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).

I just noticed we had a prior update PINNED to the top so you may have missed our latest update this morning - OOPS!

MAKE SURE TO READ OUR LATEST POST BELOW THIS ONE 

I'm not shouting, just emphasizing 😀 

Happy Two Two! Many exciting features are still being worked on so this will be a fairly short update but still WORTH reading.

improvement When receiving items by default only orders for that specific location will be included in the open order list.  There is a new configuration option that will allow you to list all open orders regardless of location.

improvement New SMS Security option to limit permission of who can send out SMS messages from the customer screen.  Wait did you realize you can text receipts to customers?  Read our previous What's New to learn more.  Sign up to www.twilio.com to use this feature.  There is more text/sms features coming in the next update, so stay tuned!

improvement Added a  new button to the messages screen to mark all messages as read.

improvement Added inventory type for non bound book users. Inventory types can be used to further segregate and categorize items.

improvement Commission reports will now allow you to specify if suspended transactions should be excluded from the report.

improvement When entering delivery address information all fields will carry over to the bound book, not just the required ones.

improvement If you have multiple locations and you are entering a transfer (either direct transfer or transfer out) you can now scan the serial number directly without scanning the item itself.

improvement When emailing a PO we added the Product Id below the UPC Code.

fix At times a work order was creating a 4473 record, this has been fixed.

fix Multiple work order notes would cause the item being repaired to print multiple times on the work order printout.

fix coreFORCE orders were being imported and at times marking the customer as nontaxable, instead of just the order itself.  

fix In the items screen when filtering the item list we fixed it so when you navigate between items once you are editing an item it will move to the next or previous item in the filtered list, following the order of the list.  If you have no earthly idea what this means that's ok 😂.  A picture is worth 1000 words.  Wait did you even realize those buttons were on the items screen?  

Write us a comment in the Send Us Feedback  right here in our What's New (include your name and email address) be truthful did you know those buttons were there? We will put your name in a drawing for a $100 Amazon Gift Card.  Winner to be announced Thursday!  And yes for those of you who are new to coreSTORE we sometimes give gift cards away just to try and encourage you to read our often lengthy "What's New" posts.  Welcome to our party!

fix  Both the Closeout report in the Tax section and the Tax report now includes any suspended sale type that is checked with Treat as Sale.  

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.

Another day another update.  First and foremost for our federally licensed firearms dealers, we are getting close to being ready to test the new 4473 forms and updated 4473 management screen.  

There will be a new workflow introduced to better fit the overall process and of course the 4473 kiosk will be updated as well.

important Update Tip

We recommend after every update you do a hard refresh of your browser. 

If you are running a Windows computer:

Use keyboard shortcut Ctl + Shift + R. Ctl + R is a regular refresh in your browser, 
Ctl + Shift + R is a hard refresh. 

If you are running a MAC:

Use keyboard shortcut Command + Shift + R. Command + R is a regular refresh in your browser, Command + Shift + R is a hard refresh. 

Purchase Order, Receiving and Transfers

improvement Payment Option

Removed the payment option from the purchase order screen (kept it on the receiving screen).

new feature Get Items and Mark Complete

This is a great new feature.  There is a new Get Items button that will pull the items from the Purchase Order into the receiving screen (you must select an existing PO first, in the screenshot I chose PO# 218).  The Get Items will populate the items with the quantities that were ordered less the quantity that was received so far.

Checking the Mark Complete checkbox will remove the PO from the list of suspended PO's.  Make sure you check this box if you are receiving the PO in its entirety.

improvement Updated Labels

Updated various fields to more clearly reflect if the user is entering a purchase order or receiving items.

improvement Automatically Select Supplier

When entering or selecting a purchase order on the receiving the screen the supplier will be automatically be selected.

improvement Receive Multiple Serial Numbers

Receiving more than 20 or so serial numbers of the same item was causing a scrolling problem in the serial number dialog box and making it difficult to edit a specific line.

fix Transfers

There was a bug with transfers that was not completing a transfer properly.

Bound Book

new feature Dispose of Multiple Records At Once

On the bound book screen you can now select multiple records and dispose all of them at once.

improvement Audit Buttons Improvement

When clicking any of the red audit buttons (missing models, missing calibers, etc.) you can now navigate between those records using the next and previous buttons to quickly fix all the information.

improvement Additional Checks and Balances

Additional checking has been added to the bound book and sales/receiving screen to ensure full compliance.  When selling a firearm with missing required information the system will stop the transaction and provide an error message showing what information is missing.

improvement Bound Book Records with No Item ID

Bound book records with no item id will be disposed of properly from the sale screen.

Sales Screen & Receipt

improvement Line Item Notes Print On Receipt

Line item notes that are not marked as Internal will print on the receipt.

improvement Estimates

Estimates will no longer allow payments. The very definition of an estimate is that it's not a sale or an order, so making a payment on an estimate is wrong.

fix Duplicate Serial Number Entry

You could enter the same serial number on two different line items in a sales transaction.

coreSHOP Enhancements - If you are a Gun Range Make Sure to Read through this

new feature New Scheduler Section

There is a new configuration section that will show up if you are a coreSHOP user for lane reservations.  This feature is used to integrate coreSTORE to the coreSHOP web site.

new feature exciting! View, Modify, and Add Lane Reservations

Once the scheduler is enabled on the sales screen you will see a Scheduler button:

Click the button to bring up the calendar.

The calendar view will show upcoming reservations in orange and previous reservations in red. Double Click a reservation to modify it, or double click an empty slot to schedule a reservation.   You can click the name on the reservation to email the reservation holder.    Quickly pull up any date by clicking the date at the top left corner of the screen.

important The Item Name that is setup (e.g. Rifle Lane 1) must match the facility name in coreSHOP.

improvement Item Screen

The ECommerce ID field is now a hyperlink that can be clicked which will pull up the Product screen in coreSHOP.

improvement Bin# (Location At Store)

If you specify a store location (also known as a bin #) in the Locations information in coreSTORE it will update coreSHOP.

fix Empty Items

When importing orders there were scenarios that were causing blank items to be created.  This should now be resolved.

We've all done it.  You hear about the latest product, whether it be a phone, computer, or a new treadmill.  But, you want to research it and put your hands on it before making the purchase.  What is the first thing you do?  You try and locate a local business that carries the item, and the vehicle you use to conduct this search is invariably the internet.  The local store that has a web presence will be the business that makes the sale because they have chosen to extend their physical presence and meet the customer where most consumers begin the purchasing process.

In 2019, e-retail sales accounted for 14.1 percent of all retail sales worldwide, with $3.5Trillion of that business conducted in the U.S. alone, and experts predict that number to reach over $4Trillion in 2020. With these predictions made before the current pandemic, that number could be much more significant. With over 2Billion online customers worldwide conducting around 51% of their purchases online using a mobile device, it is no wonder the mad rush of businesses from all industries to establish an online presence.

I believe a business website will be as common as an email address very soon.  If you currently run or operate a business with no web presence, do yourself a favor and check into setting up a website.  Meet your customers where they are at the beginning of the purchasing process. Online.

We've attached a couple of articles highlighting the importance of staking your claim online.

If you are looking for a solution to extend your brick and mortar to the online marketplace, Coreware can help.  Let us know if you are interested, and we will get you set up with a solution that works for you.

This article is from last year, and not surprisingly, it is even more relevant.

How Small Businesses Used Websites !n 2019

The following article lays out some excellent points about having a website.

Why Every Business Needs A Website

Make sure to install the latest NICS Plugin.  Uninstall the current extension and then follow the install instructions that you can find right on the Manage 4473  page.

fix Place of Birth will now populate.