Foxstar's main objective
is to increase the profitability of your store, whether you are a for-profit organization or a non-profit concerned with maximizing the profits earned for your beneficiary. Foxstar is designed to increase your store's profitability:
Whether your store is large or small, it is a serious business with serious data management problems. Think of all the bookkeeping that needs to be done when a customer purchases even a few items. Foxstar does all that bookkeeping for you.
Foxstar decreases your labor costs.
Foxstar will provide you with the management information you need to determine how to price your inventory and how to lay out your floor space. For example, the sales analysis report gives you a breakdown of the average sales volume and selling price of each of your categories. From this report, you will be able to determine which items sell the best in your store and which are most profitable. You can then plan your pricing or floor space strategy based on this information.
As an added bonus, Foxstar helps recover some of the long hours you spend on tasks related to the store.
Foxstar tracks consignments contracts. A consignment is in fact a contract between your store and the consignor. This contract needs to be formalized and itemized in order to allow reasonable tracking of the terms and conditions of the contract. Furthermore, the consignment contract is a signed agreement between you and the consignor. If you use the consignment contract expiration to determine when to make payouts, you can increase the cash flow position of your business.
Foxstar allows you to generate targeted mailings to your best customers (either buyers, consignors, or both).
Foxstar's integrated Wish List feature allows you to turn over some of your inventory almost as soon as you receive it. Remember, one of the keys to profitability is to turn over inventory as soon as possible.
Finally, with Foxstar, when the day is over, you lock the doors, turn off the computer, and go home. There are no late nights spent posting sales and resolving accounts!
You should consider Foxstar as an investment in your business. Not only does it run the store from day to day but it provides you with analysis of the data that is the lifeblood of your store. You can use this analysis to target the marketing of your store.
Foxstar Features and Benefits
Foxstar is an all-purpose retail package designed specifically for antique and consignment operations. It is designed to meet all of your sales and consignment needs, regardless of the merchandise you sell or whether your store is a profit or non-profit enterprise. Foxstar features an ergonomic, intuitive user interface that allows you to perform store operations in much the same way as you always have. However, the program's sophisticated features enhance your store operations and improve your efficiency.
The software is designed to be easy-to-use. Foxstar incorporates the intelligent use of colors, which allows you to tell at a glance which part of the program you are in. In addition, pick lists and look-up functions guide you through the program and ensure accuracy by providing exact information for field entries. Foxstar also features a context-sensitive help function that provides instant on-line explanations of the specific activity you are performing.
Foxstar also provides a number of auxiliary functions such as:
An Integrated Word Processor.
An Interface to Quicken.
Export to spreadsheets.
Word Perfect Mail Merge facility.
Built-in bar code support, requiring no additional software.
Dollar for dollar, Foxstar is the best consignment and thrift store program available.
Consignments
With Foxstar you can define multiple, flexible consignment terms which you customize to match the unique requirements of your store. Items brought in for consignment are tracked from the point they enter your store until they are sold, donated or picked up. Foxstar also provides many convenient ways to handle merchandise on expired consignments.
Foxstar not only helps you to manage merchandise, it provides full tracking of consignors. Using Foxstar, you can target mailings to specific consignors, schedule your consignor appointments and even identify your best consignors.
When you are ready to pay your consignors, Foxstar lets you pay them individually or batch your payouts and pay multiple consignors in a single operation. Foxstar also provides comprehensive consignor payout reports. Finally, Foxstar lets you give store credits against consignments.
Sales
The fully integrated Point of Sale module allows sales people to make sales, gather customer information and even easily handle layaways and returns. Foxstar handles multiple forms of payment, including cash, check, credit card, and even store credit. And, with Foxstar, you never have to post a sale.
Foxstar lets you analyze customer buying habits by customer and identify your best customers. Foxstar also provides a fully integrated wish list that allows you to match your store inventory or new stock with customer requests for specific merchandise.
Foxstar supports most POS printers and cash drawers and offers built-in bar code support. With Foxstar you do not have to purchase additional bar code software.
Inventory
One of your most time-consuming tasks is probably maintaining inventory records. Foxstar comprehensively tracks your inventory, including goods purchased outright by your store. Each inventory function can be summarized and documented using Foxstar's inventory reports.
The reports can also be used to summarize critical merchandise information, including your best and worst selling items, the average selling price for a particular inventory category, and the average shelf life by inventory category. Many Foxstar users have found these reports crucial in determining merchandise strategy, and for improving overall store profitability.
Reports
Foxstar lets you generate reports that allow you to browse consignment contracts, stock levels, and customer information. You can print customer mailing labels as well as old sales invoices. Foxstar also lets you generate a variety of other useful reports, including:
Daysheet summary
Expired consignments
Layaway report
Custom sales report
Inventory summary
Sales summary
Sales analysis
Customer sales
Create mail merge
Utilities
Foxstar also provides handy utilities that help you to quickly complete store and system maintenance chores. With Foxstar you can easily set up the system to match your exact store requirements. You can even change merchandise tag colors whenever necessary. The product offers multiple security levels that allow you to assign system access according to each employee's system privileges.
Foxstar also lets you use a single function to retire old inventory. Critical data can be backed up and stored, and Foxstar lets you purge unnecessary data.
Security
Foxstar implements a security system that is based on the user, the user's password, and a table of access privileges that are associated with the password. For the most part the security system is non-intrusive. However, there are times when an action requires a security clearance to complete. A good example of this is changing the selling price of an item at point of sale. When such an action is invoked, Foxstar requests a password permission to proceed with the action. If a password with the appropriate level of security is entered, the operation proceeds. If the correct security level is not supplied, Foxstar continually requests the password until either an appropriate password is provided or the operation is terminated with ESC. The details of configuring and using the security system are provided in Chapter 8.
User Interface Design Goals
The portion of any program that interacts with the human operator is known as the user interface. There are several design goals of the Foxstar user interface that should be understood in order to use the software to its fullest extent. Those design goals are discussed in the following paragraphs.
Consistency
Every attempt is made to keep the Foxstar user interface as consistent as possible. In particular, screen layouts present a consistent "look and feel" and similar key sequences work in a similar fashion on every screen. Of particular interest is the use of the Escape (ESC) key. In all instances, ESC terminates the current function and returns to the parent screen. If, however, by terminating the function, you would be throwing away data that has been entered, the system prompts you to indicate the disposition of that data before terminating the function.
Screen Flows
Screen Flows describe the process of moving from one screen to the next in order to do a particular function on the system. Foxstar minimizes the number of screens needed to complete any function. After transmitting a few high level screens, Foxstar presents the detail screen for the chosen function. All of the work of this function is done on the detail screen. If ancillary information is needed to complete the function (e.g. a pick list), the ancillary information is requested via a common mechanism, and the information is displayed in the same place on each screen. On any screen in Foxstar, you should be able to tell at a glance where you are and how to get off of the screen.
Foxstar is designed to optimize the most repetitive actions (consigning and selling) in your store. Consequently, these functions are streamlined and easy to use. They are not screen, keyboard, or operator intensive.
"Choice Required" Area
From time to time, operator actions result in a choice that must be made in order to progress with the function. When these situations arise, Foxstar pops a choice box on the upper left hand portion of the screen (overlaying the left side of the Screen Identification). The choices available are presented as a list. A magenta background identifies the active choice. Foxstar pre-loads the most logical of the choices as the active choice. The most logical choice as determined by Foxstar is the one that preserves most of the work. For example, if you are about to delete a customer record a "Confirm Delete" Choice Required dialog would interrupt the operation. The pre-loaded choice would be "NO" (do not delete). If, however, you have just edited a customer record and you have pressed ESC to complete the edit, a "Save Changes" Choice Required dialog would interrupt the operation. The pre-loaded choice would be "YES" (save the changes). This technique forces the operator to take definite action if he/she wants to choose anything other than the most logical choice.
Pick List Area
There are times when the operator needs to reference a pick list for a particular data entry item. The operator activates the pick list by pressing SPACE. The pick list appears on the right hand portion of the screen (overlaying the right side of the Screen Body). Cursor control keys are used to navigate the pick list. Scrolling is available for pick lists that are longer than the allocated screen area. The active choice is highlighted with an aqua background. Pressing ENTER pastes the active choice into the data entry item from which the pick list originated.
Flexibility
Foxstar has been designed to provide ultimate flexibility in running your store. It is impossible to anticipate the unique conditions that exist in each store and it is unreasonable to expect any store to make major operational changes to adopt to a new system. Obviously, more flexibility in the implementation requires more complexity. Foxstar has chosen to place the small amount of added complexity in the setup portion of the software. This is consistent with the philosophy of optimizing and simplifying the consigning and selling operations. The small amount of added complexity in the setup is done once. The planning guide and setup guide in this manual assists you in the analysis required to complete the setup. Furthermore, a periodic analysis of your operating procedures should be done as a normal course of events in any store.
Hardware Supported by Foxstar
Foxstar supports the following specialty hardware: Call us before you buy if you have any questions about a particular piece of hardware that you would like to use.
Bar code readers that interface via a keyboard wedge and are capable of supporting interleaved 2 of 5 Bar Codes with no check sum. The hit rate of the bar code operations can be improved if the bar code reader is capable of being programmed for a fixed length field. Foxstar uses a bar code length of 12.
Receipt printers
Assorted cash drawers (serial interface or 12 V pulse)
Windows Compatible Laser
HP Desk Jet Family of Printers
Foxstar Printer Forms Requirements
For the most part there are no special forms required for Foxstar. However, certain functions do require some special forms:
Label printing: Foxstar supports most Avery label formats and templates’ can be directly imported.
Tag printing: Foxstar supports clothing stock. tag printers. Call for a list of compatible units.
Check printing: Foxstar is ready to print on Deluxe # 091186. However, the check printing module is fully configurable and can be customized to your standard checks.
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