I love what I have seen in the last week since downloading FA. It is clean, fast, and combines front and back office functions. And, from what I can tell has an excellent developement team creating useful extensions. After reviewing the Forums it is clear though that the focus of FA is for B2B use. Discussion of a POS module has been extensive in the forum posts with no apprent conclusion. I actually do not think a POS module is needed to make this work for my pupose (furniture retailer.) The only thing I am interested in is making the customer entry tweaked for a retail operation. In other words, B2B operations have a more pre-set customer base operating on account basis with multiple possible branches. So a simple reimagining of the customer entry is all that is needed. Is there a way to setup a module and call it 'POS Customer Entry' which essentially creates an entirely seperate customer table in the database with characteristics of a POS customer. So, for example, it would not need to have a branch, credit limit, credit status, prompt payment discount, GSTno, Customer Name, or Customer short name. Instead it should have fields such as, First name, last name, e-mail, phone number, address field for delivery, sales group, other basic items (sales area, tax group, currency, GL accounts, Inv loc, and price list) could be identical for each POS Customer, and an automated account# which would also serve as the unique key for the table. This 'POS Customer Entry' could operate seperately from the existing customer entry methods or as a customer subset where the current customer/branch setup could have a single entry labeled 'POS Account' and all POS customers are tied to the 'POS Account' Customer/branch. I suppose that the direct invoice would have to be tweeked also to allow me to select a 'POS customer.' Perhaps a third customer selection level field could be added for the 'POS Customer' subset during order entry. In addition to the third customer selection field the order form would also need a checkbox labled 'POS sale' so that I could check that box which would then tell FA to pull the relevant information (First, last name, address) for the invoice from the POS customer database based on the POS customer selection field as opposed to pulling data from the current customer & branch databse. I am straining to think about all the other areas that would need to be changed, but customer payment and customer inquiry could also use the third level customer field for 'POS Customer' to drill down, and for reports maybe add a 'POS Customer' filter to drill down and track the POS Customer history. Since the 'POS Customer Entry' module could be a subset to the existing customer/branch setup, it seems like this could be a seemless tweek, and maybe best done with a version release since so many different areas would need minor alterations. In the end, though I don't think it would be hard at all to add a feature to FA where it would work well for a retail business. Using a third party or seperate POS module is not needed. I don't need a direct link to a credit card machine or cash drawer. Just a simple easy way to enter my type of customer in the database and have it track through. Oh, and might I add that all 'POS Customer' fields should pull by last name when searching and also display the first name and phone number beside it in the search field if you have customers with similar names.
Thanks for letting me express my ideas.
