announcement It's beginning to look a lot like... exciting! 

Yes there is a package coming to you.  A physical package containing a small thank you gift for being a Coreware customer.   Most of you probably received a notice in your email, for that we apologize, being inexperienced shippers we didn't click the do not notify button - way for us to ruin the surprise 😜. We will at least surprise you by not tell you up front what's coming.

At least you will have a fun reason to check your mail in the  next few days.  it's going by snail mail so we have no idea how long it will take to reach you, but we hope you enjoy our small token of appreciation.

improvement Customer Facing Display Improvements

Several improvements have been made to the customer facing display.  You can see the changes by looking at the store configuration.  There is a new section that you can jump to called Customer Facing Display.

You can now do the following:

- Set the background color
- Set the background color of the logo
- Specify whether to show the customer's name
- Choose whether to show the customer's email address and phone number
- Specify whether to show customer loyalty point
- Choose whether to show the customer's account balance

We just published a video on our Youtube channel, please make sure you subscribe to our channel for lots of tips and training videos.

You can download the coreSTORE Android app by clicking this link:

new feature Remove Checks from Register

You can now remove checks from the register during the day.

Deliveries

new feature Order Notes!

Easily add notes to delivery orders.  You can do it from the main screen where the deliveries are listed or you can also add notes when working on an order.

new feature Mark Items as Drop Shipped

When creating a shipment you can now indicate that the items were drop shipped which will not update your local inventory.

new feature New Tax Report

A new sales tax report was developed thanks to Maxon Shooting Sports who sponsored this new feature. There are times that customers ask for features and we don't feel those features would necessarily benefit everyone, so we either delay the feature request or simply do not add it to our to do list. In these situations we do give the customer a choice to pay to have the feature developed. We normally develop about 90% of the requests that we receive at no additional charges.

The new tax report will show the sales tax report driven by the payments made.  The system will calculate the effective tax rate on the transactions and will proportionally show the tax due based on the payments made on the transactions.

improvement Margin Calculation

In the PO/Receiving Screen, the Margin field was actually reflecting the mark-up rather than the margin.  This has been updated to properly show margin.

new feature Application Refresh

There is now a configuration option that allows you to specify how often to refresh the screen if there has been no activity.  This setting is based on minutes. You will find this setting under Application Settings section.

new feature Bound Book Waiting Time

Another thank you to Maxon Shooting for sponsoring this feature.  A new configuration option has been added under the Bound Book section - Waiting Period (in hours).  This option when set will prevent a salesperson from mistakenly completing a sale transaction prior to the period of time passing.  There is a new security setting that allows specific employees to be authorized to overwrite this option in the event the purchaser of the firearm is not required to wait. This option of course varies by state and does not apply to many states.

Customers

new feature You can now search for duplicate customers by email address or name.

Suppliers

new feature Similar to the customers merge function, we have now added the ability to merge suppliers in the event that you have duplicates.

Label Printing

improvement Two new replacement fields added: {items.type_name} and {items.manufacturer_name} .  This will assist your favorite chief label maker to improve your labels even more.

Delivery Screen

new feature Added navigation links to the delivery detail screen to easily move between orders.

new feature Added the ability to specify the serial numbers of an item when creating a shipment.  This will allow completing orders without having to access them in the sales screen.

new feature When all items are being shipped in the order, a prompt will be displayed asking the user if they want to mark the order complete.

fix Fixed an issue when importing internet orders and the UPC was missing.

fix Fixed a bug that at times was causing inventory to be reduced twice when creating a shipment.

Bound Book & 4473 

improvement In Manage 4473, the Section D/E buttons will enable or disable based on a new set of criteria after Section C has been completed.

• If 4437 Date is today and NICS status = PROCEED:

  D = enabled, E = enabled

• 4473 Date before today OR NICS status = DELAYED AND Section D has not been signed yet:     

  D = enabled, E = disabled     

• 4473 Date before today OR NICS status = DELAYED AND Section D has just been signed -- (this is possible if the FFL got the customer signature first before changing the NICS status):

  D = enabled, E = enabled   
  

improvement 4473 Kiosk - When kiosk page opens, focus on the code entry field.

new feature In Store Config there are two new configuration options in the Bound Book section that will allow you to disable the requirement at the kiosk of entering an email address and phone number. Dean, we hope we made your day.

fix Fixed duplicate customer/person bugs   

fix Fixed bug where reopening Section B would not show the phone number formatted properly.

And if you've scrolled this far (and lets face it today this was not very far), we might as well lighten the mood.  Hope you all have a wonderful day!

exciting! new feature Order Notifications via SMS or Email!

Access the statuses directly from the Deliveries screen:

Once there you can now set the color of the status and the notification rules.  You can also add your own statuses.

exciting! new feature View the items ordered directly on the main delivery screen without having to open the order!

new feature Added an option under Column Configuration in Detailed Inventory Report and Summary Inventory Report to show the item's tags in the report.

improvement The save button in the Delivery Screen now floats, so you don't have to scroll down forever to see it.

fix Fixed the issue for coreFORCE users where the item name was getting cut off if it had a double quote in the name.

fix Receipt for a sale with no customer associated to the sale was showing a previous transaction's customer.

fix When using a customer facing display, if the customer signed the display the signature was not showing on the receipt.

HOLD THE PRESSES - WE CAN HAVE A CUSTOMER FACING DISPLAY???????

Absolutely, you can use a tablet or computer as a customer facing display.  And here is a good article explaining how to set it up and how it works.

https://help.coreware.com/help-center-search?i=15477

fix Corrected the spelling error in the bound book report.  Thank you Dayna with Armed Concepts for catching that very subtle spelling error.

It's hard to believe that we are past mid February and nearing March.  Today's update has some good nuggets that hopefully will help everyone out.  We made a lot of progress in improving our delivery and pickup screen which will help all of you that are processing internet orders.   As always we appreciate all the feedback we are receiving from everyone.  We have a few things in the works that will be popping up in March which will be extremely exciting, so stay tuned! In the meantime, grab a cup of mojo and read on.

NOTES & MORE NOTES

new feature You already could enter line item notes and order comments, well we added the ability to add order notes.  Notes can be added directly from the sale screen, the suspended sales screen and the delivery & pickup screen (both the front screen and detailed one).  

Notes can be marked as Internal only so they will not print on the receipt.  Notes are dated, time stamped and the system will clearly display who entered those notes.  Just tap that little notes icon and start typing away.  

coreFORCE users will be happy to know that we import all the notes that are on an existing internet order.

DELIVERIES & PICKUPS

new featureIf the order is an internet order it will clearly show in the details screen for the order and you can click on the internet order number to pull up the order on your web site.   This is a fantastic time saver if you need to research or look into the details of the internet order.

RECEIPTS

improvement The internet order number will now print below the sale id for any orders that were imported from your web site.

fix Fixed a few issues related to printing logos on receipts.

REPORTS

improvement Sales summary now includes a checkbox to include subcategories in the report.

Looking for a fully customizable web site with enterprise level functionality?   Leading retailers use coreFORCE including the largest retailers and distributors in the Shooting Sports industry.   We just added some cool features, you can read our latest coreFORCE What's New here:

https://whatsnew.coreware.com/coreforce-news-1ovO7u

LABEL PRINTING

improvement New Label Replacement Fields

Added new replacement fields to print the value of any item attribute.  The format would be:

{ATTRIBUTENAME:item_attribute_value}

You would replace ATTRIBUTENAME with the actual attribute name.  For example if you had an attribute defined called color then you would simply enter:

{COLOR:item_attribute_value}

fix When editing labels and making multiple changes at a time, if you don't hit "Save" each time (which adds unnecessary steps/time), it won't save and then the user can accidentally click somewhere outside of the box resulting in losing all of the changes that were just made. You are welcome Rachael 😜.

Miscellaneous

improvement coreFORCE inventory bulk sync (from the store config) will mimic what is synced to the website when saving the item in the items screen.

improvement Field titles updated on the suspended sales screen.

improvement Merging customers will merge their store account balance (it will add the balances together to create a new balance).

improvement The items screen will now display the hidden system items like shipping fees.  This will allow the user to easily change fields on this item (for example making shipping a taxable item)

fix Delivery screen will now properly show the company name in the ship to information.

Bound Book & 4473  Updates

new feature 4473 Kiosk - Prevent spacebar from being entered when pulling up a 4473 using keyboard entry rather than a scanner.  A scanner at the kiosk is still the best and quickest way to pull up the 4473.

new feature 4473 Kiosk - Improved Signature Capture Options

Added ability to switch between available signature input methods on the fly through a dropdown control on Section B (to support kiosks where sig input device may fail so the customer can use 'touchscreen' instead).  

improvement 4473 Kiosk - You can hit Enter to trigger Continue button 

fix Duplicate customer records will no longer be created if the 4473 originated as a sale.

fix A new layaway will no longer create a pending disposition.

fix Pickup orders will no longer dispose to the store, they will properly dispose to the individual.

fix 4473 Kiosk - Fixed bug where if you tried to save Section B without a Race checked, after getting the error dialog picking a race and trying to save would bring up the same error dialog. 

fix 4473 Kiosk - Fixed situation where a customer entered an email address in the kiosk that was different from the email address captured at the sale which causing a duplicate Customer record to be created.              

fix 3310 Fixed bug where the 'check for multi-gun alerts on disposition' was calculating the '5 day' date range based on the assumption that the disposition date is always 'today'; it now calculates based on the actual date of disposition entered into the Boundbook record.        ⁃    

fix Fixed bug where 'Transfer Date' column in PDF was not matching the same column when viewed in the 3310 entry screen    

fix The "License State" field was not auto-populating in the Bound Book Acquisition page when firearms are entered as a Trade-In.

We have been super busy adding a ton of features to coreFORCE, but what good does it do if we don't share these updates with you.   coreSTORE users are used to our almost weekly updates and now it's time for our coreFORCE users to enjoy the same benefits.

exciting! Forms can now accept paymentsimprovement 

You can now build a custom form that allows you to accept payment on the form. This is a new feature that is extremely helpful for all different types of scenarios. Some examples might be:

• Create a form to sell a product that requires additional information from the customer.
• Setup a service or product that is dynamically priced based on what values the user enters into the form.
• Provide customers with a 1 click shopping experience for a specific item or service

We recorded a video that shows you the process of creating a form that accepts payment.

new feature Help Desk Feedback

improvement Help Desk Quick Tip

Are you using the Help Desk module for your customers?   Just a quick tip. In Help Desk you can click ctl-ctl and you will see a popup that allows you to enter a ticket number.  This is a very quick way to view any help desk ticket.

tip When Will a Strike-Through Price be Displayed?

For our Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers we have updated how the integration works with gun.deals.  This is in response to an increase in pricing by gun.deals which now prices the monthly fee based on the number of products that are being uploaded from your web site.  We have also added the ability to define different shipping charges by department.   Watch this video to learn more about our updated integration with gun.deals.

The integration with Gun Broker has been improved tremendously.  We've been told by one of the top 5 Gun Broker dealers that our latest enhancements have lead us to have the best Gun Broker integration.  Be on the lookout for a video but in the meantime a few highlights to our integration:

Listing Templates

You can now create listing templates which allows you to setup templates for different product types and different listing types.  This will save you a tremendous amount of time when creating a listing for a Gun Broker product.

Importing Gun Broker Orders

Gun Broker orders can be imported at any time (prior to this update they had to be completed on Gun Broker).  You can allow your customers to checkout on your web site or on Gun Broker.  If you allow customers to checkout on your web site you can easily send them a direct link to checkout.   This provides an opportunity for your customer to add items to their order and also visit your site directly, it will also save you some money on fees.  

If payments are made on Gunbroker the payments will be imported with the order.

Importing Listings from a Spreadsheet

You can now import product listings directly from a spreadsheet. This is a huge time saver.   All you need to specify in the spreadsheet are the following fields, make sure the column names match exactly:

upc_code 
gunbroker_listing_template_code
product_category_code
category_identifier
scheduled_starting_date 
fixed_price
quantity

Updated Listing Features

We added all of the listing features that we could think of including premium listing features. Let us know if we missed any.  

Batch Import and Email

We added the ability to quickly import all of your orders into coreFORCE instead of doing it one by one.  We also provided the ability to bulk email all the customers at once.

Winner of our $100 Amazon Card:  Eric from East Valley Tactical, a long term great customer and one who tends to read our often length and wordy updates.   This should be enough for a pair of reading glasses.

important We wanted to apologize to all of our Ammoready customers for the problems that you experienced this week.   Thanks to the assistance provided by Ammoready we were able to FINALLY isolate the issue and get it resolved.  I want to stress to all of our customers that bugs and problems are not something we enjoy having and they cause us as much aggravation, time and money as they cause you.  

The problem experienced this week with the integration was due to an issue related to a third party library that we were using. It was not easy to track it down, but we finally found and squashed the bug which was causing severe stress to all involved. We appreciate everyone's patience and I feel confident that this issue will not happen again, furthermore, we are seeing some significant speed improvements when looking up the Ammoready catalog, which speaks very strongly to the need of continuing to eliminate layers of what I call the Onion!  You will be hearing me talk a lot about the onion these coming few months so stay tuned.

And now lets proceed to the rest of the update!

new feature For those of you who own a firearms store, when you search for an FFL we are now communicating directly with FFL eZ Check, this should provide a better experience when searching for an FFL.  

Validate FFL

Wherever there is an FFL# you can now click the validate FFL button and it will validate the FFL using FFL eZ Check.

exciting! Hit the Ctl key twice when you are in the sales screen and watch the magic happen 😁.

Delivery Screen

improvement You can now add the company name to the main delivery screen and the company name will also be shown in the detailed screen.  You can also search for an order using the company name.

Store Configuration

new feature Sales Section: Warn User If Item Is Not Available
This option will alert the user on the sales screen if the total quantity available of an item (quantity on hand less quantity committed) is 0 or less than 0.

new feature Receiving Screen: Require Transfer Out Transaction # 
This option will force a user to enter a valid transfer out transaction number when entering a transfer in.

fix Fixed syncing inventory with Ammoready so that all item information is synced.

fix When merging customers loyalty points will be added together.

fix Orders from your web site will not mark the customer as tax exempt but instead will mark the order as tax exempt while keeping the customer taxable.

fix Email receipts will now include the correct terms based on the transaction type.

For all you programming geeks out there we made some changes to our API.

Sale method
The sale method should properly report the payment amount collected for a transaction, which will be the amount paid less the change due.

Items method
The items method will now return the quantity on order and quantity committed to sales.

Web Hooks
Look on the store config screen (scroll wayyyyy down).  We have added web hooks for various events that occur in coreSTORE.

new feature exciting! You can now notify technicians via SMS (text) or Email when they are assigned to a work order.   You can also notify your customer when there is a status change to the work order.

Technician Notifications

In Store Config under the Work Orders section you can specify whether to notify a technician via email or via SMS (text).  in order to use the SMS features you must sign up to www.twilio.com and then enter your credentials on the Locations screen.

Use the Jump To drop down at the top of the store config to quickly jump to any section on the configuration screen.

Once you setup notifications, any time a technician is assigned to a work order the technician assigned to the ticket will be notified.

Customer Notifications

Customers can be notified when the status of a work order has been changed.  For each work order status, you can choose whether you want the customer to be notified and how they are notified (via text or email or both).

Another day another coreSTORE update (I think I've used that line before).

improvement Show open orders 

The receiving screen has been enhanced to show all open orders that contain the item being received, rather than just Special Orders.  Layaways, estimates, and work orders will not be included. 

new feature Added Layaway to the Sale Type Drop Down

You can now start a new layaway just like you do a Special Order, Work Order or Estimate.

new feature Transfer In and Transfer Out Inventory

If you have multiple locations, transferring inventory is common practice.  coreSTORE already had the ability to transfer inventory between stores, but the transfer took place immediately.   This update will now allow you to create a Transfer Out and when the transferee store receives the items they would create a Transfer In transaction.

new feature New SMS Configuration Option

A new configuration option has been added to allow sending an SMS message every time a transaction is suspended.

improvement Default Is ECommerce based On Category

You can now specify whether by default items being added to a specific category will default to display on your web site or not.  You can still change the item individually but this is new checkbox will help prevent mistakes and save time.   So if you have a category of items that you don't want to be displayed on the web site, you can uncheck that option.  

IMPORTANT This checkbox only applies when adding a new item, or changing an item's category.  it will not go back and uncheck all the items at once, because you may have a category that by default you don't want those items to show up on the web, but there may be a few items that are the exception, so we wouldn't want to automatically go through and change those.

improvement Export Items

Exporting items will now include the image paths for an item.  Multiple images will be separated with a | symbol.

improvement Added MAP and List Price to the Column Selection field in the items screen.

improvement Added new price fields

On the sales screen when pulling up the item details, the list price and minimum selling price have been added to the screen.

improvement Shogo Integration

Shogo is a product that integrates coreSTORE with Quickbooks.  We have improved the integration into Shogo and they will be updating their system to address some of the integration issues related to suspended transactions.  We just updated our side, so it will take a few days for Shogo to update their end, so please be patient with them.  If you want to learn more about Shogo please visit:  www.shogo.io.

fix coreFORCE orders should flow through to coreSTORE without having to open them again.

fix Fixed a bug on the suspended sales screen which was hiding the search bar if an employee didn't have delete permissions.

fix Fixed the Sales report to show COGS as a negative when exporting the report to Excel.

Bound Book & 4473

improvement Receiving Date for Acquisition

When you change the receiving date, the acquisition date of a firearm in the bound book will be set to the new date.

improvement Added labels for birth city and birth state to Section C.

improvement Enhanced signature validation to help prevent saving a signature that was not done properly.

improvement Modified 'Background Check' dropdown in Store Config to include the associated state.  We now support TN background check and FL background check will be supported soon.

fix Fixed bug where Gender and Type of Identification on form 3310.4 were not being automatically set properly. 

fix Fixed bug where 'number of firearms' on 4473 was set to the word 'zero' because the initial NICS Check was DENIED (because no firearms can be transferred when DENIED), but a later NICS check was changed PROCEED and it didn't update the 4473 to say 'one' 

fix Fixed bug where the place of birth match didn't occur with NICS check.

fix Fixed bug where 3310 alerts were not taking Location into account so false 3310s could be generated. 

fix Fixed bug where 3310 was giving error dialog when trying to make the PDF.

fix Fixed problem where 3310 form wouldn't open because there was a parenthesis in the Caliber of one of the firearms.

fix Fixed bug where 3310.12 was mistakenly generated for shotguns.

fix Fixed bug where "IO" in the First Name field on Section B was being saved, but wasn't showing up in the 4473 or when reopening Section B.

fix Fixed bug in Section C where the instructions for Q27 were not coming up.

fix Fixed bug where a *customer's* FFL was being looked at to determine whether a 3310 alert should be generated, when in fact it should be the disposition FFL of the boundbook record.

fix Fixed bug where the search for previous firearm purchases was not taking into account the location of the disposition.  This relates to the 3310 logic.

fix Fixed bug where a 3310 alert was being considered if multiple firearms were sold at the same time but did not check if the "sale creates pending disposition" Store Config option had been selected. Now it doesn't bother checking for a 3310 alert at all if "pending dispositions" is turned on. 

In a world full of non-stop bad news we will try to bring you some semblance of good news and share with you our latest small update.

improvement All Reports

This applies to all reports and will be exciting for those of you who use Excel.  The reports will now export numeric data as numeric values in Excel.   You won't have to go to each column and reformat the column, which means you can easily apply formulas on columns and individual cells.

new feature Detailed Employee Report

In the detailed employee report if you choose to print All the employees in the report the system will download a zip file containing an excel sheet for each employee.  This is a

improvement Sales Commission Report Export

When exporting the sales commission report to Excel we removed all the extra headings making it easier to manipulate.

improvement Bound Book Searching

You can now search the bound book using the NICS approval code, or the 4473 transaction number.

IMPROVEMENT Bound Book Sold Date

The Sold Date field can now be selected to be displayed in the bound book screen (front screen), and it will also be exported when exporting the bound book to Excel.

Happy New Year Everyone.  We are excited that a new year is upon us and our goal is to keep improving, fixing, enhancing our software offerings, and again many of our changes are driven by customer requests.  Special shout out to Jeff Botelho with MTS who provided us with some great requests and suggestions.   He is the winner of the first 2021 $100 Amazon Coreware Gift Card!

Our goal is to always make your lives easier with every update that we make.  So this is the first update of the year and we hope you are as excited as we are.  

We have big improvements planned for 2021 with a lot of exciting updates so please make sure to pay attention to What's New! And you can even subscribe to our What's New feed so it will get delivered right to your inbox. We really appreciate all the comments that you post we don't always know who made the post but we really appreciate the feedback.  

Deliveries

Did you know that you can print shipping labels directly out of coreSTORE?  Sign up to www.easypost.com and enter your API information in the Store Config.  We have a video that walks you through deliveries that you can watch.

new feature Void/Refund a Shipping Label

You can now void/refund a shipping label directly from coreSTORE (no need to visit Easypost to do it).

new feature Support for HAZMAT & Other Shipping Conditions

 We've added some features to our shipping label production:

- Ability to add handling instructions
- Flag the shipment for "Additional Handling"
- Flag the shipment to hold for pickup
- Support for shipping HAZMAT (Hazardous Materials)
- Flag the shipment if it contains Alcohol (it's a good thing to sell these days, it's ESSENTIAL!)

Items Screen

new feature Search Subcategories

A great suggestion from our friends at Centennial Gun Club.   On the items screen when you search by category you can now include all the subcategories under that category.  By checking the subcategory box your results will include all items that belong directly to that category or any item that is in a subcategory related to that category (whether it's a child, grandchild or great-grandchild).

improvement Added Fields to Item Import

Added additional field support to the item import including the consignment fields, fee pricing fields and rental fields.

Reports

improvement Payment Detail Report

The Payment Detail Report will now include the authorization code, card type (if available), and gateway transaction id which will help all of you with daily reconciliation.

Labels

new feature Replacement Formula

This is for those of you who are courageous enough to venture into the land of ZPL programming and have worked hard to customize your labels.   Those of you who have no idea what I'm referring to, just submit a support ticket if you'd like us to customize your labels.  

Added support for using a Replacement formula:

{replacementfield,REPLACE,1,USED,NEW} 

In the example above the replacement field would be replaced with the word "USED" if the value of the replacement field is 1 or with "NEW" if it's not.

improvement Detailed Receiving Report

The Detailed Receiving report now includes the item's UPC and Item id (part number).

Bound Book 

We know you may not sell guns so skip this section if you don't.   Shout out to Jeff 

new feature Barrel & Finish
You can now maintain the barrel and finish in the bound book.  If you set these up as facets in your items screen (under the Attributes tab), then these fields will flow from your item to the bound book.  

The barrel and finish can also be included on the bound book report if your state or picky but super nice and helpful atf agent wants to see those on the report.

new feature Custom Fields Enhancement

The bound book custom fields can now be included in the grid on the main bound book screen, and will also be exported when you choose to export the bound book (using the ... menu)

new feature Capture Images Directly

Click the camera icon on the Acquisition or Disposition File Section to capture an image directly using your webcam and/or tablet/smartphone camera.

improvement Serial Numbers by Location

We have taken the first steps in tracking serial numbers by location within the inventory module.  Obviously we already do this in the bound book itself.  This means that when you select a serial number from the drop down list it will only show the serial numbers available at the location you are in (you really shouldn't use the lookup, this is why scanners were invented, "ALWAYS scan when you can" famous quote by ejw).

fix There was an issue with printing checks via Checkeeper.  Wait, you didn't know you can create checks using coreSTORE?  And you can choose to print the check or have it printed and mailed for you (for $1.25 which includes postage).  Check out Checkeeper at www.checkeeper.com!  When you sign up you will be issued an API key that you can enter into the Store Configuration and VIOLA, you can now produce a check to a supplier directly from the supplier screen.