HELIOS - V10.0.84 issues

Andy · 02-18-2003, 07:05 AM

Well first let me say, that much has been corrected in these latest updates ... but come on folks surely after 84 versions you could get it right ... so once again (and good news for you Tony, very possibility for the last time) on behalf of the many Helios Users that I call friends as well as clients ... here are the issues that I encountered again doing a quick review of Helios V10.0.84.

1. Client ID # ... improved ... now 20 characters can be saved, if you attempt to save more than 20 you now get a misleading "error" message advising that you are attempting to save a "Duplicate" ID number, which it is not. The field is then redisplayed as blank while the database continues to store the original value. While you are allowed to set in System Preferences the Client ID# as the Start At field if you use the F2-Find Client function thereon the Search screen displays in Last Name order and does not include the Client ID# as part of the display.

2. Client Profile redesign ... in short it sucks, OK a little more info on that statement:

a) The Balance Owing data is split between the Profile screen (Balance and Due Date) and the More Info screen (Payment account and Credit Limit) with the Visits Till Due field missing entirely.

b) The two date fields to the right of Pre Paid $ and Bonus Bucks serve no purpose and are a waste of valuable space.

c) The two new eMail fields in my opinion are far less important to the POS activity than the User Defined fields which are now located on the More Info tab ... VERY inconvenient for many of the excellent uses that many Users have incorporated into User Defined fields related to POS activity ... for example (Skin Type, Medications, Lotion File Drawer Code, Shared With, etc.) and finally Skin Type is a User Defined field with a FIXED assumed location (Field #2), now there is an oxymoron for you. It is impossible to give a better example to support my belief that the new POS screen was not thought through from a POS operation view point ... other agenda items where leading the thinking on this one ... oh YES.

d) Only 7 and a half characters of the Sales Code are displayed in the POS area ... useless for anyone using UPC codes (as with the Demo Data for ETS's products)

e) The Method of Payment (M) indicator shows in the heading area of the Current POS session area ... where it is totally useless, since no payment method is recorded until after F5-End Sale at which point the transactions are no longer part of the current session. This same field would be useful on the recent POS History area but is omitted (lack of room really) but is present on the F8-History display.

f) that great black void on a clear Client Profile screen might be better used to display an abbreviated Bed Status screen … not a new suggestion, but I believe a better use of space.

3. More Info screen ... upon occasion but inconsistently the First Visit date will display without the Year, the info is in the database, but the date displays incorrectly.

4. Reports … the overall appearance of reports is very much wanting. Alignment, Font selections, truncation of data, appropriate Heading and Page number is very much in need of attention.

5. Shift Report … much improvement, but still a few issues to attend to. The area in which Sales are displayed is misaligned … Product Sales display as Service Sales with a blank line in Product Sales, Service Sales display as Misc Sales over top of $0.00 if there are no Misc Sales, Prepaid Sales and GC Sales are also down one line.

On a positive note, GC-Change now properly reports with the applicable Cashier. The handling of Gift Certificate change still needs attention … separate issue, see below.

The purpose of Total Customer “count” still alludes me, this is a total transaction count … not sure of its purpose on the Shift Report.

6. Daily Sales Report … the Daily Sales Detail report is VERY difficult to read. Helios, PLEASE give Landscape a try on the Daily Sales (at least Detail) report, and lower the font size so all detail line data fits on one line. TIME never needs 2 decimal places displayed.

On the summary page, Total Customers has the value displaying to the left of the text rather than to the right (although the purpose of this value, which appears to be Transaction count, truly does allude me).

The Cost of Goods Sold value is using current inventory cost (at the time the report is PRINTED not the time of sale, which would still be incorrect anyway) rather than actual or average cost based on purchases. This does not conform with Generally Accepted Accounting practices. There is no solution for this until Helios include a Cost field in the Transaction file and properly handles and computes Average cost … neither of which is done today.

One more try on the Daily Sales Report Summary, I suggest (as I have before) that in the Division area that another group be added between Product Sales and Total Sales, this would be a summary of “Other Sales” and include Gift Certificates, Prepaid Dollar, Payment on Account and other Miscellaneous transactions … thus Service, Product and Other would add to Total Sales.

7. Gift Certificate – CHANGE … OK getting closer on this one, GC-Change now in V10.0.84 reports against the appropriate Cashier. Now to correct the reporting on the Shift Report and the Daily Sales report … here is what needs to be done.

The TOTAL value of the Gift Certificate being redeemed should be reported as Gift Certificate (Payment Method) not just the value used before CHANGE. Now the amount of the CHANGE needs to be handled one of two ways. If placed in Prepaids it would be a NEGATIVE value in Prepaids (Payment Method field) if not then it would be a NEGATIVE value in CASH. There all balanced and proper.

An example: Client redeems a $100. Gift Certificate on a $60. purchase. Currently that will be reported as a $60 Gift Certificate and the $40 if added to Prepaids just floats not reported and the amount reported as Gift Certificate redeemed is incorrect … this cause a major problem for anyone running a General Ledger and using the Daily Sales Report as the source of the Daily Sales entry. The problem is even WORSE, if rather than adding the GC-Change to Prepaids, actual CASH is given for the CHANGE, now your drawer will be short the amount of the change and difficult to track.

GC-CHANGE handled as outlined above eliminates both of these issues. Have at it.

Running out of time this morning ... to be continued ....

Sales Reports re Revenue/Non-Revenue ... the following reports appear to be including Non-Revenue when not requested and excluding it when it is requested to be included ...
... Sex and Age
... Time of Day
... Referral / Zip
... Sales Code / Zip

... the following report appear to be ignoring the include Non-Revenue selection, both resulting reports are the same ...
... Month and Quarter

Inventory Reports … still a problem. Only the Master List and Bar Code labels will actually run. All other reports respond with an error stating that either the “helios” or “invt” database can not be opened.

Not sure if the Bar Code label is valid or not … I do not have a BarCode scanner to test BUT the text description below is only displaying 9 of the 12 characters of a UPC code.

More comments when additional review completed … but it would appear that there is still much work to be done on V10 Reports. What does everyone think, will they get it right by V10.0.100 or even more important will they get it right by June … when Tony has stated that support on V9 will be terminated by Helios … just over 3 months away and counting.

Please remember these comments and observations are as a result of a quick review, mainly concentration on issues previously reported ... please do not view this as a complete or comprehensive testing of V10.0.84.

Hope this helps ....

_________________

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 2003-02-18 09:54 ]

Andy · 02-18-2003, 10:21 AM

Just got a call from a Helios User that has not installed V10 for review yet. They asked what the differences are between V9 and V10 Client Profile / POS Screen.

I told them I would post screen shots of V10 here (these are of an earlier version but remain unchanged).

V10 Client Profile / POS screen:

V10 Client Profile / More Info screen:

the areas marked in red above were denoting issues at the time ... the Date of First Visit issue remains.

Alternative Proposed design ... food for thought

The screen shot above reflects my thoughts on a possible alternative structure of the main Client Profile / POS screen that takes advantage of the new "Current Session" concept in Helios V10 and maintains the power of the current POS screen. I have always felt that Helios provided the quickest, smoothest and most advantageous approach to the POS operation in a salon.

In order for all relevant data to be displayed my proposal includes:

1. Reduce from 5 to 4 the number of POS lines in the current session box (scrolling will handle additional lines when they occur).

2. Reduce from 12 to 8 (which is still an increase from 6) the number of lines in the POS History display on the Point of Sale Tab.

3. Move the Work Phone # up and to the right of the Home Phone #.

4. Move the two new eMail address fields to the "More Info" tab.

5. Relocate the User Defined fields back onto the Primary Client Profile / POS screen.

6. Relocate the Photo and Accumulator/Membership Data back to their original position. The Photo (camera) is used by many Helios Users and since space is still available I do not see the logic of removing it from the primary screen.

7. Maintain the structure of the Client Balances area, including the presentation of the Visits Till Due field which is omitted from the current V10 screens.

8. Increase the size of the Sales Code field in both POS areas to accomodate the full field size of 13 characters. Currently only 7 and a half characters are displayed.

9. Move the "M" Method of Payment indicator from the current session to the recent History area.

and actually since I created this alternative design and since the Method of Payment is shown on the F8-History display, I would even suggest dropping the "M" Method of Payment indicator from the recent History area as well to ensure that the entire Sales code field can be displayed.

Andy · 02-18-2003, 11:18 AM

Blank Client Profile Screen in V10

Here is what the Client Profile Screen looks like in V10 with no client selected ... see what I mean by the BIG BLACK VOID.

personally I think it would be a great idea if an abbreviated Bed Status screen would be incorporated into this wasted area. It would be great for Bed Cleaners to be able to easily and quickly identify work that needs to be done, etc etc.

Now this is just a quick rough paste up of a screen shot ... but hopefully you get the idea.

The background of each Room Number would be colored in harmony with the appropriate Bed Type color.

The background of the Time field beside each Room Number would be colored in harmony with the appropriate Status color and the Delay Time or Tan Time remaining displayed.

again Food for thought ...

_________________

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 2003-02-18 11:23 ]

CHUNN · 02-21-2003, 04:03 PM

Just wait until our new Reports Wizard comes out in a few weeks. That along with Salon Wizard for Helios will be all you could ever ask for!

Just the mapping module we will add will be worth it all!

Sonshinetans · 02-21-2003, 05:25 PM

Michael,
is this for salons with networks or for single stores. And how will it benefit us with reports
tommy

Andy · 02-21-2003, 05:35 PM

Tommy ... this applies to BOTH Salon Net for networking and Salon Wizard for single stores. Of course Salon Wizard can also be used by multiple store owners that do not need networking.

The Report Wizard within both products contains a wide variety of reports some similar in intent to Helios and others addressing issues raised by many users.

The MAPPING module that Michael referred to is extremely exciting ... it allow you to display a Sales Report in the form of a map overlay show demographics within your market area ... many exciting uses for this one.

Of course as with all our Solarsoft products the Report Wizard can be used locally within your location(s) or via the web from any Internet connection with the appropriate brower.

If we can answer additional questions ... post away ... or give me a call anytime to discuss.

_________________

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 2003-02-21 17:37 ]

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02-18-2003, 07:05 AM	#1 (permalink)
Andy Join Date: Jan 25 2000 Location: CT Posts: 1,760 Rep Power: 9	Well first let me say, that much has been corrected in these latest updates ... but come on folks surely after 84 versions you could get it right ... so once again (and good news for you Tony, very possibility for the last time) on behalf of the many Helios Users that I call friends as well as clients ... here are the issues that I encountered again doing a quick review of Helios V10.0.84. 1. Client ID # ... improved ... now 20 characters can be saved, if you attempt to save more than 20 you now get a misleading "error" message advising that you are attempting to save a "Duplicate" ID number, which it is not. The field is then redisplayed as blank while the database continues to store the original value. While you are allowed to set in System Preferences the Client ID# as the Start At field if you use the F2-Find Client function thereon the Search screen displays in Last Name order and does not include the Client ID# as part of the display. 2. Client Profile redesign ... in short it sucks, OK a little more info on that statement: a) The Balance Owing data is split between the Profile screen (Balance and Due Date) and the More Info screen (Payment account and Credit Limit) with the Visits Till Due field missing entirely. b) The two date fields to the right of Pre Paid $ and Bonus Bucks serve no purpose and are a waste of valuable space. c) The two new eMail fields in my opinion are far less important to the POS activity than the User Defined fields which are now located on the More Info tab ... VERY inconvenient for many of the excellent uses that many Users have incorporated into User Defined fields related to POS activity ... for example (Skin Type, Medications, Lotion File Drawer Code, Shared With, etc.) and finally Skin Type is a User Defined field with a FIXED assumed location (Field #2), now there is an oxymoron for you. It is impossible to give a better example to support my belief that the new POS screen was not thought through from a POS operation view point ... other agenda items where leading the thinking on this one ... oh YES. d) Only 7 and a half characters of the Sales Code are displayed in the POS area ... useless for anyone using UPC codes (as with the Demo Data for ETS's products) e) The Method of Payment (M) indicator shows in the heading area of the Current POS session area ... where it is totally useless, since no payment method is recorded until after F5-End Sale at which point the transactions are no longer part of the current session. This same field would be useful on the recent POS History area but is omitted (lack of room really) but is present on the F8-History display. f) that great black void on a clear Client Profile screen might be better used to display an abbreviated Bed Status screen … not a new suggestion, but I believe a better use of space. 3. More Info screen ... upon occasion but inconsistently the First Visit date will display without the Year, the info is in the database, but the date displays incorrectly. 4. Reports … the overall appearance of reports is very much wanting. Alignment, Font selections, truncation of data, appropriate Heading and Page number is very much in need of attention. 5. Shift Report … much improvement, but still a few issues to attend to. The area in which Sales are displayed is misaligned … Product Sales display as Service Sales with a blank line in Product Sales, Service Sales display as Misc Sales over top of $0.00 if there are no Misc Sales, Prepaid Sales and GC Sales are also down one line. On a positive note, GC-Change now properly reports with the applicable Cashier. The handling of Gift Certificate change still needs attention … separate issue, see below. The purpose of Total Customer “count” still alludes me, this is a total transaction count … not sure of its purpose on the Shift Report. 6. Daily Sales Report … the Daily Sales Detail report is VERY difficult to read. Helios, PLEASE give Landscape a try on the Daily Sales (at least Detail) report, and lower the font size so all detail line data fits on one line. TIME never needs 2 decimal places displayed. On the summary page, Total Customers has the value displaying to the left of the text rather than to the right (although the purpose of this value, which appears to be Transaction count, truly does allude me). The Cost of Goods Sold value is using current inventory cost (at the time the report is PRINTED not the time of sale, which would still be incorrect anyway) rather than actual or average cost based on purchases. This does not conform with Generally Accepted Accounting practices. There is no solution for this until Helios include a Cost field in the Transaction file and properly handles and computes Average cost … neither of which is done today. One more try on the Daily Sales Report Summary, I suggest (as I have before) that in the Division area that another group be added between Product Sales and Total Sales, this would be a summary of “Other Sales” and include Gift Certificates, Prepaid Dollar, Payment on Account and other Miscellaneous transactions … thus Service, Product and Other would add to Total Sales. 7. Gift Certificate – CHANGE … OK getting closer on this one, GC-Change now in V10.0.84 reports against the appropriate Cashier. Now to correct the reporting on the Shift Report and the Daily Sales report … here is what needs to be done. The TOTAL value of the Gift Certificate being redeemed should be reported as Gift Certificate (Payment Method) not just the value used before CHANGE. Now the amount of the CHANGE needs to be handled one of two ways. If placed in Prepaids it would be a NEGATIVE value in Prepaids (Payment Method field) if not then it would be a NEGATIVE value in CASH. There all balanced and proper. An example: Client redeems a $100. Gift Certificate on a $60. purchase. Currently that will be reported as a $60 Gift Certificate and the $40 if added to Prepaids just floats not reported and the amount reported as Gift Certificate redeemed is incorrect … this cause a major problem for anyone running a General Ledger and using the Daily Sales Report as the source of the Daily Sales entry. The problem is even WORSE, if rather than adding the GC-Change to Prepaids, actual CASH is given for the CHANGE, now your drawer will be short the amount of the change and difficult to track. GC-CHANGE handled as outlined above eliminates both of these issues. Have at it. Running out of time this morning ... to be continued .... Sales Reports re Revenue/Non-Revenue ... the following reports appear to be including Non-Revenue when not requested and excluding it when it is requested to be included ... ... Sex and Age ... Time of Day ... Referral / Zip ... Sales Code / Zip ... the following report appear to be ignoring the include Non-Revenue selection, both resulting reports are the same ... ... Month and Quarter Inventory Reports … still a problem. Only the Master List and Bar Code labels will actually run. All other reports respond with an error stating that either the “helios” or “invt” database can not be opened. Not sure if the Bar Code label is valid or not … I do not have a BarCode scanner to test BUT the text description below is only displaying 9 of the 12 characters of a UPC code. More comments when additional review completed … but it would appear that there is still much work to be done on V10 Reports. What does everyone think, will they get it right by V10.0.100 or even more important will they get it right by June … when Tony has stated that support on V9 will be terminated by Helios … just over 3 months away and counting. Please remember these comments and observations are as a result of a quick review, mainly concentration on issues previously reported ... please do not view this as a complete or comprehensive testing of V10.0.84. Hope this helps .... _________________ 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 2003-02-18 09:54 ]

02-18-2003, 10:21 AM	#2 (permalink)
Andy Join Date: Jan 25 2000 Location: CT Posts: 1,760 Rep Power: 9	Just got a call from a Helios User that has not installed V10 for review yet. They asked what the differences are between V9 and V10 Client Profile / POS Screen. I told them I would post screen shots of V10 here (these are of an earlier version but remain unchanged). V10 Client Profile / POS screen: V10 Client Profile / More Info screen: the areas marked in red above were denoting issues at the time ... the Date of First Visit issue remains. Alternative Proposed design ... food for thought The screen shot above reflects my thoughts on a possible alternative structure of the main Client Profile / POS screen that takes advantage of the new "Current Session" concept in Helios V10 and maintains the power of the current POS screen. I have always felt that Helios provided the quickest, smoothest and most advantageous approach to the POS operation in a salon. In order for all relevant data to be displayed my proposal includes: 1. Reduce from 5 to 4 the number of POS lines in the current session box (scrolling will handle additional lines when they occur). 2. Reduce from 12 to 8 (which is still an increase from 6) the number of lines in the POS History display on the Point of Sale Tab. 3. Move the Work Phone # up and to the right of the Home Phone #. 4. Move the two new eMail address fields to the "More Info" tab. 5. Relocate the User Defined fields back onto the Primary Client Profile / POS screen. 6. Relocate the Photo and Accumulator/Membership Data back to their original position. The Photo (camera) is used by many Helios Users and since space is still available I do not see the logic of removing it from the primary screen. 7. Maintain the structure of the Client Balances area, including the presentation of the Visits Till Due field which is omitted from the current V10 screens. 8. Increase the size of the Sales Code field in both POS areas to accomodate the full field size of 13 characters. Currently only 7 and a half characters are displayed. 9. Move the "M" Method of Payment indicator from the current session to the recent History area. and actually since I created this alternative design and since the Method of Payment is shown on the F8-History display, I would even suggest dropping the "M" Method of Payment indicator from the recent History area as well to ensure that the entire Sales code field can be displayed.

02-18-2003, 11:18 AM	#3 (permalink)
Andy Join Date: Jan 25 2000 Location: CT Posts: 1,760 Rep Power: 9	Blank Client Profile Screen in V10 Here is what the Client Profile Screen looks like in V10 with no client selected ... see what I mean by the BIG BLACK VOID. personally I think it would be a great idea if an abbreviated Bed Status screen would be incorporated into this wasted area. It would be great for Bed Cleaners to be able to easily and quickly identify work that needs to be done, etc etc. Now this is just a quick rough paste up of a screen shot ... but hopefully you get the idea. The background of each Room Number would be colored in harmony with the appropriate Bed Type color. The background of the Time field beside each Room Number would be colored in harmony with the appropriate Status color and the Delay Time or Tan Time remaining displayed. again Food for thought ... _________________ 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 2003-02-18 11:23 ]

02-21-2003, 04:03 PM	#4 (permalink)
CHUNN Police Department Join Date: Oct 17 2000 Location: Huntsville, AL Posts: 4,391 Blog Entries: 1 Rep Power: 9	Just wait until our new Reports Wizard comes out in a few weeks. That along with Salon Wizard for Helios will be all you could ever ask for! Just the mapping module we will add will be worth it all!

02-21-2003, 05:25 PM	#5 (permalink)
Sonshinetans Join Date: Oct 23 2000 Location: alabama Posts: 493 Rep Power: 8	Michael, is this for salons with networks or for single stores. And how will it benefit us with reports tommy

02-21-2003, 05:35 PM	#6 (permalink)
Andy Join Date: Jan 25 2000 Location: CT Posts: 1,760 Rep Power: 9	Tommy ... this applies to BOTH Salon Net for networking and Salon Wizard for single stores. Of course Salon Wizard can also be used by multiple store owners that do not need networking. The Report Wizard within both products contains a wide variety of reports some similar in intent to Helios and others addressing issues raised by many users. The MAPPING module that Michael referred to is extremely exciting ... it allow you to display a Sales Report in the form of a map overlay show demographics within your market area ... many exciting uses for this one. Of course as with all our Solarsoft products the Report Wizard can be used locally within your location(s) or via the web from any Internet connection with the appropriate brower. If we can answer additional questions ... post away ... or give me a call anytime to discuss. _________________ 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 2003-02-21 17:37 ]

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