Handling the InnovaCommerce POS is extremely simple and there are few guidelines to follow. After the initial configuration of the program (if you have not read it, do it now) we will open our POS to the payment and we will see the initial window of sale, now we will explain its different parts.
Opening POS sessions
Innovacommerce works with sales “sessions”, a session can be any period of time, it can be hours, a day or a week, that is up to the merchant. The sales cycle and tonnage is computed from the moment a session is opened in the terminal until it is closed. When we want to open a POS to the collection, innovacommerce first examines if there is already a session in progress, if there is, warns that in the case of continuing with the opening, will continue with the current session. In case of answering NO to the question that the system asks us, Innovacommerce will show the closing window to close the session before and be able to open a new one. The closing and totalization of the POS is explained in another section of our WIKI. When a session is opened for the first time, it is necessary to introduce what we will call “initial cash” which is the money that is in the coin box at that moment and is the initial cash to start the session.
In this window we will introduce that initial cash and we will give to SAVE, if we close the window without introducing any data, the POS understands that it opens with ZERO of initial cash. This value cannot be modified, if you have made a mistake, close the session and open a new one before selling. After this operation, the POS loads its main view.
We can divide the work area of InnovaCommerce POS in 4 different parts, each one with its task and its operation. Before delving into the management of the POS we will see these 4 areas
Ticket control area
Here we see the button bar, which will explain what each one is, the area of the ticket lines, where the products and their amounts will appear, and the total bar, where the current total and the total, money delivered and change received from the last ticket created in the system are reflected, in order to check data if necessary.
These are the buttons from left to right:
Park ticket: Used to park a sale and retrieve it later. It will not ask for a descriptive name and then locate it in the list. The list of parked tickets is displayed if we click on the orange overlapping number next to the button. This number indicates the number of parked tickets in the current POS. It is not possible to recover tickets parked in other devices, even if they belong to the same POS.
Apply discounts to products or ticket manually: You may need to specify a discount to a specific product or to the total of the ticket at some point in the sale. Innovacommerce can establish two types of discounts to both products and the total ticket, i.e., discount by quantity (a direct discount on the price of money) or discount by percentage (a percentage is established to be subtracted from the price of the product or total ticket).
To establish a discount on a product, first select it and then press the “apply discounts” button. If you do not select any product, the program will understand that you want to make a discount on the total, so the option “apply to the whole ticket” in the discount window will be blocked.
Amount: This is the discount to be applied either in money or in percentage. Example, if you put 5, it can be 5 ? or 5%, you decide that with the selector “percentage”, if it is ON, it will be 5% and if it is OFF it will be 5 ?.
The selector “Apply over the whole ticket” is used to apply the discount to the whole ticket, ignoring the line previously selected. If there is no line on the ticket selected, this option will be set to ON by default and blocked, it cannot be changed.
By clicking on “save”, the discount will be applied to the ticket as a new line. Manually applied discounts do not count as discounts in prestashop, they are lines with negative amounts so there is no way to count how many discounts you have made in a period of time.
Trash This button is used to delete a line, the one that is selected, allows you to delete product lines or discount lines in case you have made a mistake. You will be able to rectify a discount or a product.
Add product button manualAdd line: Sometimes it may be necessary to add a manual line to the ticket, normally it is used to add a product not stored in the database. With this button, you can add a line that will be counted only for this sale, it will not be stored in your database.
Units: Indicates the units that you sell the manual product.
Description: Specify its name, which will appear on the ticket.
Base price: Price without taxes of the product. If we write a price here, the price with tax (lower box) will be calculated automatically with respect to the tax selected in the tax box (%).
Price: The price including taxes, as well as the base price, if we write in this box, the price without taxes will be automatically calculated.
Product subject to VAT: This box is automatically checked and unchecked according to the area for which you are selling the POS (which in turn depends on the customer selected), although in most cases you will not have to touch this option, it is always good to be able to activate or deactivate it manually in case, for example, what you are entering is a descriptive line in the ticket.
Button to
activate / deactivate line editing / printing: This button will display a window that allows you to activate or deactivate the hot editing of the ticket lines (units, description and price) and activate or deactivate the printing of the ticket. These options can be set by default in the POS “configuration” window which is explained in the chapter “installation and configuration of the POS”.
Cancel all ticket button: Use it to cancel the whole ticket. All the stock that was reserved in the sale is released and the POS is ready for a new sale.
The sellers of the TPV
Under the buttons you will see an area called “selected seller” and a drop-down menu. Here will be contained the “sellers” who can sell in the POS. These sellers are created and edited from the POS options (chapter “POS options”).
The innovacommerce POS allows you to keep separate accounts for each of your sellers, without mixing sales, this means that the same POS equipment can be managed by several sellers, they simply have to change in the selector to start or continue their accounts. When a salesman finishes a sale, it is registered for his account and is ready for a new account for that salesman. Sellers can do everything in their account that the POS allows, i.e. sales, returns, discounts, parking or disappearing tickets, etc.
Innovacommerce, when changing vendors, takes into account even the customer to whom the vendor is selling at that moment.
Area of the numeric keypad and sales control buttons
This area includes a numeric keypad to be used in those touch screens and several buttons and functionalities, as well as the command insertion box to operate with the POS.
Search box or introduction of short commands: The text box located at the top is a box that allows us to add products, search for them or write short commands or “shortcuts”, which are shortcuts to do different quick functions in the tpv. In this way, in this box we can introduce the reference or the barcode of a product, that if it exists in the database, the product will be added automatically. We can also introduce part of the name of a product and this will automatically invoke the product search engine, which is the same as clicking on the “magnifying glass” button next to the text box.
Shorcuts available in the command box Write these commands and press ENTER to execute them quickly.
- @[client number]: This command makes the POS client change to the client whose code corresponds to [client number].
- #[discount coupon code]: To apply a prestashop discount coupon (or obtained with the POS) on the current sale.
- + : By typing this sign and pressing ENTER the last line entered in the ticket will be repeated.
- %[units]: Quick change of the units for the next introduction of a product. The default POS sells with 1 unit any product that we pass by barcode or we select in the products button panel, with this command we can specify how many units we want to put in that line, for example, if we write %3 and press enter, the next product will be added with 3 units.
The “quantity” and “price” buttons allow you to emulate the behavior of the keyboard shortcuts for these actions. This way, if you press 2 + QUANTITY and pass a product, it will pass with 2 units. Similarly, if you press 15.50 + PRICE and pass a product, it will pass with the price of 15.50 and not with the price it brings from the database. It is important to know that the price we specify in this way will be WITH or WITHOUT VAT depending on the VAT selector that is visible on the number panel.
The product search engine: Innovacommerce has a powerful product search engine with a lot of information that we will now detail. The search engine can be called up manually by clicking on the magnifying glass or by writing part of the name of a product and pressing ENTER. The search engine also allows, among other functions, create and edit products directly in the database, so that these changes will be reflected in our online store.
To search for products in the search engine, use the box above. You can concatenate words with the “+” sign, this way, your search will be more precise and press ENTER or click on the “magnifying glass” button. You can also filter the results to a specific category by selecting it on the left. The results are displayed in the central data grid, which has two views, the “drill-down” view and the “overview” view. Both views show the same information, only the way the data is displayed is changed.
In the exploded view we see several areas, the big grid shows the products and combinations, as well as the references and barcodes, if we select a product from the list, we will see at the bottom the stock of all our stores and the selling price and cost for all our stores as well.
To add a product to the ticket, simply select it and click OK. The search engine allows the multiple addition of products, so by pressing CTRL or SHIFT when selecting products on the grid, you can add the selection to the ticket. This is useful for example if you have to add several products from the same category.
Special functions of the search engine
At the top of the main grid you can see a series of buttons that help you do some tasks. You have the 3 buttons to add, edit or delete products (in a multistore environment, this action will be performed only on the store on which the POS depends). You also have a button to quickly change the barcode of a product and another to specify the display of the stock.
Advanced and stock information of a product
In the drill-down view, you can see a table with this information, this table indicates, for each store, if the product has advanced stock (first column) or stored stock (second column), the column “C” is a button to switch between stored stock and advanced stock.
This information is useful to know if the product you have selected has, indeed, the advanced stock (a green tick would appear) and that this product is stored, it is necessary to emphasize that for the warehouse system to work correctly, both columns must be in green, if one appears with a RED tick you must press the C button of that store to correct the configuration. WARNING, this is only for stores that use the advanced stock and actually want the selected product/combination to use the advanced stock control. For stores with manual stock, this information should be ignored.
The store and warehouse stock information
The “stock information” part can show the stock of the shops, of the warehouses or both. You have to know how the advanced stock in prestashop works if you want to show stock from warehouses. One thing is “store” and another thing is “warehouses” that can depend on a store. If you show both data, you must know that the stock of a store is THE SUM of the stock of all the stores that depend on it, so you may see a different stock in the stores column (total stock) to the columns of the stores of that store (stored stock).
Function buttons on the numeric keypad of the POS
Next to the numeric keypad there are a series of buttons to operate the POS, let’s see what each of them is for:
Cash movements Use this button to specify a cash in or out of the cash drawer that does not belong to a sale operation. You can use this to specify for example a withdrawal to take to the bank.
Description: Specifies a description that will be printed on the supporting ticket and saved in the session event log.
Enter – withdraw: Select what type of movement you are going to make.
Amount: Amount of the operation.
Print ticket: Select YES if you want a ticket justifying the transaction.
The “Collect debt” button Innovacommerce offers a complete system for selling on credit to customers, the whole system is explained in the section “the sale on credit at the POS”. We invite you to read the complete chapter to learn how the credit collection and settlement system of innovacommerce TPV works. Here we will only point out that this button is inactive by default, it will only be activated if you select a customer for the sale who has the option of paying on credit and has an invoice pending (total or partial).
The button “charge order made in web” There are stores that offer their customers to place orders through the website and have them picked up and paid for in the physical store, this button is used for that operation. With this button, we will access the orders that have been made through the web. We will select the order we want to collect and this will be transferred to the ticket for collection. In this case, innovacommerce will not generate a new order, it will simply write down the one already made by the customer as “paid”.
The button to make “returns” This button enables you to effectively manage a return of products in your physical store, is extensively explained in the section “make returns in the POS”.
Ending the sale Use this button to end the current sale, the collection window will open with several options for closing the ticket.
The “amount” box reflects the total of the sale, then, below you will see boxes to enter the amounts for each available payment method, use the buttons with the name of the payment method to assign to that payment method the total of the amount or the remaining in case of collections with combined payment methods.
The “end sale” button will not appear until the total of the ticket has been distributed among the payment methods. If the amount in the “cash” payment method is greater than the total amount, the change will appear in the “change” box.
The generation of a voucher after a return
If the ticket is intended to close with a negative value, we can do 2 things, one is to return the amount to the customer if that is our return policy, but another is to generate a discount voucher that the customer can use in a future purchase either in the physical store or on the website, since it is a Prestashop voucher.
Note: Only when the amount is negative the “generate voucher” button will appear.
We see several fields in the voucher generation window:
Description: A description of the discount voucher, the POS already proposes one, but you can put the one you want.
Code (compulsory): This is the coupon code that the customer can use on the web to discount the amount of the voucher, or the code to be entered in the POS to discount the voucher. With the button “generate” we can generate a random one.
Base Price: The amount of the discount will usually be the amount of the negative ticket, but you can change it. This amount will be understood with or without VAT depending on whether the option “this voucher includes VAT” is activated.
Validity start and end: Dates for which this ticket will be valid.
Allow partial use: If you check this box, the customer can spend the voucher even if the next purchase does not cover the full amount, in this case, the voucher is updated with the new available amount. If you deactivate this option, the voucher will be invalid even if you do not spend the full amount.
Limit this client: This means that the voucher can only be used by the customer for whom the return is being made. If it is a generic return (to the generic customer of the POS), this voucher can be used by any customer who presents it within its period of validity.
On-screen keyboard: Use it to remove the on-screen keyboard, for those touch screens.
VAT slider: Use this button to switch between prices with and without VAT.
The categories and products button panel
Another way to add products to the POS and perhaps the most used by those customers who have a touchscreen terminal is the button categories and products, this is divided into two parts, the top, where the categories appear and the bottom that will appear the products of the category we select above.
To add products, it’s as simple as clicking (or tapping) on it. InnovaCommerce will automatically apply the specific prices as well as other price reductions you have stipulated on your website.
In the category panel you have two buttons “HOME” and “UP”. HOME takes you to your store’s root category and UP takes you one level up in the directory tree in case you have entered a category with subcategories.
Exit the POS
To leave the current session, click on the exit icon at the top right of the screen.
Text revised in October 2016
