In this month's newsletter, we're going over a new vendor database and some improvements to the way searching is done in the program coming soon.
AEC Enhanced Database
We have added a new version of the AEC database for record stores, this one compatible with cloud users. Access to this database is controlled by AEC, so you'll need to have an official AEC representative contact us to let us know you're allowed access.

This database contains over a million products, primarily records but with some movies and other things, and does not require updating on your end. If you have access, you can either set it as a quick importing database or search it through the AEC Enhanced option under the vendor databases tab.

Please note that the searches in AEC can be made exact matches only for title, artist, and brand by surrounding them in quotes. Searching artist for Live will include anything that contains the word live, like Oliver; if you search for "Live", on the other hand, you'll just get the band Live.

This version of the database adds a few fields over what was in the previous version of the AEC database, most notably the ability to import pictures and track data on records. When searching, you can also view the images as in the screenshot above by checking or unchecking the box for show images at the bottom of the screen.
After finding the item you want, or after quick importing, you'll be able to modify the fields that are brought in from the database. As usual, defaults will apply to those fields AEC does not provide.

We hope that customers will find this useful.
Searching Enhancements
Throughout ThunderPOS for Windows and ThunderPOS.Net, we are making enhancements to searching in a few ways we think customers will find helpful.

First, in places where you can do a quick search such as on the items screen, you can now do searches for phrases that include spaces by surrounding them in quotes. For instance, searching for "Mario 2" NES will now look for the exact phrase Mario 2, where before it would have searched for each part separately and found, for example, Mario Galaxy 2. You can still search the old way by simply not including the quotes.
Additionally, on advanced searches throughout the program, you can now mark that fields that are normally searched by contains are going to be made as exact matches by surrounding them with quotes. For items, as an example, this is Name, Description, Description 2, and Manufacturer.

This can help with finding items where the name or description is a very short phrase to avoid them getting lost with many other items.

Finally, for phone numbers, searches will now ignore parenthesis, dashes, and spaces. This should allow for more easily finding customers regardless of different phone number formatting that is being used.
The current version of the software, available for supported users, is 22.6.1. 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.

Windows 11 has been released. The current version of ThunderPOS does work with it. However, certain older printer models, such as some versions of the Bixolon SRP-770II, do not. Older versions of ThunderPOS and ExtremePOS have not been tested with Windows 11 and we do not guarantee functionality.

If you are on a version older than 4.0 that has been sunset, you can contact sales for information on purchasing an update. All versions prior to ThunderPOS 5.0 will be sunset from support on December 31st, 2022.

We will be closed Monday, July 4th for Independence Day.