Building SambaPOS 3.x Roadmap

[emre]

SambaPOS 2.x release is feature frozen. That means we'll add only bugfixes to 2.x release and we'll keep it stable.

Now we started working on 3.x release. Here are my first plans about 3.x release:

• Payment types will be configurable. Besides current payment types (cash, credit card, voucher) it will be possible to add new types. For example credit cards based on type or cash payments by different currencies.
• Templating cash transactions. We'll configure cash transaction templates like "personnel payment", "rent payment". By using templates entering transactions will be simpler and reports will be better.
• Users will send exception reports directly to our team.
• Getting payments and changing from different currencies.
• Graphical reporting and analysis tool.

Let me know your ideas or suggestions.

[alberto_lc]

Hi, First congrats by your great software.
I notice you have recipe and inventory but i was wondering if it could get a little more detail. Like the quantity in the recipe by wieght, or liquid. Example if i sell a staek it should take 250gr out of my inventoy. Or if i sell a long island ice tea it should take 30ml of rum, 30ml of tequila, 60ml of icetea, and so on. And in the report it should show me how much i have left.
Thanks,
Keep the great work.

[aloupos]

I think payment types is a great idea.  Our restaurant has contracts with some online companies, like grubhub.com and seamless.com, both provide your menu online, do some marketing, etc.  They take a credit card online for orders, and mail a check once a month.  I settle them with Voucher now, but being able to break them out would be excellent!

[aloupos]

Integrated Credit Card Processing

Configuration ... you can configure external processing or integrated processing.  If processing is set to external, it behaves as it does now, ie you can create a ticket, settle it, and tag that it was payed using a credit card.  If it's set to integrated the following happens: 

Cashier creates a ticket with food items
Customer get's the bill and provides a credit card
Cashier clicks settle, then swipes the credit card
If the credit card strip isn't readable, or the CC is given over the phone, like for deliveries, Cashier enters the information by hand in the terminal using the keyboard.

The terminal does a CC auth (pre-authorizes the amount + 30% to accommodate any tip that's left on the card)
If approved the terminal prints a receipt that contains the stared out credit card number and information, the name on the card, etc., the amount, and a blank line for the tip amount and signature.
Customer signs and returns to server. 

We still need to capture the Tip Amount, and "force" the transaction for the total amount of the bill (bill + tip), which, depending on how busy the restaurant is might be done at that time or at the end of the night/shift, etc. 

The total amount of tips could be added as a line item in the report, because it needs to be paid to the cashier. 

I can help with coding on this if you like, or maybe this is a candidate for an external module? 

[emre]

I think payment types is a great idea.  Our restaurant has contracts with some online companies, like grubhub.com and seamless.com, both provide your menu online, do some marketing, etc.  They take a credit card online for orders, and mail a check once a month.  I settle them with Voucher now, but being able to break them out would be excellent!

Hello aloupos.

Nice to see you here. After reading your post I thought it will be nice to prepare a document to demonstrate some SambaPOS features. I'll be happy if you can try it and share your thoughts with us.

http://doc.sambapos.org/doku.php/en/tips/how_to_track_sales_in_individual_accounts

Thanks.

edit:Hey it seems you created a nice feedback while I'm preparing this document. My comment relates with your first post. Thanks.

[aloupos]

emre, it's Anthony by the way.  Nice doc on tagging tickets, that's exactly what we needed.  what do you think about the credit card functionality I described above?

[emre]

Hi Anthony

Most restaurants uses mobile Credit Card POS devices in our country so we didn't prioritize Integrated Credit Card Processing feature. Integrated provisioning part might be a separate module so we'll be able to change provisioning implementations. I have to learn if we'll implement it individually for each bank or not. I'll do some research to be able to understand how it works.

Currently we are implementing a simple accounting system in SambaPOS 3.x. After implementing it Credit Card Payment type will be an account and you'll be able to track different Credit Card types under sub accounts. Tips, other services and taxes will be all accounts so we'll have more control over them.

On latest (2.63) release you'll be able to force tip calculation with service templates and tip totals displayed separately on work period report. You can also print additional lines for tip amount. If you can give me more details about how you'll use that, I can prepare an additional tutorial for it.

Thanks.

[aloupos]

Hi Emre,

Thanks for the response.  The credit card functionality is mostly US specific, but here every POS has it.  I understand if it's not a priority for you, i'll bolt something on to SambaPOS outside the code base trying to maintain the same look and feel -- unless you have a better idea.

If you want the source I'm happy to share it with you, maybe later you'll integrate it into SambaPOS as a module. 

We also handle tips differently here.  We don't fix the tip amount, the customer chooses what to leave.  For cash this works out fine, because they just leave it in the folder for the server -- we don't need to manage it with the POS.  For CC, we need to manage 1) The actual transaction, which is actually 2 transactions (pre-authorize and the actual charge with the tip amount), and then 2) paying the tip back to the waitress. 

I like your idea about doing something with cloud/asp.  The market in New York would be huge for this.  If you're interested in working together on this to form a business plan, get funding, etc. let me know.

[emre]

Hello aloupos.
Sorry, I responded a little late because I had to fine tune some SambaPOS features to be able to create a reply.

- If you know how we can provision Credit Cards we can implement it together into SambaPOS. This was not my priority because I don't know how it should be implemented for US Will we do it online or will we connect to pos device or anything else?

-I created an additional tutorial to demonstrate how tips (or similar payments) could be tracked with SambaPOS. I wonder if this configuration solves our issues or not.
http://doc.sambapos.org/doku.php/en/tips/how_to_track_and_change_tip_amount_while_creating_ticket

SambaPOS contains some hidden gems and it is a little hard for me to describe them properly. Let me know if something is not clear enough.

Thank you...

[Johan Hartono]

hi emre,

I just want to brought up the topic that alberto_lc was asked regarding reports on inventory. it happens that we have the same issue here. Any help will be greatly apreciated. Thx.

[emre]

Hello Johan
Alberto asked same question on another thread so you can find my answer here
http://forum2.sambapos.org/index.php/topic,35.0.html

[Johan Hartono]

Hi emre,

thank you very much for your prompt and clear answer. I just found out about your software yesterday and I can't wait to test in on Monday. This seems to be great software you have created.

again, thank you.