Cash register supplies

Some cash register supplies are becoming harder to find. Lucky for you we make an effort to stock even the more rare inkers and paper. We stock bond paper rolls in 44mm and 2.25" sizes and in thermal we stock 44mm, 2.25", 3 1/8th" all of which work in many cash registers. We also stock many hard to find ink ribbons and rollers like the ERC-18, IR-90/91, IR-40 and more.

Need help finding one? Call us at 1-800-863-2274

Use your SAM4s cash register to make the most of the holiday sale rush

This holiday sale season make the most of it by ensuring your POS or cash register system is suitable to handle more customers while keeping your money secure! A poorly designed cash register system does not stop error entry mistakes and does little to stopping cashiers from helping themselves to your hard earned money.

What are some of the steps you can take to improve your business and security?

• Add more cash registers or POS terminals so you can get customers moved through the line! I for one will leave if store lines are long and most often will avoid that store in the future
• Interface your cash register and credit card payments to stop entry errors and cashiers stealing from you.
• Implement bar code scanning if you can it's faster and improved pricing accuracy.

If you need help selecting a register or POS give us a call at 1-800-863-2274

Cash registers that take credit cards

Today most cash register can take credit cards directly which is the most secure and efficient way to operate.

When you interface credit card payments directly to a cash register you benefit in many ways. First and foremost you will all but eliminate entry errors in the payment field. When you have not interfaced payments to the register you run the risk of a cashier entering the sale into the credit card terminal incorrectly. As an example lets say the sale total is $19.95 and the cash enters $9.95 or $0.95 on the credit card machine. You just lost all of your profit and then some. If you don't believe those happens then you should audit your cash register transactions to your credit card transactions. It may take you a couple hours but it could also show you how you are losing thousands of dollars due to entry error.

Another pleasant side effect of interfacing payments directly to the cash register is reducing fraud. It has long been a practice of bad cashiers not to register credit card transactions on the cash register but enter them on the credit card machine. Then when they have a cash transaction for the same amount they ring that one up and close out to credit card and then pocket the cash from the transaction they did not ring up. The register will still balance! But when you have an interfaced system the cashiers can't run a credit card without first ringing up a sale for the correct amount.

Need help deciding which cash register to use? call us at 1-800-863-2274

What should I buy? A cash register or a POS system?

We hear this question all the time "Should I buy a cash register or a POS system? Well the answer depends on your needs of course and budget.

We do often see people buy very expensive POS systems that have more features then anyone will ever use and probably spent $5000.00 to $10,000.00 more then they would have with a cash register system.

Cash registers and POS both do most of the same "sale" functions, like ring up specific items, charge tax, compute change issue a receipt etc. Often a cash register can do these things much much faster.

Where a cash register and POS start to separate is in the reporting. Cash registers do not store sales by date and time where a POS does. Inventory tracking widens the gap even more. Registers count how many of something you have sold but will not or do a poor job of actually tracking inventory. If you want reports of what to order based on min and max and current stock then hands down POS only.

The cost of ownership is almost always cheaper for a register then a POS system.

Give it a lot of thought before pulling the trigger on either one! Need help with the choice? Call us 1-800-863-2274

Cash register keyboard templates

Today's technology now allows you to create your own custom keyboard templates for cash registers. Whether it is a SAM4s, Sharp or Casio you can now create new keyboard overlays with MS Word or Excel whenever you like.

In the good old days your dealer would have a proprietary software and printer that created these keyboard. Believe me because I once paid $1500.00 for a custom software package and plotter to make keyboards and that was when $1500.00 was a lot of money (1985)!

Here are several cash register keyboard templates available for free down load. I always advise people to print a blank one first to test for size, also make sure you printer is not shrinking to fit and almost every register will need legal size paper not letter size!

Where do cash registers come from?

Years ago cash registers used to be Made in the USA however all that changed back in the 1980's along with so many other things! The technology has improved, the functions and features have improved but the manufacturing has all been moved overseas. at first most were made in Japan however over the years I have seen most if not all to South Korea, although for a short while I think the Samsung register were assembled in Mexico.

What is a cash register Z report?

Cash register reports are grossly miss-understood. In this age of endless complex reporting and analytics from websites and computers people expect the same from a cash register.

So the first miss conceptions to tackle is that cash registers know the date. Cash registers do in fact print the date and time on receipts and reports but that is where it ends. Cash registers do not associate sales to dates and time, they simply print the date and time and know when to roll it over.

So with that in mind lets look at so called daily reports. The only reason they are daily reports is because you take them daily, should you forget a day it will be combined with the next day. All cash registers sales are really period to date. Most registers do have several report levels known as Z1 and Z2 or Daily and Monthly. However remember it is only daily or monthly if taken daily and monthly. Here is how they work. A Z1 or daily is the first level of report. Example lets say you use the machine Saturday and at the end of the day you take the report or reports (will get into type of reports later). When you take the Z1 it will print the info and reset it back to zero, as well as take that data and dump it into the Z2 totals. Yes that is correct sales do not count in Z2 until a Z1 has been taken! So now Sunday you take another Z1 at the end of the day, that will be the sales from after the Z1 Saturday to right then, again that data is then added to the Z2 totals. OK now you forget to take a report on Monday night and you realize it Tuesday night and you think OK I'll just take the Monday report and the Tuesday report! NOPE both days have been added together now. When you take the report Tuesday night it will now be all the sales from the time you Z'd out Sunday night to right then, and again it will add to the Z2 at that point.

OK so now you want the monthly report or Z2. First make sure you have taken the last Z1 of the month you want (remember days to not add to Z2 until the daily Z1 is taken. So now you take the Z2 and it will be the entire period of time's sales from the last time you took the report. So if you last took the report May 1st before you did a Z1 on May 1st and it is now June 1st before you have taken the Z1 for June 1 the report will contain all the sales of May. Make sense? If you take that report every two months then it will be a bi-monthly report, take it every three months it will be the quarterly reports, take it every six months it will be a bi annual report. Get it?

What you should take away from this.

• All cash register reports are period to date, they total from last report to present report.
• Cash registers print date and time but don't report or filter by it.

Also once a Z report is taken you CAN NEVER reprint it! Lose the paper report you lose the report forever!

I hope that helps you understand cash register reports. Both SAM4s cash registers and Sharp Cash Registers work the same, yes they have different reports available but the Z1 and Z2 works the same way!

Need help selecting a cash register? Call us at 1-800-863-2274

Software for SAM4s cash registers

We receive a lot of request for free downloads for SAM4s cash registers. To the best of my knowledge there is no such thing posted for public consumption. Many of the SAM4s cash registers do include free programming software, however we email it or ship it to you with purchase of your new cash register.

Keep in mind you will still need a cable to connect your register to a PC. Almost all the SAM4s line use a serial connection to communicate, NOT A USB. If your computer or laptop only has a USB port you will need a USB to serial adapter, then a serial cable attached to that. We do stock one that we have used for several years that works well. Many people call us and they have a USB to serial cable, this will not work, must convert and also have a serial cable!

There are several polling and programming software available for sale. Those are PC Poll and the SAM series from SAM4s. Both products work very well.

Questions on which one to buy call us at 1-800-863-2274.