Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook
Devcon 2020 Goes Virtual! LEARN MORE >

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

Need to Take Scheduled Snapshots of Products table in POS Software. Suggestions Pleas

Collapse
X
Collapse
 
  • Page of 1
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
Previous template Next
    #1

    Need to Take Scheduled Snapshots of Products table in POS Software. Suggestions Pleas

    I'm seeking some advice as to what direction to take to accomplish this task, would really appreciate some suggestions.

    In my POS software (still in development), I have a "Products" table, much like the one in Alpha Spots. In our store, we have certain products that are physically counted twice per day to confirm our "quantity on hand" according to the POS software.

    Currently, Quickbooks POS is being used, and the process is:
    1) Freeze a department in "QB POS" by exporting it to Excel, this is done because the quantity on hand is constantly changing dues to ongoing sale, but when exported to Excel, the numbers become stagnant.
    2) The inventory personnel then physically goes through the store counting the products from the frozen department and reconcile the results. this then confirms the amount sold from the amount stolen or otherwise missing.

    In my POS app, I would like to eliminate the use of Excel completely, by somehow taking a snapshot of the products table at the specified intervals, which would be at the beginning of each shift. The user layout for this should show each product, the date and time of the snapshot and has a field for entering the results of the count, then the software should indicates if the quantities reconsile evenly, or if there is products missing or overs.

    I have absolutely no idea on how to go about accomplishing this task at the moment.
    Any suggestions guys?
    Tags: None
    #2
    Re: Need to Take Scheduled Snapshots of Products table in POS Software. Suggestions P

    basically, you need a report to be made at a button push at shift time? Printed or saved to maybe a exel file, pdf, printer, or??? Possibly a temp table with a browse?

    Possibly carried forward, post differences with reason as it comeup to reconcile inventory count? This is where you could add backe or subtract from inventory items???
    Dave Mason
    [email protected]
    Skype is dave.mason46

    Comment

      #3
      Re: Need to Take Scheduled Snapshots of Products table in POS Software. Suggestions P

      Hey Dave, I don't see printing, PDF or Excel as an option because then the process of identifying and reconciling is done manually outside of the app. I need for it to be calculated automatically within the app so it has to be a table. The idea of a passive link table sounds great, except, it doesn't seem to have been designed for use on a local DBF database, and I see no way of getting the data into it.

      Comment

        #4
        Re: Need to Take Scheduled Snapshots of Products table in POS Software. Suggestions P

        save/temp table and open a browse on it. Dopesn't have to be a passive link sql.

        create a table with all fields needed and populate it with the results, kind of like a report. We create temp tables all the time for reporting purposes. you can populate with operations and maybe append.

        Just trying to get you thinking.
        Dave Mason
        [email protected]
        Skype is dave.mason46

        Comment

          #5
          Re: Need to Take Scheduled Snapshots of Products table in POS Software. Suggestions P

          Ok Dave,
          mission accomplished. Here's what I did. I created a table "products_snapshot", this table has selected fields from the products table, like: Product_Id, Item_Number, UPC, Description, size etc Its populated with an "Append" operation at the 1st snapshot each day. then I have 3 sets of fields that are identical to each other except their names are prefixed with S1, S2 & S3, these are for the 3 snapshots that will be taken each day. Each of the 3 set of fields contains:
          Time = Time (for the date and time the snapshot was taken, this is set in the field rules)
          Qty_OH1 = Numeric (for the system stated quantity on hand at the time of the snapshot, this is set via a "Post" operation)
          Count = Numeric (For the amount from the physical store count, this is entered by the inventory personnel)
          Qty_OHC = Numeric (for the system stated quantity on hand at the time of reconciliation, this is set via a "Post" operation)
          EXp_Qty_OH = Numeric (A calculated field that simply subtracts the new "Qty_OhC" from "Qty_OH", this is to reflect the now expected amount since maybe there was sales of a particular item during the counting period)
          Difference = Numeric (A calculated field that subtracts "EXp_Qty_OH" from "Count", the result should be "0" if no item is missing or over. A positive difference indicates overage, and a negative number indicates missing goods)

          The additional 2 snapshots of the day does not add any additional records to the tables, it instead updates the "S2" and "S3" set of fields respectively via a "Post" operation, using the product_Id to match up the records from the "products" table to those in the "products_snapshot" table.

          Many thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I greatly appreciate it.

          We have a "Chipher Lab 8000c" mobile bar code scanner that I would like to integrate with the software, this allows the inventory personnel do their count much more efficiently, right now they use inventory printouts from Quickbooks POS and walk through the store with pen and paper, then type in their results manually into their excel files. But with the Cipher Lab 8000c, they simply point it at a product and enter the quantity, point it at another product then enter the quantity and so fort, then when they return to their workstation, they place it in a cradle that's connected via USB, it then retrieves the list from the device and stores it in a CSV file.
          If I'm unable to integrate this device into my A5 app, then I'll have to somehow format the CSV file and import it. But i would much prefer to be able to retrieve the data directly from the unit into the A5 app. I was told to accomplish this, the app has to be able to open a com port and listen for data. Is this something I can accomplish with A5 V9?

          Comment

            #6
            Re: Need to Take Scheduled Snapshots of Products table in POS Software. Suggestions P

            Yes you can open the com ports. I would have a routine listen to the port for connection activity then another routine to import the new csv file. Simples

            Comment

              #7
              Re: Need to Take Scheduled Snapshots of Products table in POS Software. Suggestions P

              Hey that's simply awesome that it can be done, but um, How exactly do I open and listen to the port? :) I 've never had to do anything of that sort before and i didn't find anything about it in the help or here on the board.

              Comment

                #8
                Re: Need to Take Scheduled Snapshots of Products table in POS Software. Suggestions P

                Dude
                their are loads of posts on this subject. Can be done using .NET or ActiveXcontrol. Check the links out.

                "We're using dot net to run hand scanners via serial port. I don't know anything about .NET but thanks to Kurt Raynor, he provided a working sample. I had to loan him one of our scanners though to get him to fix the bugs, which he did. I took his code and modified it and actually was testing and debugging today. We're running it in a background thread (Kurt's code was a simple xdialog). The background thread seems to make it pretty much bullet-proof and not susceptible to the scanner state (on/off, etc). But if Kurt hadn't provided the sample, we would have had a big problem. Keep in mind that in our case, the scanner is being used w/o a UI. Just a factory worker with a USB connection to the machine scanning barcodes all day. "



                http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/al...ht=serial+port
                http://wiki.alphasoftware.com/DotNet...%20Serial%20IO
                http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...erialport.aspx

                Comment

                Previous template Next
                Working...
                X