HELIOS V10-Daily Reports

[Andy]

I offer the following observations after a quick review of the Shift Report and Daily Sales Report in Helios V10.

This review is of the Reporting Module from within the Helios Application.

After you run a report in the Reporting Module and close that report (X in upper right corner of report display), you are returned to the Helios Client Profile screen. The Reporting Module does not reflect on the Windows Task Bar or Windows Control, you can minimize other windows you have open and you will find it or again click on Management - Reports to bring the window to the foreground.

Shift Report:

Data is reflected by Cashier with no total provided. Users that balance their drawer in total rather than by Cashier will have to add values.

The amounts reported by Cashier are Left Aligned and less readable than if they were Right Aligned as in V9.

The Cash total is misplaced out of appropriate column, if you use the Calculate functions.

After Cash + Check + Credit Card - the Total Revenue line has a description of Credit Card.

Gift Certificate Change is reported separate as a "Blank" Cashier code.

The Section reporting Over/Under is omitted from the V10 report, so using the Calculate input provides no calculation.

The value of Coins is subtracted from the value of bills in reporting Total Dollars.

A Shift report that printed on one page in V9 printed on 3 pages in V10.


Daily Sales Report:

Buy shares in a Toner and Paper company.

All data except the Date and Time is displayed in Bold Font.

The Daily Sales Detail report in V9 normally displayed over 50 lines per page (but the description was truncated at 12 characters - this was a problem), in V10 each detail line is displayed on 2 lines and there are 21 transactions lines per page. This means that the V10 Daily Sales Detail report will use about 2.5 times as many pages to print.

The Sales Code "Code" is truncated at 6 character (of the possible 13), there is over one inch of blank space after the 25 character Description.

The "D" is missing from Discount in the Header line.

I personally find the spacing and font and alignment of the Daily Sales Report less readable that V9 - but that is just one man's opinion.

The Pay Type on Split payments is incorrect.

The placement of Price and Discount amount could be more in harmony to improve readability.

The page header and footer only prints on page one of the Detail report.

On the summary page, no new issues other than I personally prefer the compact readability of the report in V9 compared to the new font and alignment of the V10 report - but really not a biggie.

Couple of issue I have raised before that have not been addressed.

The Division section does not cross add to the Total. The total is the total but Misc, Prepaid and Gift Certificate items are omitted with only Service and Product columns - the Division section should have a Misc/Ppd/GC section.

The Cost of Goods sold and Profit on Goods Sold is still misstated, depending on when you create the report. The Daily Sales report takes the "Average Cost" from the Inventory table (current value) at the time the report is generate NOT the average cost that the time of the sale. The Average Cost should be stored on the Transaction file at time of sale and that value should forever be the average cost of that sale transaction. Using the Average cost from the Inventory file is incorrect. The average value can and will change as new product is received at a different price and this new average cost has NOTHING to do with that prior completed transaction.

Quite honestly, today my heart is not in looking at any of the additional reports in Helios V10.

The formatting of the initial Web based reports (which were simple mirrored presentation of the same internal reports in web format) reflected significant formatting and data truncation problems - but that was in March, most likely improved now - will save that for another day.

I am Canadian, but a second holiday (Canada Day - July 1st - Independance Day - July 4th) in one week sounds good to me, eh.


_________________

Andy Thompson
ACT Business Solutions
Toll-Free 877-777-6717
andy@atso.ca
ACT Help Center [ This Message was edited by: Andy @ ATSO.ca on 2002-08-30 21:58 ]

[Andy]

Sorry, missed a couple of points from my notes on the Daily Sales Report.

The Daily Sales Report now only allows reporting of ONE day.

In prior versions you could do a Daily Sales Report (logically you would not want Detail - just the Summary page) for a week, month or any desired timeframe.

The new V10 Daily Sales Report does not allow for a range of dates but rather one single day to be reported.


Secondly, the Daily Sales Detail Report does not have page numbers

_________________

Andy Thompson
ACT Business Solutions
Toll-Free 877-777-6717
andy@atso.ca
ACT Help Center [ This Message was edited by: Andy @ ATSO.ca on 2002-07-04 11:50 ]

[CHUNN]

Tell me again why I would want to change to Helios V10?

What NEW features outweight all the problems you are mentioning?

_________________
"BigDog member since April '02[ This Message was edited by: chunn on 2002-07-04 13:24 ]

[Andy]

New Features in V10:

1. The ability to Suspend a Transaction, do a transaction with another Client and return to and complete the Suspended Transaction.

- I am still testing this, one problem I found quickly in March does appear to have been resolved.

2. Helios now handles up to 64 beds

3. Helios now recognizes a difference between the current POS session and today's transactions. You can limit a cashiers ability to only F6-Void transactions in the current session and select in the system defaults if Cashiers have the right to Void other transactions from today. The Void Old Sales (not today) remain the same.

4. An additional Client ID# (10-N) has been added to the Client table and it is also an alternative search key (issues are outstanding on this function)

5. Two new permanent eMail (Home and Work) fields have been added to the Client Profile screen (note - all User Defined fields have been moved off the primary screen to the "More Info" screen.

6. There are now 9 (increased from 5) Contract Form available for custom formatting and printing

7. You now have the ability to "Hide" the EFT Account Number from view outside of Master Edit.

8. You can prohibit an Employee that is Clocked In from Tanning. Now depending how you have your Employee Tans set up, it may be difficult to track if an employee sets up additional Client records for themselves. This feature is controlled by putting the Client Number of the Employee on the Employee Field - a good idea.

9. There are reported to be Web Based Reports that you can access over the Internet to report on your Helios Database. I have not succeeded at installing or using these, therefore no comment at this time. I understood in March that it would use the MicroSoft Personal Web Server, if so - users with ME and XP-Home may have a problem.

Michael, I may have missed some smaller items - this is what I remember and have seen in V10.


_________________

Andy Thompson
ACT Business Solutions
Toll-Free 877-777-6717
andy@atso.ca
ACT Help Center [ This Message was edited by: Andy @ ATSO.ca on 2002-07-04 21:41 ]

[Gene]

Elswhere, Larry P. suggested a bonus scheme based on product revenue per tanner by cashier. He gets this information by running the daily sales (not detail) and putting in the date span he wants and by cashier. Then he simply divides the product revenue by the customers and comes up with average product revenue per tan.

I was going to start this until I read your post. Is there any other way in V10 to get this information?

The shift report now tells me everything I want to know in about a quarter of a page. (It was in a more appropropriate font in V7). Since I keep all shift reports at home, I'm interested in keeping this manageable. How can a shift report now run to 3 pages? How about a summary shift report option so we users are given a choice?

[Andy]

Gene, there is a new "Prod per Employee" report in V10 - I have just started to test the reporting module, it is a new report in the end of the Sales section.

On the "Avg Produce Sales per Customer by Employee" report, it displays by Employee the # of Clients, the Product and Service Sales, together with Average Product and Average Service per Client - this report can be generated for a range of dates.

The font and spacing on the new shift report is larger than the current V9 report and each Cashier is report separately. I had entered data into V9 - run the shift report and daily sales report - converted to V10 and ran the same reports. In V9 the shift report printed on about 75% of a page, V10 it was 2 full pages and about 25% of a third page.

[Chippp]

is the clients address and phone# still on the main pos screen. we have clients with the same names first and last.

[Andy]

Yes, CHIPPP - here are Screen Shots of the main POS screen and the More Info (later replaces the Summary tab.


Screen Shot of V10 POS Screen

Screen Shot of V10 More Info Screen

[Chippp]

It looks like it is just making moe work for you when you enter the info.

Do the people at helios ask salons what they want in the layout or is it all about what they want or think people want.

Did they make the changes because some salons asked for it?


I hope that the fonts and layout don't get any smaller the pos screen is hard enough to read, enter someones name with l and i, j in it see if you can read it!

I talked to tony a year ago or more about this, the fonts need to be in bold and the letters need to be spread further apart.
Or just use a better font.

[Chippp]

With helios you need glasses