Marilyns Blog

Flash Robs – Group Theft Attacks!

Social media has changed our way of life.  "Flash Mobs" – the impromtu gatherings of participants, from dances in shopping malls to uprisings in the Middle East have become a way of life.  Now law enforcement officials are warning of a new trend: "Flash Robs".

They are saying retailers this holiday season need to protect themselves against a new group of unwanted visitors; swarms of teenagers and young adults who plot via Twitter, phone text and Facebook to descend on stores and steal merchandise and money.  According to the NFR, in some cases injuries have resulted from the size of the crowds.  While most attaches have been on department stores and big-box chains, they recommend that the small retailer have a plan to keep this from happening to them.

Some recommendations are:

• Avoiding putting merchandise by the door
• Position workers near key areas of the store and valuable merchandise
• Keep good visibility through out the store
• Stock only what is needed on the floor
• Maintain low levels of cash

So a new but scary phenomenon.   CounterPoint can help you stay on top of your store’s inventory and cash flow in many ways.   The newest one is SmartAlerts that will email or text you warnings to help you know what is happen in your store without always being there.   Two that come to mind are notifications of low stock on premium inventory and when cash in drawer has gone over a set level.    Helping you keep a tighter control during the holidays goes directly to your bottom line.   So if you would happened to be hit by a "Flash Rob" or just the normal issues that come up during your busy season, CounterPoint can help you be prepared. 

Call us to see how SmartAlerts can help you.   800-672-4806 or email sales@ccscentral.com.

Navigating The Error Message Maze (Windows Word Document to Samba CUPS Printer)

Okay here goes, I can finally print my document after two hours of typing and tweaking.    I just have time to make my meeting if all goes well.  Print …   Good my screen shows the printer and the pages are counting off.   Now to pickup the copies.   What!   Nothing in the tray.   Hmm … maybe its stuck.   Let’s check the tray feed.   No jams, all looks fine there.   What about the spooler.   Let’s see:  lpq says No Entries.    Maybe the printer was not ready yet, when I printed, I’ll try it again.  Print …  That’s probably going to get it.   Let’s see the tray again.   Great still nothing.

Okay let’s check the log files to see what’s up:  tail -20 /var/log/cups/error_log says:

"
 E [21/May/2011:15:33:55 -0700] Unknown configuration directive MakeModel on line 6 of printers.conf.
 E [21/May/2011:15:33:55 -0700] Unknown configuration directive Type on line 10 of printers.conf
 E [25/May/2011:04:08:25 -0700] Bad IPP operation name "CUPS-Get-Document" on line 31!
 E [25/May/2011:06:04:31 -0700] CUPS-Accept-Jobs: Unauthorized
"

Oh, Oh this looks like its going to be a project.   Better reschedule my meeting.   Let’s Google some of the messages.   "Bad IPP operation name", "CUPS=Accept-Jobs: Unauthorized".  Looks like lots of feedback.  Hmm… most of these ideas are leading me deeper and deeper into more and more esoteric areas and articles.  Pretty soon I’ll be trying to learn how to rewrite the driver.   This can’t be it.

I know, I’ll reinstall the CUPS software and recreate the Linux and the Windows printer link again.   Print …  Still nothing in the tray.  Nope that’s not it.   What about  trying the CUPS web-client interface?   http://localhost:631.   Great interface.    Lots of tabs and tools.   Click, View, Click, View ….   This is a quagmire also.   What next. 

I better try to get some help with this.  Let’s call CCS Retail.  What would you guys suggest?  "Well one simple thing you could check, even though the messages are leading you somewhere else, is device permissions.  Did you just do some Gentoo Linux emerges for updates recently? "    Let’s see /dev/lp0 has permissions 660.   That does NOT look right.   I’ll change it to 666 to open it all the way up.   Print …  Wow there it is – at last.

What;s the point to our little story?   The software layers in your systems all have error processing steps and messages that are relative to their view of the information they see and create.   To a CUPS driver it may seem like "Bad IPP operation name".   This may lead into unnecessary levels of detail and loss of productive time.

How do we avoid this and get to the real problem of the incorrect device permissions quicker?   The best way we know at CCS Retail is to ask someone with the knowledge or experience with these types of problems to act as a consultant or guide for advice or hands-on resolution.   Try to discipline yourself to not get caught up it the frustration of the moment and start burrowing into the center of everything.  

Google and other search engines are great resources.  But if you are just pea-shooting at the problem with an esoteric error message you are likely to just burrow in deeper.   Would CCS Retail know from the error messages in the log file that it was device permissions.   Since they solve these types of problems frequently, the odds are favorable.   Would they know when to stop using a thread and wasting time at the right point.   Again the odds are favorable.

In our CCS Retail Support Department we spend our day solving problems and accumulating the knowledge that keeps our customers running.    Give us a call when you are stuck.   Make sure to keep track of any errors you get to help us get you going again quickly.

Marilyn

 

Microsoft issued a warning today that nine fraudulent digital certificates were issued by root certificate authority, Comodo Group. Although the certificates were quickly revoked, their initial release still poses a threat to browser users, including users of Internet Explorer. This is not a security flaw in Microsoft software, the company says, but it released a security update for Windows all the same.

The nine fake certificates affect the following Web sites, Microsoft says:

• login.live.com (Windows Live)

• mail.google.com

• www.google.com

• login.yahoo.com (3 certificates)

• login.skype.com

• addons.mozilla.org

• "Global Trustee"

Fraudulent certificates give hackers the ability to spoof content, phish, or insert themselves in man-in-the-middle attacks, collecting information that users think is being sent over a secure link from browser to Web site. Browsers which have enabled the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) will automatically invalidate these certificates and block them from being used. IE7 and later supports this by default, as does Firefox 3 and later, Safari on Mac OS X (but it must be manually activated), Opera 8 and Chrome.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/microsoft-warns-hack-attempt-windows-live-goo?source=NWWNLE_nlt_daily_pm_2011-03-23

SNIP-ITPRO Keystroke Productivity Utility Improves Productivity in Front and Back Operations

Any repetitive keyboarding can benefit from this great little Windows Utility.  Store your messages and commands for Counters, Back Office, or Technical Tasks, any time text needs to be re-entered for any reason (a snippet).  A great productivity tool.  See the product and get a download at http://www.snipitpro.com/index.html
 

All your favorite Snippets in one place.

Snip-It Pro is a snippet manager with features designed to make you more productive. It provides a single place where you can store all the useful bits of text that you need.

For clerks and administrators, your favorite comments/phrases, promotional messages, Order/Sales comments, Purchasing/Accounting comments, search filters, etc.  You can then find them online in one place. 

For IT personnel, save your system commands, SQL queries, program functions, XML configuration, regular expressions, and useful code.  You can then find them online in one place
 

Save Time and Keystrokes

Why type when you can Drag and Drop?  A new templating features allows you to add placeholders that can be replaced before use. Assign hot keys to snippets and save even more time.

So it’s mid August and it’s going to be 90 this weekend!  But it’s not to early to start thinking about the upcoming holiday season.  Have you considered adding a check-out to make sure you keep the lines moving when its busy or another checkout goes down?  With a lot of open retail space out there maybe you can get a good deal on leasing for a temporary store for another location or add a strip mall outlet? 

With the economy still struggling along a small change may make a big difference to help the numbers go up this year.  Remember the adage "spend money to make money".  Do this, of course, with an eye on what your customers are looking for.  There is lots of information on trends to draw from, if you need help here.

We can help you afford these changes with saving on Software and Hardware purchases through the middle of September.  We provide 20% off new software licenses and a great buy on the new Radiant 1515 Touchscreen register.  You can upgrade your CounterPoint v7 to CounterPoint SQL at a discount to get the full benefits of a Microsoft platform.  This can lead to a more secure, responsive system that has much stronger reporting tools.

This is the ideal time to  act and take advantage of our special leasing program/   4.99 APR on software and hardware purchases. Don’t forget the IRS has another Section 179 tax deduction through the end of 2010.  I’ll write more about that next time.

Enjoy the sunshine & think "SNOW".   Making changes can take some time.  We can help you get started and set a schedule that ensures your changes will be in place when you need them.  Let us know how we can help.

Marilyn

CounterPoint SQL has a multitude of reports.  But sometimes they are just a little more or a little less then you need.  You want it to to this but it does that….   Or there is more information than you need.  We can help you out with that.  Our support department writes reports every week for our customers.  Sometimes it’s just a matter of removing some fields and columns, sometimes it adding one or two bits of information.  And usually the cost is not that much considering how much time it will save you getting the information you need in the future.

To get a quote on a custom report, we just need you to email or fax us a mock up of what you want the report to look like.  Take an existing report and mark it up or give us your sample of a new report with column headings.   A short write up of what you are trying to accomplish helps us also.   Once we receive that, we review it and get back to you with an estimate of the cost to create it.  A report that shows you just what you need makes life a whole lot better then sorting through 2 or 3 different reports to get the same information.

We can also design Crystal Reports for you, if you are looking for something "snazzy" to print out.  Over our
28+ years we’ve written almost any kind of report imaginable.

Happy Seafair!
Marilyn
 

Last week I wrote that the current versions of CounterPoint are now certified to run with Windows 7.     This week  I want to mention some of the reasons it’s important to get your system on the most current release of CounterPoint. 

1.  New Features – each release has great new Features.  As an example SQL 8.3.9 now has BOGO/twofer pricing.  V7.5.18 has the ability to send emails of receipts to Customers and Purchase Orders to Vendors.  

2.  New Operating Systems and Hardware Certification – Windows 7, Window Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 are all now certified with the newest releases of CounterPoint.  New and faster hardware devices as they come out are also tested and certified.

3.  Accounting Interface – if you do a direct interface to an Accounting Package and that Vendor comes out with a new release, the current version of CounterPoint is then programmed and tested to work with that release.

4.  Stay PCI DSS-compliant – this is the credit card worlds way of trying to defeat the hackers out there.  They keep coming out with more rules and regulations for Software Companies that allow processing of credit cards through their systems.  Each release of CounterPoint makes changes to meet these regulations.  
 

Any finally if you are too many release behind and you decide you want to upgrade, it can take a lot more time.   Some times you can skip over 1 release to get to the most current version,  but if you are 3, 4, 5 or more versions behind, it might require a 2 or 3 step upgrade.  We just recently did an upgrade for a customer who was 10 releases back!   As you can imagine it took  some time to get them current.

We will start moving into the holiday season soon (can that really be true?), now is the time to get CURRENT!   We are here to help you with this transition.  Don’t wait until the last minute..

Marilyn

   

I talk to customers every week who want to know when CounterPoint will run under Windows 7.  The good news is that CPSQL 8.3.9 and CPv7.5.17 & 7.5.18 are now certified to run under Windows 7. CP7 will only run on the 32-bit release.   Since there are a couple 3rd party products that have known issues, before you move forward be sure and talk to us here at CCS.

But the real question is – do you want to be on the “Bleeding” Edge of Technology?  While Windows 7 has fewer problems then Vista, it’s still a fairly new product.  As Retailers, most of you are not trying to have the newest, most technologically advanced systems.   Your objective is to run a retail business.  Getting customers through the check-outs is probably top on your list!    Windows XP is still a product that will do that for you in a reliable and predictable manner.  

If you need hardware replacements, we can get systems for you that have a Windows 7 license but allow you to downgrade to Windows XP.  This will give you the security of knowing the system works now under XP.  You also have a licence for Windows 7 and a machine that will run it when you are ready to move forward. 

Technology is constantly changing.  While my mantra some days is “Change is Good”, we all need to take a step back sometimes and say “Why are we making this change?”.

Have a great weekend.
Marilyn

Adapted from an article by PC Tools Inc.
 

How secure is your password? 

With most websites requiring you to create an account, do you find yourself in a bit of a pickle when it comes to inventing passwords? Many people use the same password for all their online accounts and often forget the password they came up with months ago. Hands up who doesn’t feel like banging your head against the wall trying to remember the password you created months ago?

Let’s face it – everyone has problems with creating and remembering secure passwords. That’s why we decided to help.
 

Tips on how to create and remember your passwords:

•	Use the first letters of a sentence that you will remember, e.g. "I have 3 cats: Fluffy, Furry and Shaggy" gives: Ih3c:FF&S, or “Bouncing tigers have every right to ice-cream” becomes: Bther2I-C.
•	Take the name of the website and then add your personal twist, like your height or your friend’s home address (e.g. “AmazonOceanRd6’2”). Avoid using your own contact details like your phone number or house number.
•	Remove the vowels from a word or phrase e.g. "I like eating pancakes” becomes: Ilktngpncks”.
•	Use a phrase from your favorite book and then add the page, paragraph or chapter number.

The Do’s and Don’ts of creating passwords.

Do:

•	Mix letters, numbers and symbols, and use case sensitivity (upper and lower case letters)
•	The longer the better. Use passwords that are longer than 6 characters.
•	Change your passwords at least every 60 days, cycling the numeric values up or down makes the new password easy to remember.
•	Try copying and pasting at least some of the characters in your password that way keyloggers won’t be able to track your keystrokes.

Don’t:

•	Don’t use words or phrases or numbers that have personal significance. It is very easy for someone to guess or identify your personal details like date of birth.
•	Avoid writing your password down, use a reputable password manager to manage all your passwords.
•	Don’t use the same password for several logins, especially if they involve sensitive financial or other personal information.
•	Don’t tell anybody your password.
•	When registering on websites that ask for your email address, never use the same password as  your email account.

Inventory Turns is a key metric used in the retail industry, and is considered to be the number of times the inventory cycles or is replenished throughout a year. This can be calculated by dividing your average annual cost of goods by your average inventory. 

For example, if you sell widgets with an annual cost of goods of $1 Million, and carry an average inventory level of $250k, then your inventory turns is 4. 

There are a number of tools within CounterPoint SQL that will allow you to increase the number of turns and decrease your average inventory level, thus increasing your sales and profits. These tools include, but are not limited to:
 

• The identification of slow moving products

• The elimination of low-profit items

• The automation of purchasing processes

• Identification and promotion of high-profit items

By accomplishing the above objectives, CounterPoint SQL will give you the information you need to make purchasing, vendor management, and sale/mark-down decisions. 

In the example above, if this company were to decrease the average inventory to $200k (by 20%), and increase cost of sales to $1.2 Million (roughly 20% more sales), their turns would have increased from 4 to 6! This is entirely possible with the proper use of the many features within the software. 

Contact CCS Retail Systems, Inc. today for a demonstration of the specific features that can positively affect your bottom line!