New Help Desk and Chat Tools

Carrie Despaux walks you through our new help desk system which we are very excited about, and hopefully, you are too.  Make sure to subscribe to our Youtube Channel, we are going to be publishing more videos in this last quarter of the year.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MENUS?????

Yes I am shouting because that might be what you are doing, but PLEASE do not panic, all the menus are still there.  As you may have seen there is a nice tour that shows you how to navigate around.   Not much has changed but it was time to put things in a more logical order and quite frankly the accordion-style menus were a bit of a  pain, It was time to rip that band-aid off!

Store Config is No Longer Store Config!

Take a deep breath - it's now called SETTINGS.  And yes it's more streamlined and looks FANTASTIC.  At least we think it does but I'm pretty sure you will too.

Guided Tours - Help When You Need It

We only have two so far, but we plan on many more over the next few months, so keep an eye out for the big question mark, and don't be afraid to click it!

Leave Feedback

Ideas, New Feature Requests? Leave us feedback or vote on existing requests.  This is where some great ideas originate and the more votes that an idea has the more attention we will give it.

Sale Screen

Fulfill the entire order with one click
If you enter special orders then this might be a good time saver for you! We have now made the column header Qty To Fulfill clickable.  So when you are fulfilling an order which has many line items, you can click the magic link and it will default all the quantities to fulfill to the quantity that was ordered.  Very convenient!

Edit Sales
When editing a sales transaction you can now change the salesperson.

Require Login Option By Register
You can now set each register to require login after every sale.  This is useful if you want only specific registers to require login after each sale.  Visit the Locations screen to see this new setting:

Button Font Size
You can now change the font size of the text that shows up on the Sale Screen buttons (referred to as our grid). Visit the Settings screen under Company  and click the Grid Options.  You can modify several options when it comes to the buttons on the sales screen.

Company & Locations

Taxes & Fees

Set up location-specific taxes, or create special fees and/or taxes based on either the category of an item or an item tag.  In the screenshot below we demonstrate how to set up an automatic background check fee, anytime someone purchases an item from the Firearms category.  Click the screenshot below to see an expanded view, good for us old folks that are fighting the need for reading glasses.

Inventory

Price Rule Enhancements
You can now specify the number of days between uses of a coupon.  For example, if you wanted to limit the use of a coupon to each customer to every 30 days.  

Location Totals
When looking at an item the locations tab will now show total stats for all locations combined.

Category Screen Enhancement
We now show you the number of items under each category.  This is helpful to see, so you can easily manage your categories.

Work Orders

Work Order Notes
You can now enter Notes on the Work Order and separate notes on the item that is being Repaired.

Work Order Technician Report
We added a new reporting section for our work order module and the first report added to that section is the Work Order Technician Report.  Make sure to scroll all the way down to see this new report section, it's WAY BELOW!  More work order reports will follow.

Search by Serial Number
You can now search for work orders based on the serial number.  This is convenient if you have a repair item that you are not sure which work order it belongs to (work order tag fell off).

Purchasing & Receiving

Discounts
You can now enter a discount on purchase orders and/or receiving transactions.  Discount all line items by a % or discount the entire transaction by a whole amount.

Bound Book & 4473

Bound Book Report Enhancement
You can now choose to print the oldest record first or the oldest record last in the bound book report.

Bound Book Serial Count Enhancement
Added additional columns to the serial count screen to show the caliber, model and manufacturer to more easily identify the serial numbers being counted. Also added these columns to the Not Counted screen.

Destroyed Firearms
Added the ability to mark a firearm as destroyed.

HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYONE!!!!!

A month since the last update and we have been BUSY!   Over 80 tasks ranging in effort, the Coreware team has been hard at work, we hope you enjoy this latest update.  

Less words and more videos will be the goal of this post.  Make sure to click READ MORE there are a lot of updates, new features, enhancements and bug fixes.  

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

Sale Order Processing

new feature You can now fulfill part of an order and leave it open to fulfill the rest at a later date.  To learn more watch the video.

new feature exciting! There are several new features when it comes to order fulfillment, including the ability to allocate inventory to orders.  I'll be making some more videos this coming week, so PLEASE subscribe to our channel.

Click Right Here to Subscribe Now

new feature There is a new store configuration option available that allows you to default Easypost to default to signature or adult signature.

new feature If you have multiple locations you can now transfer orders between locations.

Inventory Improvements

new feature Quickly set your Reorder points and Replenishment Points (mins and maxes) for all locations.

Shipping History

When pulling up a sales order on the sales screen you can now see the full shipment history of an order.  

Customer New Features

new feature A new security option added under the customer section that lets you specify whether the employee can change a customer's price tier.

new feature Added the ability to flag a customer as do not serve.  Watch the video for more information and please subscribe to our Youtube Channel.

new feature Customer and Sale Order Tags. Watch the video to learn how to setup these tags.

Bound Book & 4473

new feature exciting! You can now search for an FFL by Name and Zip Code or just Zip Code.  This is a fantastic feature.  You will see a new button Search for FFL on various screens.

new feature exciting! We have added several features to simplify, streamline and improve the process of selling firearms.  if you own a gun store PLEASE watch this video and PLEASE let us know if you need help switching to our new interface.

new feature You can now process multiple sales orders into a single 4473.  Another good video to watch.

new feature Prevent a Sale from being completed without a 4473. Watch the video to learn more.

new feature Lets spice up that 4473 kiosk.  Watch this video to learn how to customize the 4473 kiosk.

new feature Under Bound Book reports we added a new 4473 report.

new feature You can now transfer Firearm transfers to a different location.   This is done in the firearm transfer screen.  You can transfer multiple transfers at once.

new feature You can setup different waiting periods by location and by firearm type.

announcement We haven't forgotten, but boy do we have a lot to catch up on! ⏳ 

With so much to catch up on, we'll probably break things up a bit over the next few weeks. Some of these features, you may already be aware of, others might be new to you but are worth looking into. Now grab yourself a cup of coreFFEINE ☕ and enjoy the updates. 

Today's Emphasis: EVENTS 📋 (with a few other goodies 🍭  )

new feature exciting! Event Attendance Status & Pass/Fail 

This is a VERY exciting feature as it has been requested for a long time by many of our customers who run classes.

You can get to this page by going to Events & Facilities > Events > Attendee Status. This page gives you several different pieces of functionality in one:

• You now have the ability to mark different attendance statuses for class registrants. You can make your own Event Attendance Statuses, but examples might be "Did Not Attend," "Did Not Successfully Complete," or "Successfully Completed." 
• Additionally, you can utilize this page as a check-in page where instructors can check in students either as they arrive or as the class is beginning with a single click in the box next to their name.
• There is also a link to the order record in which they purchased the class online. If it is blank, this may indicate that the order was paid for in coreSTORE or the registrant was manually added by a staff member (perhaps for family or another staff member). 
• Last, this page has a spot where instructors can write down evaluation notes.

You can set up the different Attendance Statuses by going to Events & Facilities > Events > Attendance Statuses. 

Here, you can create as many or as few statuses as you like.

Attendance Statuses can be tied to certifications... Which brings us to our NEXT new feature!

new feature exciting! Certifications

You can set up your Certification Types by going to Events & Facilities > Events > Certification Types. Certifications can be tied to attendance statuses, or they can also be set manually.

You can also choose whether your certifications expire or not and what classes are required by a user to automatically complete the certification. 

You can see a full list of who has what certifications by going to Contacts > Contact Certifications. 

If you click on a record, you can see the date issued, the expiration date, and any other notes that you may want to add.

Customers will be able to see their certifications and when they expire (if they expire) by going to "My Account".

Users, after obtaining a certificate, will also be able to print certificates of attendance or achievement from their "My Account" page if you give them one.

You can make a particular class require a certification by going to Events & Facilities > Events > Event Types. From here, at the bottom of a selected event type record, you can select which certification(s) are required in order to take a particular class:

PLEASE NOTE: By default, customers will still be able to register for classes that they do not have the certification for. In this case, a warning will pop up to the customer letting them know what certification they will need before they can attend that class. It is important to still allow the customer to register for the class in cases where they are signing up for a series of classes all at once. If a later level class fills up quickly, you don't want them to have to wait several months between taking classes. 

If you need to check this prior to the class, you can run an "Uncertified Registrants Report" by going to Events & Facilities > Events > Uncertified Registrants Report.

You can also run a Certification Expiration Report by going to Events & Facilities > Events > Certification Expiration Report.

new feature Form that registers someone for an Event

Creating a form that registers someone for an event assumes that the event will not require payment. 

A form could be created to sign someone up for an event, paid or unpaid, but they will be registered without payment. If you have a paid event, the customer will need to pay via coreSTORE at the time of the event. If you go this route, it would be best to have no pre-paid options  available so that, to avoid confusion, every customer who shows up to the event will be unpaid and require payment. 

This is useful if you need to have someone fill out a waiver at the time of signing up for the event (Think along the lines of free events such as a 5k run or a firearm assembly class). 

If you have need of this functionality, we can assist you in creating this form. 

improvement Re-signing up for Old Memberships

We found that if someone re-signed up for an old membership, rather than starting a new membership of the same type, it was advancing their old expiration date.

We made an enhancement so that if someone's old membership has been inactive or expired for a longer period of time, when they sign up for a new membership, it will simply create a new contact subscription record.

improvement Subscription Report Enhancements

To the subscription report, we now added phone number as a column, whether their associated recurring payment record "Requires Attention" (meaning payment failed and needs to be corrected), and the contact ID is now clickable.

new feature Auto-Generated Membership Numbers

Membership numbers in coreFORCE have previously been able to be stored as Contact Identifiers. You now have the ability to create a Contact Identifier that will auto-generate a number. If you choose to auto-generate, then every contact will have a value for this contact identifier. This will not overwrite membership numbers that were already input and admin users can ALWAYS edit these. 

improvement Create Events Page

Event Name is Now Auto-filled when the Event Type is selected. This can still be manually edited from this point if needed. 

Price Per Person is now Auto-filled when the Event Type is selected IF a default price is set directly in the Event Type Record.

This has an added benefit of auto-checking "Enable Shopping Cart Checkout" which will save you a click if you are making lots of events. 

new feature Ability to Combine Classes

If you have multiple classes that all use the same room at the same time, you can put a total amount of attendees on all the classes together. For example, if you can't allow 40 people to take each class because the room only supports 40 people total. This is important if you'd like to allow 1 class to have more registrants than another, especially if one class isn't filling up as much as others. 

To utilize this page, Go to Events & Facilities > Events > Combine Events. Using the dropdown, select the events you would like to combine and enter how many total attendees should be allowed for all of these events combined. 

We have so much more to share but this ends this week's update. 

DO NOT PANIC, WE JUST MOVED IT! 

We have some other news too so keep on reading, it's another update and lots of goodies in this one.  A lot of it I covered in our latest coreCAST!  Make sure to subscribe to our Youtube channel and just click below to watch the video (there is a BIG REVEAL in this video):

new feature exciting! New Interface Updates

It's better, it's faster, it's more pleasing on the eye and just more appealing.  Just watch our coreCAST above to learn more about it.  Try it, we think you will like it!

new feature Historical Valuation Report

The historical valuation report can be found under Reports->Inventory Reports.  This report allows you to print a valuation report for a previous date in time.

new feature Hide System Suspended Types

You can now hide any of the built in suspended types (if your business doesn't use them might as well hide them.  Just visit the Store Config and go to the Suspended Sales section.  You will see a new checkbox that allows you to hide anh of the built in suspended types.

new feature Employee Sales Report

If you are using coreSTORE to track employee time this report may be a good one to look at, it will analyze your total sales by employee and also display the average $ sold per work hour.  Try it you may gain some insight.  The report is right under Reports-> Employees.

improvement Select All Checkbox on Reports

The Select All checkbox now acts as a toggle to quickly select or unselect all options in a report.  Seems minor, but will 100% save some headaches.

improvement Hide Delete Button From Voided Sales

Duh...obviously if a sale is already voided, you cannot void it again...

new feature Easy way to handle Cash Payments

Click the cash payment type and you will be presented with this quick cash entry screen.  Just enter the bills and coins you received from the customer.

improvement Bound Book Filter on Used Only

improvement Export the Bound Book Table

You can now export the table results to Excel (you already can export the entire bound book, but this is a helpful feature if you just want to export the data on the screen with only the columns that are shown on the screen.

bug fixes And as always various bug fixes.

Lots of little but helpful nuggets in this update, as well as some new video tips, and even some older features that we discovered were never officially announced. By the way keep reading for a chance to win $250!

Support for Preauthorizing Credit Cards

We released support for being able to preauthorize a credit card.  This is a great feature for our customers that use the coreCLEAR or coreCLEAR MX gateways.

Watch this video to learn all about preauthorizations.

Location Restrictions

You can now restrict certain items from being sold at specific locations, this feature can also be used if you have a single location but you have items in inventory that are not for sale (for example raw materials/components).

Here's a video showing how to setup these restirctions.

Email Receipts Layout

You can now choose whether you want to email a sales receipt to a customer in landscape or portrait format, this option will only show up in the store configuration when you enable PDF receipts.

Discontinue Items

You can set a date when an item should be discontinued.  Watch a quick video on how to set this up.

Manufacturer Part Number & Brands

We added a field to the items screen for manufacturer part number.  This field can be used as another identifier for an item.  Many retailers already have a UPC code, an internal product id (or SKU) and need another primary field to specify the manufacturer part number.   This field is now available in the items screen, and users can search for items using this field in the sales and po/receiving screens.

We also decided to separate the brands from the manufacturers and store those separately.  So now you can maintain brands separately from maintaining your manufacturers.  You can easily add brands to the manufacturer right in the manufacturer screen, or right on the items screen you can start typing in a brand name and the system will allow you to add a new brand as long as you selected a manufacturer. You cannot add a brand name without specifying the manufacturer.

Assemblies Keep Getting Better

We expanded the assembly functionality so you can start tracking your entire assembly process and who did what.   Watch the video to learn more about our new assembly build screen.

Mask Your Cost

This request came from a customer who had this feature in their previous system. You can now setup coreSTORE so it will create a special code that represents the cost of an item.  This code can be printed on your price labels or displayed on your digital price tags.  Watch this video to learn more about this awesome feature.

Make the Right Purchasing Decisions

We've added A LOT of information right at your fingertips, and you can access this information directly from the sales/purchase order/items screen.  Watch this video to learn more:

Employee Security Settings are Easier

The security options are vast, but we made it a little easier to navigate by collapsing the security options so you can quickly scroll to the module you want to change permissions on and simply click the module.  Here's a video showing how the new settings work, and also it explains how to setup employee templates.  This is a HUGE time saver when setting up new employees, so make sure to watch this quick video.

2 Factor Authentication And Other Security Options

We added the ability to force 2 factor authentication in coreSTORE.  This is a great way to ensure security and also discourage employees from sharing their user id's and passwords.  Watch this video to learn about the different security options in coreSTORE including facial recognition.

WE MOVED!

We moved all the ID information for a customer to it's own tab, seems more logical and less scrolling. For our gun store owners we added several fields related to their CCL license.

Speaking of moving, we really did move and now have a couple of office locations. Our main office is now located in Columbus North Carolina:  

799 W Mills St.
Suite B
Columbus, NC 28722

We also have a small office in Colorado Springs and our warehouse is in Lexington, KY.

🎉🎉🎉It's Time for a Giveawy🎉🎉🎉

Lets see who's paying attention to our What's New.  Buried in here is an answer to this question:

What does Ezra Desperately Need?

Be the first one to answer correctly by posting the answer in the comments of this What's New, post the answer WITH your name and email address and you will receive a $250 Amazon gift card.  Coreware Employees are eligible to respond but not eligible for the prize money 🤣🤣🤣.

Bound Book, 4473, 3310

improvement Added code to prevent a 4473 from being changed to INVALID when a corresponding Sale is deleted if it has already been through a NICS check and has a recorded NICS result.    

improvement Drivers license is no longer required when disposing a firearm directly from the Bound Book module.

fix Section E could not be filled out if the 4473 was DENIED or CANCELED. Now when you go to Section E, if the status is DENIED or CANCELED, the Transfer Date is not shown on Section E and is left blank when Section E is submitted. 

fix Fixed bug where using 'Create 3310 From 4473' did not display an error dialog informing the user if the firearm(s) were on a Work Order bound book.

improvement If you attempt to send a 3310 by email that has already been sent before, you are asked to confirm you want to send it again (in which case the email_date stored in the DB is updated) otherwise you can abort the send and leave the previously existing email date alone.   

improvement Fixed bugs in 3310 submission to ATF and LEOs; this build should help ensure everyone gets the 3310 as an attachment. For LEOs, there is also a link in the email to download and display the 3310 PDF on demand if for some reason there is a problem opening the attachment.

Yes it's been two weeks since our last update and as promised we have released an update and we have some great improvements and some new features.  Before we get to the fun stuff please take the time to watch this video especially if you are currently processing your credit card transactions with a Pax terminal:

coreCLEAR Merchant Processing

Did you see our latest challenge?  If you are not using coreCLEAR as your merchant processor we will pay you $500 if we can't beat your current processing rates!  If you are interested in a free analysis and quote just visit: www.coreclear.com.

new feature Manual Card Entry Support

If you are using the coreCLEAR gateway, you can now setup a register to process manual transactions (helpful if you take orders via the phone).

To setup a Manual Register click the Locations menu option under Inventory (Left side of your screen).  Click on the location you are in and then click the Merchant Processing tab and add a register.  Set the register name and then select Card Not Present as the Card Reader Type.

When processing a sale on the manula register when selecting credit card as the payment type, you will be prompted to enter the card information.  

IMPORTANT: Make sure you have a customer selected for the sale and that their address matches the billing address of the credit card.

new feature exciting! Credit Card Terminal Settings

CLEAR 8500 - Counter Top

CLEAR 6200 - Mobile Payment Terminal

If you are using the CLEAR 8500 or CLEAR 6200 (pictured above) then this news will be exciting.  Currently these devices can display banner ads, a video, they will show your customer the items that are being rung up in the sale and now you can request additional information from your customer including their name, email address and you can even ask them to join your loyalty program or if they are already signed up the terminal will display their current point balance.  

An additional option lets you prompt the customer for any missing information that you don't have on file including their email address or phone number.

To activate any of these options, click the locations screen and under the Merchant Processing tab you will see these new configuration options:

Item Assemblies

If you do light manufacturing of products then item assemblies is what you want to use to build your assemblies. In short an assembly defines the recipe for making a product (raw materials) and a build is the action of producing the product (finished good).

We've made a few improvements with item assemblies:

improvement On hand and Committed Clearly Displayed

Showing committed is helpful because it can help with planning your production and material needs, since what is committed reflects what's on order.

improvement Choose Your Columns

Similar to the other screens in coreSTORE you can now choose from many different columns to display, and you can reorder those columns.

new feature Ability to Choose a Different Assembly Item

The assembly item is the finished product that is being assembled can be changed by clicking the Edit button.  This is very helpful when cloning an assembly.

Items

improvement Item Kits

Item Kits can be set to a $0 price.

improvement Manufacturers

The manufacturer screen has been completely revamped and modeled after the supplier screen.  You can now track more information on a manufacturer including their web site, logo, and for our FFL's out there you can enter and validate their FFL#. You can also choose what categories the manufacturer represents, and add a full HTML description.  You are welcome to guess why we did this... best answer submitted in the Send Us Feedback box will get a 💵  $100 Amazon Gift Card 💵, make sure you include your email address with your answer so we know who to send the card to (yes I'm just curious to see if I still have your attention).

Purchasing

improvement When Enable PDF Receipts is enabled under Store Config, then the PO and Receiving receipts will be emailed with a PDF attachment.

Memberships

improvement Lifetime memberships will now show up in Blue and won't appear like they are expired.

fix Several fixes applied to improve and fix selling memberships in coreSTORE.

4473 

Synchronize your 4473 forms directly to a local drive, set it and forget it.  We now have a Windows Application and a Mac Application that can be installed on a local machine where you can now keep copies of all your 4473's.  Satisfying ATF requirements is now a breeze.

Watch the video to see how to download, install and setup.  Warning - there is NO SOUND with this video.  Make sure to maximize the video so you can watch all the details.  This video walks you through the process if you are on Windows.

Welcome to our first Tuesday coreSTORE Update (it's still Tuesday on the West Coast), in short this means that in two weeks time we will have another update for you to view.  No surprise we are full of surprises and exciting updates, but let me firstshare a piece of news with you that is a bit alarming especially if you are using a PAX credit card terminal at your store.  

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/10/fbi-raids-chinese-point-of-sale-giant-pax-technology/ 

If you are and you purchased the units from Coreware, please let us know and we will make sure to get you upgraded to our new Equinox terminals that are not only better but the company is US Based and manufacturing is done in Canada and Malaysia.

Our shortest and most fun coreCAST yet, was filmed at the Powder Room in Panama Beach FL.  What an amazing range, and incredible hosts.   Please watch, like and don't forget SUBSCRIBE!

It's time to replace your Chimp with a real Ape!   coreILLA "The Mailchimp Killa", an email marketing platform that blows away the competition. Check out our "Quick Cast" where Joel Cheney and our new Director of Digital Marketing, Chris Pollitzer, talk about the soon-to-be industry standard email marketing platform: 

TRY IT FOR FREE WITH NO OBLIGATION!  YOU DON'T HAVE TO START PAYING TILL DECEMBER 1ST!

Contact: sales@coreware.com if you are interested!

If you are using the clear8500 or clear6200 Terminals, you can now prompt your customer and ask them if they would like to join the loyalty program and you can prompt them on the terminal and ask them for their Name, Phone Number, and Email Address!   Click the image below to learn more about these AMAZING devices.

You can enable these prompts from the Locations Screen (click the Merchant Processing tab at the top).

Sale Screen

exciting! improvement Major Interface Update

I never loved the section of the sales screen that shows the customer information. Why such a small font?  Why isn't it organized better?  Why can't I easily see if they have a waiver signed and what membership plans they are subscribed to?  Lot's of why's lead to lots of action.   We are super excited with this interface change that was designed by Glen, our super talented developer who is behind the tremendously powerful Buyer Assistant module.   This is just the beginning of cleaning up our sales interface even more.  You also may notice the subtle changes we have made to try to prevent you from having to scroll!  There is more coming, so stay tuned!

The colors on the membership buttons and waiver mean something:

RED - Expired
ORANGE - Expires within 30 days
GREEN - We are good

When you hover or click on the membership look what pops up:

We also moved some buttons around and made thing more intuitive.  I have no doubt you are going to really love the updated interface!

Learn more about it by watching our video:

WHERE IS MY DELIVERY SCREEN?????????????  DEEP BREATHS!!!!

Do not panic!!!!!  We simply renamed it to Fulfillment - seriously it makes a whole lot more sense, since this is the screen you use to fulfill orders (whether you deliver, ship or they are waiting for pickup).

exciting! Nothing Wrong with some extra speed!

As we strive to improve coreSTORE we continue to also work on performance improvements.   You should notice snapier screens in this update, and some of it should be pretty significant.  

new feature Price an Item with Taxes Included

You can now set a price of an item so that it includes the taxes, no need for a calculator.  So imagine you wanted to price an item at $100 and that includes the taxes on the item.  Easy, just click the item price and then click the Tax Included button (see screen shot).  coreSTORE will do the calculation for you, so it will reprice the item based on the assumption that the item with tax should total $100.

Inventory & Purchasing Enhancements

new feature Deactivate and Discontinue Items

You can now specify a date when an item is going to be discontinued.  When that date arrives the system will no longer allow you to sell that item.  You can also mark an item as inactive, which will allow you to sell the rest of your inventory but will prevent you from ordering/receiving more of that item.  Discontinued items will automatically be marked as inactive once there is no longer any stock of that item.

new feature Hide Payment Section on PO/Receiving Screen

There is now a configuration option under Purchasing/Receiving section in the store configuration to hide the payment section.  This will simply allow you to process a receiving transaction without having to choose a payment.  Makes a whole lot of sense if you are using an accounting system to process supplier invoices.

new feature Transfer Requests Alerts

When processing a transfer request the location receiving the request will get an alert. When the user clicks on the alert they will be taken to that specific transfer request.

new feature Discounts Don't Apply

There are times when you may want/need to prevent discounts from being applied to a specific item.  To accomplish this in the items screen we added a check box under the pricing tab: Discounts Don't Apply.  When this checkbox is checked, if a discount is given on the sale transaction it will not apply the discount to any item that has the option checked.  Keep in mind even price tiers do not apply when setting this option.

improvement Auto Refresh Price Check Screen

The price check screen will now auto refresh after 60 seconds and go back to the main screen.  Yes, we have a price check screen that can run off a tablet and sit anywhere in your store.  It's a fantastic feature!  If you need help setting this up, contact our incredible customer service staff.

improvement Item Summary Sales Report

We now show total discounts given in the Item Summary Sales Report.

 Navigation & Menus

improvement Menu Hover is Now Optional

Added a new configuration option under section Modules that allows you to enable automatically expanding the menus when the mouse hovers.  Myself and a couple of customers did not like the hover feature, so rather than removing it completely we decided to make it an optional setting.  Check the box to hover away!

Work Orders

new feature Repair Items Not Handled as Inventory Items

This is exciting, when adding a new work order from the work order screen, you can now simply describe your item without associating it to an actual inventory item (which makes a whole lot more sense).   The idea is that you are not forced to select an actual inventory item or add an item.  

For our gun stores, the system will still acquire the repair item if you check the box to create a bound book record.  

We will definitely record a video in the next few days to review the updated work order functionality.

ECommerce Integration

Added the ability to specify which location to import internet orders into which are not pickup orders (pickup orders will always be imported into the pickup location).

coreFORCE Integration

improvement Membership Options Better Organized

Rather than a long list of memberships, we now show the memberships by membership type.  If you only have one type then we automatically show all the memberships under that one type.  If you have multiple types then you can expand the different types.

Bound Book & 4473

new feature Print the FFL License with the Receipt

A new configuration option was added under the Bound Book Section:

When checked this option will show a button to print the stores FFL from the Receipt screen when selling an item that is in the bound book. Very handy if you are transferring a firearm to another FFL.

*Make sure you have a copy of your FFL loaded into the Locations Screen.

improvement Bound Book Report Enhancement

Added the sale id to the bound book report (invoice #).

improvement Receiving Firearms Must Have Supplier Specified

When receiving a firearm, the system will alert you if no supplier was selected.

improvement Open Transfers

When entering a firearms transfer, if the customer already has an open transfer, the system will alert the user to prevent them from adding a new transfer.

In all seriousness, it's been a long time since we've released a What's New update for coreFORCE. 

We've been busy at work behind the scenes, making BIG moves to continue pushing forward our motto of unifying and simplifying the way that you do business. This has included the launch of our new product, coreILLA "The Mailchimp Killa", an email marketing platform that blows away the competition. Check out our "Quick Cast" where Joel Cheney and our new Director of Digital Marketing, Chris Pollitzer, talk about the soon-to-be industry standard email marketing platform:

new video

In addition to an incredible marketing alternative, we've also been working on pushing out our incredible new CLEAR 8500 and 6200 credit card terminals that do so much more than any other terminal out there. We've heard incredible feedback about these machines and we're excited to get them into your hands as soon as possible! Check out our NEWEST coreCAST episode where we go on location with our friends at The Powder Room in Panama City Beach, FL and show the new terminals in the wild with some real customer feedback! 

new video

And if you're somehow not tired of our videos yet, or maybe if you just miss Joel, Ezra, and I's off-topic non-sense, heres' coreCAST Episode 7 where we talk about probably our most exciting update of the year! 

Remember to subscribe so you can see all of these videos hot off the press!

Okay okay, enough videos! 

We have so many more exciting things to share. Grab your reading glasses and maybe a fresh cup of coreFFEINE, this may be a long one!

exciting! important improvement One Word... "SPEED"

Over the last month, our developers have been working hard to address speed concerns across coreFORCE and we've managed to increase our page performance across the board, but we are still in the process of making improvements. This is an on-going process, but we are excited to see that Google is giving our websites much higher rankings. Even so, we are committed to continued improvements to improve the customer experience for both OUR customers AND YOUR customers. 

I won't go into the nitty-gritty, but a lot of these speed updates have to do with how prices are loaded by the system, how product search results are displayed, Orders Dashboard enhancements, enhancements to how product maintenance loads, and how background processes function.

new feature improvement exciting! announcement 

Checkout Version TWO

If you watched the videos above, you may already know, but we have been working hard throughout the course of the year to modernize the look of the checkout process. We spent a lot of time consulting some in-house user experience and user interface experts and brought our checkout process into the year 2025.

This checkout process has been heavily beta tested by some of the system's largest users and we are confident that this improved checkout will help increase your sales! These checkouts will be rolled out over the course of a few weeks and will be heavily tested on each customer's system prior to launching it.

Please be patient with us as we bring this checkout process to your websites!

new feature Added Notes to customer subscription self-service

Customers can now enter their reason for pausing or cancelling a subscription.

new feature coreBUY Distribution

We are now offering coreFORCE customers EXCLUSIVE access to some exciting and unique product through coreBUY!

new feature List View of Classes

We now offer an alternate event calendar. If this is a change you are interested in, please let us know and we can add you to the schedule to add this new view.

new feature AVS Control for coreCLEAR users

AVS settings for coreCLEAR (the latest version) can now be controlled directly from coreFORCE in Orders > Setup

The default setting is that only full matches will be approved, but you as a dealer will have full control over the other options. Of course, allowing everything through is not considered a wise idea.

improvement Invoices

Invoices can now be marked inactive to cancel a layaway without losing history

new feature Promotions 

Promotions can now be applied to every recurring payment in a subscription. This must be added from the recurring payment record at this point in time. 

improvement There is now an option to prevent customers from deleting a payment method if it’s used in a recurring payment.

new feature exciting! Facility Reservations

Ability to reserve multiple facilities for an event and have each facility contain its own time slot. Please note that this does not work for multi-day reservations at this point in time.

improvement Event Registrant Report 

The Detailed  Event Registrant Report now includes an Order ID column.

new feature Added Search Filters for Subscriptions

When looking through your subscriptions, there are now filters to clear out which subscriptions are expired or paused.

bug fixes 

• Fixed issue with create events
• Fixed issue with submitting orders to Bill Hicks
• Fixed Issue with Loyalty Points
• Fixed Banner Issues

Performance Enhancements

• Price Calculations
• Improved Internal API Communication
• Bot Crawling Enhancements
• Improved coreILLA Integration
• Fontawesome updates
• Orders Dashboard improvements

exciting! 

exciting! 

Over a month no update?  Well that's actually not entirely true.  We have been releasing updates but have gone a month without letting you know about them.  As a growing company we have been busy at work and myself (Ezra Weinstein, CEO) seems like I have turned into a full time recruiter.  Our company has grown to over 40 amazing individuals.  

I personally love writing these updates and decided not to delegate this task, so I apologize. This update (assuming anyone reads it) is going to take a look back, it will look at the present release and give you a glimpse into the future. This will be a long one so make sure to grab your coreFFEINE, relax, watch and read(and if you don't have any coreFFEINE let us know and we will be glad to send you a bag).

Please make sure to click read more right below, if you don't see it just keep on scrolling down.

Our Mission

Let me take a moment to share our mission with you, we hope you enjoy this video, it speak to our ethos. I feel it's important these days to know who you are doing business with and what their purpose is.

Exciting New Customer Service Tools

As many of you know we are FANATICAL about providing great customer service. At the end of the day the best software out there is worthless without having great support.  

We have now added the ability for you to chat DIRECTLY with our customer service team and also for our Support Specialists to "hop" on your computer and see exactly what you are seeing with essentially one click of a button!  

Below is our latest coreCAST we are at 200 subscribers on our Youtube channel so please subscribe and like our videos.  This coreCAST is totally focused on our new customer service tools.  

If you don't feel like watching the whole video just click here to learn more about our new chat feature:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHoNUbd4cAY&t=364s

Feedback Site

Many of you know that we LISTEN.  A lot of new functionality that shows up in our products comes from customer feedback, suggestions and requests.  As we have grown the number of suggestions keeps growing to the point where it has become a bit challenging to keep track of, and it tough sometimes to decide how important a request might be.  Well we have published a site that will allow our Coreware community to vote for features, this will help us determine what features to focus on and how to prioritize them.  So take the time not just to make a request or suggestion but make sure to read through all the requests and upvote any of them that you think would be beneficial to you.

You can access the feedback site directly from coreSTORE by clicking your name in the top right corner of the screen.  If you are not watching our entire video above, you can click here to jump right to the discussion about our feedback site.

Buyer Assistant Module

We have mentioned before, and some of you have seen our Advanced Purchasing module, well we have rebranded it and now it shall be known as our Buyer Assistant Module. Why the name change?  Because in our opinion this new feature is not an advanced feature, but a necessary feature for every retailer to use and we don't want you to shy away from it because it's called "advanced".   Click below to view a video that will walk you through the main features and  benefits of this new module.

Inventory Enhancements

improvement Location Specific Price and Cost

You can now choose to see the location specific price and cost in the items screen if you have different prices/costs set for different locations.

new feature Search for an Item by Serial Number

You can now search for an item by scanning or typing the serial number in the items screen (this already can be done in the sales screen, now you can perform the same search in the items screen).

new feature Bulk Price Update for Serialized Items

If you have serialized items and you price the items individually, you can now update the prices of the items in bulk by applying a % markup to all the items.

new feature Update Multiple Items at Once from the Web Site

When selecting one or more items in the item screen you can now update all the items at once from your web site.

improvement Assemblies Enhancements and Tutorial

We added the ability to clone an assembly and also added costs and totals to the assembly screen.  Watch this video to learn all about assemblies.

new feature Default Category to Hide/Show on Grid

Added a new store configuration option: New Category Defaults To Show On Grid, this will determine when setting up a new category whether it will default to show the category on the grid.

Sales Screen

new feature Text Receipt Button (SMS)

Added a button to the receipt preview screen to SMS (text) the receipt to the customer.

Customer Improvements

new feature Search By Drives License Number

You can now search for customers in the customer screen by drivers license number.

new feature Suffix

We added Suffix to the customer screen so users can separate out the suffix field. For our firearm dealers this enhancement was also added to the Bound Book module as well.

Purchasing/Receiving and Transfer Improvements

improvement Transfer In Improvement

When transferring items into a location the system will show any open orders that have the item being transferred.

Precious Metals

You can now price items based on current precious metal pricing.  Currently you can select Gold, Palladium, Platinum or Silver.   When an item is set to a precious metal price.  Learn more by watching the video below.

Work Order Modifications

improvement Added costs and a total to the Parts & Labor section.

Bound Book and Firearm Transfers

improvement Firearms Transfers

You can now lookup items by UPC, add transfers from multiple FFL's on one transfer and add a new FFL without losing your spot.

Watch our latest video on FFL Transfers to learn more.

new feature Create Work Order from Bound Book Entry

You can now create a work order directly from a bound book entry.

new feature Create 4473 On Sale Completion

You can now choose based on suspended transaction type when to create the 4473 (at time you suspend or at the time you complete the sale).   This feature is handy if you don't want to create the 4473 record immediately when suspending a transaction.  You can set the option under Store Config under the Suspended Sales/Layaways section. By default the system creates the 4473 record once the transaction is suspended.

new feature Serial Count Error Sound

When performing a serialized count you can specify a sound to sell if the system cannot the serial number that was scanned. Make sure to select a small audio file that is in MP3 or WAV format.

improvement Concealed Handgun Permit

Added a new License Type: Conceal Handgun Permit in the Bound Book Acquisition and Disposition screens.

coreFORCE Integration

improvement Customer Custom Fields

Customer custom field values will be transmitted to coreFORCE as long as the custom fields share the same name.

Reports

improvement Customer Summary Sales Report
The customer summary sales report can now be sorted by the total amount and it will sort the entire report not just the page you are on.

new feature Detailed Sales Search Report 

You can now show sales based on a specific selling price (under custom reports).

You can also filter by customer state or gender.

improvement Receiving Report

Added the ability exclude transfers from the receiving report.

improvement Sales Reports Show markup

Both the sales detail and sales summary reports will now show the markup % not just profit %.  If you want to know the difference well here is  a brief explanation:

Profit Margin

Profit margin refers to the revenue a company makes after paying COGS. The profit margin is calculated by taking revenue minus the cost of goods sold. However, the difference is shown as a percentage of revenue. The percentage of revenue that is gross profit is found by dividing the gross profit by revenue. For example, if a company sells a product for $100 and it costs $70 to manufacture the product, its margin is $30. The profit margin, stated as a percentage, is 30% (calculated as the margin divided by sales).

Markup

Markup shows how much more a company's selling price is than the amount the item costs the company. In general, the higher the markup, the more revenue a company makes. Markup is the retail price for a product minus its cost, but the margin percentage is calculated differently. In our earlier example, the markup is the same as gross profit (or $30), because the revenue was $100 and costs were $70. However, markup percentage is shown as a percentage of costs, as opposed to a percentage of revenue.

BUGS BE GONE!!!!

Lots of bug fixes and minor annoyances addressed.  I  will leave it at that 😀, otherwise this What's New will never see the light of day.

We'll keep this week's updates short and quick!

We've been working hard on some of our exciting new updates! 

new Knowledge Base Articles In the meantime, we thought it would be good to draw your attention to some of our newer Knowledge Base Articles!  

• Facets in coreFORCE
• Customizing Facets for the Product Search Side Bar
• Parameters for Search in coreFORCE
• How to Create a Shipping Label with EasyPost on coreFORCE
• When to Add a New Subscription Type vs Product in coreFORCE
• Why is my product not showing MSRP as the strikethrough price?

If you have any questions about any of these or would like to see some additional information covered in any of these, please submit a ticket to our Help Desk at Help.Coreware.com

Wait, what about our favorite podcast update?

new videoIn honor of our next coreCAST we decided to publish a teaser which gave someone a chance to win a $600+ computer!  If you are not subscribed to our YouTube channel, you are truly missing out on some great entertainment (ok "great" might be stretching it) and some pretty darn good giveaways.

Congrats to Chris Ray from Winchester Gallery in Fort Worth Texas for winning this AMAZING new HP Chromebase!  It's a nearly perfect 4473 Kiosk!

improvement Promotion Use Report Update

This report now has a CSV export option.

improvement Product CSV Export

This export now has the image_url as a column in this export.

improvements Performance Enhancements

• Ammoseek Feed Improvements
• Improved Error Messaging
• XML sitemap update

bug fixes Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue with discount prices
• Fixed an issue with null values.
• Fixed Issues with invalid payment methods
• Dealt with a memory issue with products