grumpydragonsoft

In this post I will be covering Customers, one of  six forms of the Digital Pocket Sales (DPS) application. DPS utilizes the touch screen of the hand held, so we will be covering only that segment of DPS.

DPS or Digital Pocket sales is a robust and comprehensive application. DPS is mainly used to help create sales while away from the office or business.

Once DPS is loaded onto your hand held, the Main Menu will appear. The DPS Main Menu provides buttons that will take you to other parts of the database and makes it easy to go where you need to be. As depicted by the image, there are several areas of the application the user can be directed to:

Customers: Customer or potential client database.

Client Types: Professions or job types.

Products: Database or inventory of all products sold.

Product Categories: Groups or categories of products in database.

Orders: Customer order records.

Details: Details of each customer orders; specific products.

Exit Program: Exits the DPS application.

On the bottom left you will also note the version of the software being used. You will note that DPS utilizes the touch screen, therefore, if your model does not have a touch screen, you will not be able to navigate.

When Customers is selected, the application will display a customer record. The Customer database stores information pertaining to a customer or a potential client. The main customer display has fields for name, address and their profession such as in this example, Gardner. Not all fields are required to be filled out, but it is best to fill out as many as possible.

There are also buttons on the bottom of the display that follow the same functionality for all pages of DPS:

Orders: Directs users to the orders page.

Notes: Allows user to enter notes about customer or potential client listed.

Details: Allows user to enter more information about customer or potential client.

Main Menu: Directs user to the Main Menu of DPS.

+: Add a new user or potential client.

-: Delete a new user or potential client.

<<: Display previous user or potential client listed in database.

>>: Display Next user or potential client listed in database.

On the bottom are four menus that I will cover later in this post.

Note: On a side note, The state field has a drop down arrow to the right that allows quick entry of states, however, the list is not compete for good reason: Why enter more data than you need? As the need occurs for a new state initials, simply type the two letters and DPS will store that entry and it now becomes part of the drop down. The state initials will remain in the dropdown until there are no customers using that state

Also, the GARDNER is a dropdown that lists several different types of professions, but obviously, the list may not be complete. If you find you need a specific client type and it is not listed in the drop down, the Main Menu has a button called Client Types that will allow you to enter new types (Covered in a later post).

To add more details, select the Details button and another page will appear. From this page you can enter more information about the customer. Here you can add phone numbers, spouse and children names, if any. You can also enter a birth date, anniversary, and set a date so the application will alert you.

Creating an alert can be done by entering a date in the field that says Remind Me and then selecting SET. This anniversary alert is an addition after a recommendation from a user. When the alarm occurs, a message will appear providing three conditions:

View: Brings up the associated customer record.

Cancel: Dismisses the alert.

Defer: Snooze for 1 hour then repeat the alert.

A field for the customer’s email address has also been provided. Two arrows have been provided to allow you to move forward and backwards through the customer records.

By selecting the Main Page button then NOTES, a large field will appear allowing to you enter just about anything you want about this customer.

In this post I will be covering Products, one of  six forms of the Digital Pocket Sales (DPS) application. DPS utilizes the touch screen of the hand held, so we will be covering only that segment of DPS.

From the DPS Main Menu, select the Products button. The Products form will be displayed There are 8 fields to enter data for each of your products:

Product Category
Product Description
Wholesale Price
Wholesale Stock
Wholesale Min
Retail Price
Retail Stock
Retail Min

As with many of the entries you will find within the grumpydragonsoft applications, the more information and data provided, the more information you will have at hand when making a sale.

The first entry is  a dropdown for Product Category. By selecting the Product Category field, you may see several categories to select from. This helps you basically ‘group’ like items in your inventory. Product Categories be modified by doing either the following:

1. Entering the category directly into the Product Category entry field

2. Going to the Product Category and entering  the category.

The first method will store the category as long as there is a product tied to it, whereas the second method will store the category indefinitely, or until you manually delete it.

To add new category to the dropdown simply enter the name into the field. If you do add a category and decide to no longer use it, then remove or modify any product record or records that may use it.

To enter the category into the category list:

1. Select the Main Menu button
2. Select the Product category button

The current Product_category listed is the last category entered. You can change this name by overwriting or by selecting the add button depicted by the green +.

Double clicking any category will load that category into the entry field to allow you to modify or delete. If there are too many categories to display all at once, a horizontal scroll bar is provided.

You will note that the function buttons are the same and therefore work the same for all forms. For example, if you were to select the Add button on any screen, a record, item or category would be depending where you are at within the form.

Once you have added any new categories into the database,

1. Select the Main Menu button
2. Select the Product button

This will return you to the Product form. Select the Product category dropdown, and the added or modified category will now appear in the dropdown.

Wholesale and Retail Price, Stock, and Min entries.

Wholesale Price: If you buy the products wholesale, you may want to pass the savings down to return customers.

Wholesale Stock: Wholesale Stock refers to how many units or the inventory quantity of that product you have available at the wholesale price.

Wholesale Min Price: Min refers to the minimum quantity of products in the inventory for that product before you may have to reorder . This number should obviously be less than the number entered for the Wholesale Stock.

Retail Price: This is the standard price you charge for the item.

Retail Stock: Retail Stock refers to how many units or the inventory quantity of that product you have available at the retail price.

Retail Min Price: Refers to the minimum quantity of products in the inventory for that product before you may have to reorder . This number should obviously be less than the number entered for the Retail Stock.

Take note that when looking at the inventory of what you have, you add BOTH Wholesale and Retail Stock to get a total inventory. For instance, there are five product items in the Wholesale inventory and five product items in the Retail inventory which means you have a total of 10 Woman Fragrance products.

Hidden Functions

There are four hidden menu functions, each with sub categories pertaining to specific items of the database. Figures 3 through 6 are used to illustrate this.

(Figure 3): The Record menu is for to the record itself, the common functions such as:

• Record|Search List: Search for a particular product by name. This allows you to quickly jump to a particular product.
• Record|Save: Save the currently displayed product.
• Record|Delete Product: delete the currently displayed product.
• Record|Close: Close Products and exit the DPS application.

(Figure 4): The Edit menu is for to the text editing and beaming the current record. The functions are:

• Edit|Modify Data: Currently not used at the time of this post.
• Edit|Undo: Undo the last text entry.
• Edit|Cut: Cut selected text from record.
• Edit|Copy: Copy select text from record.
• Edit|Paste: Paste text either cut or copied from record.
• Edit|IR Beam: Send current to other handheld that has form and receives IR signals.
• Edit|IR Beam All: Send all product records to hand held that has form and receives IR signals.
• Edit|Receive IR Beam: Turn IR receive signaling on or off.

(Figure 5): The Option menu is for importing, exporting, and filtering.. The functions are:

• Option|Export Products: When selected, the records, all or filtered, will be exported to a file called Products.txt. This file is in a comma delimited format and can be modified on your desktop if required.
• Option|Import Products: If exists, the Product.txt file will be imported. If you do NOT clear the product list first, the product records will be appended to your current list. You must take care when you import, otherwise you will end up with two of everything.
• Option|Clear: When selected, a dialog box appears to ask if you are sure you want the Product database to be cleared. If you say yes, all Product records will be irrevocably erased. Always be sure to export the Product list before using this feature.
• Option|Filter Off : This will remove any filter you may have initiated.
• Option|Filter Custom: The custom filter allow you to filter on just about anything on your products. To better understand this feature, see the post about Custom Filters.
• Option|Jump To Product Categories: This option takes you to categories, as long as you have chosen a category that exists in the list. Categories entered on line as depicted above will cause a ‘Record not Found’ error since no category exists.

(Figure 6): The Misc. menu essentially for functions that do not fit under the other menus:

• Misc|List: When selected, the filtered records will be listed. If no filter is initiated, all records will be listed.
• Misc|List All Products: Removes any filter and lists all products in the database (Figure 9).
• Misc|Show ReOrder List: When selected, all records having a stock quantity less than the Min quantity will be displayed (Figure 7). Double clicking on any product will take you to that record. You will also note, because this is a filtered list, the FILTER button is green to indicate you are not looking at all the products in the database (Figure 8). You will also note the Total products is less than the total product records.

By selecting the FILTER button, all records will once again be available for display. You can verify this by selecting Misc|List (Figure 9) and also by noting the Total Products number and the grayed out FILTER button.

• Misc|Reload Products Form: This functions just reloads the Products form.