News From Extreme Point of Sale, Inc.

Previewing The Enterprise Cloud Solution

We are closing in on our release of Cloud support for our enterprise users. Once this is in place, enterprise users will have the ability to migrate to the Cloud solution. New Enterprise users will be able to choose between the new Cloud solution or the legacy solution. To take advantage of the Cloud solution, all stores in the chain will have to migrate their databases. There will be pros and cons to migrating to Cloud, and whether it makes sense for your chain will depend on what your specific priorities are.

The biggest benefits to Cloud are in simplicity, reduction in technical issues and flexibility of access. With the Cloud solution, you will be able to manage your corporate database through the ThunderPOS website. The website has been designed to support all major browsers on computers, tablets and phones. This will allow an owner to check in on things real-time from any mobile device, without the need to install an app, and to make additions or changes to inventory, customers, etc at his convenience from any location. The other major benefit you'll see is simplicity. You will no longer need to install and maintain a corporate database or a Corp Server or Corp Client windows application. Communication from each store's POS registers will be with the Cloud database, not a corporate location. Synchronization between stores will occur behind the scenes in the Cloud and should be much more reliable. Router or IP address changes in any of your locations won't have the potential to impact your enterprise system.

At this time, however, there are some restrictions on features with the Cloud service. The cloud service is not currently compatible with any of the vendor databases - BRE, VGPC, AEC, etc. Support for some of these databases is planned, but not all. It also is not currently compatible with BigCommerce or Amazon integrations, so if this is currently important to your chain, you won't want to switch just yet. The most important aspect of using a Cloud solution is that it requires a solid and stable Internet connection at all of your stores. If you do not feel comfortable that your Internet provider can give you consistent service, you should probably stay with the on-site solution.

There are a number of small differences in how the Cloud enterprise solution will work versus the current Corp Server/Store Server based solution. The most significant is in Store Transfers. For the Cloud approach, all three steps - creating the transfer, taking the stock from the sending store, and putting the stock into the receiving store can be done entirely the site. This is one step vs three steps in the on-site solution. Additionally, pulling stock out of the sending store and adding it to the receiving store is now a single click. This is because you can now edit those quantities up until they are pulled from the sending store, and if there is an error at that point you can undo the transfer. We believe this will be a great improvement in the store transfers process.

A store transfer in progress

Credit Card Options

We've gotten a few questions lately about the options that are available for processing credit cards with the system, and about older methods that are no longer recommended.

First, there is the Express Manual option. This simply covers all scenarios where you are using an external method, whatever that might be, to process credit cards. Under these, the credit tender type gets treated a lot like a check would - we assume that whatever amount you put in has been approved through your external system.

Next, there are currently available integrations. These are the methods currently available to new customers who want an integrated solution, where the point of sale will send the transaction to the credit card device and there is no risk of the cashier inputting the amount incorrectly on the separate device.

One of these is forthcoming in the next update, the recently announced integration with Genius by Cayan. We also have integrations with EVO Payments and Worldpay, both currently using the VX805 terminals. All of these solutions support the EMV chip cards, and also support contactless payments. Worldpay and Genius both also offer alternative gift card support to the built-in in store gift cards, to those interested. We are happy to put customers in touch with any of these companies, but we do not get involved in the negotiations of rates or any other fine details of the business relationship between the processors and the stores, other than the technical.

There are also older integrations that we have that did not use EMV readers. These have not been available to new accounts for some time, but are in differing states. Users of ExtremePOS Payment should upgrade as soon as possible to get compliant once again. Those on Transsentry may be able to hold off a little longer. However, in either case you are likely paying fees and taking risks by not using a chip reading solution, and in the long run you will both save money and inspire more confidence from your customers utilizing an EMV solution.

The current version of the software, available for supported users, is 5.4.4. To get back on support, or to upgrade to phone support from email support, contact sales at (919) 387-7597 x100. If you are not on phone support, and you call, a response will be sent to the email address on file. You can also buy a support incident from our website.

As a reminder to users of Windows 7, Microsoft's support of this version of Windows has ended as of January 14th, 2020. We highly recommend getting onto Windows 8.1 or 10 if you are on Windows 7. Versions of ExtremePOS, Musicware, Praiz, and ThunderPOS 4.0 and above should all be compatible with Windows 10; versions before 4.0 were sunset for support as of the end of 2019.

If you are on a version older than 4.0 that has been sunset, you can contact sales for information on purchasing an update.