Welcome to our first newsletter!

We hope you will find our Newsletter informative and helpful. Alien is developing very fast and we often find that users do not know about all the features that could help improve their business.

Please let us have your feedback of what you would like to see in this newsletter or any suggestions about Alien or our services.

We have launched the new version of our Online Reports Tool. While we would normally charge for this facility, it is free for our existing clients. As an existing Alien client, if you have an access level of 5 and above, you may go to http://reports.aliens.co.za and logon with your Alien username and password.

Online Reports offers the basic reports, sales, takings, cash-ups and stock levels. If you have specific needs, customised reports can be added for around R1500 each.

Alien now offers integrated credit card facilities. This allows for significant savings on the hiring of your credit card machine and telephone calls made by your current credit card machine. It also allows easy reconciliation of credit/ debit card transactions. Using your current banker, we will replace your current credit card machine with a smaller pin-pad which is cheaper to rent (around R90/m) and plugs into your computer. The total saving could cover your Alien subscription! Call us for more information. 

Alien Software has affiliated with Wim Human & Associates, who is accredited and certified partners of Softline Pastel for Pastel Evolution. Pastel Evolution is an easy business accounting system which requires basic accounting knowledge and supports businesses of all sizes.

Alien now integrates with Evolution providing a total business management solution.

Pastel Evolution is hosted with Alien on our servers and shares data such as sales and inventory data with each other. 

Instead of paying the full price for the whole Evolution package, we issue you with a logon allowing you access to your own company data. This gives you the functions of general ledger, cash book, debtors, creditors, invoices, reports writer, coupled with Alien providing stock control, point-of-sale, customer communication, accounts, and so on.

Pastel Evolution is interfaced with Alien Software one of three ways:

• Schema One: Daily sales and daily cost of sales
• Schema Two: Accounts (needs Schema One)
• Schema Three: Sales & inventory (needs Schema One & Two)

We look forward to discussing your specific needs with you.

Now for some very good news...
Should you wish to pay your basic account, i.e. monthly subscription and database hosting, in advance for the year (12 months), we will be happy to offer you one month free as a discount on the annual amount.

We have added the EAN13 barcode format. EAN13 is used world-wide for marking retail goods. so, if you sell goods off to other stores, this is the format to use.

You can now define a number of thermal or sheet label templates. For instance shelf talkers, small labels, swing ticket labels and so on.

Products that come with their own barcode can be recorded with this label and also reproduced when printing labels.

A number of improvements have been made. for instance, stock on hand is completely recalculated when generating a stock list.

The tender types are now displayed on the till slip.

When receiving goods, you can enter the cost price at the time of receiving it. This is prefixed to your barcode labels, e.g. 234.11000045. this way Alien can calculate an exact GP% and MU for an individual item.

The stock on hand figures will now exactly mirror your levels report in custom query and you can also see total sales for a previous month.

If you sell goods such as Government bread, You can define this product as zero rated for VAT.

You can define a number of products together as one product. For instance a  shirt and a tie as a gift pack. Discounts for each item in the mixture can also be defined.

If you have stock which are ingredients of another product, e.g. flour, being part of your actual product such as a cake, you can define this item as an assembly   item. This stops the item from being sold on its own, while still allowing its stock levels to be controlled.

We can now import up to six extra criteria, non-stock items, assembly items and VAT ratings.

This will allow you to create specials such as two for the price of one, buy 2 get  another (or the same) product free, and so on. Special discounts are for a specific period only.

When receiving goods, you will be able to define its specific location in your storage areas for easy retrieval.

Alien records an audit roll of each security enabled action performed. To view the audit roll, go to Tools->Security->Miscellaneous->View Audit Report.

You can save money on telephone calls by using Alien's messaging feature. On the menu go to Tools->Send Message.

You can define a stock code by using colour and size and/or up to six criteria. These criteria can be anything you want and we can give them the names you want. For instance, you might want to define the type of trimmings used, e.g. steel zip and plastic zip, or 100ml and 250ml, etc.

If you offer services such as hair cutting or tailoring, you can define products as NSI (non-stock items). This way, no stock on hand figures are calculated for this product but still allows sales, GP% and MU reporting.

Alien automatically records names and contact details if you record them during   a sale. This can be used to send newsletters (such as this one) and/or sms to   your clients. These can be scheduled to send at a specific date and time.

After cashing up, Alien can send an automatic sms or email to anyone you select. This is useful to get a report on the takings of the day.

We thought that we at Alien Software could take a break during this holiday season. Instead it turned out to be an extremely busy time for us. We took on many new clients, some opening new stores. We are happy that there is confidence in our recovering economy. This is a good sign for the future for us all.

In addition we are also proud to say that we have had a very good year with massive growth in our client base and we are even happier to report that our valued clients are as happy as we are with Alien Software.

We thank you for your support and for making this possible. Watch this space for more Alien innovations and news...

Happy retailing and best wishes for 2010!

Alien Software Consultants © 2006 - 2010