Addendum to Update 7.10

Addendum to Version 7.10
(for 7.10 - 7.15)

(The following changes were implemented since version 7.06)

We are proud to announce many new dynamic features in The Ultimate with this release. Please take the time to carefully read through this addendum to learn how to implement many of them.

Now tracks an individual customer’s rentals by format
When a customer rents a particular format, The Ultimate now keeps track of this information. With 7.10, there is not yet a screen or report to display this new data, but it is beginning to “collect” the information for the future. We will address this in an early patch so that screen & printed reports can be run. This will probably come in the form of a “Custom Report” which you will simply link to the existing Report menu system.

Perform Customer searches to include all users of the account
You can now search your customer base by the name of each assigned user. From Customer Maintenance, press <F5> like you would normally search for a customer’s name. Pressing <F5> again brings up the users of each customer. Locate the proper user and press <enter> which will bring up the main user to which they are assigned. This feature works from Customer Maintenance as well as customer entry in the invoicing mode. Remember, the user will only show on the list if you have assigned a first and last name to the user. Other information, including user code is not required for them to appear in the list. The user’s full name, code and phone number will appear on the display.

Daily Sales Lookups now include pricing groups breakdown
From the “Daily Sales Lookup” screen, pricing group breakdowns can now be accessed by pressing the <F6> after entering a date or range of dates to view. To make room for this feature, the <F7> and <F8> keys have been reassigned as well. As before, pressing <F3> will send the information to the printer.

We are always looking ahead to new features in future releases. That is why, with the release of the previous version 7.00, The Ultimate has been collecting the daily sales information divided into your pricing groups. Although the software has always kept track of ratings, formats, title categories, and sales categories, it never displayed the pricing group breakdown. Therefore, your price group data will go back to the day you first installed 7.00 in your store. Any date previous will show up as “0.00”’s, since the data was not collected by pricing groups.

Added Date Range to “View Sales Activity” lookups
You can now view line details from more than one date at a time. Enter the starting and ending date when prompted. If you just want one date, then make sure the starting and ending dates are the same. Since there is so much information that this screen provides, this is a great new addition.

Added “Rental Type” to view past invoice screens and Daily Activity Reports
This highly requested feature adds the “free type” of each rental. The software calls it the “Transaction” type and is in the extreme left of every invoice line in all the View Past Invoices screens around the software. The “Key” is listed at the bottom of the invoice screens and refers to “Free”, “Coupon”, “Credit” or “Rental Pass” transactions.

Note: The “F” (Free) type only registers when you have pressed the <F1> key (Options) within the invoicing screen. It does not appear if you simply <F3> edit the price to 0.00.

All User defined reports can now be printed to the screen as well as printers
The Ultimate now gives you the choice of printing your customized reports to the screen instead of the printer. After pressing <F3> to print, there will be a question whether you wish to send the report to the printer or to the screen.

As it states when designing reports, these reports must be less than 79 characters in length in order to have this choice. If you currently have a report that has more than 78 characters in length, you must shorten it to activate the screen printing.

All User defined reports can have only the totals printed or viewed without line detail
Sometimes, only column totals are important to the report and bypassing the pages of detail are desired. This option is also an added feature which allows only the Total line to be printed to the printer, or viewed on the screen.

Please be aware that only numeric fields have totals calculated, not text fields.

Mobile Phone field added to customer’s account
Since many of your customers not have cellular phones, this number has been added as a field in the Customer Maintenance screen under the "Main User Status” tab. In addition, when printing or displaying the “Rental Out & Late Listing”, a choice is given for which phone number (Home, Work or Mobile) will be in the report. If you do not wish to separate all the phone numbers, then it is best to input the best number to call in the “Home Phone” field.

Additional fields added to a customer’s users
Each user on a customer’s account now can have a phone number and Driver’s License on file. What is great about this feature is that the software includes these user fields in all duplicate searches. This way a person who is a user on someone’s else’s account (who owes money) cannot simply join as a new Main user without passing duplication checks on phone numbers, social security and driver’s license.

Add User defined “Screen Orientation” information to rental file
The field “screen size” has been added to Rental Maintenance. This is great for DVDs. The choices are user defined.
Go to the following screen to create your choices:

System Tables Setup / Rental Lookup Tables / Rental Screen & Features / Screen Size Lookup Table

Once these are defined, you can press the <F10> key in the item information tab of Rental Maintenance to select a screen size for each rental.

Now includes several user defined “Extra Features” fields
The “extras” that our customer love so much can now be listed in your Rental Database. A new tab has been created in the Rental Maintenance screen. Again, this is great for DVDs. The choices are user defined.
Go to the following screen to create your choices:

System Tables Setup / Rental Lookup Tables / Rental Screen & Features / Extra Features Lookup Table

Once these are defined, you can select as many as you want for each rental in the Extra Features tab. As with any “check mark” item in The Ultimate, pressing the <space> bar will toggle the checks on and off.
Some ideas for “extra features” are:

Deleted Scenes
Director Commentary
Actor Commentary
“The Making of…” video
Actor’s profiles

Keeps track of Check Numbers for invoices with check payments
Every time “Check” is chosen as the method of payment, you can now input the check number. This will display on all “View Past Invoice” screens. In addition, a check register can be printed from the Daily Sales Lookup screen. The report can be for a single date, or a range of dates. Once the dates have been entered, <F9> displays “Checks” and can be pressed to print a check register.

This new feature can be found in the following menu:

Main Menu / Point of Sale System / Daily Sales Lookup.

Added “Date Sold” range field selections for designed reports
The “Date Sold” field has been added to the report generator as a Range Field. This allows you to design reports which print out rentals that were sold between two dates of your choice.

View Hourly Rentals
Hourly activity can be shown for any individual date or range of dates. You will be prompted to enter the starting and ending dates.
This new feature can be found in the following menu:

Main Menu / Point of Sale System / View Hourly Rentals.

The feature can also be accessed from the POS screen by pressing <F8> (Menu). Then right arrow to the “Analysis” tab.
The chart displays total invoices, total rentals, and total rental (only) income. The times of the day that are shown are 6:00 AM to 12:00 (midnight).

Print Receipt choice when ONLY Sell thru items are on invoice
This choice has been added so you now have the choice of printing (or not printing) receipts if ONLY sell-thru items are on the invoice.
This new feature can be found in the following menu:

System Tables Setup / Invoicing Setup & Tables / Workstation Printing.

Two additional invoice types available
Two additional receipt types have been added to the software, bringing the total to 14 types of built in invoice formats.
Pictures and details on each receipt type can be found on our web site in the documentation section.

Don’t Forget to set Security for new features
Some of the new additions to this update have associated security options.
If you use security, then you can find these added questions from the following menu:

System Tables Setup / System Setup & Tables / Security Levels.

The newly added questions will have “blank” answers which you may want to fill in with a security permission level.

Removed Screen Saver
We have removed the Screen Saver from the software. Screen savers originally were to protect the monitor from “burn in”. Since today’s monitor’s do not have that problem, and since so few of our customers used the feature, we have removed it. Today, screensavers are mostly used for fun and the type of security that POS software does not require.

We have always recommended even turning off any Window’s screensavers that might be active. DOS application automatically minimize themselves when a screensaver is exited, and the clerk may not look at the taskbar to check if the software is already running. This often leads to the opening of a second copy on the same machine, which can cause the software to malfunction.

Removed Rental Depreciation Display
This was a feature which again, became outdated when the IRS laws concerning Video Tapes and DVDs were changed. Since then, it has been an irrelevant part of the software which we have removed.

Changed some TAB positions in Customer and Rental Maintenance to accommodate new features
Please take note of the Customer Maintenance and Rental Maintenance screens have some tabs in different positions so that some new features can fit. For example, the Customer Users tab has been moved to the top row so that the newly added fields can display on the screen.

IMPORTANT!

Many of the new features added in version 7.10 will be enhanced in version 7.20 which will happen fairly quickly. They may also be available as patches for 7.10, so check out our web site every few weeks.

Some of the enhancements planned are now being tested in several stores for their feedback on the best presentation method within the software.

Some of these enhance the following features and will be implemented:

DVD Extras and Rental Screen size will display in various parts of the software for easy lookup.
Mobile phone number will be better integrated with quick lookups so that the BEST way to reach the customer is displayed and known.
Customer’s rentals by format will be available in a report form as well as displayed in customer maintenance. It was important to integrate this feature into 7.10 so it begins to immediately collect this breakdown.
Reports to break down “Free, Coupon and Free Credit” Rentals will be available aside from all the View Past Invoice screens which are in 7.10.
Quick “Rental Pass” renewal method. (We have been working on this for quite some time now and it is almost “Ready for Prime Time…”
New user fields will be better integrated into user defined reports.

Please be aware that ALL customers who received
version 7.10 will receive 7.20.

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