NCR CounterPoint

CounterPoint real-time software is a graphical point of sale and inventory management system that gives retailers complete data access and control over their business operations. CounterPoint includes a robust inventory management system, touchscreen point of sale (POS) ticket entry, built-in customer loyalty programs, automated purchasing and impressive reporting capabilities. More than ever, operating a profitable business requires controlling cost while increasing sales. CounterPoint has all the features you need to efficiently and effectively operate your business at its fullest potential.

With over 25 years of experience in the retail industry, CounterPoint streamlines your business, manages your inventory, tracks of your customers, improves your purchasing decisions, manages your vendors, lowers your costs, and increases your bottom line

The Strength Behind CounterPoint

CounterPoint is a data-driven solution that stores and tracks all of the critical information to your business. Tap into the power of SQL to create queries, lookups, filters, and triggers that let you find and update your records instantly. CounterPoint is also compatible with a variety of popular third-party applications, like Microsoft Excel, allowing you to export and view your information however you want. Gain maximum control over your data, so you can exert maximum control over your business.

Take Your Business to the Next Level

CounterPoint gives you the tools to operate your business faster and more efficiently, with lightning-fast performance and countless timesaving features. Streamlined point of sale means faster ticket entry with fewer errors. On-the-fly data entry allows you add items, customers, or vendor records from anywhere in the system, and data-driven lookups, filters, and searches help you find those records in a flash. Quick Receivings and Quick Transfers let you instantly receive merchandise or redistribute it to another location. Intelligent automation features accelerate daily and repetitive tasks. All of which make CounterPoint the ultimate in speed and convenience.

CounterPoint Grows With Your Business

CounterPoint expands with your business, allowing you to add features as you need them. Advanced Retail POS Software Features like advanced pricing capabilities, account receivables, and serial number tracking adds support for additional pricing levels, A/R charge customers, and serialized inventory tracking. Offline Ticket Entry continues ringing up sales even if your workstation loses its connection to the CounterPoint server. It is also great for sidewalk sales, portable kiosks, or network outages. NCR Counterpoint Online provides integrated ecommerce, allowing you to expand to the Web and integrate your online sales with your CounterPoint database. Multi-Site allows you to operate multiple stores and manage information at all your locations. From single-site to multisite, CounterPoint delivers consistent performance across your entire organization.

Secure Your Business

In today’s world of heightened security concerns, NCR is committed to providing you with solutions that protect your customers’ information. All of the latest software versions go through an extensive audit process to ensure that they are validated with the PCI Data Security Standards.

To date, NCR has successfully received validation with Visa U.S.A.'s payment application best practices for the CounterPoint POS through Visa’s Cardholder Information Security Program (CISP). CISP compliance is required of all entities that store, process or transmit Visa cardholder data.

Accounts Payable

An Accounts Payable package must be used to track payables and issue checks outside of CounterPoint. CounterPoint vendors may be set up automatically from existing A/P vendors or created manually in CounterPoint. Return to Vendor (RTV) transactions may also be vouchered into A/P and appear as vendor credits.

Automated Purchasing

Automated Purchasing provides retailers the tools to control every aspect of purchases and receiving.

New purchase requests are entered with system-assigned or user-entered PO numbers. Or you can use Add Items to simplify the process of entering purchase requests by allowing you to quickly add items to a purchase request simultaneously, without requiring you to create each line individually

You can optionally print PO forms when you post.

CounterPoint automatically updates on-order quantities for items. New vendors and items may be added on-the-fly. During receiving, PO’s may be retrieved by PO number, vendor, or other keyword fields. A PO may be received in full with minimal data entry, or only selected lines may be received. Unreceived goods can be easily backordered or cancelled. You can add additional lines or change, reissue, or reprint the PO. Merchandise that arrives without a PO may be entered on-the-fly during receiving as well. You can optionally import a receiving from a file built with a handheld data collection device.

An item may have unlimited vendors, each with its own cost and purchasing unit. Costs and quantities may be entered on a PO and printed on forms. Vendor items are automatically defined as part of normal Inventory and Purchasing usage.

Full support is provided for 3-dimensional gridded items (color/size/width) when entering PO’s, entering receivings, and printing reports. Additionally, with the Serial Numbers Feature, you can enter serial numbers during receiving.

You can also use Quick Receivings to enter and receive inventory in a single step.

Forecast Driven Replenishment - Create seasonal forecasts for your items, allowing you to more accurately estimate future demand based on historical sales, using proven forecasting methods. Once you have created a forecast, CounterPoint can use the forecast data to calculate and set the ideal minimum and maximum quantities for your items. In addition, you can generate purchasing advice based on the updated minimum and maximum values to ensure that you have the forecasted quantities on hand for each period or season.

This feature allows you to more easily evaluate your inventory needs, dynamically adjust minimum and maximum quantities, and automatically replenish your stock to meet changing demand for your items.

Purchasing Advice - CounterPoint’s Purchasing Advice can automatically calculate and create restocking orders, plus view or generate purchase orders by lowest cost vendor.

Purchasing Advice calculates the quantities to reorder based on current inventory levels, commitments, backorders, in-transit merchandise, open PO’s, desired stocking levels, vendor multiples, and/or vendor minimum order requirements.

Reorder quantities may be calculated using one of two methods:

• Min/max-Orders an item up to its desired maximum stocking level when it falls to or below its minimum (reorder) level.
• Replenishment-Orders enough of an item to replace what was sold during a specified time period and allows you to enter a history factor so you can order, for example, 20% more or 5% less.

Days of Supply - The Days of Supply method, allows you to enter the number of days you want a supply of, and using a specified time period considers both quantity on-hand and actual sales trends to calculate suggested quantities to order to last for the numbers of days requested

Returns to Vendors (RTVs) - RTVs may be entered, reviewed, and posted to record the return of merchandise to a vendor. RTVs reduce on-hand inventory. RTVs may also be vouchered into Accounts Payable to record credits with a vendor.

Purchasing Adjustments - After your receivings have been posted, you can correct receivings costs and miscellaneous charges to adjust inventory and/or cost of goods sold.

Allocated PO’s - For multi-location purchasing, Purchasing Advice can generate allocated PO’s. Using location groups, you can order and receive merchandise for a group of stores in a single, combined PO. CounterPoint supports allocated/merged PO’s as well as allocated/separate PO’s.

Allocated/merged PO’s remain a single document throughout the order/receive process. When the PO’s are received, transfers are created to distribute the merchandise to the appropriate locations.

Allocated/separate PO’s are split into one PO per location when issued.

Multi-Location Purchasing - Full support is provided for purchasing and receiving across multiple stores. PO’s may originate at the main office and may be received at the other stores or received into the central warehouse for distribution to the stores through transfers

Customer Specific Purchases - CounterPoint makes it easy to take a customer’s order from the point-of-sale, place a purchase order with a vendor, track and receive the PO, and fulfill the customer’s order. Copy the detail of that order into a PO to the vendor and stamp the PO with the POS order number to identify the inventory as allocated to a particular order, track the PO- even at the POS you can zoom in on Special Order to see the status of the PO attached to the order

Views and Reporting - A detailed history of PO receivings and cancellations is retained for viewing and reporting. Open PO’s may be viewed or printed showing quantity ordered, received, and expected. The Open PO Report shows outstanding PO’s and can be printed by PO number, vendor, delivery date, etc.

Accounts Payable Interface - Received PO’s may be vouchered directly into a third-party Accounts Payable system. Invoices may be vouchered to the vendor and a report of unvouchered receivings is provided.

Electronic Orders - You may print paper PO’s for your vendors or output text files suitable for use in electronic ordering. You may save PO’s as PDF files to fax or email to vendors. Full EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) typically requires use of third-party translator and communications software.

Miscellaneous Charges - Extra charges (for freight, etc.) may be entered during receivings and optionally included in the landed cost. You can enter up to five separate miscellaneous charges which can be allocated based on the weight, quantity, cost, or cube (cubic volume) of the items received.

Credit Cards

CounterPoint’s Base System includes credit card processing under the CounterPoint Merchant Program (CMP). With the Credit Cards feature, CounterPoint supports credit card processing through any of CounterPoint’s Preferred Processors. Using a CounterPoint Preferred Processor ensures compliance with rapidly changing standards and access to the most favorable rates, as well as industry classifications (Retail, Mail-order/Telephone-order, and Ecommerce), AVS, CVV2/CVC2, dial-up processing, purchase/corporate cards, and CPGateway.

Customer Loyalty

CounterPoint includes customer relationship management tools that give you details of every customer, including detailed sales history, loyalty features, and more.

The Receivables Feature adds charge sales, receivables tracking, account aging, cash receipts processing, finance charges, and statement printing to the Customers application.

Customer Information - A customer may be set up using standard maintenance function, or on-the-fly in Point of Sale. Basic customer information includes name, address, email, two contact names, fax numbers, and phone numbers. A customer may be assigned to a specific user-defined category to group similar customers for reporting, pricing, and analysis.

Customer numbers may be manually entered or assigned automatically. When a new customer is added, much of the basic information may be copied from another customer to help reduce errors and speed up the entry process, or a template customer may be defined.

Customers can be selected by entering the customer’s number, scanning a customer ID card, or by searching for keywords that match any portion of the customer’s name, company name, telephone number, etc.

For a charge sale, CounterPoint checks the customer’s credit limit, and only an authorized user may override credit limits.

Embedded Loyalty Programs - CounterPoint provides integrated solutions that provide the ability to implement gift cards and loyalty programs across all sites from a central location. Manage and evaluate these strategic marketing programs quickly and efficiently.

• Stimulate repeat business with powerful reward systems.
• Variety of plan types include item based, dollar based, points based, frequency based or random
• Flexible rewards: instant discounts and gift card options
• Easy set up at both POS site and corporate level
• Rich enterprise reporting options including customer history and management alerts

Customer Profiles - Customer profiles allow you to build a valuable database of information to assist in analyzing and marketing to your customers. Up to 20 user-defined profile fields may be tracked for each customer, such as birthday, preferences, shoe size, membership status, etc.

Each user-defined profile field is set up to only allow certain types of information. For example, “birthday” would only allow valid date entries, “shoe size” would only allow numeric entries between a specified range of values, etc. In addition, you may set up user-defined profile codes to ensure that (for example) “membership status” is selected from a list of valid user-defined values (e.g., Gold, Silver, or Bronze). Use this information to build customer base marketing programs.

Credit Limits and Controls - Credit limits ensure that customers do not exceed management’s guidelines for open credit. In addition, individual customers may be prevented from paying by check, making charge sales, making any kind of sale, or even from placing orders.

For charge sales, the customer’s credit limit is checked, and only authorized users may override the credit limit.

Credit card information may be retained for each customer and may be retrieved automatically when paying for a purchase.

History - A multi-year monthly summary view is available for each customer showing sales, cost, profitability (dollars and percent), number of sales, and average sale amounts. Complete, detailed history shows every item sold on every ticket, or summarizes individual categories of merchandise.

Zooms - You can easily view detailed customer information whenever you look up or view a customer. Zooms provide information about the customer including current balance, last payment date, recent sales, open orders, ship-to addresses, layaways, customer-specific purchases, images, customer notes, and detailed ticket history. You can customize the format and the fields that display in the Zoom.

Shipping Information - Each customer may have an unlimited number of shipping addresses, and the default ship-to address can be different from the primary address. Each shipping address may have its own tax code, preferred shipping method, and specific ship-to notes that can be printed on invoices.

Notes and Images - Unlimited pages of customer notes may be entered, viewed, edited, and optionally automatically displayed when the customer number is entered. In addition, images can be stored with each customer and optionally displayed automatically when the customer number is entered or available on an as needed basis.

Taxes - For basic retail sales, a tax code is assigned to the store.

Customers may have multi-level tax codes assigned that indicate special tax rates or taxing authorities. If applicable, a customer may be non-taxable, and the customer’s tax exemption number may be entered and retained in CounterPoint.

You can optionally specify a tax code for each customer’s ship-to address. If a ship-to tax code is specified, tax calculations are based on that code instead of the customer’s tax code.

Labels - Labels may be printed for any range or grouping of customers. Customer labels can be printed from ticket history based on merchandise purchased during a specific time period. For example, you can print mailing labels (ordered by ZIP code) for charge customers who purchased at least $100 worth of merchandise from your downtown store last year.

Reports - Customer listings (brief and full) are available, organized by type of customer, customer number, ZIP code, name, etc., to show basic customer information, credit rating, and payment information. Customers may be included in reports based on their categories, their profiles, or any other criteria.

Ecommerce

CPOnline is a robust ecommerce solution that is fully integrated with CounterPoint. CPOnline allows retailers to leverage the power and simplicity of using CounterPoint to run your brick-and-mortar and online business using one database while not incurring additional integration costs. Powerful enough to support a business processing hundreds of thousands of dollars in web sales a month, but simple enough for a retailer with no online experience, CPOnline has all the features you need to efficiently and effectively operate your business at its fullest potential.

CPOnline works seamlessly with your CounterPoint system to expand your business to the Web with a little effort and minimum expense. CPOnline makes it easy for you to:

• Manage your entire business with one powerful solution
• Affordably establish an online presence
• Quickly create an online store using templates and wizards without coding
• Maintain an integrated inventory between your online and brick-and-mortar stores
• Drive more traffic to your site with search engine-friendly templates
• Securely transact with customers
• Market to existing customers with email newsletters, promo codes, and abandoned cart tracking
• Find new customers through Google Base uploads, affiliate programs, and tell-a-friend emails
• Process online orders in CounterPoint for easy fulfillment
• Automatically calculate FedEx^®, UPS®, and USPS® shipping rates

General Ledger

CounterPoint account numbers are mapped to corresponding G/L account numbers. Mapping rules can be set up that pertain to all accounts, or on a one-to-one basis. G/L account numbers may be up to 50 characters and may be segmented.

The Distribution Report may be printed in order by account number or by posting source (distribution type or module). A summary version is available, or the detailed version may be printed in order to provide a complete audit trail back to the individual posting journals and document numbers that originally created the distribution.

Distribution activity can be transferred automatically into G/L in summary or detail format, providing a complete audit trail from G/L.

Inventory Management

Inventory is the backbone of CounterPoint. It is the means by which all items are identified, priced, and tracked. Inventory is designed to help you maintain optimum inventory levels, control inventory costs, and track merchandise movement. It provides the tools necessary to track and adjust inventory turns and increase overall profit percent and gross margin.

Setting up inventory items is quick and easy. Item numbers and barcodes may be manually entered, scanned or imported in, or assigned automatically. When a new item is added, much of the basic information may be copied from another item to help reduce errors and speed up the entry process, or a template item may be defined.

Each item number can be setup to identify a unique inventory item with an associated descriptions, categories and attributes, price levels, barcodes, and other information or as a “gridded” item having one item number represent hundreds of size, style color combinations of that item.

CounterPoint supports normal inventory items, gridded (apparel color/size/style) items, and serialized inventory.

An item may be defined as an Inventory, Non-Inventory, Service, or a Discount item. CounterPoint tracks on-hand quantities for Inventory-type items.

Easily remove inactive items from CounterPoint. Inactive items are those that have no quantity on-hand, no quantity committed, and no sales activity after the specified cutoff date. CounterPoint will still retains sales history for removed items.

Item Information - Categories, subcategories, and up to six user-defined classification methods may be established for grouping items. These classifications are validated to ensure correct setup of information.

An item may also have:

• Unlimited barcodes, a stocking unit, and up to five alternate selling units (e.g., EACH, BOX, CARTON).
• Up to 20 user-defined profile fields for collecting and displaying additional item information.
• Images, sounds, or video clips that can be displayed during item Zooms, or auto-displayed in Regular and Touchscreen Ticket Entry.
• A weight assigned.
• Unlimited substitute items that can be viewed during Item Zooms.
• A primary vendor and an unlimited number of alternate vendors. For each vendor/item combination, CounterPoint tracks the purchasing costs, the vendor’s item number and preferred ordering unit, and other valuable information.
• A note associated containing unlimited text

LookUps - Easily select an item by entering the item number, scanning a barcode, or by using LookUps. With LookUps, you find the item using a keyword search by entering any portion of the item number, description, category, subcategory, or any other field designated as a keyword search field.

Zooms - You can easily view details of an item whenever you look up or view an item. Item Zooms display information about the item (price, category, extended description, etc.), the inventory (location, cost, quantity available, etc.), recent sales history, vendors for the item, open purchase orders, monthly history, substitute items, serial numbers, open transfers, images, and item notes. You can customize the format and the fields that display in the Zoom.

Barcodes - Barcodes of up to 20 characters are supported (field length can be expanded), and an item may have an unlimited number of barcodes. Barcodes may be associated with a specific selling unit-for example, one barcode may indicate BOX, while another barcode indicates EACH. A unique barcode is supported for each individual color/size/style combination for a gridded (apparel) item.

Barcodes may be manually entered or automatically generated by CounterPoint. Both manufacturer and in-house barcodes are supported. Barcodes may be printed on labels and used for automated scanning during Point of Sale checkout, when taking a physical count, and in other functions.

Random-weight barcodes allow for variable weight items, such as meat or produce Ticket Entry recognizes random-weight barcodes and automatically calculates the correct quantity (weight). Weight scales and tare weights (container weights) are also supported.

Commissions - Each sales rep can be assigned a commission code, and commissions can be calculated on selling price or on gross profit. Different commission rates may be used for different sales reps. Commissions are described more fully under Sales History.

Kits - Capabilities are included for defining and processing Sales Kits (tag-a-long kit), miscellaneous, and prebuilt kits (Bill of Materials). A tag-a-long kit allows you to associate one or more “tag-along” items with a single “parent” item. When a user sells the parent item in Ticket Entry or Touchscreen Ticket Entry, the associated tag-along items are added to the ticket automatically. This feature provides a simple method of ensuring that associated items are always sold together.

A Miscellaneous kit allows you to define any number of component items with a single, “miscellaneous” (i.e., Non-inventory or Service) parent item. When a user sells the parent item in Ticket Entry or Touchscreen Ticket Entry, the associated components are added to the ticket automatically. Unlike tag-along kits, each component of a miscellaneous kit is not treated as an individual line item. Instead, all of a miscellaneous kit’s components are grouped together below the parent item, which means that the component lines cannot be separately edited, moved, or deleted. Further, the total price of a miscellaneous kit is always based on the parent item’s price, which is allocated among the component items in proportion to each one’s individual Price-1 value.

Prebuilt Kits or Bill of Materials allows you to define a bill of material that lists the component items, or parts, that are required to produce a single “parent” item. Once you have defined a bill of material, you can create quick assembly transactions to record the actual production of a specific quantity of the finished good.

Notes - An item may have unlimited pages of notes. These notes may be viewed, printed on forms when the item is sold, and even be set to automatically display when the clerk sells the item (valuable for power-selling related items). Notes use rich text format (RTF) for bolding, underlining, etc.

Inventory Detail Window - This allows you to review the Status, Price-1, Qty available, Qty committed, Qty on hand, and other relevant quantity values for a single item or a range of items for a single location or across all of your locations. This window is designed to help you make purchasing, pricing, and stocking decisions by providing a snapshot of your inventory throughout your company.

Pricing and Units - Item prices can be set up by simply assigning a selling price to each item. Or you can take advantage of CounterPoint’s flexible and powerful pricing rules.

An item may be priced by its stocking unit or by alternate units (up to five alternate units per item). For example, you may stock golf balls by the EACH, and sell them at one price by the BOX and at another price by the SLEEVE.

Each item may have up to three price levels for the item’s stocking unit and for each of its five alternate units (or six levels with the Advanced Pricing Option).

Margin driven Pricing - CounterPoint allows you to define Minimum margin and Target margin values for each item category and sub-category, and then set Price-1 values for your items based on these margins. In addition, every Price-1 field throughout CounterPoint now includes an easy-to-read, visual indicator of whether its current value is above, between, or below the minimum and target margin values for the corresponding category or sub-category.

This allows you to monitor and dynamically adjust your item prices to ensure that you are meeting your store’s profit margin goals.

Pricing Rules - Pricing rules determine the basic pricing structure of an item-whether the item’s price is selected from one of the price levels or whether it is based on the quantity purchased, item or customer information, or a combination of those factors.

The calculated price can be based on a price level, a discount percentage/amount off of a price level, a markup percentage/amount from cost, or a fixed price determined by user-defined pricing rules. CounterPoint also supports BOGO (buy one get one free) and mix and match pricing.

Pricing rules provide flexible pricing options, including Promotional, Contract, and Special pricing:

Promotional-Sale prices typically have starting and ending dates (and times). Discounts may be defined for specific items or entire categories or subcategories. Multiple sales may be defined in advance using Planned Promotions.

Contract-Customer-specific prices may be defined for specific items or entire categories/subcategories of merchandise and have optional starting and ending dates (and times).

Special-Special prices may be defined for general pricing policies or for particular groups of customers and typically don’t have starting or ending dates. You can also customize price calculations using SQL stored procedures.

Markdown Tracking - Whenever Price-1 is changed, CounterPoint automatically tracks that change as a markdown. For example, if you reduce a shirt’s price from $10 to $9 and you have two shirts on hand, the change is recorded as a $2 markdown. CounterPoint retains a detailed history of all markdowns.

Merchandise Analysis - Merchandise Analysis is a powerful tool for analyzing inventory. You can classify and rank merchandise using criteria you choose, including units sold, sales dollars, profitability, quantity-on-hand, turn-rate, GMROI (Gross Margin Return on Investment), weeks-on-hand, discounts, etc.-there are over 180 different measurements to choose from.

Analyze merchandise at the item level, or get the bigger picture by grouping inventory by vendor, category, subcategory, etc.

With hot/cold reporting, you can show, for example, the “hottest 40 items based on quantity sold” or “the coldest 20 items based on turn rate.”

Merchandise Analysis includes pre-defined reports:

Sales is a high-level view of your performance. Inventory Performance measures the performance of a particular item, category, or subcategory. Sales/Returns evaluates returns in relation to sales. Vendor Comparison compares each vendor’s sales performance against your investment in that vendor’s merchandise.

Retail History provides an in-depth or summarized analysis of inventory changes at the retail value within a selected period.

Sales Analysis shows the retail and off-retail values so you can compare discounts and profits.

Alternatively, you can create your own merchandising reports by selecting the columns, grouping, and ranking method you want to use.

Sell-through Report - CounterPoint includes the Sell-through Rate report to provide an overview of how well your items are selling based on each item’s sell-through percentage, which compares the total amount of inventory that was available to sell during a particular period to the quantity that was actually sold to customers. The report also indicates the Gross Margin Return On Investment (GMROI) and turn rate for each item.

Transfers - A transaction processing system is provided for initiating and tracking inventory transfer activity and in-transit quantities. A transfer-out may be entered manually and reviewed prior to posting, and may be accompanied by a printed transfer form. The completion of the transfer is accomplished by a transfer-in transaction and an optional transfer reconcile step.

For businesses with more than one store, transfer documents can be completed at the main office or at the other stores.

The Transfer Advice report provides a list of suggested transfers using either the maximum-quantity or the replenish sales calculation method. The Transfer Advice report can automatically create transfer transactions, which may be reviewed and edited prior to finalizing the transfer-out documents. Miscellaneous charges, such as freight, can optionally be added during the transfer.

You can also use “Quick Transfers” to transfer inventory in a single step.

Valuation Methods - Inventory valuation is provided by stocking location using the Average Cost method. With the SQL Enterprise edition, you can use the Retail Valuation method to track your inventory based on its presumed selling price. For example, if you receive two shirts priced at $10 each, you have increased your inventory value by $20. If you later mark down those shirts, you have reduced your inventory value, even though you have not received or sold any merchandise.

Physical Inventory - A complete physical inventory subsystem is provided for streamlined physical counts and variance reporting. Support is provided for importing count transactions from text files created by handheld data-collection devices.

Order Management

CounterPoint’s Order Management is designed to meet the needs of retailers who process orders from a website, mail order, or customer special orders. Order Management supports everything from entering orders and associated shipping information to order fulfillment features such as picking tickets to help retrieve the merchandise to be shipped, and batch printing of invoices.

Entering Orders - Order entry allows the user to complete a sales order screen to identify the customer, their terms, one of the on-file customer ship-to addresses, ship via method, and other vital information for order processing. Item weight can be stored and total order weight calculated for interfacing to shipping manifests. You can define rules regarding optional order deposits, so you can, for example, require the clerk to receive a certain dollar amount or percentage of the order as a deposit.

Tracking Orders - Once an order is on file, you have the option to edit, view all order activity, take additional deposits, or cancel the order. Other features include refunding the order and releasing the order with a copy remaining on file for future use. This is helpful if a customer wants a “standing” order on file.

Customer Specific Orders - CounterPoint includes the ability to tie customer specific special orders to a Purchase Order via the Customer-Specific purchasing feature. When this feature is used, a purchase order is created that stamped with the customer order information, and the purchase order information is made available from the Customer Zoom. Reporting is also available that shows order lines for outstanding purchase orders and the status of each line.

Fill Backorders Report - The Fill Backorders report is an essential report that allows you to quickly identify backordered or ordered lines that can now be filled from on-hand inventory. This report can save considerable time during the order fulfillment process.

Batch Processing - Orders can be processed one-at-a-time, or in a group through batch processing. The Batch function allows you to process multiple orders simultaneously based on filtering criteria that you define. You can batch release orders that have a balance due as long as a final payment pay code has been defined in the order.

Order Notes - Notes can be entered and associated with orders. When an order is released, the note is copied to the ticket/invoice. Order notes are retained in Ticket History.

Ecommerce Orders - CounterPoint’s integrated ecommerce solution, CPOnline, allows merchants to use the same database to power their brick and mortar and online stores. This allows you to maintain a single integrated inventory. You can use CounterPoint to publish item and customer information to your online store, and after orders are placed online, they are passed to CounterPoint to be fulfilled. This eliminates the need to rekey the data which in turn saves a lot of time and possible errors. You’re also able to market to existing customers with email newsletters, promo codes, and abandoned cart tracking.

Point of Sale

Point of Sale - Ticket Entry provides fully integrated cash register functions on a computer workstation. It also gives you a full complement of management controls and reports to help you operate your business profitably and securely. Ticket Entry works well in a variety of retail, and mail-order environments.

Benefits - Point of Sale provides valuable benefits to any business that desires to:

• Drive revenue growth with integrated gift cards without paying third party processing fees
• Simplify and accelerate checkout
• Reduce costly checkout errors and shrinkage
• Provide clerks with up-to-date inventory quantities by location and customer information
• Keep track of what’s selling and what’s not
• Update customer balances automatically
• Improve audit controls and accounting efficiency
• Improve timeliness and accuracy of sales analysis reports
• Electronically process credit cards, debit cards, EBT, and checks

Touchscreen or Regular Ticket Entry - CounterPoint also provides a simplified Ticket Entry user interface based on large buttons suitable for touchscreen, mouse, keyboard, and scanner input. A touchscreen monitor is not required.

Touchscreen Ticket Entry is user-configurable, so you control the screen layout, button behavior, button colors, button text, and even the graphics that appear on each button. You can set up one touchscreen layout to be shared by all stations, or create unique layouts for particular stations.

To further customize Touchscreen Ticket Entry, you can create buttons that run custom actions or RunPage actions. Custom action buttons can display forms, run scripts, or print reports. RunPage is a powerful and easy method to perform multiple actions from a single button.

For example, you could simplify the steps a clerk must perform when entering a Point of Sale order by defining a button called New Customer Order. When New Customer Order is pressed, the following actions would be automatically executed: Start Order, Enter Customer, Enter Sales Rep, Enter PO Number, Enter Shipping Information, and Enter Ship Via.

Built-in Gift Cards and Loyalty Programs CounterPoint provides integrated solutions that provide the ability to implement gift cards and loyalty programs across all sites from a central location. Manage and evaluate these strategic marketing programs quickly and efficiently.

• Includes card sales, redemption, configuration, reporting and has the means for physical card production
• Unlimited card types for special promotions
• Gift card balance printed on customer receipt
• Flexible configuration - for one store or an entire chain

Drawer Readings - An instantaneous summary of store-level or drawer-level activity is available. Drawer readings display the day’s sales activity and show the exact amounts of cash, checks, and other tender expected to be found in each cash drawer.

Passwords - Optionally password-protect ticket entry to ensure that access to CounterPoint is restricted to authorized users. Through passwords, you may authorize a user for specific functions such as price overrides or the ability to void a ticket. You may also restrict a user to a specific store or location.

An authorized user can override another user’s security settings and allow that user to void a ticket, change the tax on a ticket, reprint a ticket, etc.

Daily Reports - Multiple daily reports (including X-tape and Z-tape) can be generated for each drawer and run at any time. Each report’s parameters are user-specified and provide end-of-day balancing, summary sales reporting, and sales and profitability analysis by department, user, and salesperson. Additional analysis is available by tax code, sales rep, store, station, user, and payment type.

Sophisticated exception reporting allows a manager to monitor danger zones without having to pore through voluminous reports. Exception reports are available for critical areas such as tax overrides, voids, merchandise returns, and others. The Price Exceptions report allows you to review price overrides on unposted tickets before you post them.

the Point of Sale Exceptions report, allows you to track the ticket count, average ticket amount, drawer overages and shortages, hours worked, and other daily statistics for each user, as well as the number of Point of Sale exceptions-including price and tax overrides, voided tickets, cash drops and cash loans, manual credit authorizations, and so forth-that each user performed over a specified period.

This report allows you to more easily monitor and manage your users’ activity in CounterPoint, helping you to identify patterns that might necessitate additional training or indicate potential security concerns.

End-of-day processing updates inventory, customer history, and financial records. End-of-day reports may be run automatically during the end-of-day process or at any time in the future.

Pricing - Merchandise is priced accurately and automatically, based on list price, quantity breaks, customer discounts, a markup on cost, or a desired margin. CounterPoint supports Promotional, Contract, and Special prices.

• Promotional prices can be date- and time-activated for limited-time sales.
• Contract prices are valid for certain customers for a group of items during a specific time period.
• Special prices indicate general pricing policies or for particular groups of customers and typically don’t have starting or ending dates.

Promotional, Contract, and Special prices can be based on a discount, markup, fixed price, or desired profit margin. Alternatively, you can simply pick the price. Prices can be based on relevant item, customer, or ticket information (e.g., the item’s vendor, the customer category, or the time of day). Items can be priced and sold by using the stocking unit or up to five alternate selling units. For example, you may stock golf balls by the EACH, and sell them at one price by the BOX and at another price by the SLEEVE.

Holds and Quotes - A ticket can be placed on indefinite hold, and then later recalled for editing or completion by document number, customer name, or other fields.

Customer quotes can be printed and retained indefinitely, and can be reviewed, edited, and copied prior to completing the sale. Quote lines can be turned in to Order lines. Holds and quotes do not commit inventory

Orders, Backorders, and Special Orders In ticket entry, you can mix sales, returns, orders, backorders, special orders, and layaways on the same ticket.

An order can be quoted, held, and recalled-just like a sales ticket. Plus, you can edit the order, accept a deposit, release the entire order or just specific lines, print a picking ticket, cancel an order, and reinstate a cancelled order. You can also view an order’s history, including the original order, each time it was edited, each partial release, and the completed order.

CounterPoint’s order processing works for pure retail as well as for retail-delivery, retail-assembly-delivery, retail-special order, retail-wholesale, wholesale, and wholesale-manufacturing operations.

Layaways - The layaway processing system allows you to add new layaways, record deposits, view the status and history, and release completed layaways. Layaway processing is similar to order processing.

Store Credits, Gift Cards, and Shopping Cards Store credits and gift cards can be issued, partially redeemed, reissued, and voided. Rechargeable SVC cards can be accepted as well as built in gift card tracking that doesn’t require third party processing fees. Gift Cards and store credits may be redeemed at any store or restricted to the issuing store.

Payment Types - An unlimited number of payment types (e.g., cash, check, A/R charge, debit or credit card) may be defined. Each payment type may be defined to open the cash drawer, allow change to be given, and to require validation (such as a credit card or driver’s license number). An unlimited number of payment types can be accepted on a ticket, including multiples of a single payment type (such as two Visa cards).

You can also specify restrictions on each payment type. For example, you can require a $10 minimum on all Visa cards, or set a $5 maximum cash back amount for gift certificates.

End-of-day reports provide reconciliation information for each type of payment. Historical data is retained and reported for each payment type.

Commissions - Optionally calculate sales commissions for each item on the sales ticket based on either the sale amount or the gross profit. Commissions are tracked by ticket and are reported in detail or in summary on the Commissions Due report.

Taxes - Taxes are calculated automatically based on the taxable status of the merchandise and the customer. Tax calculations can be overridden by authorized users on a per-ticket basis, or individual line items can be set to “no-tax.” An entire ticket can be non-taxable by entering a tax registration (tax exempt) number. Tax can be a percentage of the sale amount, an amount per piece, or a combination. An item’s tax can be different for each location. Tax figures are printed on end-of-day reports and are retained for historical purposes.

Surtaxes (taxes on the tax) and Canadian PST/GST calculation is also supported.

Ticket Numbering - Ticket numbers are normally assigned sequentially by CounterPoint. Alternatively, user-assigned ticket numbers may be entered. Each station can have an independent series of ticket numbers, or all stations can issue tickets from a single series of numbers for the store. Order, layaway, hold, and quote numbers offer similar capabilities.

End-of-Day Processing - The end-of-day process (counting and reconciling drawers, posting tickets, settling credit card transactions, etc.) can be run for any station while other clerks continue to ring up customers. Drawers can be counted by currency unit (e.g., 4 fives, 7 ones, 2 quarters, etc.).

Managers can reconcile drawers during the end-of-day process to verify the closing amounts and correct any mistakes made when the drawer was counted. Drawers can optionally be auto-reconciled.

End-of-day processing updates inventory, customer history, and financial records. End-of-day reports may be run automatically during the end-of-day process or at any time in the future.

Receiveables

Complete customer tracking is an integral part of CounterPoint. The Receivables feature adds charge sales, receivables tracking, cash receipts processing, finance charges, account aging, and statement printing.

Serial Numbers

Serial number tracking provides a detailed record of each piece of merchandise-when it was received, what it cost, which customer bought it, when it was bought, warranty expiration, etc. Serial number tracking is beneficial to any business that sells big ticket items, tracks product warranties, or deals in regulated commodities.