The AGKSoft Home Office allows data from multiple back office locations to be consolidated into one centralized location.  It uses an FTP service such as Internet Information Services (IIS), to communicate with the back office locations to FTP data to the home office, and also to allow the home office to FTP price changes to the locations. 

To use AGKSoft as a Home Office, run the software and log-in, the "First Time User" should launch automatically, if it does not you can open it from the AGKSoft desktop or press SHIFT + F4.

•     Under "1. Cash Register Interface".  Select "None" and you will be prompted "Are you using the software as Point Of Sale?", select "NO" for Home Office.

•     You should now go to the "Setup" menu and select "Locations" see the "Location List".  Make sure to keep "ID (0), Desc (ALL LOCATIONS)" in place.

•     Click under the "0" and type "1", hit the right arrow and type your 1st location name.  Note: in our example below we used 1 and 2 for the ID, these numbers would be replaced by the numbers that have been configured at the Back Office if different.

Repeat for each additional location (s).  When you have finished, click "Quit" all entries will be automatically saved.

Now you can click "Cash Register Interface" from the AGKSoft desktop or press F5 and you will see the following:

Cash Register Interface Options:

• "Upload Products to Cash Register" allows you to choose what folder or Zone (see below to learn more about zones) you are going to export the price changes into.

• "Product Wizard" will allow multiple price changes with the click of the mouse. Click "Product Wizard" for more info.

• "Department Setup" will display the current department configuration setup at the back office.

• Change Price Groups allows you to view the current price groups configured at the back office, and also allows any changes to be made if necessary. Click "Change Price Groups" for more info.  Note: When sending Price Groups to a Gilbarco G-Site the number of price groups that can be configured is limited to the software running on the G-Site.

• Change Categories / Sub Categories is similar to a price group allowing items to be grouped together that aren't in the same department for easy reporting.  Clicking on either Change Categories or Change Subcategories  will allow you to view the current configuration, and also allow you to make changes or corrections if needed.

• Click "Products Download" to manually import a Price Book file from another location that is saved on a disk file.

• "View products" is a list of the price book file including departments, UPC's and PLU's.  Click "View Products" for more info.

• Click "Validate Products" to make sure your Price Book is valid.

• "Buy Down" is where you can configure the discount from the cigarette manufactures and send to the back office.  Please see BuyDown for more info.

• "Mix Match" is the window used to configure items that would sell normally 1 for .59 and 2 for 1.00.  Click "Mix Match" for more info.

• "Create/Modify Products" will allow working with one UPC, Dept or PLU at a time.  Changing pricing, updating names etc... Click "Create/Modify Products" for more info.

• "Change" under Gas Selling Prices will allow all prices to be raised or lowered a certain amount, and then hit Send to Register to send these new prices to a zone or folder for the back office to import.

• "Setup Zones" is where to configure the Zone names and folders that the back office will pick up the price changes from.

• "Auto" will open the Home Office Automatic Import screen to allow the home office to import the data sent from the back office.

• "Help" opens up a help document with information on this window.

• "Quit" will close the window.

 

AGKSoft Home Office Automatic Import:

The AGKSoft Home Office Import window is used to setup a folder for each location.  This window will monitor each folder for new data sent from the Back Office and will automatically import the data into the Home Office Software.

The Home Office Software is pretty much the same as the Back Office Software in addition to being able to send price changes from the Home Office to your Back Office.

For more info. on what the software can do, please see the Back Office Software.

To import data from your Back Office locations, click "Auto" from the Cash Register Interface and you will see the following:

• Click on "Add Folder" to add the folders that were configured in Internet Information Services (IIS), if you have not created these folders please refer to the Home Office Guide that was sent with your package and configure them now.  If you have configured them, please continue.

• The "Add Folder" dialog box should now appear; Browse to where the folders were created and choose the folder name (e.g. C:\Inetpub\FtpRoot\Location1) Note:  In our example we used Location1, when setting up your Home Office, replace Location1 with your folder name.

  • Repeat the steps for "Adding a Folder" for each location.

• Once all folders are added for all locations, choose how often you would like the software to check to see if any data has been exported from the back office locations into these folders, under where it says "Import Interval".

• Click "Start Auto-Import" to start monitoring the folders.

Other AGKSoft Home Office Automatic Import options:

• "Remove Folder"  will eliminate/remove a folder from the list.

• "View Auto-Log" opens a log of the information of what is happening at the back office.

• "Stop Auto-Import" will stop the monitoring and importing of data until Start is pressed.

• Clicking on the  , will open a log of the Home Office Importing activity.

• Clicking on the AGKSoft icon, will allow a support engineer to log onto the PC for remote support, if needed.

• "Quit" will close the Home Office Import window.

After all that data gets imported, what do I do with it?

When the home office is finished importing click "Stop Auto Import" to stop the importing process and press Quit.  Open up the Cash Register Interface screen to "log into" a specific location to see their sales info, inventory info. etc...  There always is the option to view all information for "All Locations" as well.  Click on the location name to see the information for that location and then click Quit.  Note:  On the title bar of the software you will see the location name you are "logged into".

After you have made your selection you are now ready to browse to the various windows to see the information for your selected location.  To see information for the shift / day click on the Short/Over screen and you will see the window shown below.

To see previously saved data that has been imported from the back office location (s) click on "History", select a date range and press ok and then choose the specific shift or day.  The information will show directly on the short over screen and allow changes if necessary.  Once all the changes have been made, click on "Close Shift (Save)" to save the changes.  The report button can also be used to view certain shifts / days as well as all days saved in the software.

It is also possible to see sales, inventory, cost of goods information etc... for "All Locations" or a "Selected Location". 

For example: To view sales information for location 1 only; open the cash register interface, choose location 1 and hit quit.  Then, open the sales room screen from the AGKSoft desktop, click on report and choose a report.  The reports can be limited to a department, UPC, category, profit margin, etc... A date range can be selected as well. Once the report is generated you will see on the left margin the location name you are viewing.

Working with price changes in the Home Office:  

The Home Office portion of the software has the ability to control the price book for one store location or multiple, by using zones. By creating a zone, we are grouping multiple locations under a master folder; referenced as a “Zone”. Once store’s are placed in a “Zone”, any changes to that “Zone” will apply to all locations contained in that “Zone”.