December 2019 - Armagh Cash Register and POS Systems Since 1979

Windows 7 End Of Life

Dec 4

Windows 7 EOL And What It Means For Your Point of Sale It is widely distributed public information that after a good 10 year run, Microsoft has scheduled the Windows 7 end of life (EOL) on January 14th, 2020. In fact, many of you may already be receiving notifications on your computers from Microsoft informing you that the “end is nigh” and providing a link to the Microsoft Windows 7 EOL page for more information. Although most people are aware of it, not everyone is one hundred percent sure what that means for them or what they should to do about it. Here at Armagh we thought we would compile our understanding and provide it in an organized way for merchants looking to better understand the ramifications it will have for their point of sale systems and their stores. Will My Windows 7 POS Terminal Stop Working After January 14th, 2020? Here’s what Windows 7 EOL means in a nutshell: After January 14th, 2020, Windows 7 will stop receiving feature updates, bug fixes, and security updates. So no, your Windows 7 machine will not immediately stop working on January 15th. However, the lack of security updates are a concern. A direct quote from their website reads: Why Do Windows Security Updates Matter on My Cash Register? Once again, the Microsoft Windows 7 EOL site reads: Windows security updates are very important for any computers and computer-based point of sale terminals (your cash registers) connected to your network and the internet that maintain data you wish to protect, such as sales data, accounting data, gift card data, credit card and debit card data, employee data, or customer data. It is at all times the responsibility of the merchant to understand and maintain their security, and software updates are included in that obligation. How Do I Know If I Am Running Windows 7? You can find the operating system version you’re running in the “System Properties” of each machine. If you are unsure how to find this on ANY computer (yes, we mean any – security is important to us and we’re happy to help our merchants even if it isn’t a cash register), Armagh clients may contact Armagh Technical Support, and they will help you figure this out whether or not you have a support contract. How Do I Solve This? In this section we will identify three practical strategies to manage this upcoming challenge. Option 1: Upgrade The Operating System On more recently purchased POS equipment it is sometimes possible to upgrade a Windows 7 operating system (OS) to Windows 10. This could be the least expensive option for many merchants, IF the hardware is compatible with Windows 10, AND they have the time, patience, and opportunity to make upgrading viable. Some older POS hardware was built and designed before Windows 10 even existed, and so it’s not always possible. Even if it is “possible” it’s often not desirable, as the user experience is so slow or error prone, that it is unbearable for the merchant. Therefore, it’s important to understand the risks of upgrading operating systems on older hardware. Simply put, the results can’t be guaranteed, and Windows 10 licenses and labour are often not refundable if the end-performance is not what was expected. Even if the POS terminal is fully functional after an operating system upgrade, sometimes peripherals like receipt printers, scanners, rear displays, card swipes, payment devices, and cash drawers don’t operate properly, or their drivers are not fully compatible. With thousands of terminals to manage, ranging across a decade of installations, in diverse retail, restaurant, and grocery operations all across the country, used in dozens of different ways, it isn’t possible or reasonable to expect that a technician has had the time or opportunity to test every combination and permutation of a product 7 years in-market and discontinued for 4 years. Furthermore, downtime during the upgrade process is sometimes unavoidable. Back office database servers are often very difficult and costly to upgrade as the upgrade process can take several hours of backup, conversion, and testing, and many merchants are unwilling to invest that much money into old hardware if they will only upgrade 1 or 2 years down the road anyway. Option 2: Hardware Refreshment (Replacement) Although this is more costly up-front, it has the highest satisfaction level long term. Because it’s a full replacement with new equipment, everything works on a bench in the lab before it’s even brought to the merchant’s store, and technicians are in and out in no time at all. Within an hour an old terminal is replaced and a new terminal with double the RAM and 5-10 times the horsepower is fully functional in its place. As a result, there is little or no downtime on a system refresh. The benefits of new hardware are instantly noticeable, and the productivity improvements are worthwhile as both administrative tasks and customer service throughput are impacted immediately in a positive way. Armagh has a variety of current Windows 10 compatible point of sale hardware options available. Speak with your Armagh Account Manager to determine which of the many POS hardware configurations are right for your grocery, retail or restaurant operation. Option 3: Extended Support Updates Microsoft recently announced that they would be offering up to three years of extended support updates for Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 7 Professional operating systems on a paid-for basis with a new program called Extended Security Updates (ESU). Unlike previous after-life support options for Windows, the Windows 7 ESU updates will be available for purchase by any size merchant one in 1, 2 or 3 year blocks. The cost doubles each year it’s extended – let’s face it, Microsoft wants people off Windows 7. This can be a good solution for merchants needing to properly time their POS refresh investment or for people looking to remain in security compliance with PCI long enough to permanently replace equipment. If Microsoft Extended Support sounds great… Read More

Integrated Credit And Debit: Why Merchants Should Insist On It

Dec 1

One Feature Can Streamline The POS, Reduce Shrinkage and Theft, and Improve Manageability With Minimal Effort Have you noticed as you shop that nearly every multi-unit retail store operator or restaurant chain has integrated credit and debit? Ever wonder why? It’s because they’ve already done the math. They know that integrated credit and debit processing improves the transaction experience for both the customer and cashier, and reduces cost at the front end. In an era where everyone in business is talking about artificial intelligence and automation, integrated credit and debit is an automation tool for your store that requires zero effort and pays for itself on every single transaction. Here are the reasons why you should integrate credit and debit technology with your POS system. Streamline The POS Transaction Take a good look at your point of purchase. If it looks like a yard sale and or the transactions are clunky and slow, the bad news is, that’s how it looks to your consumers as well. In the retail and restaurant trade, image and wait times are important, and the cash register checkout is usually the first and last thing they either “endure” or “enjoy” when they enter your store. This impacts the trust that your customer has with your retail store or restaurant. One of the fastest and easiest ways to make your front-end POS experience more professional is to automate the credit and debit transactions with the POS. Integrated transactions speed up and make the payment process uniformly the same each and every time, no matter how experienced the cashier is. Because the transactions are faster and easier, it’s not only easier to train customers to pay, it’s easier to train cashiers to efficiently cash-out your customers! Control Human Error The opposite of integrated credit and debit is separate credit and debit, right? That means after your cashier rings everything up in the cash register, they must then also enter the transaction total after tax manually into the payment device. To err is human, and that portion of human entry is prone to mistakes, especially during the attention “trough” of 2 o’clock to 4 o’clock in the afternoon. These are called, “Transposition Errors”. The act of copying the total from the cash register to the credit and debit machine is where the loss of revenue and customer trust happens regularly. These are honest mistakes to be sure, but that’s irrelevant to your profitability. The credit and debit machine has a fixed decimal entry system, so if you miss one digit, you miss either a tens or a hundreds column, and those mistakes can accumulate and cost your business thousands of dollars a year. Under-keying just one digit could incorrectly result in $ 45.16 doing a transaction on someone’s credit card for $ 4.51 for example. That’s a loss of $40.65 on a single customer, plus the product that they walked out the door with for four bucks! The total loss in this example is now $60-80 bucks! On the flipside, if they over-key the transaction (in other words they accidentally enter too many digits) the fixed decimal system takes too much money from your client. For example, that same $ 45.16 transaction when manually keyed into a credit and debit machine could end up costing your customer $ 451.60! How much trust do you think you’ll gain with your customer when your staff over charge them at the point of sale? Improve Reporting and Accountability Integrated credit and debit transactions are automatically connected to receipt numbers, and receipt numbers are connected to credit card authorization numbers. All of them are tied to times and dates, cashier names, cash register numbers, customer loyalty information, payment type, and even the products on the receipt. All of which can be cross referenced in the reporting system in the point of sale. All of which is possible in a PCI compliant way, without sacrificing card data security, because when done right, no payment card data (the data required to complete a transaction) is present in the point of sale. Just the circumstantial evidence required to prove the transaction information and provide proper customer service. When a transaction error happens how easy is it to track down what happened and who did it? If it involves a ladder to get at cardboard boxes, files, and a couple employees sifting through small pieces of paper for a couple of hours, you have already failed. Integrating credit and debit into the point of sale system eliminate this circus and makes things much easier to track down when necessary. Reduce Labour Cost Let’s face it, your lifestyle matters. You have a family and you have a life of your own. Spending hours on end in the store either at the crack of dawn or in the middle of the night trying to make heads or tails of mismatched transactions doing employee cash-outs or reconciliations is not a path to a better standard of living, nor will it do much for your sanity. With improved reporting and accountability, managers and cashiers benefit enormously from improved management capability. When credit and debit (and even gift card) is integrated, Visa, Mastercard and Debit transactions are penny accurate. Once you understand this, you realize that you’re not having to micromanage the cash-out process or add up every slip when doing reconciliation. Instead, it’s more of a review process, and you’re looking for process discrepancies rather than trying to hunt around for your money. Once you understand how it works, you’re paying more attention to the thing that matters – cash. Cash is a negotiable tender, which means it’s often miscounted, counterfeited, lost, stolen, it’s dirty, and must be deposited. Once you understand the control and management ease of electronic tenders, you realize that today, Cash is no longer King. Prevent Fraud & Theft Separate credit and debit terminals allow your staff to accept electronic payments, sure, and they’ll even give you a report. They do NOT however, require them… Read More