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ComTrac/DOS Documentation

1. Make Out Stock Report sss Make Spe Inv Pommes sees sees eee eee eee Make Stale Mdse Report sess Make Stale Mdse Report esse sesse see se ee Make Subscription Form esse see se se ee e Make Subscription Form e Manual Eeu LE IE a RE Manual Updating se se se esee Master Cat File ee ee se ee Ge Re in Misc Info zi SS Ee N EG REA New Comics Module sss sesse se se se ee se ee Newsstand Sales eee No Free Lunches eee Normal Order 3 22 5 here ems Now you are ready to enter Customer Orders Now you are ready to start entering customers Number of Subscribers sess One Shot or Standing Order Systems Open Orders File ene Order COMICS ee ee ee ee ee GR Re ee Order Piles oi ERE edet Order Form Report Order Te EE ERROR Order Specialties sess Order Specialties esses Ordering COMICS ete e es Ordering Specialties from a Comics Distributor 10 17 86 18 18 63 13 62 23 36 28 30 71 74 21 81 80 42 70 28 62 25 21 87 62 71 12 Ordering Specialties from a Manufacturer Publisher se eee eee Ordering Specialties from a Specialty Distributor see se eee eee Ordering Tables Ordering to Sell Orders Module uu EE ER N
2. Count the books as listed on the Count Form being sure to indicate if any titles are missing from the list When you are done go to New Comics C Update Comics Sales and enter the quantities you recorded into the spreadsheet on the screen When you are done with this exit ComTrac Use the Start Run command on the Desktop to run the program C ComTrac FixCycle Exe This will fill in any weekly zero values in your cycle Page 51 sheets If you want you can now go to Utilities I Create PLU and generate a new PLU Table When you import this into POS or when POS auto imports it you ll be able to scan all barcoded comics and sell the non barcoded comics by their title 8 16 4 Getting Your Specialties Up 8 16 4 1 Doing an Initial Specialties Inventory We recommend printing out an Inventory count form for each Specialties department one at a time Go to Specialties H Make Specialties Inv Form to do this When you ve counted the items on the form go to Specialties C Enter Spc Sales to update your inventory quantities Note that you can enter the quantity sold or the quantity remaining Be sure to set the F6 toggle so that the proper label is showing Enter the quantities that you recorded update your PLU Table and you can start scanning these items 8 16 4 2 Adding Additional Specialties or Comics Inventory If you have a significant number of comics or specialty inventory items that were not ordered in the last three months make up
3. Everything else including inventory updates and logging in happens on the home office PC What this means is that when merchandise comes to the store you and your staff check the invoices for accuracy and note any changes in price or quantity on the invoice Then the actual log in takes place on the main PC when it is convenient 8 24 2 1 Data from Store to Office Home Here s the data that travels from your Store to your Office or Home Daily sales export files Weekly subscriber folder data via Mass Export Mass Import 8 24 2 2 Data from Office Home to Store Heres the data that travels from your Office or Home to your Store Daily or weekly PluTable Zip whenever you add new items to your inventory in ComTrac Daily or weekly LookupFl Zip whenever you have multiple stores and want to modify your company wide Inventory lookup table in ComTrac Occasionally Depament Dbf whenever you update your department table in ComTrac 8 24 3 Back Up Back Up Back up regularly at the store and at your office or home If you have an attack of carelessness you will have a fighting chance to recover with enough recent and complete back ups Rotate back ups over at least three disks or sets of disks Disks eventually develop bad sectors and have to be reformatted If a bad sector is right in the middle of a file such as your Specialty Inventory file you won t be able to restore the data in tht file Make a backup at least once a month
4. Orders Contains all regular comic subscription orders Dropped Customer Contains all dropped customers Archive Customer Contains all archived customers and their order data Rental Contains all rental products Of these files the only files that you will work with directly in the normal course of business are the Customer and Orders files From time to time you may want to add one or two products to the Title file directly rather than using the transfer tool that s part of the Diamond Order Form import process 3 1 1 Title File The Title File contains one entry for each product title or description that you are making available to your customers If a product isn t in this file you can t create an order for that product in the Orders File The only fields that must be defined when you add an entry to this file are Title Description and Retail Cost Leave the other fields empty or with their default values The only time you need to enter the Issue Number is if you are requiring your subscribers to submit a unique order for every item every month Otherwise leave it blank When you import your monthly Diamond order form into ComTrac you will be asked whether you want to electronically update your Reserves Title file If you say Yes which we recommend ComTrac will automatically transfer all the items you designate to this file as long as they aren t already present Page 6 3 1 2 Customers File The Customers File contains basic
5. 8 22 1 When You Receive Your Comics Order Packs 8 22 1 1 Load Order Forms You need to bring your comics distributor electronic order forms into ComTrac for ordering purposes Orders Option G Load Forms 8 22 1 2 Zap Order Forms You should eliminate any stale order forms from earlier months They just take up valuable hard disk space Orders Option G ZAP Forms 8 22 1 3 Update Sub Title File If you run a one shot subscriber system the first order pack you loaded replaced last month s Subscriber Title file You can update the Subscriber Title file for other distributors with the help of this tool Reserves Option B Option J 8 22 1 4 Make Subscription Form If you want ComTrac can help you create an order form for your Subscribers Reserves Option C Option D 8 22 2 Comics Ordering Related Tasks 8 22 2 1 Analyze Comics Sell Through Before starting your monthly comics orders you may want to check your Comics Sell Through to see whether you are experiencing sell through problems in any part of your c omics portfolio New Comics Option I 8 22 2 2 Copy Current Orders If you want to create subscription orders for newly solicited titles for every customer who currently has ordered an existing title this tool will save you time Reserves Option B Option H 8 22 2 3 Upload Download Files If you are using a Remote system you will want to Upload your subscriber data to your cen
6. Enter High Value Sales Enter New Bak Inv nen Enter New Common Back Issue Inventory esee eterne nennen nennen tenent trennen enne Enter Payments eese Enter SPC Data sees Enter Specialty Sales Enter Your Store Code into ComTrac Entering Common Back Issue Comics Entering High Value Back Issue Comics coocococcocccocconocononanonnnononanonn nono non nono ene on non neon en recono nennen trennen ee ee ene Epson Compatible Dot Matrix Printers 66 66 31 22 28 40 13 51 52 29 32 85 39 47 40 19 87 34 87 19 87 15 17 86 80 52 52 47 Evaluating Store Performance Ratios asezas cece se se se ee torsos ee ee ee Ge Ge Ge Rd GR non Re Ge Ge Ge oE Se ee ee ee ene Export Sales History File 4 EE ER OE OE d e EE ONE OE EE Extract Exe Free form Data Analysis for POS Users ees esse se ese se ee eke ee Re Se ee ee Se ee ee ee Ge Gee Ge enne Firid Expiring Subscribers sie esse Eens Eie ER Es EE Ee Se ee se e repe e DE Ee Dro ee tane First Week SPEI c En Fians ComTrac POS Internal Errors Essie tee iii bue Polder Tables so MEER d s e oret eei Ee ed mer notes Aere ad AE eA te aA esce ue Full Customer Listing ne dr e RE RR SEE EE EE OE N Generate a Cycle Sheet Count Form EE EE pb iR REE oor Generate Customer by Title LiS
7. Go to Update New Arrivals and check mark it has having arrived That ll take care of comics items For Special Orders to to the Special Orders menu and manually flag it has having come in 8 19 Installing ComTrac and POS Software Upgrades We provide regular software upgrades to ComTrac and to the POS frontend program If you Page 56 are in support we will notify you by e mail whenever a new update is available on our website If there is a change in the Support Files password we ll provide you with the new password in the e mail Once you ve downloaded the Zip file that contains the new enhancement make sure that it is in either your ComTrac or POS20 directory depending on what program you are upgrading If you try to install a POS upgrade over your ComTrac software or vice versa it ll take a fair bit of work to straighten things out Let s use a ComTrac upgrade as our example 1 Go into DOS Start Programs MS Dos Change directories from Windows to Comtrac cd comtrac enter or change directories from Windows to POS20 cd pos20 lt enter gt 3 If your upgrade file was CT30 Zip enter the command at the Comtrac DOS prompt pkunzip ct30 lt enter gt 4 When the unzip program warns you that duplicate files exist press A to overwrite all duplicate files 5 When the unzip program is done enter the command install bat lt enter gt This will run all the components of th
8. There are two types of transfers Store Initiated and Office Initiated The only difference between the two types is that an Office Initiated transfer produces data that you can generate a picking list from If a store manager transfers merchandise from their store to another location you d use a Store Initiated transfer to record what happened after the fact If you are going through inventory at the office and are initiating transfers that you want to take place you d use the Office Initiated option Then enter the Transfer Date and start selecting products that need to be transferred Note that you ll see current inventory levels across your company for every location ComTrac won t let you transfer more product from one location to another than what it knows is in inventory If there s no inventory entry at the destination store ComTrac will create a new entry for you automatically The no data message means that there isn t any record or entry for that item at that location 6 4 Level Stock This tool isn t presently available but will be reinstated in a future upgrade 6 5 Xfer Audit Reports The Transfer or Audit reports are used to generate Pick Lists for merchandise or to generate reports which summarize the value of merchandise moved from one location to another 6 5 1 Summary The Summary Report generates a summary of the piece count retail value and wholesale value of transferred merchandise between locations This is
9. and L is for people who are only on your Mailing List 4 Leave Membership Type empty unless you are using POS and have a multi level membership scheme You can assign groups of customers to a membership type later if you implement this feature at a later date See the Club Members cheat sheet 5 Enter N for the Rental Customer field unless you are using POS and are going to use the built in game video rental module You can assign groups of customers to rental status later if you implement rentals at a later date 6 The Entered Date will be today s date Leave it be unless you know when they became a member or subscriber 7 Enter the Discount eg 10 for 10 if the customer gets a discount 8 Leave the Membership Number blank Most users rely on the Customer Code which is assigned automatically by ComTrac 9 Enter the customer s last name and then their first name 10 Press PageDown twice to exit the screen Page 80 11 Press Y es the default value of the Exit prompt box to save changes Now you can enter your next customer Notice that ComTrac has assigned a customer code for you 8 33 3 Preparing the Reserve Subscriber Title File You must have data in the Reserve Title File before you can start entering subscriber orders That ensures that all the ordering information is as consistent as possible If we haven t provided title file data for you as part of a da
10. 18 42 42 42 40 31 47 30 Set System Values Short Eyele or Full Cycle dico ettet ORR eee ee erri oce e ey bit a EE Special Interest Codes Special Interests DY Customer ss acie cite m e E e e demie R e Ot eode ede Special Order Reports Special Orders Special Orders One Time Orders EER Re RE GE tees e He Ee e HP eigen Special Topics Specialties Module Stale Comics Report Stale Comics Report Stale Comics Report Store File Store INFO esse sesse ese Store Summary Sub List Subscriber Bonus Points Subscriber Telephone E mai st ete ete N Ee Re de ie Subscribers Sum Multi Order Sum Multi Order Summary oe ese ese ee The Department Table The Law of Large Numbers ESEG oeza tes GE VER GR ES Re SR cdecdenteaccesecesdaadesadevebvandaudavaevaenudaeuieadaccdendeesdesrceuiaueedanes The Store Table Time Clock Title by Customer Title by Store Summary Title File ina ns Top Comics Seller Report 29 67 27 10 16 15 70 33 17 84 84 27 29 13 40 10 71 63 25 24 50 73 50 40 13 13 Trans E A E EA E E Ee eH GE RE EE Ge Ee eie Transfer COX to Spe tete ettet b er EE e RO e aT OE NG
11. calculate the age of the renter and check it against the code for the item they are renting If there is an age problem POS will warn the clerk 7 1 3 2 Rental Prices The Rental Price table allows you to define rental prices for each day of the week 7 2 Pack Files The Pack Files command allows you to condense any or all files in ComTrac stripping out any entries that were previously marked for deletion 7 3 Index Files The Index Files command allows you to regenerate index files for any or all files in ComTrac Index files can be damaged by glitches in your power supply static electricity buildup or by having your PC turned off while ComTrac is running Page 28 7 4 Set System Values Set System Values allows you to define how ComTrac works 7 4 1 Store Info Default Area Code User Color System Country Code Use Res Slot Number Default Store 7 4 2 Inventory Info Avg Wks Shelf Login Day Inventory Day Last Cycle Date Full Short Cycle Company Store Order Convert Currency 7 4 3 DOS Printer Printer Type Printer Name Printer Port Thermal Port 7 4 4 POS Info Scanner Preamble Import File Path Export File Path 7 4 5 Rental Information Rental Return Time Days Open Enter the most common area code for your customers Enter Y to have ComTrac work in color Enter the proper country code leave blank to see defaults Enter Y to use slot numbers N
12. changed its spelling for your convenience The 32 bit version of ComTrac will be able to always match on part number so this inconvenience will disappear 4 Exit from the window when you re done and let ComTrac update for any items you check marked yourself 8 18 4 Generating Pull Reports 1 ComTrac is now ready to generate your pull reports including any special orders which arrived which customers had ordered 2 Go to Reserves C Reports B Pull Pick Lists 3 Generate Pick List A to get a listing of how many copies go onto the subscriber pile and how many go onto the rack or newsstand pile 4 Then generate either Pick List B or C to get a list of which customers get which products If you don t see Special Orders on one pick list generate the other and they should be there 8 18 5 Wait Till Your Shipment Comes Don t reset your subscriber system until your Diamond shipment actually arrives There are often variances between your Diamond invoice and what actually ships so wait till the shipment arrives and then correct for variances 8 18 6 It s on the Invoice but didn t Ship If an item was on the invoice but didn t ship go to Reserves Perform Jobs and go to the Recall Tool so any orders which were marked for deletion will be undeleted Do the same thing in the Special Orders menu for items which have been marked for purging that didn t arrive 8 18 7 It wasn t on the Invoice but came in anyway
13. E EE Ee Rae das Special Interests by Customer scs ec SEE EE GREG e eter e RD rha ep te GR gek a E besoo la TRER Subscriber Telephone E mail list zer tet Se See es Ee oa VRESE Wa Deeg ee De eo ge ee gee eed Find Expiring Subscribers 20 00 see sees see se se ee ek trer Se ee ee ee ee rennen rennen Er Se ee ee List Cust Title Orders ZAP Customer Title FLOOR Copy Current Orders Upload Download Fil L EE EE OE AE DE S Xter COMK SHRESELVES sie AE EE RS EE ET OE AE RE EE dae Use Special Interest Assign Special Interest Codes cs essere ED KERS ERGE pet eo S cR eR Parrot inerte sta Generate Orders Do Reports Reserve Customer REPOrt sos em pee pedo teh ete eue etos Full Customer Li Partial Summary pA C EE Subir Store Summary Sub E T e e eee ite e DER sve desis tinas dh acy eye hores Res Title Pull Report Title by Store Summary teo eo N etre to ER DI ER ipie etae Title by Custome AU UNES Customer by Title es ERG eh tede rte tree E e Le DATE See ere ee exeo Make Subscription Form merosini Ge ed GR RA Re Ge Ge Se ee Ge ee ee ee rennen enr RA GR GR entren nennen Print Reserve Files Update Report Sub Pi Rental Reports Rental Report Customer Rental D lue Mec i M E n Repott EES ER Ee EE eerie md en NO Late SIDE 90 u O E RSA EE EE NE ES AR Rental lem Report EE OE N ENE N ET Dam mm CA CA CA L Un Un E BB BWW OO B D 00 00 00 4 4 AAA Bar Cod
14. If you have any other about questions about Windows please call Bill Gates Page 78 8 32 StartSub Utility Instructions StartSub is a utility which we wrote to make the process of implementing the Subscriber module in ComTrac quicker and easier Installing StartSub is easy Once you ve installed your regular ComTrac program take the StartSub installation disk and put it into your diskette drive Change over to your diskette drive eg A or B and enter the command Install and press the Enter key Follow the program prompts during the course of the StartSub installation program The default directory for StartSub is COMTRAC Loading StartSub is easy Go into DOS if you use Windows 95 98 you can go into an MS DOS window you don t have to reboot your PC into DOS Mode and change to the ComTrac directory At the ComTrac DOS prompt eg CACOMTRAC gt enter the command startsub and press the Enter key The startsub command can be in any combination of upper and lower case your computer doesn t care When you load StartSub you ll see a reminder screen telling you about using StartSub If you haven t created your Reserve Title File or haven t copied a starter file that we can give you you shouldn t be running StartSub yet If you haven t entered minimum information into ComTrac about each Folder customer you should not be running StartSub Once you have created your Reserve Title File and have en
15. ON ORDER O ACTIVE no code or PULLED R This value is normally set by ComTrac Start date This is the first day this product went on sale Shelf Wks This is the number of weeks you want this product to be on sale When a product is past its shelf date ComTrac nags you to remove the book from the rack Pull date This is the day on which you normally remove any leftover copies from the rack Leftover copies can be transferred into the Back Issue module Page 3 Omit We call this the Death of Superman field If a unique Title Issue is so abnormal that using it in calculations would bias your order quantities setting the value of this field to Y screens it out of calculations You normally set this value during the ordering process 2 3 Update Comics Sales If you are not using POS you will have to update your comics sales manually using this tool with the MANUAL option If you use POS you should use this tool every week in POS mode See Cycling New Comics Sales elsewhere in this Manual for more detail 2 4 Make Count Form Whether you are using POS or not you need to generate this report weekly so you will know what comics titles are scheduled to come off the rack If you don t use POS select the MANUAL option otherwise select the POS option When you are prompted to enter this week s cycle date enter the calendar date BEFORE the actual day you would cycle your comics manually or pull them from the rack It s d
16. One Time Orders ComTrac provides you with assistance in processing special or one time orders A good example of this is the Sandman statuette which retailed for 135 00 Rather than set up an order as for aregular comic book we believe that it s better to enter it through the special one time order sub module This allows you to take deposits and lay away payments and the orders will automatically be captured by ComTrac when you write your monthly distributor order When you flag this item as having arrived ComTrac will tell you how much money your customer still owes you Page 70 8 26 3 4 Want Lists One of the more valuable services which you can provide your customers is maintaining a Want List which contains products which they want but cannot find When you or one of your staff are going to attend a comic con retailer sales conference etc print out your Want List by several formats eg Product Group Description and take it along 8 26 3 5 Ordering Comics Ordering new comics is difficult Anyone who tells you that this isn t true just doesn t know what they re talking about With lower gross profits due to increased shipping costs not to mention lower discounts as well in many cases tight comics ordering has changed from being desirable to being absolutely necessary for survival ComTrac thinks about comics orders the same way that most experienced comics retailers do It tries to answer three questions about each
17. PC These tools allow satellite locations to create export files from Reserves that can be e mailed or sent on diskette to the central location The central location can then import these files All the export files are in zipped compressed format and the default location will be C COMTRAC if that s what you set in Utilities Set System Values POS Info When you import data from a satellite location all the current information for that location will be stripped out of ComTrac and then replaced with the new information This shouldn t be a problem normally since adds drops changes should only occur at the originating location Mass Import Exports all files in zipped format Mass Export Imports all files in zipped format Import Titles Exports just the title file Export Titles Imports just the title file Export Rental History Exports Rental history data Import Rental History Imports Rental history data This is useful if you want to standardize title spellings throughout multiple stores Have the central location maintain the Reserves Title file and distribute it weekly or monthly to your satellite locations Page 11 This is useful if your stores all rent products and you want to be able to analyze rental history at your central location 3 2 10 Xfer Comx gt Reserves You will usually update your Reserves Title file at the end of the process by which you import your monthly Diamond order form into ComT
18. along with an alpha numeric representation of the label code The description price and grade if used are also printed on the label The rate of label wastage varies Short print runs waste the most labels Your printer must be HP compatible and have Printer Control Language versions 4 or greater So called HP Windows printers won t work properly with ComTrac unless you download a special driver from Hewlett Packard s web site As far as we know the only HP inkjets that will print proper barcodes are the 1200 series or higher 8 12 3 Seiko Ez 30 Label Printer We support and sell the Seiko Ez 30 Label Printer This label bar code printer comes with its own software for generating labels or barcodes in both DOS and Windows95 98 versions It can take a transfer file that ComTrac generates import it and create bar code labels We don t really recommend this printer to ComTrac users as it s slow and limited in the size of the bar code it can print It is limited to 12 digit barcodes which will deal with most ComTrac bar code numbers but is still very limited 8 12 4 Eltron Label Printer The Eltron label bar code printer also comes with its own software for generating labels or barcodes in both DOS and Windows95 98 versions It uses a transfer file from ComTrac imports it and creates bar code labels We have users who have generated large bar code label runs week in and week out for four years on these machines and they are still go
19. di UI HIC ERREUR Trinster ONERE TOTO Transfer Departments to POS sees secti e Eten RR eh hU be pe e eo eee ere Fransfef U QURE ONIC ERE ERES D Hee Transter Mdse ss MEERDER e Ae MeL IE cou a mesi esto AN ER ed err Me ste aA L Transfer Specialties oie Oe d Re RE RE EE EO tesi ces Update amp Gl AAA ttr tr Hr eH EO IE Update Comites Sales a o ai Update Comics Sales es es EE E E Ee dee es ee SR EE e Update Comics Salesiana bebe Mos Update Master Bake i emen tte e ta danse sa He e e e e e Qr dere da its Update New Arrivals ona oia Update NEw Arrivals c AE EE RE OR EE N OE OE ON ESE EO Update Sub Title GIERE EE EO N N e e RP E ene e e e N Update Report Sub Pickups caia Updating Manual SPC Salesiano e entree ee een v m c b ente eee Updating SPC Inventory 6 ense nete det re e EE EE edad Upload Download Files 5 5 eher te d e e ERO RET tee EU EE ardet Upload Download Files ER EE EE er Rt bet re P E enr OR obeso T S Use NE Master E uctor reete eerie eee dee ense Use SPC Cycle Sheets iia a Use SPE Master List uentos a eee Use Special Interest EO EE EE EE RE EE RE EA ER Use Want EL A De Ee Bes De AR RE e DE WE GE RR e Uthties Module EE EG EE ED ER Ee GEE GR DE GE GE EE N GE GE DEE EE EE EE EE EE NU Ve ndor File A E NE Re EE Re A oe Se DE EE EE EAEE E Want List 20 84 85 34 87 24 86 86 84 84 20 85 62 1
20. eee Entering Common Back Issue Comics ee ee se ek ee Ge ee Ge ee ee ee ee ee Ge ee ee RA Ge eere Entering High Value Back Issue COMICS iese ses sees ee ee se ee se ee Se ee ee ee ee rennen Ge ee Load Order Forms sese Zap Order Forms Update Sub Title File Make Subscription Form Analyze Comics Sell Through Copy Current Orders Upload Download Files Order Comics sss Order Specialties Balance Orders Sum Multi Order Make Stale Mdse Report Re Price Back Issues Data from Store to Office Home ccc ee ee e Re Re ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee RR Ee Ee ee Re Re ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee Data from Office Home to Store sss Short Cycle or Full Cycle First Week Sales Last Week Inventory Ordering to Sell Out Identifying Growing or Decaying Ties se ees se se sek ee Re GR Ge ee Re Ge Ge RA enne enne Changes in Subscriber Patterns Rapid Sell Through for Small Count Titles ce se ee Ge ee Ge ee ee ee Ge ee ee RA Ge GR ee Lengthening Sell Through for Small Count Titles eese Pay as you Go or Prepaid Subscriptions Ge ee ee ee Ge Re Ge GRA GR GR Re Re Ge ee eie One Shot or Standing Order SyStemsS
21. enable users to group products across departments or modules As an example you might have a Batman genre code that is assigned to all Batman products whether they are comics trade paperbacks clothing mugs etc If you don t use genre family codes you must have one entry in this table where the code field is empty and the word NONE is in the genre family description field 7 1 1 4 Special Interest Codes Special Interest codes are used to group customers for mailing lists or to generate special orders every month If you don t use special interest codes you must have one entry in this table where the code field is empty and the word NONE is in the special interest description field 7 1 1 5 Projects and Members Projects are used to define multi issue series which your customers tend to order as a unit such as Zero Hour from DC Comics several years ago Once you have defined a Project you can create Members that are associated with each project Each member consists typically ofa title and issue number 7 1 2 Ordering Tables Ordering Tables contain information that is normally associated with writing orders for merchandise Page 27 7 1 2 1 Vendor File The Vendor File contains entries for each vendor or distributor that you order from You must have an entry for Diamond Comic Dist with the code DIAM No variations are allowed 7 1 2 2 Pub Mfr File The Publisher Manufacturer file contains entries for each pu
22. eo ge Update amp Report on Subcriber Pickups iese ses sesse see ee ee Ge ee ee ee ke Ge RA Ge GRA GR en en Re ee ee eie Create Inventory ST N OR EE EN RE ER EO Enter Specialty Sales et eee eee tet a v ec ae are ee Ee Log in New SPE Maserati it Pie dines Make Out Stock Report sh eee aq e nte die eet e ai eir OI AT IRR Transfer Specialties 5 ee oett bte ter o te tne ERE pH OE RD Create Transfer Tast erini aeann pU aer HA IE tea ote Ug aereo ER EIE Order Specialties eei eo Ree ber lacas Maintain High Valtie ISSuess suiers bees gevee re UR eres rre eid de iere tica ette Enter New Common Back Issue Inventory ees sesse sesse se ee Se ee ee ee ee Ge RA ene emen nennen nene orde AI EO EE EE EO EE ER EE Enter High Value Sales EA AO EE EE er bed quie gite OE EE IE Transfer from COImICs tgo d teen nb i etes Orbe p e OPERE 1 0 ComTrac Overview ComTrac DOS consists of two programs ComTrac and Point of Sale POS ComTrac contains all the ordering and inventory control tools required to manage your inventory and provide services to customers POS serves as the cash register and data capture tool for ComTrac 1 1 ComTrac Main Menu When you load ComTrac you will see an opening screen containing version information and the amount of free hard disk available to you After a moment you can speed this process by pressing any key you will see the Main Menu screen The Main Menu screen stretches horizontally across your screen an
23. gh EE te dete e pepe ee HER dee Archive Customer a e GE EE Reb nnd en oni Archive Restore Subscribers eee ES RO AE EE EE RO DELER ades Assign Departments to Merchandise sss eee Assign Special Interest Codes ESE SE Bes SE VER DEE EER EER ee sede ee seg Se eine Seg De de VG EIE ee ee dee dee Assigning Genre Codes to Groups of Products sees se ee ee Ge GR Ge Re Se ee Ge Se ee ee ee Ge Gee Ge enne Average Customer Transaction By Department sesse see ee Ge GR GR Re Se ee Ge Se ee ee ee Se Ge Ge ee Average Customer Transaction Store Wide se ee ee ee Ge GR GR Re Ge ee Ge Se ee ee ee Ge Gee Ge no Back Issue Collectibles Module ie se ee Re GR AR Re GE ER Re GR r GR ee e ee ee Gee ee Re ee ee nr Gee ee Back Issue IR ee OE e enit ete ea een va um c m enc pete ee Back Up Your R 5 3 noon ete dete ep e REOR EO d ot EE edad BaklIssue Grades cccccceesesssesesesscssscccuscscscscscscscececescececesenecsusescscscscssscscseseseceeseseecesesesesecescscscscsesasesesssesesevecs Balance Dra Werner tecla ee RE E E RE ED Pe ects Balance Existing Orders mein mieten e phe eee hi ee epe dated eS Balance e es Bare od e S EER Svcd ED ov ient EG GE Ge ee ee ees Barco abels EE Rec e IHR RUE E GE ees eg Barcode L bels ee nete rh BERE EE te ate echter etie Cask RE De WEE ER EE i ode Best Seller KST EE AE AO HOE EE AE EE EN Change ProductCusts n ce cones e o ee G
24. iese eae see GR GR Re Ge ee Se ee ee ee ee ee Ge ee Gee o ee renes Special Orders One Time Orders esses RA GR GR ET ee nennen ee ee ee ee ee Want EE EE AE Ordering COMICS Subscribers eese Newsstand Sales Back Issue Coplies OE OR RE PR GT OE OR N Ordering Specialties from a Comics Distributor sees ee se se ee se ee ee ee Ge Re Ge GR GR GR ee Se ee eie Ordering Specialties from a Specialty Distributor essere Ordering Specialties from a Manufacturer Publisher eese Company Wide Ordering vs Store Ordering esse sese ee eee eee E A A me hem d te e I Dont Have a Central Warehouse eoceno ni i nennen nenne nennen treten enne t rennen rennen No Free Lunches EE entes EE EE ON dre PERPE eR Company Wide Ordering amp POS see GR GR Re nennen nnne terere eret rennen rennen Enter Your Store Code into ComrTrac esse ses see see ee ee Se ee Se ee ee ee Gee RA Ge GRA GR Re Re ee ee ee Now you are ready to start entering Customers sese eee esse ee ee ee eee Preparing the Reserve Subscriber Title File sesse se se se ee se ee ee ee Ge RA Ge GR GR GR ee ee ee ee Now you are ready to enter Customer Orders sees enne Make Count Form 3 e Rm NE to EE aee EEE der e e eee E P eU N Update Comics Sales eater Gee rH PRO SERE UE Ir HD Ur TT stale Comics RARR OE EE EE
25. information about all of your customers Non POS users will usually just enter their subscriber customers and perhaps a few customers who they want to have on a mailing list POS users will benefit by entering information about as many customers as possible regardless of their subscriber status In POS you cannot rent merchandise to customers unless they are in the Customer file Further every item you sell to a customer will be recorded and stamped with their customer code if you have the customer in this file and if you pick them from the file when you start a transaction for them The information that you can gain from this is invaluable The most important fields in the Customers file are Sub Type The default I is for In Store customers The other codes are M for Mail order customers and L for Mailing label customers L customers don t appear on any drop down selection window involving customers I d assign all non subscriber customers to the L category Mem Type Membership Club type The legal values are S V P and none Most of you don t use multi level clubs so you ll leave this empty The three letter codes tie into the POS Department Code table and control discounts by department based on club status Rental Cust Enter Y or N depending on whether the customer is going to be a rental customer If you enter Y be sure to enter the customer s birthdate later in the file so ComTrac can check whether rental product
26. it in to your specialty distributor Page 72 Any backstocked or out of stock items can be zeroed out in your ComTrac order and then posted Making sure that new items are included in your order requires that you create Stock Cards for these items with minimum inventory levels and having zero inventory This guarantees that these items will be included in your specialties direct order 8 27 4 3 Ordering Specialties from a Manufacturer Publisher There are times where you will need to order directly from a manufacturer or publisher You can do this within ComTrac just as you can order directly from a non comics distributor 8 27 4 4 Company Wide Ordering vs Store Ordering One of the reasons why there are so few successful multi store comics retail companies is the ordering barrier Until the development of ComTrac every store needed an employee who could write a monthly comics order With earlier versions of ComTrac one person at a central location could write orders for each store since all the data for every store is kept on the central administrative PC This still isn t sufficient for larger companies Company wide ordering is in our opinion the optimal way for companies with two or more stores to order product Even if you do not maintain a central warehouse and have your comics or other distributors ship directly to each store in your company you should seriously consider company wide ordering 8 27 4 5 The Law of Large Numbers
27. mark all customers who came in during the previous week and picked up subscription materials After you ve checkmarked the customers and left the drop down customer window ComTrac will update their customer entries with today s date When this is done ComTrac will generate a report showing you which customers have not been into to pick up their subscriptions in X weeks If you are a POS user and have all your subscribers in the Customer file and look up your customers at the POS register ComTrac automatically updates this field when you update your inventory from POS Ifyou are a POS user don t checkmark any customers and just exit the drop down customer window to go to the report feature 3 3 6 Rental Reports Rentals have become a key merchandise line for many ComTrac users These reports allow you to generate key rental management reports 3 3 6 1 Rental Report The Rental Report can be generated by Department Type or Rating You can also generate each report by Summary or Detail forms This report provides you with the total units that were rented the total Rental fees Late fees and Total Amount Paid 3 3 6 2 Customer Rental Report The Customer Rental Report generates a complete history of what an individual customer has rented from you for a range of dates 3 3 6 3 Late Rental Report Their are two versions of this report The first version is a General Report which is a listing that shows which customers have rentals that a
28. months or longer and have been creating their Diamond orders through ComTrac we recommend using Option 1 importing the weekly diamond invoice file in text format Diamond will put two versions of this file into your mailbox on their website one is a dat format file that shows a representation of the invoice as if it came off your printer The other is a txt format file which contains just the data in ascii delimited format quotes around characters and commas between fields The txt version can be imported into ComTrac using Orders Login Logout Mdse If you have been writing your orders in ComTrac for some time but aren t ready to try importing your invoice file you can use the QuickLog import tool to create a spreadsheet that contains an item for every product which is on order Using your hardcopy invoice you ll search for each item mark it as having arrived and make any editorial corrections for quantity price etc that are needed New users are STRONGLY URGED to use the Manual method of logging in at first This actually doesn t take much more time than the first two methods and allows the user to create inventory records on the fly for items which aren t in their inventory files Here s how it works 1 Go to Orders 2 Select B Login Logout Mdse 3 Select logging in merchandise by Store not Company 4 Select Manually as the login method 5 For your first pass through your invoic
29. one to be split up by customer for subscribers The other common use for this report is to generate a document which is used to double check that all the appropriate comics titles in your Diamond comics order match up with your subscribers You should do this because your Reserves Title file may have differing spellings than this month s Diamond order form 3 3 2 2 Title by Customer This report generates a pull list in Customer order with all the comics products that arrived this week listed below the customer If there were Special Orders for the customer in this weeks shipment they should appear here as well If you have mail order customers you can use this report to generate both picking lists and invoices for these orders 3 3 2 3 Customer by Title This report generates a pull list in Title order with all the Customers who subscribed for the item listed below the customer 3 3 3 Make Subscription Form This tool creates either a printout or an ASCII text file containing all the Titles in your Reserve Title file that are checkmarked with with Y under the Sub Form header Some ComTrac users generate this form or modify the text file and give it to their customers so they can checkmark the items they want to order Page 13 3 3 4 Print Reserve Files This menu gives you access to the files in your Reserves module so you can print them to screen file or printer 3 3 5 Update Report Sub Pickups This tool allows you to check
30. order form description Almost all ComTrac users accept the default Note that ComTrac won t let you import an order form using a description that s already insider ComTrac If you are importing the June 1998 order form June 1998 would be an appropriate description You will see a message that ComTrac is Importing Basic Distributor Order File You also see a gas gauge status bar telling you that addition processing is going on Finally you see a large pick box filled with items from the Diamond order form Some of these items will save checkmarks to the left of the descriptions These items are considered to be Comics all other items are considered to be perpetual order items Most ComTrac users don t want to wade through 2 000 3 000 items hand editing the checkmarks We recommend that you press the Enter key and let ComTrac do the heavy lifting When Page 53 you actually write your order you can manually switch individual items from Comic to Specialty status as needed That s a more efficient use of your time than trying to deal with all items whether you order them or not When you press Enter to leave the box ComTrac will go through two passes of the order form one for Comics and one for Specialties ComTrac displays status bars during both processes so you know that everything is going well When this is done you ll be asked whether you want to Delete the Original Import File Answer with Y since a
31. recommend using barcodes if the majority of the merchandise is barcoded If you are using descriptions we recommend entering just the first few characters of the description and selecting the product from a drop down window If ComTrac finds them item it updates the item and you continue If the product is a comic it ll switch the cycle sheet to Active from On Order calculate a pull date and update all the inventory fields If ComTrac doesn t find the item you can Create an entry or Pick an entry from a drop down window If you Pick an entry from the drop down window and discover that there is no matching entry select any item exit from the window and tell ComTrac that you don t want to carry out the update Then do it again and choose Create rather than Pick 6 2 2 QuickLog QuickLog is faster and more accurate than Manual Login but requires that the great majority of your inventory that has arrived has matching inventory entries in ComTrac If you have been ordering most of your products through ComTrac QuickLog is a good way to proceed When you choose QuickLog you will be prompted to specify the location you are receiving merchandise for and a range of order dates If you leave the range of order dates with the default of no date to start and today s date to end you ll get a spreadsheet containing every comic or specialty item that is currently on order If you are receiving merchandise that was ordered on a single Purchase Ord
32. see see se Gee Ge ee nee ee p ee Ge ee ee Rd Ge ee GR ee Cost of Goods Sold Inventory Turnover Rate Extract Exe Free form Data Analysis for POS Users se ese ee ee se Ge Ge Ge ener nee enne Fixing ComTrac amp POS Internal Errors enne RA GR nennen nennen tenens Generate a Cycle Sheet Count Form Generating Barcodes in ComTrac Epson Compatible Dot Matrix Printers sss esse esse ee eee Hewlett Packard Laser or Inkjet Printers TTT Seiko Ez 30 Label Printer Eltron Label Printer Our Recommendations Pre Printed Barcode Labels Generating Genre or Family Codes Creating Your Own Genre Codes aite ep petet e RO EP UE Pag Assigning Genre Codes to Groups of Products sss esse se se eree eee Getting Com Tac Started Install ComTrac The Store Table The Department Table Install POS Create Export ComTrac Data Import the Diamond Order Forms ete etel e EU eer tee peo eiie bee seg eek eng Log in Merchandise Doing an Initial Comics Inventory ee see se see ed GR Eroe Re GR ee Se ee ee nennen ener eren GR GR S Doing an Initial Specialties Inventory ee ee eee Ge Ge ee Se ee ee ee Ge RA Ge GRA GR GR en Re ee ee ee Adding Additional Specialties or Comics Inventory wo eee sese ee ee ee
33. that you take and put in a safe location Ideally you want backups at your home office and at your store location If you have a disaster at one place you ll still have a decent backup to work from All of this applies to backups made onto Zip disks tape or other high density media Note Data backups made to CD ROM set the attribute of all files to Read Only If you restore data from a CD ROM backup you will have to reset the attributes of all restored files Go into Windows Explorer and navigate to the ComTrac folder Lefi click on the first file then go to the last file in the window and Shift left click to select it and all files displayed between the first and last file Then right click to get to a menu and select Properties Once you are in the properties screen you can deselect the Read Only attribute Page 66 8 25 Operational Considerations 8 25 1 Weaving ComTrac Into Your Business Purchasing and using ordering and inventory control software isn t like getting a clothes dryer plugging it in and using it right away Not only must you load all your inventory data into ComTrac but you need to fit it into the way you operate your business The idea that you have a distinctive style of operation is going to be a new idea for many comics retailers But even if you ve never thought about the implications of how you choose to operate your business your choices have defined an operational style for you The purpose of t
34. the store you want to work with in the Store File Go to Utilities A Maintain Tables A Folder Tables A Store File If there isn t an entry for your store create it by using the Add command It s also a good idea go to AD Special Interests in the same submenu and make sure that there s an entry with a blank special interest code and the label Blank or None in the description field This lets you enter Customers who don t have any special interest codes without many extra keystrokes Finally go to Utilities D Set System Values Store Info and check the value for the field Use Reserve Slot Unless you really want to use customer slot numbers make sure that this value reads N If you are unsure enter N Computers make tracking customers by name much easier than when using manual systems and names are much more meaningful to everyone than just a numeric code 8 33 2 Now you are ready to start entering customers 1 Go to Reserves A Maintain Files B Maintain Customers ComTrac will probably tell you that there are no customers Press A for Add 2 Enter the store code in the store field If you don t remember press Enter and a drop down box will appear with your stores Select the correct store and it ll appear in the field 3 The default value for Subscription Type is I Leave it alone for In Store Customers M is for Mail Order Customers
35. then exit from the drop down window You ll see just the items you selected in a second window Press A to select ALL or just checkmark the ones you want if you changed your mind about any of them 5 8 Update Master Bak If the connections between the Master Common Back Issue file and the Common Back Issue Cycle file are damaged you can restore them by running this tool 5 9 Price List This report produces a Price List of all your Back Issues that are in inventory 5 10 Want List This report produces a list of all the Back Issues or High Value collectibles where the inventory on hand is less than the minimum quantity you specified earlier Page 20 6 0 Orders Module The Orders Module contains tools that are used to order products for your business 6 1 Order Mdse The Order Merchandise menu gives you access to the four basic ordering choices f you want detailed information on ordering see Monthly Comtrac Tasks Comics Ordering Related Tasks 6 1 1 Normal Order The Normal Order is your regular monthly Diamond order or weekly order from non Diamond sources When you choose this tool you can either create a new order or open an order that is in progress Note You cannot have two orders for the same store and distributor open at the same time You have two choices in writing an order You can use a Diamond monthly order form that you have imported into ComTrac or you can write an order based on products currently in Co
36. title and issue how many copies do I need to keep my subscribers happy how many copies do I need for the shelf or rack or newsstand how many copies do I need for my recent back issue bins 8 26 3 6 Subscribers The first thing which ComTrac does is check your Subscriber Module to see how many standing orders and one shot orders there are for the title and issue you re ordering The total is displayed on the ordering screen as Pullhold The total number of subscriber copies which have come into your store for the previous issues of the book you are ordering are displayed on the screen before you This means that if there is any subscriber trend you will be able to easily spot it For example if there s been a slow steady increase in subscriber sales over the last 6 8 issues you should consider increasing your order 8 26 3 7 Newsstand Sales ComTrac then figures out how many newsstand copies you are likely to sell Again you may want to adjust this figure up or down depending on trends over the last 6 8 issues We are also assuming that there s nothing unusual about this issue such as story content guest artist etc 8 26 3 8 Back Issue Copies It may seem heretical in this day and age to suggest ordering extra copies for your back issue section especially when ordering to sell out has finally won wide acceptance Even if most retailers aren t succeeding in doing this Our rationale is that in
37. titles that you want to generate orders for in connection with this special interest code Scroll through the window and checkmark items buy pressing SPACEBAR or the PLUS key Exit the window when you are done and ComTrac will create one time orders for every item you marked for every customer with that special interest code If an order already exists for an item you checked ComTrac will not create a new order Page 12 3 3 Do Reports We provide a number of reports so you can manage and analyze customer and subscriber data 3 3 1 Reserve Customer Report We provide three customer reports 3 3 1 1 Full Customer Listing This report generates a complete listing of each customer s data and their subscription orders 3 3 1 2 Partial Summary Sub Listing This report generates a 1 line summary listing for each customer at each location 3 3 1 3 Store Summary Sub List This report generates a 1 line summary listing for the customers at each location 3 3 2 Res Title Pull Report The heart of any subscriber system is producing lists of products which have arrived in your store and need to be processed so customers receive them in a timely manner 3 3 2 1 Title by Store Summary This report generates a 1 line summary of the number of copies that subscribers have ordered for each title or product in the Reserve Customer Orders file It is most commonly used on New Comics Day to split your new arrivals into two piles one for the rack and
38. to use last names Enter your store code if you have one store Enter the average number of weeks you want comics to stay on the shelf as active titles You can vary shelf length during the ordering process Otherwise known as New Comics Day The day on which you count and pull comics from the rack The last day you cycled your books maintained by ComTrac If you enter a date to begin it ll be a day earlier than the Inventory Day Full Cycle calculates for every week of the cycle short cycle prompts counts or pulls only on first and last week For non POS users Most users choose Store ordering A few multi store users choose Company orders Only reply with Y if you are a non US user who wants to convert US Dollar values to your currency S Standard width W 132 column width Select from the list of printers taken from Option E Set Printers Select LPT1 LPT2 etc as is appropriate Used for Eltron barcode printers only Usually the symbol Enter so ComTrac strips out the preamble from your scanner when you scan directly into ComTrac Normally should be c comtrac Normally should be c comtrac Enter the time after which rentals are late Use the 24 hour clock where 10 00am 10 00 and 10 00pm is 22 00 Enter Y under each day your store is open N if closed Page 29 7 4 6 Misc Info Current Cust Seq ComTrac increments this number every time you add a new customer If you reset it to a higher number be s
39. wait and use the Purge Special Order tool later 3 4 3 Enter Payments If you want to enter partial payments for Special Orders this tool will let you do the job You can enter up to four partial payments for any item Page 15 3 4 4 Special Order Reports There is only one Special Order report although you can sort it by Title Customer Distributor and Order Date We recommend sorting by Title on New Comics Day so you can quickly scan your invoice for arriving items if you don t use Diamond s weekly electronic invoice 3 4 5 Maintain Orders Use this tool to find and modify an existing Special Order 3 4 6 Purge Order This tool will let you purge all special orders that have an arrived date earlier than the purge date you enter in the Purge Date prompt window 3 5 Want List The Want List is essentially a notepad file that you can sort by date department and customer You can use this file to record information about products that your customers want you to locate for them It doesn t tie into any other parts of ComTrac s data 3 5 1 Use Want List This screen allows you to enter or modify items into the Want List file 3 5 2 Purge Want List This tool allows you to purge items from your Want List that have a Found Date 3 5 3 Print Want List This generates a Report showing every item in your Want List file sorted by Customer or Title Most ComTrac users who print this report generate it in Title order which gives them
40. your files 2 11 Comics Title Listing Report This report provides you with a listing of all comics titles that are on order along with their order date and projected ship date based on the Diamond order form 2 12 Top Comics Seller Report This report generates a list of your 100 best selling comics You will be prompted for the range of dates you want to use in preparing the report and for the number of titles you want in the report You can specify any number of titles from 1 to 100 Page 5 3 0 Reserves Module The Reserves Module contains all the tools to maintain information about customers subscriptions and special orders It contains five subsidiary menus Maintain Files Provides access to Title Customer Orders Dropped Customers Archived Customers and Rental File Perform Jobs Provides access to tools which perform Customer and Subscriber tasks Do Reports Provides access to Subscriber reports including Pull Pick Reports Special Orders Provides access to Customer Special Orders Want List Provides access to the Want List file See the following in this manual for detailed instructions Creating Subscriber Lists on New Comics Day Subscribers Get Them Up and Running Start Sub Utility Instructions 3 1 Maintain Files Menu The Maintain Files menu provides access to six files Title Contains all titles available to subscribers Customer Contains all customers including subscribers that you track
41. 4 17 17 62 11 17 17 12 16 27 28 20 Mid T i NE AE KA EA HE Want T cde ces GE Ek EE a tak EE Ee ER EE Ge AR EE Meets datas be cot Ee ee ER S ge eg ds Work with Special Order EE EE o OE OR E N Xfer MAR CS AO EE EE OE EE OE OE N DS ETE Reports 5n seite ete e et ee een ci tee fi o te eee Petre ZAP Customer Ml en Oe e eint eoi ce PUR NO e es ees ZAP Customer Title Orders sse Zap Order Forms 2 5 HE ER red EE RE bo e Ee EE EE ER N Option 16 71 86 12 24 11 85 62 33
42. A fundamental premise of statistics is that as your sample set increases the accuracy of statistical results based on that data also increases If you are ordering a large quantity title such as X Men your order is likely to be fairly accurate on a single store basis But ordering a small quantity title such as Cerebus or Strangers in Paradise is another matter entirely Random monthly fluctuations in customer sales could result in anything from your selling out by the third week the book was on the shelf to having 1 2 copies left over Having 1 2 copies left over isn t trivial because that can represent 50 65 of the units which you ordered Multiply that by 40 60 titles and you can lose a significant amount of money On the other hand if you have three stores you aren t trying to order 2 4 copies per store you re ordering 8 10 copies for the entire company While small fluctuations in sales will always occur on the store level company level sales variations will be minimal as the store level fluctuations tend to cancel out Instead of 1 2 copy variations on the store level you re looking at 1 3 copy variations on the company level That s a much better situation 8 27 4 6 Don t Have a Central Warehouse If you don t choose to run a centralized warehouse have ComTrac help you break down your company wide order to store level Have your largest store receive slightly more product than your satellite stores Page 73 8 27 4 7 N
43. BAK You will need to assign department codes to any item that s entered in the Specialties Master Title file or the High Value file The reason why we have a department code field in the High Value file is that high value items can include back issue comics expensive Magic singles and collectible action figures 8 2 3 Transfer Departments to POS Once you have defined your Department Table in step 1 go to Utilities l Create PLU Table to create an export file with your department codes for POS Once this export file has been created go into POS and import it into POS Go to Lists Department Table to see the contents of the file The difference between the POS and ComTrac department tables are that the POS table lets you assign standard discounts to individual departments to specify the beginning and end of sale periods etc 8 2 4 Consolidating Sales amp c When you sell products by barcode or title through POS the department code is part of the entry in the PLU Table If you sell something Manually you are entering the quantity sale price and department just as if you were using a cash register Either way the daily sales file has a department code for every item that was sold in the day As a result ComTrac and POS can generate reports subdivided by department code Page 34 8 3 Creating Subscriber Lists on New Comics Day 1 Go to Reserves in ComTrac Do this after you have used Quicklog Electronic Invoice to perform you
44. ComTrac DOS Documentation 28 February 2001 2001 All Rights Reserved Melchior Thompson n Associates 170 West Poplar Ave San Mateo CA 94402 1152 ComTrac Overview ComTrac Main Menu ComTrac Data Entry Convention iese sees ee sees ee See Ge ee ee eene ener enin Re reete Se Re EEEE ee EEE Report Destinations New Comics Module Use NC Master List Update Comics Sales Make Count Form Transfer Cmx to Spc Cycle Sheet Report Stale Comics Report Out of Stock Report Analyze Cmx Sell Through Report 5 eese terere etii ret tdi e tre GEE TIERE S TOE t Purge Late Comics Report ne egebe ig adore e IER UH bete ERE ibi Comics Title Listing Report ese entente re tet e REO EIER DE Ee Se Be sientes Top Comics Seller Report Reserves Module Maintain Files Menu Title File Customers File Order File Dropped Customer Fi Archive Customer To Rental File Perform Jobs Menu Update New Arrivals Reset End of Week Reset Duplicate Titles Address Tasks Make Mail Label List Birthdates 1 EE MAS ER MA Ide REO EE ca LE EE LE OLD EE EE EE DS Create Subscriber Barcodes issi en de Re eb ai bee
45. E EE EE EE OE OE OE odis Inventory Turno ve Rate sie PE e RH ia io Journal Tape b ast Week InVentoty NR rtt te Eee ee N EE RE EE Pere eroe Late Rental Report Lengthening Sell Through for Small Count Titles esee eren Level Stock List Birthdates List Cust Title Ord Load Order Forms CES sca EE HE ye ve peeve ue TE AE NE TT Load Zap Forms RD Re RU a o ita Log in Merchandis MR AI EI RE DEP Log in New SPC LEIER SEE e dh i Ee EIE RR Ge EE D Ie Ie etre OK Logm Out Mdse o p ot Ih epe n e e P he en ete e e he yere Maintain Common Bak Issue Maintain Common Bak Iss Inventory eee Maintain Files Men vs hee ecce di Maintain Form Maintain High Val Maintain High Val lle AE EO EE EROR EE EE FREUE PEE PPP ERE Issa OE EA EE EE T DE LE RR ES AD Se TO Maintain Master CODIMONS o ees Ee ee era Maintain Orders uos EE aree eee miei ee VO NA De ee Maintain Reserv Order Elle Re EG EG Ee SE GR ava av oa eati anu Maintain Subscriber File nseni sesse ee ees ee ee ee RE Ee Re en I ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ER Re ee rennen ee ee ee ee ee EE Maintain Tables Make Count Form Make Count Form Make Count Form 29 26 43 40 68 14 69 24 10 10 62 25 51 41 86 22 19 25 19 87 19 16 85 85 27 84 84 Make Mail Labels sese Make Out of Stock Report
46. Identify specialty merchandise which hasn t sold in XX days Specialty Option F 8 22 3 2 Re Price Back Issues Re price back issue comics manually Page 63 8 23 Moving ComTrac to a New Computer There are at least three ways to move ComTrac from one PC to another You can physically move the hard disk use a program such as LapLink to transfer files from one hard disk to another or move ComTrac file by file from the old PC to your new PC 8 23 1 Moving the Hard Disk If you physically transfer the hard disk from your old PC to a new PC you don t have to re install Com Tac or enter a new unlock code 8 23 2 Using LapLink There are several commercial programs which allow you to move files from one PC s hard disk to another PC s hard disk via your parallel port LapLink is one such program You can quickly and easily move all or just selected directories or files from the original computer to the new computer If you use this approach you will probably have to enter a new unlock code for ComTrac and POS so they will run properly 8 23 3 Moving ComTrac Manually If you are going to move ComTrac manually here s the sequence of tasks 1 Create the directory COMTRAC on your new PC 2 Delete all the index files in the COMTRAC directory on your old PC Del ntx lt Enter gt 3 Copy the files PKZIP EXE and PKUNZIP EXE from your old PCs ComTrac directory and copy them into the ComTrac directory on your new PC Copy p
47. Issue If you entered a Start Issue the default value will be the same issue number You can modify it if you desire Be sure that there are leading zeroes to fill up the field Note If you have no Start Issue and enter an End Issue ComTrac will order this product till the final issue number that you entered If you have beginning and ending issue numbers ComTrac will only order those issues Further ComTrac will only include this product in the Pick List for the customer if the arriving issue qualifies as one they want Qty Enter the number of copies the customer wants If the customer wants an extra copy of a specific issue add a new order for that product beginning and ending with just that issue number Note ComTrac automatically purges one time orders when they arrive in your store and are printed out on that week s Pick List 3 1 4 Dropped Customer File The Dropped Customer file contains basic information on every customer that was Dropped by using Reserves Perform Jobs Zap Customer Title This allows you to screen new subscriber applications for people who were problem subscribers in the past 3 1 5 Archive Customer Tool This tool lets you archive or un archive customers their subscriber orders and their special orders Some users like to archive their college students in June when they go home for summer vacation and unarchive them in the Fall Archiving saves all the data associated with the customer and makes them inac
48. NE WITH IT When you are done with printing exporting etc your order go to Orders Order Merchandise Delete Order in Progress and select this order from the selection window This will kill off the order before you can accidentally cause problems by opening and posting it another time Page 76 8 30 Removing ComTrac POS Copy Protection Every once in a while your computer s hard disk controller or a power line glitch may damage the ComTrac copy protection files If this happens your copy of ComTrac or POS will revert to Demo Mode and any unlock code we give you won t stick Here s how to fix this Depending on whether your problem is with ComTrac or POS go to your COMTRAC or POS20 DOS prompt Then enter the following commands 1 del printdef sys Enter 2 attrib copypro sys h s r Enter 3 attrib hdlock sys h s r Enter 4 del copypro sys Enter 5 del hdlock fil Enter Now you can call ComTrac Tech Support for an unlock code and it ll stick Always be sure to exit from ComTrac or POS after you ve entered your new unlock code and then re load the program to make sure this works Your ComTrac Tech Support person should wait will you test that everything is correct Note We ve put extra spaces between words in the above commands so that you can see more easily where the spaces exist There aren t any spaces between the last part of a command line and pressing the Enter key Or Go to My Computer an
49. OE EE EO N Ne OUPIRECOMMENGALONS ese des eise died dIE OE EE EE OE ep ep de EE EG Out of Stock Report miooo ews ER ER RR EE OE N Out of Stock R port NN Pack Files Partial Summary Sub T TTT Pay as you Go or Prepaid Subscriptions sss sees eee ee eee eee Perform Jobs Menu a 5 eese das Pick Special 6 RE IRR OE OR REPE UR EE OES Picklist POS Cycle Sheet EE ee prote eid tepore menle e e nere POS Info Pre Printed Batcode LEabels eet lia ux ees Preparing the Reserve Subscriber Title File se sesse ee se ee ee Ge ee GR Ge RA GRA Re Ge Se Ge ee ee ee ee Price List Prnt Reserve Fles oso omen aee a EES Print Want List Profitability Report EE VR ER ER GE ii Projects and Memib rs ieoi EE EE RR EE OE N Pub Mfr File Purge Files Purge Late Comics Report AE EE DEE eue OE EE OE EE OR Purge Order Purge Want List 73 72 27 68 21 48 84 85 28 13 70 15 25 37 29 48 81 20 14 16 26 27 28 30 16 16 QuickLog QuickLog with El ctronic INVOICE sie eec ctt teen tete Cased e dde uscd eve On Gene bee Eie Rapid Sell Through for Small Count Titles esse se se ee se ee ee Ge RA GR GR Re Se ee Ge Se ee ee ee Ge ee Ge conos Ratings ol EE EE EE RE EE OE EE E Re Order COMES mel OE teet did esoa Re Orde COMICS eei ae Re Price Back E UT ees ee ee ee RR ER Re Re
50. Printed Barcode Labels We have a source for pre printed barcode labels These labels have consecutive numbers are small about 1 by 1 2 and are of high quality The cost is about 4 per label These labels are good for situations where you have unique products such as back issue comics or rental video cartridges Page 48 8 13 Generating Genre or Family Codes Genre Codes or Family Codes let you look at your sales data across departmental boundaries Most of the time we are interested in sales by individual item or by department But if you want to look at how a group of related products are behaving Genre Codes are the appropriate tool for you to use Let s say that you have a store with a significant number of customers who are interested in Alternative Independent titles You might want to create a Genre Family Code for Hate if you were creating a temporary display or boutique featuring a wide range of products connected with this title You can also use Genre Family codes to track sales of related titles for a given publisher For example you might create codes for your DC titles to cover Batman titles Superman titles and Other titles We recommend that new users only have a blank generic genre code in their Genre Table As you become familiar with ComTrac you can begin adding genre codes as you see fit Keep it simple and don t get too complex right away Experiment with just one or two genre codes other th
51. R sunbed AR a Ee is Change Title 15 33 52 10 21 62 85 25 34 12 49 24 42 42 19 71 38 27 41 22 62 14 18 20 18 11 30 Changes in Subscriber Patterns uote deg AE RR EE OE OR ER Comics Title Listing Report ete OR OE EE EE EE ONE EE tates Company W ide Ordering amp POS iot tee t ER UR ge EORR DE Re sues FREIER EET ERR Heo SERERE Gegee ke ind Company Wide Ordering vs Store Ordering essere ener Ge ee trennen ComTrac Data Entry Conventions 452 nr et tpe i t ud Di N EE AN ComTrac Main Menu ComTrac Overview Consolidating Sales amp c iege dr e RE EE dre te PR E De OE N Copy Current Orders Copy Current Orders Cost of Goods Sold Create Inventory FORM Ee Re TRIN tee eie eS Create PLU Create Subscriber Barcodes senres esiones rae nennen eene en nennen nnns esas sss e aS E OEO EErEE RR RR Raio dag Create Subseriber List rt pietra etae ette o Evils vex ie es Ae e Pi rete e as ia eue Pete e Create Transfer List Create Export Comltac Data Creating Department Codes for ComTrac amp POS see see se GR Ge Re Ge Ge RA Ge ee ek ee Re GR Re Re Re Ge Ge Creating SPC Entries Creating Subscriber Lists on New Comics Day sese sese sees eee Creating Your Own Genre Codes 9 etai e re PO oee SEEE EE E EEEE E E EEEn Currency File Customer by Title Cu
52. Re ee ee ee ee ee RR Ee tenete e nsns ee ee ee ee RR Re Ee ee ee nnn Recall Subscriber 6 a ES bi e o Ee Ge Ge Ge GER GR GES GR edo GEE De conie Rental File Rental Information ER EG i EE ui Rental Item Se AR EE OE EO EE OO EE EE EE Rental Prices RM eae EG EE EG GE GE GE DE RENE RD EER EE N EER TE EE OE EE EE AE EE EE EG Rental Reports N RE RE EE OE AR UA OE Rental Tales si EER ER EA tr t neta eee ette oe T Report Destinations s hse OE EE OE EE EE RE EE EE RES Title Pull Reports it Ee Ee EE Heer e ee ee Ee ERE e etes ee Eg oe Ee nt E eia e Ed R serve C stomer Report edente ide ente een v mp b pete e Reserves Module vcd EE EE N E dee PRU EE cris iir cce e i dE ce A E A uUa S c o Me Eee oe Reset Duplicate Titles atinada andanada EI Reset End ob Week ER SEA E TE A EER EEE EE EE EG ae ee eee ee Res t SPC Master ueterem enema o e Sales per Employee Hour Worked ese ese ese se ee Ge ee Ge enen ee Re ee eenn eenn Sales per Square Foot By Department sesse se ee se ee Ge Ge GR GR GR ee GR ee Se ee ee ee Ge ee ee RA Ge GR Sales per Square Foot Store Wide es ee ese se ee rer e Se ee bee eE ono ae Be ee Re ee ee ee ee Be Be ESEE bee ee Ge ee sales Tax by Dept RE ON settee I EE ON OR OR e ER EE OR vis Sales Bi PAL EE EE OE OE AE EE EE EE Seiko Ez 30Label Prater is Set Printers 23 24 69 28 85 84 63 86 29 14 28 14 14 28 13 13
53. a list of the items or take one of each item to your POS station during a quiet period and log them into ComTrac using the Manuallog in process You can scan in their barcodes directly during the process Since you ll be creating inventory records during this process you can enter the existing inventory directly 8 16 4 3 Entering Common Back Issue Comics We do not recommend creating individual inventory records for back issue comics which have retail values of less than 5 00 if you are a small store or less than 10 00 if you are a large store The amount of labor needed to process these items just doesn t return enough profit to justify the amount of work both initially and later needed to control them What we recommend for lower cost common back issues is to create a series of generic inventory entries in Specialties not Back Issues based on retail price point So you might have a 1 00 2 00 3 00 4 00 and 5 00 inventory entry with anywhere from several hundred to several thousand units in each inventory items starting inventory amount Then as you add to inventory you can simply add items to the existing quantities and as you sell back issues from each category POS will deduct them from inventory What you ll know at any time is how much stock you have what the weighted average cost was and whether it s selling at least as fast as it s coming into your store 8 16 4 4 Entering High Value Back Issue Comics All high priced ba
54. a more useable format if they are at a convention or show and are buying merchandise Page 16 4 0 Specialties Module 4 1 Use SPC Master List The Specialties Master List contains all the basic information that you may want to enter about any given Specialties product The key fields are Expires Leave blank except for seasonal merchandise ISBN Leave blank unless you order from a book distributer like Ingram Per Box Only use for cards how many packs per box Parent Only use for cards what box entry matches up with a card pack entry You can skip over all the Rental fields at the bottom by pressing the Page Down key once or twice They are needed only for items that you plan on renting at some time 4 2 Use SPC Cycle Sheets There should be one Specialty cycle sheet for every product at every location So if a given product is available for sale at all three locations that you operate you should have one entry in the Specialties Master List and three entries in the SPC Cycle Sheet file 4 3 Enter SPC Data This tool can be used for two purposes creating new Specialty entries and modifying or updating inventory levels for existing merchandise 4 3 1 Creating SPC Entries If you enter the description of an item or a barcode that doesn t exist in ComTrac you ll get a prompt saying Not Found Pick Create or Quit If you choose the Create option you can define all the information for a new product 4 3 2 Updat
55. a website session you ll be asked to provide a user id and password through a dialogue box The user id is always the word support entered in lower case without the quotation marks The password is changed from time to time If you are in support and have an e mail address we will automatically send you an e mail with the changes If you are not in support or have not received an update notice call us at 650 579 3624 during our office hours normally Monday through Friday 9 00am to 5 00 pm All the files available for download are listed in the What s New section the most recent at the top of the screen Files that can be downloaded are shown in blue If you double click on a download file name you ll see a dialogue box similar to the one shown below this paragraph j Many users don t know ETA ES naw To download files into Save in Y Comtrac E IZ c the ComTrac directory ikillstor laa Arcivcst dbf a Bakcycl2 ntx laa Bakgrade f io uM M in laa Arcivord dbf laa Bakcycl3 ntx laa Bakholds window bu the top of the E Autofix exe ls Bakcycl4 nts Bakholds r Save as dialogue box It laa Backtype dbf a Bakcycl5 ntx laa Bakissul r PF currently says general If laa Backtype ntx Bakcycle dbf laa Bakissu2 r YOU click on the file folder laa Bakcycll nt Bakgrade dbf laa Bakissue c icon to the right of this window the icon has an arrow pointing up you ll File name laas hap m
56. ach unique combination of Title and Issue As a rule you will never have to physically create an entry for a comic product in this location When you order a comic product through ComTrac in the Orders module an entry in this file is created automatically when you are done with the ordering process 2 2 Use NC Cycle Sheets The New Comics Cycle Sheet provides you with access to the Cycle Sheet for each unique combination of Title and Issue at a single location That is if you have two or more locations you would have two cycle sheet entries for every combination of Title and Issue The first cycle sheet will contain ordering and inventory data for the first location the other cycle sheet will contain ordering and inventory data for the second location This allows you to monitor sales at each location as well as to transfer merchandise from one location to another As a rule you will never have to physically create an entry for a comic product in this file When you order a comic product through ComTrac in the Orders module an entry in this file is created automatically when you are done with the ordering process The most important fields in the Cycle Sheet file are Notes Any notes made here will appear on the Ordering screen if this cycle sheet is being used in calculating order quantities for a comic title You normally enter this information during the ordering process rather than afterwards Status Comics cycle sheets are either
57. again and start where you left off Titles marked as pulled will not be accessible to you so you can t double enter data for it If you re enter data for a title which hasn t been pulled the last value you entered against the new value is checked If they re identical no change will be made If they are different only Page 36 the difference will be entered If you are in doubt exit this function and look at the Cycle List entry itself 8 4 2 POS Cycle Sheeting If you are using ComTrac POS ComTrac will update your cycle sheets every time you import sales history from your POS units We recommend that you physically count your comics and periodicals every week as you Pull older items from your newsstand If you don t count them when they re pulled yoannot find out what your merchandise shrink rate is ComTrac will ask you for the Cycle Date just as in Manual mode Select the proper location for your Count from the select window select POS mode and after some preparations you ll see a cycling screen that s identical to the Manual process The only titles that should appear are books which are at or past their scheduled pull date When you Quit the POS cycling process you ll be prompted to QUIT cycling or ENTER data for another store If you QUIT cycling you ll have the opportunity to generate a Variance Report for any of your stores The Variance Report can be sent to Screen File or Printer and shows the total variance between wh
58. al Orders Pick Special Orders or you can pick them Manually If you have imported Diamond s weekly electronic invoice through Orders Login Mdse and then updated your inventory you don t need to do anything further to update your Special Order file It s been done for you If you don t use QuickLog in orders you can still use the Diamond weekly electronic invoice in this tool Select the Electronic Invoice option and follow the prompts All the qualifying items that arrived in the invoice will be marked as having arrived Or you can use the Manual option where you will select Diamond from a drop down list of distributors Then select whether you want to update by Catalog or Description Go through your invoice and enter the qualifying items It s simpler of you have already printed out a copy of what s in your Special Order file so you can scan through the invoice for qualifying items Note Once you ve marked all arrived items in the Special Order file you can either print out a regular subscriber pick list or you can print out the proper Special Order report If you just print a Pick List Special Orders will be included only if there is at least one comics item for the customer If you do a lot of Special Orders we recommend printing the Special Order report as well as the weekly Pick List At the end you ll be asked whether you want to purge all special orders that have arrived If you ve printed your pick list go ahead Otherwise
59. an the generic no code code 8 13 1 Creating Your Own Genre Codes Go to Utilities A Maintain Tables A Folder Tables C Genre Codes Press A to Add a new genre code To create a generic no code code leave the code field empty and enter the name None or Blank under the description heading then save the entry To create any non blank code enter the memnonic code you want eg BAT under the code heading and then enter a brief description under the description heading The brief description is what will appear in drop down menus when you re chosing genre family codes elsewhere in ComTrac 8 13 2 Assigning Genre Codes to Groups of Products You can always enter a Genre or Family code manually whenever you are creating an inventory entry manually Most of the time you will want to be able to select a Genre code and assign it to a group of items electronically it s a much faster process Go to Orders J Assign Codes and select Genre Codes Select the Genre code you want to use from the drop down menu If it isn t in the Genre Table it won t show up in the drop down table Then choose which group of products you want to work with Comics Specialties etc In a moment you ll see a window that contains all the items in the group you chose in alphabetical order by title Go through the list and checkmark all the items that you want to assign to this Genre Code Pressing the spacebar or plus key will
60. art ShutDown Reboot Note If you use Windows 98 and you have a line buffers nn where nn is some number remove it from your config sys file as this version of Windows doesn t like this command Page 39 8 7 End of Day Closing Routine for POS Closing down a satellite POS installation at end of day is pretty straightforward if this checklist is followed consistently 8 7 1 Generate Reports 1 Journal Tape You can generate the journal tape by selecting this report The disadvantage of generating the journal tape here is that it will use up quite a lot of register tape The receipt printers that we recommend can work with 2 layer receipt paper which automatically creates a journal tape for you The drawback to this approach is that you need to create a place for the second layer to go to during the day and it has to be bundled up at the end of the day Our recommendation is that you print your journal tape from ComTrac rather than POS during the process of updating your inventory If you are very careful about backing up and storing your data transfer files it s unnecessary to generate paper copies of your register tapes You can generate them in case of an audit from your sales transfer Zip files If you choose to do this we strongly recommend that you save your Zip files in a fireproof box that is kept off site Accumulate your files on diskette monthly and at the start of the new month get them off site into a bank safety dep
61. at you actually reported and what ComTrac thought was present in inventory Variances are totalled in units and retail dollars Page 37 8 5 Daily ComTrac Tasks There aren t many tasks which need to be performed each and every day 8 5 1 Back Up Your Data You should Back Up your data on any day when you have made changes to your ComTrac files not part of ComTrac 8 5 2 Generate PLU Table Generate a new PLU Table POS Users only for POS registers if new merchandise is in ComTrac Utilities Option I 8 5 3 Import POS Sales History Load POS sales history into ComTrac and update inventory Utilities Option J Page 38 8 6 Editing Config Sys to Add the Dos Memory Manager Click on Start Programs Accessories Notepad to open the Windows Notepad editor Enter Config Sys in the dialogue box after you ve navigated to your C drive You will either see an editing window with nothing in it or you may only see two lines with the words buffers and files in them Here s what your config sys file should contain device C WINDOWS himem sys testmem off device c windows emm386 exe noems files 65 dos high umb These commands should be at the front of your Config Sys file Any other commands that are already present should follow them When you have added these commands click on Files Exit Be sure to say Yes if prompted to save your changes Then go ahead and reboot your PC by clicking on the commands St
62. ate New Arrivals Let ComTrac know which titles have arrived this week so you can generate Subscriber pull lists Reserves Option B Option A 8 35 3 9 ZAP Customer Title Orders If you need to eliminate an entire Subscriber and their orders or an entire Title and all the orders for the title use this command Reserves Option B Option F Page 85 8 35 3 10 Work with Special Orders Add drop modify record payments for One Time or Special Orders Reserves Option D Options A through F as needed 8 35 3 11 Recall Subscriber Orders If any titles were marked as having arrived and actually did not arrive use this tool to unmark them so that any single or multi issue orders won t accidentally be dropped from the computer Reserves Option B Option L 8 35 3 12 Generate Title by Store Summary Most retailers generate this pull list first so they can split their arrived comics into two piles books for subscribers and books for the newsstand Reserves Option C Option B Option A 8 35 3 13 Generate Title by Customer List If you pull your books by customer create this pull report Reserves Option C Option B Option B 8 35 3 14 Generate Customer by Title List If you pull your books by title create this pull report Reserves Option C Option B Option C 8 35 3 15 Update amp Report on Subcriber Pickups If you are anon POS user and are tracking whether your subscribers are picking up their orders promptly do this a
63. ave reached their last issue number and reflags all standing orders for next week s picking cycle If you didn t reset during the pick list process you can force resetting by using this tool 3 2 3 Reset Duplicate Titles If you have duplicate titles in your Reserve module use this tool to consolidate them into single entries Page 9 3 2 4 Address Tasks There are a number of tools which are available to perform certain address tasks using your customer data They are 3 2 4 1 Make Mail Labels This tool lets you create mailing labels for your customers 3 2 4 2 List Birthdates This tool lets you print a list or mailing labels for all customers whose birthdate falls within the specified period you enter Many users like to send customers a small gift certificate before their birthday 3 2 4 3 Create Subscriber Barcodes This tool lets you create barcode labels for your customers These labels can be placed on a credit card sized card and laminated so your customers can present the card when they come to the POS register This lets you scan them in which simplifies the customer look up process 3 2 4 4 Special Interests by Customer This tool lets you generate a list or mailing labels for customers based on their Special Interest Codes If you wanted to send a flyer to all customers who were interested in Fantasy amp Role Playing Games and you d created a Special Interest Code for this group and assigned it to the customers
64. average comics shop depends on fewer than 300 core customers for its existence 8 8 3 Average Customer Transaction Store Wide Divide the total sales for the week by the number of customer transactions to obtain the average customer transaction The average customer transaction shows how effectively store staff is selling to customers and how well your merchandise mix matches your customer s needs Typical averages range between 14 00 24 00 per customer transaction 8 8 4 Average Customer Transaction By Department Divide the total sales for the week for each POS or cash register department by the number of customer transactions in that department to calculate the average transaction by department 8 8 5 Sales per Square Foot Store Wide Divide the total sales for the week by the total sales area for the store exclude back room areas or washrooms to calculate sales per square foot Sales per square foot is a performance indicator that shows how appropriately sales area 1s allocated to each major department line Sales per square foot performance is also an indicator of how well the store s gross size matches up with current sales Low sales per s f levels show that the store either is too large for its sales potential or that it doesn t carry a sufficient breadth of merchandise to generate adequate sales from its customer base Sales per square foot ratios vary with the gross size ofthe store Asa rule the smaller the store s footprin
65. be erased and the pointer in ComTrac to the file will be deleted 6 1 4 Balance Existing Orders This is a great tool if you have multiple stores and write individual orders for each store It s also useful if you have had ComTrac split a single company wide order into separate orders for each individual location What this tool does is let you scroll through these orders item by item and make changes in the order quantities for each store Many ComTrac users find this useful as it helps them make final reductions in order quantities since they feel they can transfer products from one store to another rather than put additional funds into excess stock Once you ve gone through and balanced your orders you can go ahead and open them up and send them to Diamond print them and Post them 6 2 Login Out Mdse Logging merchandise into ComTrac can be done in three ways Manual QuickLog and Electronic Invoice QuickLog Page 22 6 2 1 Manual Login Manual Login is best used for ComTrac users who are just getting their system up and running You won t have many items in inventory yet and will have to create inventory entries for most of the items you are logging in With Manual Login you select your store and merchandise category that you want to log in for You must select either Comics or Specialties as your merchandise category You can log in using barcodes or descriptions For comics we recommend using descriptions For specialties we
66. blisher or manufacturer that you want to track sales inventory and orders for You must have an entry where the code is empty and the description is NONE This allows you to have a category for products that you don t want to track by publisher or manufacturer 7 1 2 3 Dept Code File The Department Code file contains the names of all the departments that you want to use to track inventory sales and profitability You should never have an entry with no code 7 1 2 4 Master Cat File The Master Catalog file contains one entry for each order form that has been imported into ComTrac and has not yet been purged from the system 7 1 2 5 Open Orders File The Open Orders file contains one entry for each order that is in progress and has not been posted 7 1 2 6 Currency File The Currency file allows you to specify various price points in US Dollars and the corresponding value in your own currency This feature is most often used by Canadian retailers where the value of the Canadian dollar varies continually against the US Dollar 7 1 3 Rental Tables Rental Tables contain information used in the rental of videotapes and or game cartridges 7 1 3 1 Ratings File The default values in this file are taken from the MPAA for movies The Age Limit field defines the minimum age that a renter must be to rent an item having this code If you make sure that every rental customer has a birthdate in the Customer entry ComTrac and POS will automatically
67. ck issues should be entered into the High Value file in the Back Issue module Doing this creates a unique inventory record for each item and allows you to search your inventory for customers by creator artist etc and to record special comments about each item You can also generate individual barcode labels for your high value back issue comics 8 17 Importing the Diamond Monthly Order Form 8 17 1 Diamond Order Form Nomenclature You must import the monthly Diamond order form into ComTrac before you can write your Page 52 monthly Diamond order You can download the current order form from Diamond s BBS or Web Site in compressed Zip format The Diamond order form uses the naming syntax MM Y with an Exe extension January 1998 would be named 018 exe and December 1998 would be 128 exe The Diamond naming convention for the actual monthly order form file is D plus the MM Y with a Dbf extension January 1998 would be named D018 dbf and December 1998 would be D128 dbf 8 17 2 Downloading from Diamond BBS Web Site Most ComTrac users download the Exe file into a separate Diamond folder or directory Once the Exe file has been downloaded either enter the command 018 exe Enter at the Diamond DOS prompt or double click on the 018 exe icon through Windows Explorer The monthly Exe file will self decompress creating a number of files within the directory 8 17 3 Importing from Diskette If you receive your monthly Diamo
68. copy is still in your Diamond directory You have imported your current Diamond order pack and are now back in the Main Menu Other Jobs 1 Go to Reserves B Perform Jobs J Xfer Comics gt Reserves to update your Subscriber Title file 2 Go to Orders A Order Mdse A Order New Comics to begin the ordering process for your stores Page 54 8 18 Importing the the Diamond Weekly Invoice Even if you don t use POS you can use QuickLog and Diamond s Invoice on Disk to update your Reserves and Special Orders This is most useful for retailers who take a large number of Special Orders from their customers 8 18 1 Getting Your Invoice File Diamond will make your weekly invoice available to you on their website or bulletin board on request They provide three file formats dbf dat and txt The format you want to use with ComTrac is the one which has just data in it with commas separating fields and quotes around character fields The contents will look like this SPARTA 99999 Invoice on Disk 02 13 99 5 NOV980835D A NEXT 6 002 1 99 1 0397 5 20 1 5 14 DEC980824D A NEXT 7 002 1 99 9950 13 93 1 1 5 DEC980824D A NEXT 47 002 1 99 1 0397 5 20 1 5 The file name will be either 99999 txt or 99999 dat depending Download both file types and use your text editor such as Notepad or Wordpad to check the contents 8 18 2 Using QuickLog 1 Goto the Orders Menu s
69. d contains the following menu options New Comics Provides access to the periodical merchandise module Reserves Provides access to the customer subscription and special order module Specialties Provides access to the reorderable merchandise module Back Issues Provides access to the collectibles module Orders Provides access to ordering and data maintenance tools Utilities Provides access to a wide variety of system maintenance tools Exit Provides access to Backup and Restore also Exit to DOS Windows ComTrac does not support the use of a mouse although POS does You can move through these menus by using the right and left arrow keys or the up and down arrow keys followed by pressing the Enter key You can also use hotkeys to select menu items The first character of each menu item is the hotkey For example press U to select the Utilities menu if you are in the Main Menu 1 2 ComTrac Data Entry Conventions All ComTrac data entry menus are identical Some spreadsheet style data tools have different menu commands their commands are documented in the User Manual in the section which deals specifically with those tools The standard ComTrac data maintenance menu consists of these options Add Allows you to ADD an entry to the file Change Allows you to CHANGE an existing entry Delete Marks the highlighted entry for DELETION Undelete Unmarks the highlighted entry for DELETION Find Allows you to FIND an entr
70. d navigate to the ComTrac or POS20 folder Make sure your PC is set so you can see hidden files Then find and delete the files listed above Page 77 8 31 Running ComTrac POS Under Windows 95 98 To determine how far down this list you need to go click on the Start button move up to Programs then click on MS DOS Prompt The familiar C gt prompt should appear Type MEM then press Enter Look for a line that says Largest executable program file If the number to the right is less than 600K you will need to complete steps 1 through 9 If you have more than 600K you only need to complete steps 1 through 3 To return to Windows type EXIT then press Click the right mouse button right click on the Windows Desktop anywhere there is no icon A menu will appear Click the left mouse button left click on New then click on Shortcut The Create Shortcut wizard will start The first thing you need to fill in is the Command Line If ComTrac is installed on drive C type C COMTRAC COMTRAC Exe then click on the Next button Now you need to Select a name for the shortcut Type the following ComTrac then click on the Finish button You may stop here if you have at least 600K of free memory in DOS as we checked in the first paragraph At this point you should have a shortcut on your Windows Desktop called ComTrac Right click on the ComTrac shortcut and a menu will appear Click on Properties and the ComTrac Properties window will a
71. der Take your printed copy of your last three Diamond orders Go through the order form and enter the quantities that you actually ordered When you are done exit the ordering process and Post your order You do not need to export the order to Diamond format or print it out again Repeat this process for the three most recent Diamond orders When you are done you ll have inventory records for every item you ve ordered from Diamond in the last quarter 8 16 3 2 Log in Merchandise Now take your last twelve weekly invoices from Diamond and log in this merchandise one week at a time We recommend using Orders B LogIn Store Manual for the Log In process The advantage of this procedure is that you can create inventory records on the fly if an item was ordered more than three months ago Review the Chapter Logging in New Comics and General Mdse from Diamond before you start this process When you are done you ll have initial inventory quantities for every item that you received from Diamond in the last three months 8 16 3 3 Doing an Initial Comics Inventory You should start by initializing your current comics inventory The short version is that you need to create a Comics Count Form for Manual Operation not POS operation This will list every comic that is in your inventory that you logged in It ll be a much larger printout than what you ll normally deal with but this will be the only time you ll have a printout this large
72. dias Profitability Utilities Module Report 5 o RE aene AO EE AE OR EE EE N 14 15 15 15 15 16 16 16 16 16 16 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 18 18 18 18 19 19 19 19 19 20 20 20 20 20 21 21 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 24 24 24 25 25 25 25 25 26 26 27 Maintain Tables see Folder Tables Store File ee ee ee ee Baklssue Grades Genre Codes s Special Interest Codes Projects and Members Ordering Tables Vendor File Pub Mfr File Dept Code File Master Cat File Open Orders File Currency File Rental Tables Ratings File Rental Prices Pack Files aure etes Index Files unes Set System Values Store Info sese sese Inventory Info DOS Printer es ee ee ee ee Sales Update POS Handscan Update DOS Shell i Special Topics sese Adding a DOS Printer to ComTrac Option ette Creating Department Codes for ComTrac amp POS sees Enter Departments in Department Table sss sees eee
73. directories from Windows to POS20 by typing cd pos20 lt enter gt Once in POS20 type Extract lt Emter gt to run the program from DOS Once the program has begun running it will show you a status message The more sales data you have in your POS program the longer it will take to process When the program is done you will either return to the POS20 DOS prompt or the Windows desktop depending on which method you used The result of running Extract Exe is a dbf file named Extract Dbf or Uextract Dbf depending on the version of Extract that you have This file is completely independent of ComTrac or POS and can be copied to any PC or directory you wish You can import this file into any third party program such as Access or Excel by specifying the dBase3 file format when you import the file Extract combines data from three POS files History Transactions and Payments into a single flat file for maximum convenience when you perform your analyses You can analyze your sales data by such criteria as day of week employee department individual product or range of dates If you have more than one register run Extract Exe once on each PC Then change the name of the second Extract Dbf file such as Reg2 Dbf and import both files into Excel or whatever other software package you prefer Page 44 8 10 Fixing ComTrac amp POS Internal Errors Once in a while POS or ComTrac users may experience difficulty in gettin
74. dise mix and sales volume you will need to generate at least a few specialty orders every week Orders Option B 8 35 5 Weekly Back Issue Sequence 8 35 5 1 Maintain High Value Issues Enter any new High Value back issue inventory BakIssue Option C 8 35 5 2 Enter New Common Back Issue Inventory Add new Common back issue inventory BakIssue Option D Note You must have at least one entry in the Master Commons Title file for this tool to work properly Or update generic back issue inventory items in Specialties 8 35 5 3 Enter Common Sales If you are anon POS user you should enter your Common back issue sales data or your current inventories Baklssue Option E 8 35 5 4 Enter High Value Sales If you are a non POS user you should enter your High Value back issue sales data Baklssue Option E 8 35 5 5 Transfer from Comics ComTrac creates entries in a transfer file if you have any copies left when you pull your newsstand comics You should transfer these books into your Common Back Issue file Baklssue Option B Option C Page 87 Add Special Order AA EE AR OO ER RR EE OE OER Adding a DOS Printer to ComrTrac issie eaedem eee i ert e dci se dk Gee Adding Additional Specialties or Comics Inventory esse sees sees eee eee eee Le MEET CREER TO TET E Advance a T eee t teer eite rece Re Re eh ree EE EE ea Analyze Cmx Sell Through Reporte ere ete o e peter riti e SO te NU EE E Ne ee tees Analyze Comics Sell Thro
75. e Labels 2 tee dete ir ee ete ea eh MEES ei RE Add Special Order 2 te ee ente dec t pe grt Dee unas sae REG GR GE Ee RR RE Pick Special Orders ite avete ge Ge EE etre o ir cesi elei eere ber eee c e eed dne Enter Payments SE OE OR oer e OE EE ER Special Order Reports EE N RA OE ER N Maintain Orders OE EE EO EE EA HE Purge Order OR EE OE EE KEN N e ed ere ER Want List Use Want ES Co umen Ge Be sees ca le Se eS GE wa Baw ee tud EG Se ee ANENE T OO N NE OR EE ER EE Ug Pit Want E T EES a ee Vee se eg Specialties Module sce cess o isis ei t tt te Aem c e Seed eevee i E e t I A Ee Use SPC Master List heo ete P ed eto a tie Ue e ERU ERU N N aos TEESE Use SPE Cycle Sheets cios e reet EPI ORT LONE er REO i Enter SPC Data eee ec RID nate Ce RES deis a e d ee De Ee er Creating PC ENTES eto et epe eet mre iretur m redes teret det mesi EE Updating Manual SPC Sales ee ee se ee nennen nennen nennen R ee RA GR rennen Updating SORG SR EE OE EE N Make Qut of Stock Report reete ER RE EE osse REEE Make Stale Mdse AAA p sep eps nag E EE EE RE OR EE EESE Best Seller Reports ESE ee aid BERE ER RE ee oe eN Ee ER BERE Ad R EDE ees Make Spe Inv Forma dese OE eN ee se sts EE Eb sh DG Geis eo GR eg eae Shen PER Bosh iens Reset SPC EE AE EA N EE EE N OR EE cde tete OR Barcode Labels vuitton EG Back Issue Collectibles Module 4 5 5 n EES e t lada i ER Mai
76. e a comics retailer who does not discount your comics and have a 50 off discount on comics from their comics distributors on the average you can generate a 15 pre tax profit on your comics products with an average sell through of 90 If your comics sell through is 75 with the same assumptions you are likely to break even And if you have less than a 75 sell through on comics you are probably losing money on this merchandise line You may respond but I m staying in business Yes you may be staying in business because you are making money on other non comics merchandise that you carry and comics can provide good cash flow even when they re not profitable at least for a short time But how often have other retailers that you know taken money from another source and used it to pay off their back bills That s re capitalizing a business and if you don t aim for 90 average sell through on your comics that s what you ll eventually have to do as well When you order comics through ComTrac you ll see your sell through levels for each issue on the ordering screen ComTrac will use this information to recommend an order for you You should review your sell throughs by issue when ordering a title to see if there have been any sales trends whether up or down Always remember that you are ordering 60 90 days in advance depending on the title and publisher NOTE But if you are a multi store retailer you will find it very very dif
77. e appropriate printer If your exact printer model doesn t appear on this list select the nearest model number to what you are using You will see that the printer you selected has been added to the short printer list on the left hand of the screen Press lt esc gt to bring up the Exit Menu then confirm your desire to exit Then go to Utilities D Option Set system values and go to the Printer section enter the first few characters of the printer name in the Printer field press enter and select it from the drop down menu Exit from ComTrac re enter and test your printer In most cases it will work properly Important for Windows Users If your printer is a so called Windows printer that relies solely on the Windows operating system for control you will have to route all your reports to file and print them out through Notepad or Word HP in particular has cut costs on a number of its printers by stripping out the on board CPU and relying on Windows Print Manager to do the heavy lifting If none of this works we can possibly modify ComTrac to support your printer free of charge We will need the printer control codes which are normally found in the Appendix of your printer manual If your manual has this information Xerox the pages and mail or fax them to us and we ll do the rest You may have to call the manufacturer of your printer and have them fax the codes to you as not every manufacturer is putting their control codes into t
78. e found In most cases this will come up clean This applies to both ComTrac and POS problems 3 POS users should Run CLNTRANS This is a utility program that should be in your POS20 directory the full name is CLNTRANS EXE that can deal with mis matched links between your three POS transaction files Make sure POS is closed down and go to POS20 then enter the command clntrans and press Enter Follow the prompts 4 Finally if you are getting a write error check the amount of free hard disk space on your POS PC Hard disks and controller cards are pretty reliable these days modern hard disks have a normal useful life of 4 5 years so this usually means you are low on free hard disk space If you have less than 2Mb of free hard disk space start pruning your old excess files This really only is a possibility for those of you using older PCs with small hard drives 5 If your system is resetting itself to Demo mode you may need to remove your copy protection files and re enter a new unlock code for POS See the cheat sheet on Removing Copy Protection from ComTrac or POS Page 45 8 11 Generate a Cycle Sheet Count Form You can generate a cycle sheet count form for every store or location using New Comics D Make Count Form The output will contain every new comics title issue which is still marked as being Active The output will be in alphabetical order by issue number Every title which is at or has passed its scheduled pu
79. e in Utilities A Maintain Files Be sure to enter the retail price of the item Cycle flag s default value is Yes and we suggest leaving it that way When you re done either press Enter at the last field or press Page Down to exit to screen 15 Now you ll see the inventory data screen You can enter values in shelf weeks Initial Order Initial Received Bin stock Comments Adjust and Supress Shelf weeks tells ComTrac how many weeks you want to keep this book on the shelf as a new comic Initial order and initial received are the quantities you originally ordered and quantity you actually received Initial order can be left set to zero Bin stock is normally zero for most retailers it accounts for copies ordered specifically for back issue stock Comments lets you enter information about things that might materially affect sales on this title issue combination Eg radioactive glow in the dark cover sterilizes customers Leave Suppress set to N 16 Either go off the screen by pressing Enter or by pressing Page Down Now you are back in the login screen and can enter the next item This is the fastest and most accurate way of entering new merchandise into ComTrac if you are a new user with partial or incomplete inventory records The only differences when logging in specialty perpetual inventory items is that you ll be prompted to enter the wholesale cost of the item This is used to update the average wholesale co
80. e select Comics for the second pass select Specialties 6 For either comics or specialties enter the correct log in date If you enter the wrong date for your selected login day of the week ComTrac will warn you Re enter till it s accepted 7 We recommend logging in by Description when logging in manually 8 For comics you ll see a screen with the default store code and three fields you can work with Title Issue and Qty Revd 9 Enter part of the title eg Mutant Programmers and press enter 10 Enter the issue number padded with zeroes eg 0004 Page 58 11 If ComTrac found an exact match it ll update without comment and put you back in the three prompt fields 12 If it didn t find an exact match it ll tell you and ask you whether to Pick Create or Quit If you know you made an error select Quit so as to try again 13 If you are a new user and you don t select Quit you are usually best off to select Create which lets you create a stock card inventory card for the item 14 If you chose Create you ll see the following Title Issue Sku Publisher Retail Cost and Cycle Flag Title and Issue should be filled in for you If the book has a barcode you can scan it into the Sku field directly If the book has no bar code press enter to have ComTrac create a unique identifier Publisher can be left blank It s validated from the Publisher fil
81. e the electronic invoice you start the process here and not in Orders Login Mdse You will see a drop down window containing all the titles that your customers have on order whether only one copy is on order or many Take your invoice and go through the comics titles checkmarking every title that has arrived Note You won t necessarily find every comics title on your invoice in the drop down window Why Because only titles that have subscribers will appear in the drop down window Checkmark an item by pressing the SPACEBAR or PLUS key when the highlight bar is on the title A checkmark will appear to the left of the item in the window You can un checkmark an item by pressing SPACEBAR or PLUS key when the highlight bar is on a checkmarked item Then exit the window ComTrac will check for any titles that have one time orders If there are one time orders you ll be prompted to enter the issue number of the arrived title Be sure that there are leading zeroes eg 0010 When you re done you re ready to print out Pick Lists If you used Diamond s electronic invoice all your Special Orders have been pre flagged for picking If you didn t go to Reserves Special Orders Pick Orders and log in specialty items that arrived before printing your Pick Lists 3 2 2 Reset End of Week ComTrac prompts you to Reset your reserves module at the end of the Title by Customer and Customer by Title pick reports Resetting purges any one time products that h
82. e upgrade process including making a backup of your data before it makes any file structure changes for the upgrade The name of the backup file is CTBACK ZIP and can be found in your ComTrac directory For POS the name of the backup file will be POSBACK ZIP and it will be in your POS20 directory If you have problems getting into either ComTrac or POS after following this upgrade process it is almost certainly due to your PC missing the file Autofix Exe in ComTrac or POS20 or having an outdated version You can use either the DOS dir command or Windows Explorer to check for the absence of this file If the file is present click on it and look at Properties to see the file creation date If the file creation date is earlier than 10 96 you have an outmoded version We maintain a file on the website under System Files named Utils Zip which contains the most current versions of all the ComTrac DOS utility programs including autofix exe Note Don t do an upgrade while you have open orders in progress Page 57 8 20 Logging in New Comics amp General Mdse from Diamond There are three ways to log in merchandise from Diamond Comic Dist 1 Import the weekly text file containing the Diamond invoice See our separate cheat sheet for detailed instructions on its use 2 Use QuickLog to create a spreadsheet that contains every item that s on order 3 Manually log in items If you have been using the ComTrac for three
83. e will be marked for deletion You can choose to have ComTrac ignore titles with issues in the range 1 4 if you want to keep data for ordering new solicitations When the purge process is done ComTrac will give you a chance to abort the purge process Purge Comics Master File This tool goes through your master title file If there is no corresponding cycle sheet in the cycle sheet file the item is marked for deletion Purge Specialties Go through the list of specialty products and checkmark the items you want to purge 7 8 Change Title This tool allows you to change the spelling of a title globally throughout the various ComTrac modules Select the module New Comics Specialties etc that you want to work with then select the product you want to make changes in Enter the new spelling Page 30 7 9 DBU DBU database utility is a special tool that you SHOULD NOT USE unless you are being coached by ComTrac Tech Support or you have been sent keystroke instructions on its use It allows you to make radical changes in the contents of the ComTrac data files 7 10 Create PLU The Create PLU tool is used to do three things create a fresh Price Lookup Table for your POS stations to create or update the Department Table for your POS stations or to create a text export file which you can use to update a retail web site When you use this tool you can choose to update any single module within the POS PLU table or the entire PLU tab
84. ede Out of Stock Report 1 RE vete eade ete enero EE paces OE OER EE N Re Order Comics azo eere ette eee ae Reel siente e otro edite pe retine ee ge ee ee HEDE AO n ANNE eet de ER EE ER ER qut esses EE Make Count do eee ttem EE HEP DO RE HR ud Update Comics Sales ione EE nre OE TO ue e Oni net Stale Comics Report mamita ita Ree guerre e eet AE MD Ee RE eerte dne Outzof StoCk Report edet E ee ee ER ee eg ee ES gee ire tret e EE exe AR ere ese bes Re Order Comes outs os EED EES ede abe tid GLa prot te quiete eene Transfer A OE EE OE OR EE Maintain Subscriber ol seas EE t OE EER E EE EE ON EE Create Subscriber List eno sie e OER OE OR ON Maintam Reserve Order Ele ioc eret ette lese me rre Ee e ii Dropping SUDSCLIDELS epe eet eere iii e Dep Piper perti Archive Restor SUDSCTIDETS ascos eec ent ate eei n eee tme pe eie Gegee Bep Import Diamond Invoice File us eie e tret erre Pre eee qat tente b Eee ee E EYE oe de bg Update New Arrivals ome EE EE OR EE ZAP Customer Title Orders vietnamita ere irte te e e Qe ek ese ect esto i e deren Work with Special Orders i e ipee tete Sep PR ses n eee ee rtp tree teet dep bees Recall Subscriber Orders rt ette ren te Petite eee ptatem ei etn Generate Title by Store Summary estrei anes ea EE e NEEE E TE EIEEE ra ESKA EEE EPEA EE eren entren nennen Generate Title by Customer Just neto t eano ERG Ke er P EEEE EEES Generate Customer by Tithe Listas iss eter nti cases se ie ee suns EEEE EEEE
85. eee Assign Departments to Merchandise sese Transfer Departments to POS Consolidating Sales amp c Creating Subscriber Lists on New Comics Day sss esse se se eee Cycling New Comics Sales Manually and POS sss essen Manual Updating POS Cycle Sheeting Daily ComTrac Tasks Back Up Your Data Generate PLU Table Import POS Sales History Editing Config Sys to Add the Dos Memory Manager sesse se eee End of Day Closing Routine for POS Generate Reports Journal Tape eee Dept Sales e Sales Tax by Dept Subscriber Bonus Points Pm COCK x soe entren Balance Drawer Export Sales History File Log OU sis ER ER ettet Evaluating Store Performance Ratios Number of Subscribers Customer Transactions per Week ones eene sstsctedsoussavsessenscsosebseessnoseodensseas Average Customer Transaction Average Customer Transaction St re ER IR EE EE OR EE By D partinEnt EE ct EE ERGE EE sane ER IRE ER DER dre RR Sales per 5quare Foot Store Wide ient ete exe tee ertet PR eC END eerte dd Sales per Square Foot By Department sesse see see se se Ge ee GR nennen treten rennen eere Sales per Employee Hour Worked ese es
86. elect B Login Logout Merchandise 2 Login by Store 3 Select Invoice on Disk 4 Select Yes Go to QuickLog 5 Read the two pages of notes if you need to 6 Select the store for your invoice 7 Respond to the prompt Are you loading an invoice on disk with Yes 8 Enter the proper Login Date for your shipment ComTrac won t let you put in an incorrect date in terms of the proper day of the week 8 ComTrac will prompt whether to continue the logging in process respond with Yes 9 Youshould see the prompt C COMTRAC in a dialogue box that asks you where to look for the invoice file If you don t see a prompt you can go later to Utilities Set System Values POS and enter the values CACOMTRAC in both the Import Path and Export Path fields The next time you use ComTrac the default prompt will appear 10 Go to the end of the prompt and add txt after the dot Press enter to get the selection window All the TXT files in the ComTrac directory will appear Move the highlight bar to the proper file and press Enter to select it 11 After a moment ComTrac will tell you that it imported xx items and will display them in the QuickLog spreadsheet 12 If you see multiple instances of a comics title be sure to look at the bottom of the screen for its issue number and Diamond part number 13 If you are just using QuickLog to update your Reserves and Special Order files don t make any c
87. entory at each location or the company for accounting and managerial purposes 6 12 Profitability Report The profitability report can be run for any range of dates any location and any department It generates profitability information based on Point of Sales data imported into ComTrac from your POS register s Page 26 7 0 Utilities Module The Utilities Module contains tools which are used to tell ComTrac how to behave or to carry out a number of maintenance or housekeeping jobs that are required for the smooth operation of the system 7 1 Maintain Tables Tables are critical to the proper operation of ComTrac The values in tables are used to validate entries in many fields which ensures that only legal values get into your database They are used in drop down windows to perform operations for specific locations 7 1 1 Folder Tables Folder Tables contain data that is mostly associated with subscribers and their subscriptions 7 1 1 1 Store File The Store File Table should contain one entry for every location that you store merchandise at If you have one store you may still have multiple locations at which you have product such as a Back Room and the Store which represents the store s sales area 7 1 1 2 BakIssue Grades If you don t grade your back issues you must have one entry in this table where the code field is empty and the word NONE is in the code description field 7 1 1 3 Genre Codes Genre or Family codes
88. er this covers most non Diamond vendors enter the Order Date as the start and end date and ONLY the items that were ordered that day will come up in the QuickLog spreadsheet Note If you go into QuickLog and aren t prompted for location or dates or if you are using the electronic invoice option and aren t prompted for an invoice it is because there is data already in the QuickLog spreadsheet You cannot overwrite existing data in QuickLog rather you must exit QuickLog and tell ComTrac you want to Zap the contents The next time you invoke QuickLog you ll be prompted to select an invoice file or enter a location and start and ending dates Page 23 6 2 3 QuickLog with Electronic Invoice If you use the Diamond weekly invoice file the DAT version you can import it into QuickLog See the previous page for a note about previously existing data and how it affects loading new data Once you ve imported the file you can modify the contents as needed and then go ahead exit the spreadsheet and tell ComTrac to update inventory 6 3 Transfer Mdse Being able to transfer merchandise from one location to another in ComTrac can save you a lot of money It s usually more profitable to transfer excess merchandise from a slow selling spot to where it is selling well than it is to order more The first step in Transferring merchandise is to select the proper module Comics Specialties Common Back Issues or High Value Collectibles
89. eric inventory entries in the Specialties module eg 50c Commons and that you use the High Value file to track expensive individual items See Quarterly ComTrac Tasks 5 1 Maintain Master Commons We recommend that ComTrac users put all their new comics that will be sold as back issues into generic back issue price point entries that are kept in the Specialties module or as single entry items in your High Value collectibles file in Back Issues 5 2 Maintain Common Bak Issue Maintain Common Bak Iss Inventory You can make changes to a Common Back Issue master entry here Don t create new common back issues here use Enter New Bak Inv to do that The Base Retail price is used only for companies that have multiple stores and who want to price back issues as a percentage of this price depending on their grade In the Common Back Issue Inventory you can modify the Cost or Grade The Box refers to a warehouse storage location Most ComTrac users don t bother with this any more the cost of tracking isn t justified by the profits 5 3 Maintain High Value The High Value file allows you to enter a single product and record more detailed information about grade special characteristics pricing history etc 5 4 Enter New Bak Inv If you are going to enter or create Back Issue inventory for Common back issues this is the place to do it Follow the prompts and enter values as required for each item ComTrac will create a single 1 unit en
90. et Them Up and Running Once this task is completed you can start looking up subscribers and customers at POS when you begin a transaction The benefit of doing this is that every item that these customers buy will be stamped with their customer code date and time for future marketing analyses and projects Page 50 8 16 3 Getting your New Comics Up If you are a ComTrac Lite user who is upgrading to Plus POS all your comics are already in ComTrac and are ready to scan All you have to do is create a PLU Table in the Utilities Module and POS will pick it up If you are starting from scratch you will need to create cycle sheets comics inventory entries for all your current comics inventory and then update them to reflect your starting inventory Here s a strategy which has worked very well for many of our users 8 16 3 1 Import the Diamond Order Forms You should have at least the six most recent Diamond order forms in electronic format on the CD ROM which we sent you when you purchased ComTrac Look in the Diamdata folder for files in the format D060 DBF D060 refers to the month and year of the form DBF is the file format Copy these files to your ComTrac folder Then refer to the Chapter in this Manual Importing the Diamond Monthly Order Form Once you ve imported the order forms go to the Chapter in this Manual Ordering Merchandise with ComTrac DOS to learn how to open a Diamond order form to write a Diamond or
91. exe a lt Enter gt to get them onto the diskette when you re in the ComTrac directory on the old PC Copy a lt Enter gt to get them onto the new PC s hard disk when you re in the new PC s ComTrac directory 4 Geta stack of formatted floppy disks and label them from 1 to 10 5 Enter the command PKZIP A TRANSFER amp F lt Enter gt This will create a multi diskette copy of your entire ComTrac directory and format your diskettes as you go 6 Goto your new PCs ComTrac directory and enter the command PKUNZIP A TRANSFER Pkunzip will ask you to put your last diskette of your backup series into the floppy drive and press lt Enter gt Do so Then put the first disk back in when prompted to do so and press Enter again Feed disks until the backup process is completed 7 Load ComTrac by typing ComTrac at the ComTrac DOS prompt ComTrac will rebuild all the missing index files automatically for you You may need to enter a new unlock code when the index process is complete Page 64 8 24 Moving Data Between Your Store and Home Office Many ComTrac users routinely move data to and from a Store PC and a Home PC Here s how to do it as well as some comments on potential pitfalls 8 24 1 Moving Data No POS Data We ll assume that you re starting with data on your store PC Go to Exit System A Create Backup Follow the instructions to create one or more backup disks Most ComTrac users will only need one diskette to backup
92. ficult to transfer comics between stores Multi store retailers SHOULD NOT use the Short Cycle option You also lose valuable insights into how your comics are performing while they are on the shelf That information can help you identify growing titles or titles which are starting to decay 8 26 2 4 Ordering to Sell Out The retail comics business has completely changed in the last decade It used to be that comics retailers generated cash flow from comics and made their major profits on marked up back issues This meant that ordering to sell out really wasn t very important Those days are gone forever unless you have decided to emphasize the back issue niche market in your community For most comics retailers that s not a viable option Ordering to sell out means trying to order just enough product to satisfy your subscriber base and the regular news stand purchasers Ordering to sell out means being willing to chase extra copies of an unexpectedly popular issue of a comic rather than trying to figure out how to move extra copies from over ordering Ordering to sell out also implies that having two stores gives you a strategic advantage over all your single store competitors If you have two stores you can order very tightly on a company Page 68 wide basis and transfer merchandise between stores We ll discuss this more fully later on 8 26 2 5 Identifying Growing or Decaying Titles An important job that is often overlooked by comics reta
93. from sidelines even while selling more comics by dollar volume than ever before Comics retailers have found that adding to their overall volume by agressively promoting compatible sidelines have enabled them to afford more expensive high visibility store locations These superior locations have resulted in higher dollar volumes of comics sales as well as higher overall sales Another reason why sidelines have become much more common is that since they are perpetual inventory merchandise which can be re ordered they tend to smooth out the big up and down cycles associated with comics sales Comics have the unique ability of attracting customers into your store on a weekly basis which gives you the opportunity to expose customers to your related sidelines products 8 27 4 1 Ordering Specialties from a Comics Distributor In our opinion ordering specialty or sideline products from a comics distributor is sensible only when you don t have the time or initiative to seek out alternative sources of supply you can t get a better price from another source In general most comics distributors have done poorly at providing sidelines products as they have been locked into the fast freight forwarder comics mentality Sidelines require a major inventory investment a major commitment to efficient warehouse staff and procedures and require that comics distributors become competitors to well established distributors in other fields T
94. g into these programs The DOS error messages are not particularly helpful as the DOS error handler often misinterprets the nature of the problem This also applies if you are using a Windows short cut icon from your desktop to load either ComTrac or POS and the screen flickers when you select the icon and then returns you to the desktop We find that the following actions will fix the problem in 99 of all instances of users experiencing these problems 1 With POS closed down go to the POS20 DOS prompt If you are in a Windows environment Go to Start Programs MS DOS You ll see the prompt C windows on the screen Enter cd pos20 and press lt enter gt to switch directories to POS When the prompt changes to C pos20 enter the command del cdx and this will delete all the POS index files Then type pos to load the point of sale program POS will detect that the files are missing and will recreate them Most of the time this is all that you will need to do The equivalent process for ComTrac problems is to enter DOS change directories to the ComTrac directory and enter the command del ntx senter Then run ComTrac It will detect that the index files are missing and will rebuild them from scratch eliminating any damages If this doesn t solve your problem delete the index files again and go on to the next items 2 Run SCANDISK This will check for problems with your File Allocation Table and repair them if any problems ar
95. hanges to the data just press Quit to exit the spreadsheet and continue 14 Respond to the Quit Logging in Merchandise prompt with Yes 15 Respond to the Update Inventory prompt with Yes 16 Respond to the Pre Sell Reserves prompt with No 17 Respond to the Update New Arrivals for Reserves prompt with Yes 18 You ll see a report showing all the items which were logged in with today s date 19 Respond to all the following prompts with No this will put you back into the Order Menu Page 55 8 18 3 Checking QuickLog for Reserves 1 If you haven t printed out your invoice using Diamond s report format file do so You can use Utilities M DOS Shell to temporarily leave ComTrac without shutting it down to print this file Typing Edit 99999 DAT at the ComTrac DOS prompt will open the report version where 99999 is your account number Be sure to type Exit at the DOS prompt when you are done and want to return to ComTrac 2 Go to the Reserves menu select B Perform Jobs A Update for New Arrivals 3 You ll see that many comics titles are already check marked Just cruise through the window and double check that all the comics titles were correctly marked by ComTrac Since we are updating on Title there s always a chance that some titles won t get caught due to changes in spelling between when Diamond first solicited the book and when it shipped or you may have
96. haracter file name followed by a period and a 1 3 character extension For example CYCLE RPT might be your name for a cycle sheet report that you send to file When you look for the report file you ll find it in your default ComTrac folder normally COMTRAC When you print a report file be sure to specify a monospace font such as COURIER and use a small point size in the 8 10 point range Also minimize your margins using the SET PAGE command to 0 5 or less Note Some printers are so called Windows Printers and cannot print output from DOS applications because their windows printer drivers are poorly written If you have such a printer you must route all your reports to file for printing If you don t have a word processor such as WordPerfect or Word go to Start Programs Accessories WordPad to get access to a built in editor Windows 95 only has Notepad which will also work Page 2 2 0 New Comics Module The New Comics module contains all the tools that you need to maintain your periodicals inventory We define periodicals as any product that has multiple sequential occurences such as most comics Magazines also fall into this category Reorderable comics such as Hate trade paperbacks graphic novels and other reorderable products belong in the Specialties module The New Comics module contains the following tools 2 1 Use NC Master List The New Comics Master List provides you with access to the Master Entry for e
97. heir User Manuals When we make the transition to Windows 32 bit ComTrac we will be able to print directly to any Windows compatible printer Page 33 8 2 Creating Department Codes for ComTrac amp POS The way ComTrac and POS deals with departments is to assign a department to each stock ca which is what we call the Master Title entry for each item 8 2 1 Enter Departments in Department Table The first step is to enter your departments in the Department Table Go to Utilities A Maintain Tables Ordering Tables and make sure there s a department definition for each department you want to work with Two department codes are mandatory NC for new comics and MISC for miscellaneous Other than these two reserved codes you can use anything else you want There is no limit to the number of departments but most retailers find that between 8 16 departments are sufficient Remember you can create the equivalent of sub departments by using the Family Genre Table So you can have X Titles and Spider Titles as families within the NC department Or you can use the family genre codes to create categories that cross multiple departments such as MUGS 8 2 2 Assign Departments to Merchandise Any item that s in the New Comics Master Title file automatically has the department code NC Any item that s in the Common Back Issue Master Title file automatically has the department code
98. his is why sidelines haven t been very attractive to comics retailers till recently With the upheavals in the comics distribution marketplace the only way surviving distributors can regain their former sales volumes is to market sidelines products aggressively We have already seen substantial drops in price for sports cards and game products at both Capital City and Diamond and expect to see additional changes in both price and product availability The conventional wisdom has been that almost any comics retailer could get better prices terms order fulfillment and breadth of product from a non comics specialty distributor In fact the average multi store comics retailer has maintained between 30 50 vendors apart from their primary comics distributor Smaller comics retailers have established relationships with 15 25 vendors As with everything there is no free lunch There s real convenience in one stop shopping and there s a price associated with the benefits many comics retailers perceive in shopping from a multitude of vendors 8 27 4 2 Ordering Specialties from a Specialty Distributor ComTrac supports ordering specialties or sidelines from a non comics specialty distributor If you place a Direct Order through the Specialties Ordering function you can have ComTrac generate a trial order for any item in a specified department or group of departments You can modify this order manually within ComTrac and then fax or phone
99. his material is to discuss some of the major issues connected with ordering and inventory control and to try and shed some light on the impact of choices which you are going to make You are welcome to call us if you are in support and discuss these issues with us We do ask your consideration if you call us at a particularly busy time when our support lines are dealing with more technical questions 8 26 2 New Comics Management Issues The major New Comics Periodicals management issues center on three major topics how much information do you want to retain if you are operating ComTrac in manual mode what sell through levels should you try to reach and how best can you identify growing or decaying titles before they become crises 8 26 2 1 Short Cycle or Full Cycle If you are a ComTrac POS user you can pass over this discussion ComTrac automatically updates your periodicals inventory and summarizes sales data by individual day and by week of sale If you are using ComTrac Lite you need to consider whether you want to track our comics or periodicals sales by individual weeks or whether you just want to track first and last week sales The most important information to have in managing comics ordering is your First Week sales and Last Week inventory information ComTrac will assist you in developing and using this information from your cycle sheet entries 8 26 2 2 First Week Sales First Week sales information can give you valuable insigh
100. ics retailers can least afford to absorb additional losses Page 69 Most comics retailers still don t understand that giving Subscribers a 20 discount is the equivalent of spending 40 of their gross profit on marketing if they have been getting a 50 discount on their new comics from their comics distributor How many single store retailers are going to get 50 off from their current comics distributors A 20 discount when you are getting 40 off is equivalent to 50 of the gross profits on these books Add in your cost of labor inventorying etc and you have got to think about whether you can afford to continue giving heavy discounts to your subscribers We know that most comics retailers have several competitors and that you are concerned that you ll lose the major part of your subscriber base if you discontinue or reduce your subscriber discounts We can work with you to determine whether you can modify or discontinue your subscriber discounts or whether substituting other less expensive goods and services for your current subscriber discount Your decisions about what Subscriber Services you are going to provide and how you are going to be paid for providing them can have a major impact on your profitability 8 26 3 1 Pay as you Go or Prepaid Subscriptions Some comics retailers are moving in the direction of full or partial pre paid subscriptions This practice protects them against customers failing to pick up their merchand
101. ilers when they manually cycle sheet their comics is identifying titles which are beginning to grow or which are showing signs of decay Since ordering comics is a continual test of skill in ordering 60 90 days before publication identifying books which are changing their sales status can have a major impact on your sales and profitability Even when comics distributors have implemented electronic ordering to the point where you can reliably change your orders up to two week prior to publication being able to identify changing titles will be very important 8 26 2 6 Changes in Subscriber Patterns One of the more reliable ways in getting warning that a formerly reliable title is starting to lose its appeal with your customers is to monitor your subscriber patterns ComTrac saves your subscriber count at the moment you write your comics order and modifies the subscriber count again when you receive the book and log it into your system This means that once you ve been using ComTrac for a while you ll have an eight issue history on how your subscribers have been ordering this book It s easy when you re writing your order in ComTrac to identify an upward or downward sales trend when the data is laid out in an effective manner for you 8 26 2 7 Rapid Sell Through for Small Count Titles Another indicator of growing interest in a title is found when you have a product where you normally are ordering 10 or fewer copies If you find that you are co
102. imported into ComTrac this will give you access to the entries that make up your imported order forms Note Order forms are just master copies stored in an electronic file drawer When you start an order using one of these order forms ComTrac makes a copy to a separate file and THAT is what contains all your order data 6 10 Assign Codes ComTrac relies on using certain codes Departments Genre Family Distributor Priority especially in ordering Most of the time these codes are assigned as users enter inventory into ComTrac for the first time or as they are logged in for the first time There will be times where you will want to reassign groups of products to one of these code groups This tool lets you do it quickly Select the code group you want to work with Departments Genre Family Distributor Vendor or Priority If you are working with Distributors you ll be asked whether you want to assign products to the Distributor as Primary Secondary or Tertiary You ll also be asked to choose whether you want to assign Comics Specialties or High Value collectibles Then checkmark the items you want assigned and exit the drop down window ComTrac will do the rest Page 25 6 11 Inventory Level Report This report gives you a quick departmental summary of the value of your inventory piece count wholesale value and retail value by individual Location Store or the entire company It is very useful for tracking the growth of inv
103. ing Manual SPC Sales This tool is used by a few ComTrac users who don t have POS but track a few product categories sales by writing down what they sale on paper at the register Later they use this tool to update their inventory for sales Not recommended 4 3 3 Updating SPC Inventory Use Enter SPC Data with the Update Inventory option to m ake changes in Specialty inventory levels usually from a Specialty Inventory Form Make sure that the Qty field is set to Qty Left rather than Qty Sold 4 4 Make Out of Stock Report The Out of Stock Report is useful more for checking up on managers rather than writing an order You should use the Ordering tool with the Direct from Inventory option to identify all items for a specific Distributor that are at or below their scheduled inventory level Page 17 4 5 Make Stale Mdse Report The Stale Merchandise Report will identify any items that haven t had a sale in the last XX days Stale items should have their reorder point reduced or even set to zero and then the remaining inventory should be marked down and blown out on sale 4 6 Best Seller Report The Best Seller Report generates a report showing what the top XX Specialty products are using either gross sales or percentage of units sold 4 7 Make Spc Inv Form You will want to inventory your Specialties inventory periodically for tax insurance and shrinkage detection purposes You can generate this inventory form by Publ
104. ing strong They appear to be real workhorses and we strongly recommend them for higher volume single stores and for multi store operations with centralized ordering amp handling of specialty products This printer is faster than the Seiko Ez 30 offers a larger range of label bar code sizes and is better suited for creating larger numbers of barcodes Check with us for the proper model Page 47 number Price 525 00 including shipping amp handling a one year warranty including parts and labor 8 12 5 Our Recommendations If you are a single store company or are on a tight budget we recommend going through your storeroom and using an old Epson compatible 24 pin dot matrix printer with tractor feed Ifyou don t have a suitable printer you can often find one used for 25 00 to 60 00 locally Get your address labels 5 000 to a roll from your local discount office supply store and make sure you have a good supply of printer ribbons There are several national office supply companies which still stock most common printer ribbons Look for them on the Internet If you are a multi store company or are a high volume single store we recommend purchasing the Eltron barcode printer This will give you a rugged fast machine which can generate a wide range of barcode sizes ranging from small labels with just the barcode and an alpha numeric representation of the barcode to larger labels with barcode and text descriptions 8 12 6 Pre
105. ise is selling Take the beginning inventory for a period add in the ending inventory for the period divide the quantity by two This is your average inventory Then divide your period sales by the average inventory If your period is a month multiply by 12 to get an annual inventory turn rate If your period is a quarter multiply by 4 to get an annual inventory turn rate Turn rates of 1 2 are quite low 3 4 are mediocre and 5 or 6 are good Anything above 6 is truly excellent Note This information can be kept in a spreadsheet or database management program You should maintain this information on a weekly basis by individual store location You can combine store information as needed when you want to produce company wide statistics Programs such as Access or Excel will also let you generate charts and graphs based on this data Page 43 8 9 Extract Exe Free form Data Analysis for POS Users Sales data in ComTrac DOS is generally stored in summary format such as Sales Year to Date While this is convenient for reporting there are many times where you would like to be able look at sales data in much greater detail The way we have solved this problem in ComTrac DOS is to create a utility program named Extract Exe which should be in your POS20 directory If it is missing you can get a replacement copy from us Make sure that POS is shut down Then either use Windows Explorer to find and run Extract Exe or go into DOS and change
106. ise promptly or not picking it up at all This practice also helps prevent customers from ordering more product than they can really afford Offering a discount also becomes more palatable economically if you have the use of the customer s money for a minimum of two months before your distributor bill comes due 8 26 3 2 One Shot or Standing Order Systems The other major decision which a comics retailer needs to make about their Subscription Service is whether to make the majority of their customers place orders every month or whether they will accept standing orders for repeat titles If I for example ask you to order me Larry Marder s Beanworld whenever Larry gets around to putting an issue out that s a standing order On the other hand if you tell me that I have to put in separate monthly orders for Steroid Man 1 2 3 The advantage of making subscribers place unique orders every month is that it keeps you in touch with them and helps prevent over ordering The penalty is that your data entry load will be significantly larger than if many of your customers are on a standing order basis If the majority of your customers place standing orders with you your data entry workload will be reduced as you will only have to deal with adds and drops On the other hand you will have to monitor your customer s orders to make sure that they are not ordering more merchandise than they can afford 8 26 3 3 Special Orders
107. isher Manufacturer or Department When you ve counted the product use Specialties C Enter SPC Data with the Qty Remaining option to update data 4 8 Reset SPC Master This tool is used to update the Specialties Master Title file to remove ghost inventory items those items with no parent entry to remove items that have zero inventory zero minimum order level and zero quantity on order and to reset the Year to Date sales field in January 4 9 Barcode Labels This tool allows you to choose items from the Master Specialties Product file and generate barcode labels for them You will checkmark each item you want to generate barcode labels for then exit the window A second window will appear with all the items you checkmarked If you want to generate barcodes for all of them press A to select All If you changed your mind and want to deselect some only checkmark the items you want Page 18 5 0 Back Issue Collectibles Module The Back Issue module or Collectibles module is a shade of its former self At one time it mattered to used whether they could use Percent of Mint to price books etc etc At this time many users just route their pulled new comics into generic Specialty inventory entries such as 1 Back Issues 2 Back Issues etc The Back Issue module can also be used for any other collectible such as sports cards or game cards Once again we strongly recommend that low cost items be tracked by the use of gen
108. ist of titles which have arrived that the customer has on order in alphabetical order We suggest using the prompts In store customers rather than mail order customers NOT making invoices for customers Arrived Titles rather than for Every title Just Customers with Titles rather than for All Customers 13 Once you ve generated all of your pick lists you can reset ComTrac for next week s arrivals There are two ways to do this At the end of either of the Customer Title pick lists you ll be prompted whether you want to reset for next week If you respond with Yes you ll be prompted whether to reset Numeric Fields usually No and Reset Arrival Flags Yes if you re done for this week If ComTrac found any items at the end of their issue range it will have marked them for deletion If ComTrac finds any items it 1 stop and tell you how many items it found If the number seems too large you can stop the process and research items in the Reserves Order File that are marked for deletion To reset subscriber data for next week go to Reserves B Perform Jobs B Reset End of Week Page 35 8 4 Cycling New Comics Sales Manually and POS Even though many comics publishers have barcoded their Direct Market comics many comics retailers are going to have to continue manually cycling comics sales We ve tried to make this process more convenient by designing a function to help you enter sales into your C
109. l the orders associated with it from ComTrac When you Zap a customer you ll be asked to enter a Drop Code This can be any code you want or none at all This code will become part of the Dropped Customer entry so you will know later why you dropped the customer Examples might include MOVE for moved BAD or LATE for problem customers etc 3 2 7 Change Product Custs This tool lets you make changes to Products and Customers If you select Products you can globally change the retail price or you can recall reverse the weekly pick list flagging process for the item you select If you select Customers you can Drop the customer this selects the Zap Customer tool Transfer them to another location or change their status from In Store to Mail Order 3 2 8 Copy Current Orders A number of comics titles come out in mini groups of issues and then start over again with a slightly different title Most of your customers will want to subscribe to the new mini series This tool lets you block copy orders for one title to a new title For example let s say Alien Vs Predator Colonial Marines is at issue 2 Alien vs Predator The Next Title is being solicited and it s been added to our Reserves Title file If we select Colonial Marines we ll create an entirely new set of orders for The Next Title 3 2 9 Upload Download Files Multi store users often need to consolidate the subscriber and special order data for each store at their central
110. le Add missing titles to Title Product file If your subscribers order books which aren t in your Title file you ll need to add them Don t delete titles from the Title file Use Zap Titles to eliminate an entire title Reserves Option A Option A 8 35 3 2 Maintain Subscriber File Add new subscribers to Subscriber file Dropping customers is done through Zap Customer Reserves Option A Option B 8 35 3 3 Create Subscriber List If you operate in non POS mode and want to check off subscribers as they pick up their weekly orders create a simple list of subscribers to keep at the register Reserves Option C Option A Option B 8 35 3 4 Maintain Reserve Order File Add new orders to Order file delete dropped single orders see Zap titles for eliminating an entire title Reserves Option A Option C 8 35 3 5 Dropping Subscribers Get rid of any customers who are in default who have moved etc along with their orders Reserves Option A Option D 8 35 3 6 Archive Restore Subscribers Archive Subscribers who will be resuscitated later such as students military etc Reserves Option A Option E 8 35 3 7 Import Diamond Invoice File Import the weekly Diamond invoice file into QuickLog When you exit QuickLog instruct ComTrac to update Subscribers for New Arrivals This will flag most comics titles on reserve and will flag all items in the Subscriber order file Orders Login Logout QuickLog 8 35 3 8 Upd
111. le ComTrac will prompt you whether each module is taxeable or not If ComTrac asks you whether to update the Inventory Lookup Table reply Y Exporting a text version of the PLU table is optional Note When ComTrac asks you for the directory path to export files the default should be CACOMTRAC If it isn t go to Set System Values in Utilities and change the directories under POS Info to C COMTRAC for both the IMPORT and EXPORT fields 7 11 Sales Update POS This tool takes the sales output file from any POS station and uses it to update ComTrac inventory and generate a sales report ComTrac does not recognize any sales made through POS until the data has been exported from POS and imported into ComTrac through this tool All POS sales export files have unique names assigned to them by POS The naming rules are Originating Store Code Month Day file name Year Register Number extension Eg PARK 02 20 01 1 PARK0220 011 When you use the tool ComTrac will ask you to select the file you want to import from a drop down window After the update process is complete this tool generates a profitability report and an exception report The exception report lists any items that didn t update properly and the reason for their not being updated You should fix any problems flagged by the exception report and then run the update process again for the same file ComTrac will ignore all transactions which were updated succes
112. ll date will be marked with a P on the form If you select the Manual option every active title issue combination will appear on the counjt form If you select the POS option only active title issue combinations that are at or past their scheduled pull date will apear on the count form NOTE When your staff pulls titles they should CIRCLE the issue number of any title which is marked as being due to pull that they are leaving on the shelf There are often good reasons why store staff may leave a title on the newstand past its pull date so for the convenience of your data entry person only the exceptions should be marked Any title which is due to be pulled and not circled should be entered as having been pulled When you generate this form you will be prompted for the cycle date After that you ll select the store or location for which the form is being created from a select window which will display all the location choices After a pause while the computer does some pre processing you ll have the choice of sending the form to your printer or to a holding file on your hard disk If you choose to send the results to a holding file you ll be prompted to enter the name of the file When you re ready to use the file it will be found under the name you chose with a PRN extension in the ComTrac directory or folder Page 46 8 12 Generating Barcodes in ComTrac ComTrac users have four choices when generating bar code labels You can gene
113. ll go through every cycle sheet for a comic title that s on order and check the Reserves module to see whether the subscriber quantity has grown since the original order or the most recent re order If there s been a change ComTrac stops displays all the relevant data and prompts you to enter the reorder quantity The default reorder quantity is the difference between what you had and what you currently require You don t need to automatically do an advance re order just because the subscriber count went up It all depends If you ordered 50 copies of a book and the subscriber count went from 3 to 6 copies most retailers wouldn t submit an advance reorder They d set the default value to zero and continue On the other hand if you ordered 10 copies of a book and your subscribers went from 4 to 7 copies most retailers would submit an advance reorder With either the Manual or ComTrac Assisted option you ll get a printout of your advance reorders complete with Diamond solicitation numbers when you finish this process Print it out and use it when telephoning your advance reorders in Many ComTrac users run this tool every two weeks or every week depending on the size and activity level of their subscriber base 6 1 3 Delete Order in Progress There are times you may want to remove an entire order from ComTrac before you post it or send it to the distributor Select the item you want to remove from the drop down window and the order file will
114. mTrac The only companies that regularly provide electronic order forms are Diamond Comic Dist and FM International If your distributor or vendor doesn t provide an electronic order form you can generate an order form through ComTrac based on every item in inventory that has been assigned to them as a Primary Secondary or Tertiary source You also have the choice to do an order for an individual store or for multiple stores that are treated as a single store If you have multiple stores and only one Diamond account number you can write individual orders for each store and then consolidate them for transmission to Diamond If you write a company wide order you can have ComTrac split your company wide order into separate store level orders so when you post your order you ll get unique cycle sheets for each store and product If you want detailed information on ordering see Monthly Comtrac Tasks Comics Ordering Related Tasks 6 1 2 Advance Reorder ComTrac makes doing advance reorders quick and easy You have two options Manual or ComTrac Assisted Manual advance reorders are simple You ll enter partial or complete information about the title you want to submit an advance reorder for and then select the item from a drop down window You ll be prompted for the reorder quantity That s all Advance reorders where ComTrac helps you are a little more complex but is much more powerful Page 21 If you select this option ComTrac wi
115. most areas there are 20 30 comics titles which have fairly strong back issue sales for the most recent twelve issues If you know that you are ordering tightly over the range of comics titles which you customarily stock meaning that you have an overall sell through rate of 90 you can over order these key titles by 2 3 copies This will give you sufficient bin stock to carry you through to when used copies start coming in from customers at 10 20 per book Reorders Cutting your initial comics order to the absolute minimum becomes even more desirable if your comics distributor provides adequate advance order services You can use ComTrac to check your Subscriber Module on a weekly basis to see whether any title that s on order has had a significant increase in subscriber orders since your original order or the last re order If it has then you need to send in an advance order for additional copies of that issue And if there s evidence of increased customer interest in a title s issue in the six weeks between your initial order and the advance order cutoff date you should also boost your original order Page 71 8 27 4 Ordering Specialties Specialties or sidelines have become far more important to comics retailers than anyone would have dreamed back in 1985 Back then the typical comics shop derived perhaps 10 to at most 20 of their volume from sidelines These days high end comics shops often get 50 70 of their sales
116. nd order form on diskette you can either copy the contents of the diskette to your Diamond directory or you can go to your diskette drive and enter the command Install Enter Unless Diamond has changed their diskette again entering the Install command should create a Diamond directory on your hard disk if you didn t have one and will decompress the Exe file s data into it 8 17 4 Importing the Order Form into ComTrac Once you have decompressed your monthly Exe file go ahead and copy the D dbf file to your ComTrac folder or directory or leave it in the Diamond directory Then load ComTrac and go to the Orders Menu Select Option G Load Zap Order Form Select the Load option from the Load Zap prompt Select the Diamond option from the menu Select ComTrac Directory from the menu rather than Diskette Depending on the default directory in your Utilities Set System Values POS Data ComTrac will show you the path it will use to look for the Diamond order file If you the D DBF file is in your Diamond directory enter the path C Diamond D DBF and all the qualifying files will appear in a Pick Box Select the proper file and press Enter Ifthe D DBF file is in your ComTrac directory use the path C Comtrac D DBF and press Enter All the qualifying files will appear in a Pick Box Select the proper file and press Enter A prompt box will appear with the month and year in it as the default
117. ng the Control key and the Yes key will delete everything in the field 15 Enter the first 2 4 characters of the customer s last name Press enter and select the proper customer from the drop down window showing all your customers in alphabetical order 16 Now you re at the Title field Enter the first few characters of the title press enter and select the proper title from the drop down window 17 If your customer wants this title every time it s solicited and if they only want one copy of the book go ahead and press PageDown to exit the order record Press Yes to save changes 18 If your customer wants a single issue or a range of issues enter the starting issue number in the first Issue field Press Enter and it should re display with leading zeroes Eg Page 81 0003 The same value should appear in the ending Issue field If the order is for a single issue and for 1 copy press PageDown 19 If the order is for a range of issues enter the last issue in the ending Issue field with leading zeroes Eg 0010 That s it Page 82 8 34 Website Downloading Files to Your PC The ComTrac website is found at www comtrac net and contains general information about services that we provide our customers articles and various files of interest to our users If you want to download the latest version of ComTrac or POS select the What s New menu option The first time you select this option in
118. nsistently selling out of this book in the first second or occasionally third week of its cycle period that s usually your cue to increase your order by 1 2 copies Continue nudging your order quantities up each issue until you begin to have 1 2 extra copies Then drop the order quantity down 1 2 copies and wait for future events 8 26 2 8 Lengthening Sell Through for Small Count Titles If you have consistently sold through by week two for a small count title and the time required to sell through is beginning to lengthen you should take this as a warning that customer interest in this item is beginning to drop ou can spot this kind of trend visually when you order the book through ComTrac Train yourself to look for lengthening sell through periods when multiple cycle sheets are on the screen during the ordering process 8 26 3 Subscriber Management Issues Comics retailers traditionally offer Subscription Services to their customers The original reasons for offering this service were attracting new large customers and to simplify the monthly comics order Providing Subscription Services is an expensive process The retailer must take Subscriber orders collate them monthly as part of the ordering process figure out which customers are to receive products every New Comics Day etc etc Besides these problems the rate of Subscribers failing to pick up products which they ve ordered has increased in recent years just at the time where com
119. ntam Master Comrinors a etie nr iste EES Se ee oe tero en eate Ee De dois Maintain Common Bak Issue Maintain Common Bak Iss Inventory sss ses see see see se eee Maintaim S T S L EE N RE OE EE enn Enter New Bak ie e OE RA r OE EN EO a Enter Bak Sales is A Sous ate Dee Peens ee EE se BOE ee deel du tei ter ast an ER sees TransiCnx Bak id EE N EE ED he DE SE EE aset edet GE edere te EUR Barcode Labels EE GE Meter edo Ds GR eter RO qur Update Master Bak se ES Pe Ge ee Ee Pe es Price List Want List Orders Module Order Mdse Normal ORME a ed ER EER ER EG Bee beac EEG cd aes sek E ae TT Advance Reordef ie ER on Delete Order an Progress ss ree do setae cs oot sages oe utes oi ee SR seuss ende oe ecb p ERREUR Balance Existing Orders s ie hit tie e e eg e Login Out Mdse EE ER e etat re APO IUE Ie Ot RERO ERO EE OR Manual En MEC AE HEES ER EER EE ER EE N LS Be RES EE EE EE EE EE EE ONE OR OuickL6g with Electronic INVOICE vos dees err ee Seeds O ee petes Transter Mdse er ee ER me ege tet ne SG ee aves ae a cette aS Level Stock Xfer Audit o RE OR ON ETE OE ONE TEE OR OP ONE IG SEA Em Audit Picklist Sum Mula Order TT Load Zap Forms erste eee huss ds Order Form Report EE EE OE EE EG Maintain FOTM EE EE N EE EE EK EE ORT OE asta Assign Codes RE EE EE OR EO OE EE EE RR Inventory Level Report eie se sncecgceds ee Se eed Ne seeks eee epe ARE Ge eee quee ee ee Ge bee ese eee
120. o Free Lunches The price that you pay for company wide ordering is that while you are far more likely to order correctly at the company level you are going to have unplanned deficits or surpluses at the stores This means you are going to have to transfer merchandise from store to store There s never a free lunch If you don t want lots of unsold product at each store you re going to have to move product from store to store within your company The cost of transport is a lot less than absorbing the cost of unsold product 8 27 4 8 Company Wide Ordering amp POS Company wide ordering is most efficient when paired with Point of Sale POS registers at each store At the end of every day the central office knows what the inventory status is across the entire company and can generate transfers etc at will Without POS the central office is dependent on store managers initiating transfers and can only log in transfers after they occur a much less efficient practice Page 74 8 28 Quarterly ComTrac Tasks 8 28 1 Make Quarterly Sales Report Create Specialty sales report Analyze product sales to determine whether to increase or shrink representation Specialty Option 1 8 28 2 Create Back Issue Want List Create want list before attending conventions etc Baklssue Option C Option B 8 28 3 Back Issue Inventory List Create catalog of back issues for customers BakIssue Option C Option C 8 28 4 Purge In
121. od of time such as when you are writing your monthly comics order you can let your store staff modify the in store subscriber folder data What you need to do is use the Mass Export feature in the store copy of ComTrac to update your Home PC with their subscriber data The command structure is Reserves I Upload Download Files Enter the Import and Export file paths in the dialogue box Select B Mass Export to write all your subscriber files to diskette Then take the transfer diskette to your Home PC and go through the same command path except that you would select A Mass Import to bring the transferred data back to your Home PC If you have been updating your Home PC with fresh Store PC subscriber folder data just use the ComTrac Backup Restore commands to create an update data disk for the Store PC from your Home PC You don t need to use Mass Export Import as the regular Backup Restore commands will bring over all your subscriber folder information along with your other data Page 65 8 24 2 Moving Data Including POS Data The key to successful data manipulations with POS and ComTrac is to designate one PC as the Master PC and enforce the rule This means that all data flows downhill from your off site or home PC to the store PC The only exception to this would be subscriber folder data which can go uphill from the store to the home PC via mass export And of course your daily POS sales files go to your home PC for inventory updates
122. of the same club 8 21 1 Preparing in ComTrac Each Customer in ComTrac s Reserves Customer file must have a Subscriber Type code assigned to them if you want to implement a club membership scheme Sub Type Sub Type is the field label l in store subscriber M M mail order subscriber L L mailing list entry Membership Type Membership Type is the field label Blank Blank is the default legal value for this field a basic subscriber Be sure to enter the discount value if they are to get a specific discount S S subscriber V V VIP member P P Platinum member Discount Enter a subscriber discount for regular subscribers who aren t members Resale Enter a resale number for customers who are wholesale customers POS will read the value and know that they are supposed to receive the wholesale price for selected merchandise regardless of their member status 8 21 2 Configuring POS for Club Membership Go to the Options Menu and select Store Info In the Store Info configuration screen you will see a check box labeled Use Dept Sub Discount Either tab to the box and press the spacebar to select it it click on it with your mouse This enables the varying levels of club discounts stored in your POS Department Table Page 61 8 22 Monthly ComTrac Tasks There are quite a few tasks which fall into the once monthly category Not all of them are mandatory
123. osit box or the equivalent 2 Dept Sales Department Sales should be generated on a daily weekly and monthly basis Depending on your accounting program and practices you can update your general ledger for departmental sales on either a daily or weekly basis If you are a smaller business weekly updates can work well If you are a larger business daily updates are more appropriate for cash management purposes Generating Department Sales for a month or even a quarter is best used in preparing sales analyses 3 Sales Tax by Dept The comments for Dept Sales apply equally to Sales Tax by Department 4 Subscriber Bonus Points You should generate this report on a daily weekly or monthly basis If you are a small store generating the report on a weekly basis is best If you are a larger operation generating the report on a daily basis is preferable This report tells you how many unredeemed bonus points are held by your customers We recommend that you keep a record in a spreadsheet or data management program with the following information Store code if you have multiple stores Date use the first day of the week if you are storing data on a weekly basis Unredeemed Bonus Points from this report Qty of Bonus Points Redeemed in period 5 Time Clock Your Time Clock report can be generated on a daily basis but most retailers will want to generate it at the end of their week for payroll purposes Page 40 8 7 2 Balance D
124. ove UP through your directory structure Save as type an Files y Cancel A When you get to the level which has your ComTrac directory click on the comtrac directory name which will show in the larger box which shows the contents of the level you are at Now you can click on the Save button and your download file will go right into the ComTrac directory We also make documentation available to users on our website You can either review the information on the screen or download it directly to your printer by clicking on the appropriate item on your screen The documentation for ComTrac 2 x is available in printer friendly format for example Page 83 8 35 Weekly Tasks Some weekly tasks are really semi weekly tasks that is they are performed several times each week Ordering specialty sideline products in high volume comics shops are an example of that 8 35 1 Weekly Comics Sequence Non POS Users 8 35 1 1 Make Count Form Generate manual count form on Comics Count Day New Comics Option D 8 35 1 2 Update Comics Sales Enter manual comics counts New Comics Option C 8 35 1 3 Stale Comics Report Identify comics that should be pulled and haven t New Comics Option G 8 35 1 4 Out of Stock Report Identify new comics which are out of stock Be sure to transfer or reorder out of stock titles New Comics Option H 8 35 1 5 Re Order Comics Re order fast selling or out of stock comics O
125. ppear Across the top of the ComTrac Properties window you will see some Tabs These Tabs are labeled General Dates Program Font Memory Screen and Misc Click on the Program Tab then click on the Advanced button The Advanced Program Settings window will appear Click on the checkbox labeled MS DOS mode An AX should appear next to MS DOS mode and some additional options will be enabled Now click on Specify a new MS DOS configuration The two small text areas labeled CONFIG SYS for MS DOS mode and Autoexec Bat for MS DOS mode will now be enabled Click the mouse in the CONFIG SYS area below the line that says Device C WINDOWS Himem Sys The text cursor should now be flashing below that line Type the following DEVICE C WINDOWS EMM386 EXE then click the OK button 9 You will be returned to the ComTrac Properties window Click the OK button That s all there is to it Isn t Windows easy If you completed steps 1 through 9 when you click on the ComTrac shortcut you will be warned that This program is set to run in MS DOS mode blah blah blah Click on the Yes button and Windows will restart in MS DOS mode and run ComTrac When you shut down ComTrac your computer will restart and Windows will reload If you only did steps 1 through 3 ComTrac will start under Windows If the window in which ComTrac is running doesn t fill the screen press Alt Enter and the window will switch to Full Screen mode This should get you started
126. put a checkmark to the left of the selected item If you want to get rid of a checkmark put the highlight bar on the item and press spacebar or plus key When you exit the selection window ComTrac will put your chosen Genre code into all the items which you checkmarked Repeat as needed Page 49 8 14 Getting ComTrac Started If you are a new ComTrac user getting ComTrac and Point of Sale POS up and running may seem to be an intimidating process If we break the process down into manageable pieces it will go a lot faster and easier 8 14 1 The Basics for ComTrac and POS Here are the basics for installing configuring and initializing ComTrac and POS on your PC 8 14 1 1 Install ComTrac Install ComTrac on your PC and call our office for your unlock codes Don t install POS yet You have work to do in ComTrac before you install POS 8 14 1 2 The Store Table Go to Utilities A Maintain Tables A Folder Tables A Store Table and create an entry for your store in the Store Table Press A for Add and enter an alpha numeric store code do not start the code with a number and a short name that describes the store or location If you want to track merchandise in your back room or warehouse this is a good time to enter a second code such as WARE or BACK 8 14 1 3 The Department Table Then go to Utilities A Maintain Tables B Ordering Tables C Dept Code File and create all the basic department codes that you want
127. r initial logging in 2 Select B Perform Jobs A UpdateNew Arrivals 3 Select Yes when prompted whether to continue updating new arrivals 4 A window will appear with a number of titles in alphabetical order 5 Go through the window arrow up or down page up or down and mark all titles which have arrived in this week s shipment with a checkmark by pressing the PLUS key while the highlight bar is on them Deselect items by pressing the PLUS key again 6 When you have checkmarked all the new items press the ENTER key to exit the window 7 Select Yes when prompted whether to actually exit from the window 8 In a few seconds ComTrac will have flagged every order in the Reserves Order file which matches the checkmarked titles Select so as to return to the Reserves menu 10 Select P Previous Menu C Do Reports B Res Title Pull Report 11 Most ComTrac users select A Title by Store first This generates a list showing how many units of each title should be set aside for subscribers in total The remainder can be set aside for immediate distribution to the newsstand racks Generally select Arrived Titles when running this report to save paper Select All Titles if you are running a spot check on subscription orders before generating your monthly Diamond comics order 12 You then need to generate a list of specific customers and titles Most ComTrac users prefer to generate their list Title by Customer This prints a l
128. rac If you forgot to do it you can force ComTrac to do it as a separate action We recommend that you let ComTrac do most of the heavy lifting when you use this tool Let ComTrac pre mark all comics products for you and otherwise just press the Enter key when you re in the data windows to accept what ComTrac does 3 2 11 Use Special Interest If you use Special Interest codes to group customers for marketing or ordering purposes the two tools located here will be very useful to you 3 2 11 1 Assign Special Interest Codes While you can assign special interest codes to customers one at a time as you enter customers into ComTrac what do you do when you create a new code This tool lets you select a special interest code from the Special Interest table found in Utilities Maintain Tables Folder Table and assign it to customers through a drop down window The drop down window will display all your customers Checkmark each customer who you want to receive this special interest code by pressing SPACEBAR or the PLUS key Then exit the window and ComTrac will update all their entries 3 2 11 2 Generate Orders When you select this option ComTrac checks the Special Interest Code file and will return you to the menu if there are no entries with a special interest code If there are codes it will step you through every code in the file asking whether you want to create orders based on this code If you say Yes you ll be asked to checkmark the
129. rate bar code labels on any Epson Compatible dot matrix printer or Hewlett Packard laser printer or inkjet printer with Printer Control Levels 4 or 5 ComTrac also supports two commercial bar code label printers You cannot generate bar code labels from your receipt printer 8 12 1 Epson Compatible Dot Matrix Printers Most ComTrac users create their own bar code labels from an Epson compatible dot matrix printer on one up mailing labels 5 000 to a box These labels are 3 1 2 wide and 15 16 high We have found that these labels are the least expensive to generate in terms of consumables 3 per label plus printer ribbons and last a long time ComTrac puts the bar code on the label along with an alpha numeric representation of the label code The description price and grade if used are also printed on the label An additional advantage of this method is that very few labels are wasted Make sure that your dot matrix printer is Epson compatible and that it has a functioning tractor feed 8 12 2 Hewlett Packard Laser or Inkjet Printers A number of ComTrac users generate bar code labels on HP compatible laser printers or inkjet printers using Avery 5160 mailing labels 30 to a page These labels are smaller than the mailing label barcodes generated on Epson compatible and look more professional They are more expensive to generate 8 per label plus the cost of toner not including wasted labels ComTrac puts the bar code on the label
130. rawer If you want you can balance each cashier s till individually or you can balance the till just for the entire day See your POS User Manual for details on Balancing Drawers 8 7 3 Export Sales History File Click on Files Export Files select the the day s entry and export to diskette or directory depending on whether you are using one or more PCs See your POS User Manual for details 8 7 4 Log Out We recommend that you always log out of POS and turn off your PC overnight unless you are planning to work on your PC from a remote location using PC AnyWhere or an equivalent program Page 41 8 8 Evaluating Store Performance Ratios Many of our software users have asked us what store performance indicators we recommend that they generate using ComTrac information Here are some useful indicators 8 8 1 Number of Subscribers Keep track of the number of subscribers that you have on the books every month along with their average order size in both pieces of merchandise and gross un discounted sales value You should also calculate the average value of a piece of merchandise which they order This information shows how stable your comics sales are how much discount you are giving up to attract this business etc 8 8 2 Customer Transactions per Week Keep track of the number of customer transactions each store experiences every week Changes in this figure indicate fundamental changes in a store s financial base The
131. rders Option A Option C 8 35 1 6 Transfer Comics Transfer low or out of stock comics to from stores Orders Option C Option 1 8 35 2 Weekly Comics Sequence POS Users The weekly comics sequence for POS users isn t much different from the weekly sequence for non POS users The only real difference is the number of comics you ll need to manually count every week With POS you only need to count remaining quantities of books which are being pulled this week so you can generate a shrinkage report 8 35 2 1 Make Count Form Generate manual count form on Comics Count Day This tells you which books are due to be pulled You also need to count books which are due to be pulled if you want to calculate your comics shrink rate New Comics Option D 8 35 2 2 Update Comics Sales Enter manual comics counts for books which are being pulled New Comics Option C 8 35 2 3 Stale Comics Report Identify comics that should be pulled and haven t New Comics Option G Page 84 8 35 2 4 Out of Stock Report Generate this report several times each week Identify new comics which are out of stock Transfer or reorder out of stock titles New Comics Option H 8 35 2 5 Re Order Comics Re order fast selling or out of stock comics Orders Option A Option C 8 35 2 6 Transfer Comics Transfer low or out of stock comics to from stores Orders Option C Option 1 8 35 3 Weekly Subscriber Sequence 8 35 3 1 Maintain Title Product Fi
132. re X days late The second version is a Form Letter which you can send to late customers telling them that they have late rentals and need to return them to the store 3 3 6 4 Rental Item Report This report generates a complete rental history for an individual item It is most useful when an item has been damaged and you need to trace its rental history so you can determine who damaged it 3 3 6 5 Bar Code Labels This tool allows you to generate barcode labels for rental products Page 14 3 4 Special Orders Special Orders are one time orders for non comics products We are able to tie each special order in to the unique solicitation number that Diamond uses in their monthly order forms This gives increased accuracy and reduces the amount of time processing the orders 3 4 1 Add Special Order When you add a special order for a customer you must have created an entry for the customer in the Reserves Customer file and must have imported the appropriate Diamond order form When you enter the order you ll have to select the customer from a drop down window and then select the right order form from another drop down window and then select the item from a drop down window that displays the contents of the order form 3 4 2 Pick Special Orders There are three ways to pick special orders on New Comics Day You can use Diamond s weekly electronic invoice through Orders Login Mdse you can use the electronic invoice through Reserves Speci
133. s are age appropriate or not at the register Discount Enter the percent discount for the customer It ll be applied automatically when you ring up the customer s subscriber products at the register Mem Optional Most users don t use this field Sp Interest Special Interest codes are used for target marketing and to deal with special ordering requests All Marvel 1s See Utilities Maintain Tables Folder Tables Special Interest for more details 3 1 3 Order File The Order File contains subscription orders for comics products There are two kinds of subscriber orders standing and one time A standing order for a product is ordered every time the product is solicited from Diamond One time orders are ordered only once normally for a single issue or for a range of issues Orders for non comic products are best entered in the Special Orders file The most important fields in the Order File are Cust Code When entering the first order of a group for a customer erase any value in the field and enter the first 2 4 characters of the customer s last name press Enter and select the customer from a drop down window All the subsequent order entries will come up with their customer code as the default Title Desc Enter the first few characters of the title and press Enter then select the product from a drop down window Start Issue _ If this is a one time order enter the starting issue number and press Enter Page 7 End
134. sfully and focus just on non updated items This means you could have a file that updated 100 successfully and import it another time without damaging your inventory This tool also updates a file named PROFHIST DBF which is used by the Profitability Report to generate profitability reports for a range of dates departments or stores Page 31 7 12 Handscan Update A few ComTrac users have portable inventory scanners This tool can import an ASCII delimited file produced by the Inventory Scanner software and use that information to update ComTrac inventory The import file must contain the following information in this order barcode quantity and have a DOS filename 1 8 characters in length with an extension This tool produces a variance or shrinkage report that provides you with a listing of all items where the inventoried quantity does not match the quantity stored in the computer along with the retail and wholesale value of the merchandise variance 7 13 DOS Shell This tool will drop you into the DOS command line in the ComTrac folder Most DOS commands can be executed while in DOS Shell Type EXIT and press Enter to exit DOS Shell and return to ComTrac Page 32 8 0 Special Topics 8 1 Adding a DOS Printer to ComTrac Go to ComTrac Utilities Option E Set Printer When the screen clears press the INSERT key to bring up the large menu on the right of the screen Go to Manufacturer of your new printer and select th
135. st field If you select Create ComTrac asks you for a little more information such as the ISBN number which isn t used by 98 of all users Ignore the Rental fields The catalog number is the Diamond part or another distributor s part Sale price is obvious the tax flag should be Y if the item is taxeable N if not When the screen changes enter the total quantity available in the first field including the quantity which arrived today If this is a totally new item this figure will be just what arrived in today s shipment If you re in transition the value would be what s on the shelf plus what has arrived today The Minimum level is the minimum reorder level If you want to keep this item in stock this field should have a value of at least 1 In that way when you go out of stock it ll appear in your reorder files Last of all enter the wholesale cost of the item It ll appear when the inventory screen disappears When you re done logging in your merchandise press Escape You can print your logged in Page 59 merchandise to screen file or printer If your printer is able to print ComTrac barcodes as an epson compatible 24 pin printer or an HP compatible laserjet go ahead and do so Otherwise skip it Page 60 8 21 Membership Clubs in ComTrac Many comics and game retailers organize membership clubs in order to stimulate sales ComTrac allows you to have three different clubs or three different levels
136. stomer Rental di OE AE e RI epe Ie i D edet N ep ete EO Te EE Customer Transactions per Week teineen sepes riere EEES ethernet trennen ee entr Ge race ee ee ee eee Customers File Cycle Sheet Report Cycling New Comics Daily ComTrac Tasks sales Manually and POS sees RARE ipe ERU ER IE 69 74 73 34 11 62 43 86 31 10 85 87 50 34 17 35 49 28 13 14 42 36 38 Data from Office Home to Store Data from Store to Office Home Delete Order in Progress Dept CodeFile oe ee ett Re idee coset t e i e PU n e EE AE Dept Sales iier eem Do R ports nete tet OR E ERE REC ER D ER EB E CR P ERE N Doing an Initial Comics Inventory tenete deco ri eie RE EER Leere peace dris seca Doing an Initial Specialties Inventory ehe teet dete etie tee rn REIS E B ee eet DOS enl en mei RE DOS Shell ici a DIU ee Dropped Customer File Dropping S bscribers EE EE OE e ta eee ee Ge OE e e NO SE EG Editing Config Sys to Add the Dos Memory Manager sesse see se see se Gee Ge GR ee Ge Ge Ge ee rn ee ee ee Eltron Label Printer End of Day Closing Routine for POS Enter Bak Sales ss Enter Common Sales Enter Departments in Department Table asses seas ee ee aA eene enne nennen eene e E ENSS
137. t iese ese E E ee Se ee ee Ge ee Gee Ge a GR non nn Ge ee Ge ee ee ee ee Generate Orders EE EG RR ic Generate PLU Table De eres Generate Reports Lecce EE EE EE EE costs dus e ae ER OE IG Generate Title by Customer EL AAR ER EO RE EE OES Generate Title by Store Summary sasies eh e ee ses feb is tus Gang ious GEDENK See Re Eee de Ee Eee see tbe Generating Generating Barcodes 1n Com be SE eie eee EO EO tii Gente or Family Codes 5 sce tp OE OK EE OE EK SAA Getting ComTrac Started AAA OE EE EO br prep Hand scan Upd te 3 2 eue ER OE a edet Hewlett Packard Laser or Inkjet Printers eese eese enne ener enne nennen enhn nennen ER TDont Have a Central Warehouse a Saa ra ZZZ oE eere niea ese ee Se Gee ees Ee rein Identifying Growing or Decaying Titles isinsin dhes e se ee ee a E Ge RA E Re GR Re Ge ee ee ee narra ee ee ee Import Diamond Invoice File iese esse es see ee ee ee ee ee ee ee GR ee ee RA ee Re Ge ee ee GR EE E ee ee Import POS Sales HIStory AA EE EE EE RE EE ER EE DO ER Import the Diamond Order Forms iese ses sesse see ee ee Taca Ter ee Ge RA Ge RA SEEE EEE EE TEE ee Ge Ge Ge enne Index Files Dt Com Praca EEA Ea Install POS 42 41 44 10 67 45 27 13 46 86 12 38 40 86 86 47 49 27 50 32 47 73 69 85 38 51 28 50 50 Inventory Info Inventory Level Report EE E
138. t This report generates a list of all comics titles that are past their scheduled pull date and have inventory on the shelf It s used mostly by owners to keep track of what their managers are doing 2 8 Out of Stock Report This report generates a list of all ACTIVE comics titles that have zero quantity in inventory You could use this to help with re orders though given the low level of over printing it s not likely to be very useful This report s main purpose is to identify books in their first week of sales that are out of stock primarily so you can transfer product from one location to another 2 9 Analyze Cmx Sell Through Report This report analyzes your comics sales by groups with each group based on the average number of copies you order Two groups are 1 5 copies and 100 copies The report presents you with detailed information on each group including the average sell through rate which is the key to comics profitability Sell through rates of 90 are profitable sell through rates in the 80 s are marginally profitable and sell through rates below the 80 s are likely to be unprofitable You can filter your comics data by Location Start and Ending dates Publisher Genre or individual Title 2 10 Purge Late Comics Report This tool lets you purge your files of old orders which have not arrived When you use the tool ComTrac asks you for a Purge Date Any books on order that were ordered prior to that date will be purged from
139. t the higher the sales per square foot with ratios in the 250 500 per s f range Very large stores 3 000 s f generally have ratios in the 100 200 per s f range 8 8 6 Sales per Square Foot By Department Divide the total sales for the week for each POS or cash register department by the sales area dedicated to that department to calculate the sales per square foot by department Ratios can range from 2000 per s f for collectible cards to 50 per s f for common back issues 8 8 7 Sales per Employee Hour Worked Divide the total sales for the week by the total number of employee hours scheduled for the store Add in the store s share of any corporate staff The result is an indicator that shows how efficiently you are allocating and managing staff time and how productive your staff is Ratios of 20 or less show an inefficient use of staff time 20 45 are average to average plus values anything over 45 is good Page 42 8 8 8 Cost of Goods Sold Calculate the percent cost of goods sold on an average quarter basis Cost of goods indicates how efficiently you are purchasing and selling goods Cost of goods for a blended comic and game store should be below 60 and the operator should aim for 55 Most comics shops have COGS of 65 or even higher 8 8 9 Inventory Turnover Rate Calculate the average inventory turnover rate on an average quarter basis The turnover rate is an indicator that shows how quickly merchand
140. t the end of each week It will update all your Subscribers Last Pickup Date if they ve picked up their orders and will generate a report listing everyone who is more than X weeks late in picking up orders Reserves Option C Option F 8 35 4 Weekly Specialties Sequence 8 35 4 1 Create Inventory Form If you are a non POS user and are using ComTrac to control your Specialties you will have to take a physical countf merchandise Create this form to take your count Specialty Option H 8 35 4 2 Enter Specialty Sales If you are anon POS user and are using ComTrac to control your Specialty inventory enter your Specialties sales or inventory count here Specialty Option C 8 35 4 3 Log in New SPC Mdse You must let ComTrac know when you ve received new shipments of Specialty merchandise Orders Option B 8 35 4 4 Make Out Stock Report You may want to identify out of stock situations before you write orders so you can transfer merchandise Transferring stock usually is preferable to ordering additional merchandise Specialty Option D 8 35 4 5 Transfer Specialties If store managers have already transferred stock update your inventory to reflect the changes Initiate any transfers here Orders Option C Option 4 Page 86 8 35 4 6 Create Transfer List If you have initiated transfers you must create a Transfer List Orders Option E Picklist 8 35 4 7 Order Specialties Depending on your store s merchan
141. ta conversion you ll have to make sure that the current Diamond monthly order form has been imported into ComTrac See the cheat sheet on Importing the Diamond Order Form Once you ve imported the current Diamond order form go to Reserves B Perform Jobs J Xfer Cmx gt Res This tool lets you select a Diamond order form and use it to update your Reserve Title File Follow the prompts on the screen When you are done go to Reserves A Maintain Files A Reserve Title File and you should find a minimum of 300 items in the file We suggest when you use Option J that you let ComTrac pre checkmark all the items in the Diamond order form which are comics When the large display window appears that shows all the items in the order form exit the form without any manual edting and let ComTrac do the heavy lifting 8 33 4 Now you are ready to enter Customer Orders If you have paper documentation showing which customers get an individual title that is a list showing a title such as X Men followed by all the customers who get the book you can use StartSub to enter this data more quickly than manually entering it through ComTrac Otherwise use the following instructions 12 Go to Reserves A Maintain Files C Maintain Orders 13 Press A dd to add an order 14 Select the proper store code If you ve been working with the file the most recently used store code will automatically go into this field Hint Pressi
142. tered minimum information about each Subscriber load StartSub You have two options in creating your Subscriber orders If you have your orders on paper by Title that is all the customers who have ordered that title choose the Customer by Title option If you have your orders on paper by Customer that is all the titles that a specific customer has ordered choose the Title by Customer option If you have recorded your Subscriber orders both ways we suggest using Customer by Title as the easiest and quickest way to use StartSub You don t have to enter all your customer orders in one session Be sure to make a note where you ve broken off work so that you don t accidentally create duplicate entries for a customer Remember that we use the Plus key to checkmark customers or titles in the selection window If you don t checkmark any customers or titles you won t create any orders in the Subscriber Order file Page 79 8 33 Subscribers Get Them Up and Running We always tell our users that getting their Subscription or Hold Service module up and running is the best way to get started in using ComTrac It doesn t take long to get going and the positive results will be almost immediate If we haven t had electronic subscription data which we converted into ComTrac format for you here s what to do 8 33 1 Enter Your Store Code into ComTrac Before you start entering customers or orders make sure that you have an entry for
143. their system since only DBF and DBT files are used Be sure to label your diskettes so you know which one is Disk 1 Disk 2 etc if you need multiple disks When at home go into ComTrac and go to Exit System B Restore Backup Put Disk 1 into your diskette drive and start the backup process If you have multiple diskettes you ll be asked to put the last disk in your backup series into the diskette drive Then you ll be asked to put Disk 1 back in If you only have one backup disk you ll still be prompted for first and last disks Just keep your single backup disk in the drive and press the Enter key as needed When you are finished with the backup go to Utilities C Index Files and select All files Now you re ready to begin work When you are finished working at home go to Exit System A Create Backup on your home PC to create a transfer file that will go to your Store PC Back at the store go to Exit System B Restore Backup and follow the same procedure to restore your data and reindex your files Cautions If possible don t let your employees make changes on the Store PC when you are working at home If they do make changes they ll be overwritten when you restore from your Home PC If employees need to record changes have them fill out forms not scraps of paper which can be entered into the Store PC when you have restored your Home PC s data If you must keep your data at home for an extended peri
144. therwise pull the book and adjust the Pull Date and Cycle Weeks values so you don t get 100 sell through figures accidentally Cycle Select the option and enter the quantity on the Count Form for that title and issue Then press the lt Enter gt key ComTrac will update the Cycle Sheet entry for that issue and title If the title is past its scheduled pull date ComTrac will ask you if the title is being pulled from the Newsstand If you reply with lt Y gt es the entry will be marked as having been pulled If you reply with lt N gt o the title will continue to be treated as active and will continue to appear on your cycle sheet worksheets that you generate for your stores ComTrac will continue to nag you whether the title has been pulled whenever you cycle it Find You ll be prompted to enter the Title name and issue You may choose to enter just part of the title and leave the issue prompt space empty ComTrac will jump to the nearest match to your entry and open a select window showing the nearest matches to the prompt This is a quick way of moving through the Comics Cycle file in big jumps Next This command will move the highlight bar to the next comics entry on the screen Previous This command will move the highlight bar to the previous entry on the screen Return When you are finished choose this option If you need to exit and you haven t finished your work be sure to enter the proper cycle date when you use the function
145. tive so they don t appear on your Pick Lists and aren t included in any order totals 3 1 6 Rental File The Rental File contains information on every product that you rent whether it s a video or a game cartridge or DVD You must have an entry in the Specialties file for a product before you can add it into the Rental File When you add an item to the Rental File it is taken out of the saleable inventory in Specialties and is assigned a unique identifier in the Rental File for tracking purposes You may have multiple copies of the same tape or game and need to know which unit has been rented by whom When you Add a new item to the Rental File enter the first few characters of the Title Description and press Enter then select the proper item from a drop down window Page 8 3 2 Perform Jobs Menu There are a number of jobs that are involved in using and maintaining a subscriber service We ve grouped them in a single menu for convenience 3 2 1 Update New Arrivals If you have subscribers you need to process each week s shipment from Diamond so your customers get they books they ordered If you ve imported your electronic weekly invoice through Orders Login Mdse QuickLog and then updated your arrivals most of your subscriber books have been pre checkmarked already Because Diamond has problems in consistently spelling their product descriptions you still need to go to this tool and review the books that have come in If you don t us
146. to begin with You must enter two mandatory department codes NC for New Comics and MISC for Miscellaneous Non Comics products We suggest that you not get too detailed in your department code breakdowns until you have some experience as to what information you want to extract from ComTrac and POS It s easier to break down a larger department such as GAMES into multiple sub departments than to combine them after the fact 8 14 1 4 Install POS Now that you have a Store Table and Department Code Table go ahead and install POS onto your PC You ll have to call us for an unlock code when you do so Be sure to read the chapter in the POS User Manual on Getting Started 8 14 1 5 Create Export ComTrac Data Once you ve got POS installed and configured as per the instructions in the POS User Manual go back to ComTrac Go to Utilities l Create PLU and create both the initial PLU Table which will be empty and the Department Table The next time you load POS it will automatically seek out and update itself for these files so long as you checked the automatic update box in the Options area of POS when you installed and configured it Note At this point you are ready to start using POS as a stand alone cash register 8 16 2 Subscribers and Customers Most ComTrac users find that entering their Subscribers and Subscriber orders into ComTrac is the next most appropriate step Go to the chapter in this User Manual on Subscribers G
147. tral computer If you are using a central computer you will want to refresh your subscriber files for your satellite stores before ordering Reserves Option B Option I 8 22 2 4 Order Comics Write your comics distributor orders for comics products which are going to cycle sheet If you are a non POS user or don t track Specialties separately you can record your Specialty order quantities from this ordering section Orders Option A Option A 8 22 2 5 Order Specialties If you track Specialties or are a POS user you will want to order Specialty products from this section of ComTrac so you can access your inventory data Orders Option A Option B 8 22 2 6 Balance Orders If you have multiple stores you may want to conducta final review of your store level orders before you post them and create or update inventory records This tool will show you what Page 62 you ve ordered for all your stores for the same item from the same distributor and will let you change the quantities at each store Orders Option E 8 22 2 7 Sum Multi Order If you have multiple stores and each manager ordered separately or if you preferred to write individual orders rather than use the Company wide ordering option you can create a summary of all your orders You can print the summary and also send it to file for electronic submittal to the distributor Order Option G 8 22 3 Miscellaneous Monthly Tasks 8 22 3 1 Make Stale Mdse Report
148. try in the Common Back Issue Cycle file for every unit you enter in the Qty field So if you enter 6 in the Qty field ComTrac will create six entries in the Common Back Issue Cycle file 5 5 Enter Bak Sales This tool is no longer available in ComTrac If you are using POS you will have automatic updates if you are tracking sales manually it s too laborious to do Page 19 5 6 Trans Cmx gt Bak You will always have some new comics left over at the end of the week when you pull stale comics off the rack to make room for new issues At the end of the comics sales update process in the New Comics module you ll be asked whether you want to Zap the Transfer File If you answer with NO data for every comic which had any units left will be stored in the Comics to Back Issue transfer file When you use this tool ComTrac will ask you to choose a generic product to transfer comics into If you have an item like 1 back issues in Specialties you can select it and then checkmark all the comics that you want moved into that slot Repeat the process till all the left over comics have been processes into generic inventory entries What s left will come up on your screen one item at a time and you can modify the data before these items are transferred into the High Value collectibles file 5 7 Barcode Labels You can create barcode labels for any back issue item Select the items you want to create barcode labels for by checkmarking them
149. ts into whether a book has been over or under ordered Depending on your distributor ship date and when you prefer to count your comics inventory every week your first week may very well be less than seven days in length Common First Week lengths are 2 4 days ComTrac knows how to allow for this adjustment POS users really don t have to worry about this although the convention is useful when analyzing sales If you have 90 100 sell through in the first week you have probably under ordered the book and need to think about finding more copies for your customers If you have less than 25 35 sell through in the first week you have probably over ordered the book and will be stuck with extra copies which may never sell in your Back Issue bins The First Week Comics Sales Report will give you information about your comics sales by individual title including each titles performance over the three previous issues so you can spot any changes in behavior Page 67 NOTE If you choose the Short Cycle Option you ll get First Week Sales and Last Week Inventory data for every comics title You will only have to count books that are in the first and last week of their assigned cycle periods 8 26 2 3 Last Week Inventory Your last week inventory count tells you what your Sell Through Rate was Your total sell through measures how effectively you ordered and promoted each title and is a measure of profitability If you ar
150. ue to the way computers calculate dates Do You Want Specific Weeks Highlighted Answer NO unless you manually cycle on non continous weeks such as the Ist 3rd and last week of the cycle Do You Order by Genre Answer NO unless you display your comics by Genre Family and want your Count Form to be sorted by Genre Family Title and Issue 2 5 Transfer Cmx to Spc You may find that you have inadvertantly routed some products to the Comics Module instead of the Specialties Module Or you may want to track sales for the first five weeks of a product and then transfer it to the Specialties Module for routine re ordering When you use this tool a window will appear with every comics product displayed in it Tag the items you want to transfer by pressing the SPACEBAR or PLUS key for a highlighted item You ll see a checkmark to the left of the product indicating that it s been selected for transfer To untag an item move the highlight bar to it and press SPACEBAR or PLUS key again and the checkmark will disappear When you exit the window ComTrac will prompt you to specify certain information such as the new department code for each transferred item 2 6 Cycle Sheet Report ComTrac users once relied heavily on the Cycle Sheet Report but with the passage of time most users need to use it only rarely If you do need to print out detailed cycle sheet information for one or more titles use this tool Page 4 2 7 Stale Comics Repor
151. ure to use leading zeroes Current Mdse Seq ComTrac increments this number every time you add a new product If you need to set it to a higher number be sure to use leading zeroes Current Bak Seq ComTrac increments this number every time you add a new common back issue to the Back Issue Cycle file If you need to set it to a higher number be sure to use leading zeroes 7 5 Set Printers This tool allows you to select printers from a pre defined list of printer attributes When the screen clears you ll see a short list of printers on the left side of the screen If your printer isn t on this list press the INSERT key to see a large list of printers on the right side of the screen Scroll down this large list to find your printer Printers are listed by Manufacturer and Model Number Many modern windows printers will not be found on this list If your printer isn t in the large list choose the nearest model number Note Many modern windows printers don t support DOS applications or do a poor job of printing from DOS applications Ifso you can send your reports to file and print them from your word processing package or from WordPad using a monotype font such as Courier 9 7 7 Purge Files The purge files option allows to remove groups of entries from ComTrac when they are no longer needed Purge Comics Cycle Sheets This tool prompts you for a purge date All comics cycle sheets with a Start Date before the purge dat
152. useful for people who keep separate books for each location in their business 6 5 2 Audit This report generates a detailed list of all transfers To and From for a given range of dates for every location in your system Page 24 6 5 3 Picklist This report generates a merchandise Pick List for all Office Initiated transfers for a range of dates If you ve made a number of transfers and want to create a picking list for the warehouse crew which also doubles as an invoice for the receiving manager use this report 6 6 Sum Multi Order This tool allows you to take individual store orders for the same Distributor and combine them into a single mega order This is commonly used by multi store comics retailers who want to write individual store orders and combine them for transmission to Diamond 6 7 Load Zap Forms Diamond order forms must be imported into ComTrac before you can use them See Importing the Monthly Diamond Order Form for a detailed key by key set of instructions You can also remove old order forms from ComTrac by using the Zap command 6 8 Order Form Report This report allows you to print out the contents of your Master Order Form file As this file is likely to be quite large a single Diamond order has 2 500 3 500 items in it we don t recommend doing this or if you must do it route the output to a text file 6 9 Maintain Form In the unlikely event that you need to make changes to an order form once it has been
153. ventory We recommend that ComTrac users purge their comics cycle sheet file every quarter once they have accumulated a year s data This tool lets you purge all or selected items Utilities Option F Page 75 8 29 Retrieving a Posted ComTrac Order Sometimes you will need to retrieve your ComTrac order to Diamond Comic Dist after it has been posted ComTrac automatically makes a backup of your most recent posted order to Diamond which can be retrieved and worked with Go to your ComTrac DOS prompt Enter the command dir storecode DIAM enter eg SIDIAM You should see at least one file with an ARC extension Check the date stamp on the file to make sure that it s compatible with the order you want Copy the file to a DBF format eg copy S1DIAM ARC S1DIAM DBF enter Go into ComTrac Go to Utilities A Maintain Tables Ordering Tables Open Orders HON RE P E 8 Look for an entry that matches your recently posted order For example if you are recovering the August 1998 order pack look for August 1998 in the Order Form Description field and DIAM and S1 in the distributor and store fields 9 If you don t see it use the add command to create an entry for your deleted order form 10 Now go to Orders Order Merchandise Order Comics Manual Store and select the Existing order form option select the order from the selection window and go on with your work DO NOT POST THIS ORDER AGAIN WHEN YOU RE DO
154. who belonged in the group you d use this tool Be sure to look at Reserves Perform Jobs Work with Special Interest Codes to see how you can easily assign a Special Interest Code to groups of customers 3 2 4 5 Subscriber Telephone E mail list This report produces a list of customer s telephone numbers and e mail addresses 3 2 4 6 Find Expiring Subscribers This report produces a list of subscribers whose membership expires within a given date range Most users don t use time sensitive memberships any more but if you do keep the membership information in Reserves Customers current 3 2 5 List Cust Title Orders You will need to produce a list of which books have been ordered by a single customer or which customers have ordered an individual book Special orders aren t included in these lists A special feature of the Customer by Title list is that you can sort the output by the date on which each customer first ordered the title If you are short shipped on a book you can print out this list and use it to fairly allocate product to customers Draw a line through the list before the first customer who didn t receive their order and if you can get more copies use this sheet to make sure they get what they ordered Page 10 3 2 6 ZAP Customer Title Don t delete customers from the Customer file or titles from the Title file Use this tool to remove a customer and all their orders from ComTrac or use the tool to remove a Title and al
155. y elsewhere in the file Next Moves you to the NEXT entry in the file Previous Moves you to the PREVIOUS entry in the file Return Returns you to the PREVIOUS menu or press the Escape key Exit Exits you from ComTrac to DOS or your Windows desktop Page 1 In all data maintenance screens you can exit directly from the screen by pressing the PageDown key once or twice Pressing the Escape key will normally return you to the previous menu and abandon any changes you were making When you select the FIND command you will be prompted to enter search values If you leave the search value prompts empty and press PageDown or press Enter to exit them a drop down data window will appear You can move through these data windows by pressing the UP or DOWN arrow keys the PAGE UP or PAGE DOWN keys or by SEARCHING If you want to SEARCH within a drop down data window press the key and respond to the search value prompts Wild cards do not work with these prompts If you want to find a title for example which starts with the letters X just enter those characters and exit the prompt fields The data window will redisplay beginning at the first occurence of these values 1 3 Report Destinations All ComTrac reports except for a few wide reports can be routed to Screen Printer or File Reports that are routed to Screen are one way you cannot backup and re examine a previous page If you route a report to file you must specify a 1 8 c
156. ycle File entries When you select the New Comics C Update Comics Sales option you will be prompted to choose whether you are using MANUAL or POS 8 4 1 Manual Updating If you are using the Manual Updating option you ll be prompted to enter the CYCLE DATE The next cycle date as defined by your entries in Set System Values will appear at the prompt as a default value If that date is the date you cycled comics inventory press the lt Enter gt key and continue Otherwise enter the proper date on which you cycled your comics ComTrac will validate the data against the LogIn date you specified in Set System Values Select the store you are entering comics inventory data for and select the Manual option when you choose between Manual and POS The work area on the screen will clear and a new menu will appear and the screen will fill with title and issue data for the store you chose The titles on the screen will follow the same order as the cycle sheet form that you are working with You will be prompted to choose whether to initialize your cycling quantities to Zero or to the quantity for the Last Cycle Count In general we advise selecting LAST CYCLE COUNT There will be a pause while ComTrac prepares a working file The Comics Cycle Update menu has five options They are Remove If you want to pull a book before its scheduled Pull Date use this option It will prompt you for the ending quantity zero or o

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