Membership cards and discount cards

Depends on the card and exactly what kind of membership program you want to offer. If you create membership cards with a barcode for the customer account number, and simply want to offer discount levels, you can get good functionality right out of RMS. If you want to offer rewards based on points, or use magnetic membership cards, it gets much more complicated and you're going to need an add-in. Talk to your RMS Reseller about your needs, there are many many options - some will be built into your current software, others can be quite expensive.

I actually just made a COM DLL that checks the customer's CustomDate1 (as expiration date) and does the following:

1) Allows transaction at POS to proceed normally, provided there are more than 30 days remaining on the membership 2) Displays a pop-up counting down from 30 days, stating that the customer has X remaining days 3) Says that the membership has expired and logs out of the session.

Let me know if that is adequate for your requirements, I'd be more than happy to share! I also made a PHP page that renders out the barcode based on account number, so you can print out the First/Last Names, Company Names and Barcode on a card printer. It requires a 50 dollar barcode script, but works pretty well and is handy for other barcode requirements.

My next move is to pop-up a form with the ability to bump the CustomDateField a day for a temp override to allow for charging/renewal and printing at the POS.

Kevin

Dear Kevin,

I have similar requirements of dealing with membership card. Assume my store issues store-wide membership card with a prefix 99999 that designates as membership ID, and the total length of card number is 14 digits of EAN 128 code, how can I achieve the goal below when the membership card is scanned during a transaction:

1. The RMS Store Operation will ignore the membership number, i.e. does not pop up Items lookup window, nor beeps
2. fires event so that COM add-in can capture the membership card number

I appreciate a lot if you have any ideas.

Take a look at the way random weight upc/ean codes are processed (There's a knowledgebase article). That's the only way I can think of to get encoded information in the barcode to trigger a hook, unless you create an item to represent each customer.

Glenn,

Thanks for your hint, however I do't feel that was a good solution.

When a scanned code is not found in Items database, the Items lookup window would normally pop up, how could I replace the event handler, and program it in the way that, for my predefined code, the window will be suppressed, and still open for other undefined codes?

Sorry for having dropped off of the face of the planet, I've been wholly consumed by my RMS tweaks.

I have the RMS POS instantly open the Customers Window upon login. Then, our membercard is scanned, thus setting the Customer for the transaction.

So, let's say, I walk into your store, and I have been assigned

9999912345, theoretically, shouldn't my account number be that number? Then the scanner translates your EAN/UPC barcode back into its constituent values, I can't think of any other way to approach this?!?

Am I just crazy?

Or, is it, that you're just polling the database for information against the account number/barcode like a gym membership? A VB program on the side that relies on the RMS database Custom Field of some sort would work.

Please don't hesitate to write back here, or more easily my e-mail as listed in the post.

Thanks, Kev> Dear Kevin,

Kevin,

I'm afraid I did not state my issues completely and clearly. Actually, the membership card I refer to, is independent to retail stores, i.e., consumers who present our membership card may not have an account set up in the store, my add-in component needs to capture the membership card number when it is scanned at the cashier. It seems to me, since RMS does not have an explicit way to read membership card number, what I need is to override the event handler of item scan, so that the item lookup window will be suppressed if scanning a predefined code type, and also let add-in to retrieve the barcode of the card.

Hopefully RMS MVPs could help on this issue.

Thanks, Louis