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Thinking of buying RMS

Hi all -

I read through posts going back a little ways, and I didn't see any that answered the questions of someone considering buying RMS. If there are links to old discussions or an FAQ, I would read if provided.

I am posting this here after reading the MS propoganda. I know many of you are resellers, but I think you will give me the straight scoop on my questions, or ask me to clarify so that I can get a program that does what I want.

That said, here is my situation. I use a different software. It's ok, but has some problems. Here are areas I wish my current program worked better:

- Reports all can seamlessly come out in Excel.

- Reports can be modified to sort by certain columns.

- Many of my reports take a loooooong time to run with my current setup. I have around 8000 customers in my database, and around 75,000 items in my inventory, most of which are not matrix items.

- Creating new reports is fairly simple, and a data dictionary doesn't need to be onhand, and if it does, the Data Dictionary is readily available.

- Reports on my customers and their buying habits. My current POS has a very weak customer report module. I would like to be able to draw lots of conclusions about my customers and use that to increase sales.

- Frequent buyer program. There is a rudimentary one included, but it doesn't automate all the way (you can't for instance tell it to print all the labels of all the customers with X points and then reduce those customers points by Y; nor can you redeem points at the invoice/register screen, but only in the back-end).

- Inventory Theft. My current POS doesn't have a specific way to deal with inventory shrinkage, and we have to use a workaround and then manually enter those into my Quickbooks. I would like it to have a better way to deal with shrink.

- On a similar topic, I have lost confidence in the way my POS tracks inventory, and because of that, I can't be sure if indicated shrinkages are due to POS blips, or actual theft/loss. How rock-solid is RMS' handling of inventory counts?

-When I create orders for customers, I can't order the order by SKU or Description, it's just left at however I put the info in.

Things that my current software does well, that I would like to keep going:

- Multiple SKUs for the same item. I haven't found a limit yet, but some of my items have 8 or 9 SKUs.

- Alphanumeric SKUs. Many of my items have letters in their SKUs.

- Handling 15 digit SKUs.

- Importing my inventory is a snap, as is importing the Vendor SKUs for each item. I have to import items every single month (over 1500 items a month), so manually typing them in is out. I wonder if RMS' import functionality is nice and easy.

Thanks for any reply.

best -

chris shorb

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Reply to
librarian
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Hello librarian,

I've included answers below:

You can export RMS Managed Active Reports into either Comma-Separated (CSV), Tab-Separated, HTML or XML. Excel will open CSV and Tabbed files. You can also use ODBC to query data directly into an Excel spreadsheet.

Yes, you can click on the headers in the Active Reports to sort by a column.

The speed of the reports will depend on the amount of memory in the SQL server and the machine(s) running RMS. I usually put atleast 1GB on the SQL server, and 512MB on the RMS workstations. If the SQL Server and RMS workstation is one machine, then 1GB. Also remember that running very large reports across the network will always be slower than if you ran them on the SQL server.

Active Reports has it's own kind of markup language for reporting. If you're handy with computers and a familiar with other markup and programming languages, then they will be easy to learn by example. There is a Customization Guide available from Microsoft which contains report language documentation, but it is intended for Partners only. If you're not computer-friendly, then it might be best to have someone else create customized reports for you.

The default reports that come with RMS do allow you to pick and choose which columns you want to view. However if you want to add new columns (e.g., some of the reports do not include the subdescription fields) you will need to customize the report.

As for a Data Dictionary, there isn't much available. There are some that have been created by other Partners, but nothing from Microsoft officially. Personally I have never needed one; the table and column names are pretty self-explantory, and again you can learn by example from the default reports.

Can you be more specific? There are some default reports such as Top Selling Items and Top Selling Departments, but they are not linked to individual customers. I'm not sure what kind of report you would want to see here.

There are third-party add-ins for this. I have used Retail Realm's Loyalty Points add-in before, and it works fairly well. I don't know of any others.

RMS has a Physical Inventory feature, which will calculate discrepencies (expected vs counted) and update the inventory with the new counted quantities. However you will still need to manually adjust your inventory value within Quickbooks.

Every time the inventory quantity is modified, a movement history is created, which can be viewed in a report. Even if a person manually changes the on hand quantity, there is a record. The only way to avoid this manually modifying the database tables; someone would have to be familiar with SQL and have direct access to the database. This is where it's important to setup the system securely. Even then, the numbers would not add up at some point because you've received X into inventory but there is only Y being shown in the history.

I'm not sure what you mean here.

You esentially have unlimited Aliases (SKUs) for each item.

RMS's limit is 25 characters on ILCs (Item Lookup Codes) and Aliases.

RMS itself does not have a native import feature. There is an import utility available for free from Microsoft, but it is unsupported (e.g. if you break something by using the utility, they won't help you). There are also third party add-ins available for this type of thing.

-- Jason Hunt Advanced Computer Systems

Reply to
Jason Hunt

That's good enough. Great news.

I would like a report wherein I can see what zip codes are buying what departments and categories. In this way, I can market certain aspects of my store to certain areas. Another report would be: customers who bought this item, what else did they buy? I can't even see what my average ticket is on my current program. I would like to know my average ticket based on payment type, based on department/category (people who bought x category spent on average Y amount in Z length of time). More as I think of them...

Seems like a lot of Third Party add-ins. Is there a centralized location listing *all* RMS Third Party add ins?

How does one do special orders for customers on items that are out of stock, or seem to be out of stock?

Thanks Jason.

best -

chris

Reply to
librarian

Chris,

Infuriately, no, but MS is working on it finally, and is starting to encourage the ISV's to list them.

Here's the old one;

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Here the new one;
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In both cases look for the Retail section.

Reply to
Jeff

For a list of RMSynery Add Ons please contact me. I will be happy to ansswer any questions you may have.

Kind Regards

Grant Chaplin RMSynergy snipped-for-privacy@rmsynergy.com

Reply to
RMSynergy

Grant,

Have you thought about putting them in the MS list on the links provided in the last post? Don't keep them a secret. ;-)

I haven't looked, but I don't think there is a cost involved.

Reply to
Jeff

I'll do that thanks.

Feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss the range of add-ons that we have created.

Kind Regards

Grant

Reply to
RMSynergy

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