something amiss in a Product

[rjsmeyer]

Yesterday we had a sale in which the price charged was somehow changed - without input from the cashier - from $145 to $108.75 (25%). 

In looking at the sale now, the Product Description appears with "S7-" as a prefix to the regular Description, and no value for a discount.  Price shows up at $145, and Extended shows up as $108.75.  When I re-print the receipt, NO prices show up.

There's nothing in Product Control that reflects any of this - no "S7" shows up anywhere, and there's no "$108.75" in any of the Price Levels.  And there's nothing but standard Retail pricing in Customer info.  Additionally, I can export that entire Category into Excel, and see no difference whatsoever between this product and the others.

What can I do to keep this from recurring?

Bob

[ronaldrwl]

S7- would just mean Seat#7.  Look at the Options tab for that product.  Also, check the Activity Log.

[rjsmeyer]

How would a seat number show up, though?  We've never used seat numbers, and none of us even know how to assign them.

The only Options that are checked for this item are "one item per line" and "tax is included".  These are checked for every other item in this Category, too.  I also use Modifiers for every item in this Category.

The only things that show up on the Activity Log for this transaction are Print Copy, Delete Item, Print Copy, Process Credit Card, and Finish Sale.   

Can Products become "corrupted" in some way?  I have another Product in that same Category that, when I export sales data for my accounting program, the Category name is consistently missing - and this happens only for that one Product.  The Category field is indeed filled with the Category name in Product Control, it just does not export.  I didn't feel that was a big enough deal to say something about, but in combination with this other quirk, it might be. 

What's my next step?

[ronaldrwl]

If you are exporting products and editing them with Excel anything is possible.  If you really want to know what happened in that sale I would need to see your ezp folder.

[rjsmeyer]

I'm just exporting them to my accounting software.  Exporting only.

Indeed, I used to export, edit, then import - but you've created too many good alternatives to keep editing them that way.

I'm sending a zipped file of my ezp folder.

[ronaldrwl]

I got your file and looked at the sale.  I found the deception 
Open the Tax & Precision window and change the Qty Decimals to 2.  Now look at the sale.  The cashier set the quantity to 0.75 in order to give them a discount.  It would seem.

[rjsmeyer]

Okay, it looks like there are at least two components to this issue - the first being the Price.

It looks like your statement explains what's wrong at this point, but I'm not sure it explains how it happened.  I don't believe it was intentional.  The cashier described to me what happened, and it was an absolutely normal transaction.  She admits that she may have clicked on one of the Modifier buttons (though that shouldn't have caused this), but she's sure she didn't use the Edit function.  I trust her more than most, I can find no motivation for her to have given this person a discount (she was from out of state and had never been in before), and it was a credit card transaction for which the customer simply paid the “discount” price (i.e., I see no way our employee could have benefited). 

Besides all that, I don’t see an “Edit Product” in the Activity Log for during the time of the transaction.  There is some activity from a previous start to that transaction (it looks like she brought up a Product to print a price sticker, then deleted it - as I instruct them), and some activity including Edit Product from when I was investigating it the next day, but nothing notable for the time of the transaction itself. 
 
I have to admit that I’ve tried all sorts of combinations of things to duplicate the situation, and can duplicate the "seat number" prefix and lack of price on the receipt (more on that later), but haven't been able to duplicate the Quantity change. 

But this does bring up the disturbing fact that quantities can be adjusted to fractions.  This instance resulted in a loss of $145 – from a feature that I've never been aware of, can't think of how I'd ever have any use for, and could pop up again at any time.  Sure, I’ve already asked everyone to look more closely at the Retail/Extended prices, but I can already guess the accuracy with that when we’re busy.  Right now I have no reason to believe that it won't happen again.

(cont.)

[rjsmeyer]

(cont.)
One possible solution seems to be to take the "quantity" field out to 2 decimals, and have every receipt start showing each item with quantities of "1.00", "2.00", etc.  But then I found that you can enter a quantity out to any number of decimal places (e.g., "0.9999), and just one decimal place more than what is set in Precision will round the quantity to the nearest whole number - and still adjust the Price.   

My other first thought was to maybe eliminate access to the "Edit" function, but I can't think of any other way to allow the cashiers to edit prices, and I consider that essential.  Besides, it's not looking to me like the Edit function was involved anyway.

I’m hoping that there may be a way of changing something in the software, though I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not aware of the level of difficulty of accomplishing it:

For one, could there be way of differentiating a “Bulk” Product from other Products?  something like an Option added to signify a Product that acts as a Bulk item – something along the lines of the “Service” option - and have only specific Products able to be sold in fractions?  I’ve seen this used in other software, and it worked very well (though again, I have no idea as to difficulty of programming it)

Or if that's no doable, how about making one of the differences between the Retail and Restaurant versions be how quantities are handled?  I may be wrong, but I really can’t imagine a situation in a Retail setting that would ever, ever split up a Product.  And with already a separate version for Restaurants, it seems that this could be one of the differences between versions.  I just think there are limits to a “one size fits all” approach for various clientele, and this "fraction of an item" concept would seem to be one of them since it allows for a problem like this.
 (cont.)

[rjsmeyer]

(cont.)
As far as the effect on Product Description for the transaction, it looks like the addition of the Seat Number prefix and lack of Price on the printed receipt go hand in hand.  And I’ve been able to reproduce this consistently by using Products that have Modifiers with a default Modifer by unclicking that Modifier.
 
The net effect of this every time is that either "S7" or “S167” will become the prefix of the Product Description in the transaction, and nothing is shown on the printed receipt for the price (i.e., it’s absolutely blank), even though it shows up in the Sales Window!  There IS a Sub-Total and Total, but no Product price.

This has happened in every Product with a default Modifier I've tried so far.  I’m also surprised that I don’t have a chance to add a different Modifier after unclicking one – especially since I get an error message that I can’t have 2 Modifiers if I click a second one before unclicking the first (and, of course, there's no way to back up to a previous Modifier to revise it)

If "S-whatever" is a seat/table assignment, it seems that some wires are getting crossed (maybe another feature that could be different between versions – no seat assignments for the Retail version?).  I've never done a thing with seat or table assignments in this software.
 
But the fact that the price doesn’t show up on the receipt in this case is certainly not good.

Further, when trying to duplicate the original incident, I entered the item in question, unclicked the default Modifier, and then changed the Quantity with the “1-2-3” button – and with one click suddenly had a quantity of about 30 for the sale!

There’s clearly something wrong going on, and I hope something can be done to straighten it out.  Would you suggest that I create all new Products?  Do I need to avoid using any Modifiers?  Or avoid using Modifiers with defaults?

Thanks.

[ronaldrwl]

I tried unchcking a default modifier and can't reproduce the S7?

[rjsmeyer]

Maybe it's the particular Category.  I don't have a lot of Products that have default Modifiers, but I know item #'s 24595 or 24502 do, and both exhibit this behavior.

[ronaldrwl]

Here is what we have learned.

1 - The default modifier being un-selected caused the seat# to appear and the price to not be printed.  That has been fixed.
2 - The quantity being changed to 0.75 is not related in any way to #1.  It seems very likely the quantity was changed to reduce the price in a deceptive way.

[rjsmeyer]

Hey, as far as I can tell, it all works great now.  Thanks, Ronald!

Bob