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rpcelectronics

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    http://www.rpc-electronics.com

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    Williamsburg, Virginia, USA
  • Interests
    Electronics, Amateur Radio, Model Trains, Guitars and Shooting.

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  1. Late last year I upgraded my EI from a roughly five year old version to the most recent. I was immediately blown away with how much has changed. A few annoyances (changes) I have found a way around or changed the way I do certain things. One thing I cannot figure out is marking invoices as PAID when I create them. In 99% of my sales, an order comes in online, I create an invoice reflecting the order, shipping, even the shipping method. In the old days, I could go to the drop-down in the top right and change it from Pay in 30 Days to PAID. Print, pack and ship. Now, I don't have the option to mark PAID. I have to leave it as Pay in 30 Days and I have resorted to added a note at the bottom "PAID IN FULL". Just so my customers don't think they still owe payment. I guess this software assumes that most businesses and rendering services and then invoicing for payment afterwards. For most businesses like mine, we're creating the invoice on the spot to pack in the box with the products. It looks like I can create an invoice and then convert to a sales order and then mark paid? Seems like a bunch of extra steps when I used to be able to do it all at the same time. Why did this change? What are my options? Thanks, Jason - RPC Electronics, LLC
  2. A couple of additional questions: 1. When using a credit card, will there be some kind of "sign here" line indication and last four digits of the card on the invoice? I guess as youins work towards integrating POS-like functions, things like this will be added. 2. What will the card input interface be? Will it be all hand typed or will there be support for one of these low cost USB stripe readers? I think I mentioned before that I have one of these and they work great. They just spit out a string and the software just has to parse the information out. 3. Are there any talks about supporting a receipt printer of some kind? Not as much for the items sold but for the buyer to sign for a credit card transaction. I have a Dymo Turbo 400 and it works very well. You have the option of putting in a continous roll for receipts. Plus, its thermal, so no ribbons or ink to buy
  3. That will just have to be a fix for now. I already use the notes field for similar things. That has come in handy for custom orders! OK, I can do that for now. It might not be a bad feature to add on. Some kind of "discount profiles". Set them up in the settings and have them selectable anytime you make an invoice or work up a quote. For me, when its education, they typically are tax exempt, so it doesn't really apply. For "dealers" they pay tax, so I would say the tax is based on the post-discount price. I don't think you can legally tax on an ammount that isn't paid. The tax has to be based on the actual paid amount. At least in the US, I think thats the case. Thanks!
  4. I am feeling kind of dumb! I can't figure out two, what I would assume be simple functions. 1. I have a customer that canceled an order. I want to retain the invoice for records, but I need to show that the money was refunded and take that out of the reports. Basically, I don't want the sale to show as valid and give me false income numbers. I guess I could delete the items on the invoice, but again I would lose record of what was refunded. Obviously, I don't want to outright delete the invoice. Is there a way to do this? 2. I have made use of the discounts function many times already, but I have two I primariy use. Is there a way to set up discount "profiles" such as an "Educational 10%" and "Dealer 15%" so I can just select it without having to type in the percentage amount every time? Thanks!
  5. No doubt about it, as far as simple, low cost solutions, EI is the top of the list! I'm sure you saw my post above explaining my convoluting method for running credit cards. The real bitch is, PayPal has what they call Virtual Terminal. Its a web-based CC terminal thatw orks just like the real thing, but no BS to enter in like names and addresses. The catch is, you must have to have bullet proof credit or some kind of major income to qualify. I have been using PayPal for online business for 8 years and they rejected my request to use the service. I responded by coming up with the method I use. Its not the best, but it does work. The funny side to that story is, after one show, I did close to $3000 is sales that day. PayPal contacted me and said "It looks like you are attempting to use our service to bill credit cards, we suggest you try out 'Virtual Termial'." I shot back and told them I already tried that and was rejected. I never got a response to that email. I guess the other PayPal method is using their backend authorization through a program, like EI. Hopefully the developers will give us several choices. I would prefer Authorize.net (most popular and trusted) and PayPal for starters.
  6. I haven't heard anything further, but that doesn't mean that it isn't in the works. I am really looking forward to it because it will make my life much easier when I am at trade shows and conventions. Ever since I had to dump my own POS software, I have been basically entering my customer's CC info into PayPal's online interface as though I was them. I created a subdomain on my website that I go to when at a show, there I have a buy button for $1. I just select this and change the quantity to the amount due. This makes the total what I need to charge to their card. This is very cumbersom because I am forced to sit there and enter everything, including their mailing address and phone number for the card. Oh and if there are ANY details that do not match the card's records, it rejects them. To make matters worse, if they have the card linked to their own PayPal account, it rejects it outright unless they log into their own PayPal account and send the payment that way. My whole point is, with a simple interface with authorize.net as the backend, you can simply swipe the card and run it like a normal POS would. That brings up a gew suggestions... 1. Add provisions for any simple credit card swiper to be used. The nice thing is, these act like a keyboard input. When you swipe the card, the string is printed to wherever the cursor is. I can simply open Notepad, swipe a card and the string shows up in the window. I have some well working parsing code down in VB.net to read in this string and parse the CC info out. I am even willing to share this with the developers. 2. Add some kind of "payment type" option to the invoice window. I would like to see "Cash", "Credit" and "Check". When Credit is selected, have the printed invoice show the CC holder's first and last name, last four of the CC number (possibly with leading * signs) and a line for a signature. Last week, I attended a large convention where I used EI for the first time live. It worked VERY well, but when I did a credit card, there was no way to reflect this on the printed invoice. I simply had the customer sign the bottom of the invoice and I kept it. I printed a second copy to give them as a receipt. Another suggestion down the road would be support for continous paper printers for receipt printing, especially CC signing. I use the popular Dymo Turbo printers for printing labels and postage. They also have a tape roll and I have one, but I can't use it yet. Just another suggestion to make EI more POS like.
  7. Great! This is great to hear! I have to beleive there is a demand for this. If you get this added in, you will be one step closer to crushing the QuickBooks empire I refuse to buy their software after attempting a try with their demo a while back. The closer you can get EI to a dual invoicing/POS program, the better off you will be and you can sell to a wider range of businesses. In my case, I have a use for both sides in what I do.
  8. I made the submission through the software it'self. Well, I'll cross my fingers hoping to see this. If it was to be added, I think it would be a great addition! I guess I should explain that I am hoping to use Express Invoice both in-house when shipping orders and on-site at a trade show, convention, ect. This is why the CC function would be an excellent add-on. The software I have been using for invoicing and on-site POS was custom written by me and it worked very well for several years. Unfortunately, I had a fatal HDD crash and lost all of my source. Ever since then, I have been on the look out for commercial software that I could replace my software with. I managed to work in barcoding for both inventory and on-site sales. It really sped things up. Its just some suggestions.
  9. Yep, I already did that. I did'nt get any response, so I figured I would ask here again.
  10. I can't be the only one looking for this feature. I realize this is a primarily user-fueled forum, but some feedback from the developers would be nice. If there is no intentions of adding on features like credit card handling and barcoding, then I need to know before I really sink time into learning to use it. I can consider the $50 I spent on it an educational loss.
  11. So far, I love EI for producing regular invoices and quotes, but I am looking for a way to integrate credit card processing. In my own software, I had a function that I wrote to read in CC info from a magnet stripe reader, parse it out and then I could easily copy and past this info into PayPal's credit card terminal for processing. Now that I am no longer using that, I am looking for a way to do that through EI. Quickbooks has a similar add-on module that lets you do this. Is there any plans for EI to have a function like this? What would be the most likely credit card gateway? Authorize.net? Sagepayments.com?
  12. Fairly new user to EI myself. I have been playing with it off and on for the last couple of months. The source code for my own handmade POS program was lost on a crashed drive and instead of trying to re-create the program from scratch, I started searching for a sutiable replacement. I went ahead and paid for the Pro version last night since they are running the deal right now. Email setup was a bit**! I tried to use SMTP/SSL through my company email, which is on an Yahoo server. The first thing I ran into was the port number identification. After doing some reading, I found out the SMTP address had to be appended with :PORT Once I did this, it attempted to connect, but no go. I eventually had to use my Gmail account SMTP access to send emails. I HATE this because my customers are seeing the gmail address for reply. Even after I changed the reply-to option. Make sure you have the correct server address and port number. Use SSL and make sure all of your server authentication login is correct.
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