Order Entry, Uncategorized Tagged with: windows

Coupons & Discounts

Coupons and Discounts – sounds easy, but do you know the difference and why having both makes SP-1 more powerful?

First let’s talk about the differences between the two:

Discounts: A discount in SP-1 is a dollar or percent off a ticket or item. The advantage is that it is a little more generic. For example, you could have a $1.00 off the ticket, 10% off a ticket or 15% discount off one line item on the ticket. All of these discounts are able to be set by the menu group, group size or specialty. The great thing with a discount is that it is very flexible and allows for multiple controls. Discounts can be security coded so they are only available when authorized.

Some sample discounts are: employee, fire department, senior citizen etc. You can also use these to track problems and mistakes. For example, setup a mismade order, dropped item, returned item, comped etc. This is a great way to track what is happening in the store.

Lastly, don’t forget that you can assign a discount to a customers delivery file or to their gift and reward card!

C0upons: Coupons operate a little differently. A coupon is more specific than the discounts. For instance, you can bundle items with coupons. If you offer a large pizza with two toppings, breadsticks and a 2 liter of soda for a specific price a coupon is the way to go. You can even set the price so each item is accounted for in the reporting. Another example is to have a coupon that sets the specific modifiers allowed. So, you might have a 16oz Latte with two extra flavor shots allowed. The coupon would only then work on that size etc.

Remember that all coupons and discounts can be day and time specific!

Contact us at:

Mike Spence
SelbySoft
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Posted in Marketing, Order Entry, Uncategorized Tagged with: coupons, discounts, marketing

Non-Taxable Sales

This morning I had an email asking about non-taxable sales and I thought it would make a good blog topic!

Basically there are two things we talk about with non-taxable sales. . . The first is Tax Exempt situations. These are the situations where you are selling to a non-taxable organization, group or person. For instance, church, school, people from Alaska or Oregon. With this, you can actually create a customer entry for each person by adding a customer in Order Entry and then making sure the Taxable switch is not selected. This will allow you to track each non-taxable order made by that individual.

Now, if this is a very rare event for you, then you might want to create one customer and call it Tax Exempt. This gives you the ability to immediately handle the order in the future without going through the trouble of entering a customer.

These transactions will show up on the Business Summary under Tax Exempt Sales.

The second scenario is when you have specific items that are non-taxable. SP-1 handles up to 5 different tax rates and then also a sixth when the tax is set to 0. So, on your Menu Groups, you have the ability to set each menu item to a specific tax (or 0 tax in this case) and to do this by the order type! For example, you might have an item that you have to charge tax on when it is prepared in house but not for to-go orders.

These taxes also show on the Business Summary under the Tax Rates as None.

I hope this helps.
Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Posted in Order Entry, Reporting, Uncategorized Tagged with: reporting, sales, taxes

Inactive Items

Are you offering seasonal or holiday items? Every year we get the questions of what to do after the season or holidy has passed!

SP-1 has a built in switch to help with this. You may have noticed a the switch in Master Files called Inactive. When this is selected, the item no longer shows up on the menu but is still in the system.

The really neat thing is that this switch affects all the items below the level you are on. So if you turn off an ingredient it does not show up anymore. If you turn off a Menu Group, then the group size, specialties and ingredients for that Menu Group are hidden as well.

This can be a great switch for making menu changes and even for designing a new menu group before implementing it for your staff. Simply turn it on and test it and then turn it off if you need to make more changes to the menu.

Contact us at:
SelbySoft

Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Posted in Order Entry, Uncategorized Tagged with: menu, Pricing

Dashboard Functionality

As you can see, this is a great way to see a quick snapshot of things! Total sales, tickets, voids etc are all shown on this quickly!

Selecting the hourly detail button provides the screen below:

As you can see, this allows for comparisons from today vrs last week, last month and last year by the hour!

Now, a little known feature on this is that you can use as well. If you highlight an hourly or section you will get the following:

As you can see, this provides you with the sales figures for that hour and the percentage that you are up or down over the last week, month and year.

Posted in Order Entry, Uncategorized Tagged with: dashboard, reporting

Little Known Retail Feature

For those of you that have the retail control system in SP-1, did you know that you can assign those items to buttons?

For instance. . . Let’s say that you sell gelato or ice cream by the ounce or pound or coffee. Well, it’s a little difficult to barcode that! So, instead of remembering a complicated sku number or code assign it to a button in order entry! This is a really easy and convenient way to pull up and sell retail items without a barcode.

The way this works is by assigning the retail item to the menu group. Since it shows up as a menu group, it is always on the main screen. It’s as great way to access a very commonly used retail item. To set this up, simply create the retail item and then create a menu group with the name *retail*upccode (replace upc code with the actual code). Then when you select this button it pulls up that item immediately.

While we are on this, don’t forget that we offer the ability to not only barcode items for use with a scanner but that we can actually print the customized barcodes for you through a dedicated barcode printer. This allows you to print the barcodes as you receive the retail into the store.

Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike@SelbySoft.com
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Posted in Order Entry, POS Features, Uncategorized Tagged with: retail

Accounts In SP-1

Do you ever bill customers for product? If so, did you know that SP-1 has an extensive billing system built into the software. Last week I was talking to a customer that did not know we did this! So. . . .

In SP-1 you can specify per customer if they are allowed to run an account tab. Once this is selected, you will have an account payment button and an account charge button appear.

If you are near a number of businesses, schools etc – this can be a great method of picking up more business. Setup the account so that when that business orders, you can just bill them!

Once someone orders and you are on the ticket complete screen, simply hit account button to
add the total to their account bill. SP-1 will track this for you. One suggestion: In the remarks, enter the ticket number / name of the person running the account. This makes it easier to answer the account billing questions.

Now the business owes you money. The next step in this is the run the billing report and billing cycle. In the reports, you will see all the options for this. SP-1 will even run a bill that can be printed and then folded and put in a windowed envelope. This makes life easier as far as sending the bills.

Once the check comes in, look up the customer and select the account payment button. Apply the payment and you are done!

Hopefully this brief introduction to accounts helps you understand how to use this to capture some of more of your customers business. While these factories and schools like to place big orders, we also know that the accountant and bookkeepers at these places like easy billing systems!

Contact us at:
SelbySoft
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
Sales@SelbySoft.com
WWW.SelbySoft.com
8326 Woodland Ave. E
Puyallup Wa 98371

Posted in Order Entry, POS Features, Reporting, Uncategorized Tagged with: accounts, customers, marketing, reporting