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Juhend HansaWorld Enterprise'i versioonile 8.3  

Synchronised Number Series

Each time you create a POS Invoice on a desktop client or on a till with a live connection to the server, the Invoice Number of that POS Invoice will be determined by the Number Series - POS Invoices setting, a setting that is stored in the main server database. This setting will send the first unused Invoice Number to the desktop client or live till, ensuring that a particular Invoice Number is only used once. This also ensures that all POS Invoices will have Numbers from the same sequence, irrespective of the machine on which they were created.

This method of determining the Invoice Numbers of new POS Invoices cannot be used for POS Invoices created on tills with live-sync connections to the server. At the moment when you create a POS Invoice on a live-sync till, that till might not be connected to the server and so will not be able to refer to the Number Series - POS Invoices setting on the server for the next Invoice Number. An alternative method of ensuring the uniqueness of Invoice Numbers is therefore required, and is provided by the Synchronised Number Series setting.

When a live-sync till logs in to the server for the first time, a batch of unused Invoice Numbers will be sent to that till from the Synchronised Number Series setting on the server. This batch of Invoice Numbers will be stored in the Number Series - POS Invoices setting on that till, and will be used when new POS Invoices are created. When the batch of numbers has been used up, another batch will be sent to the till from the server.

In configuring the Synchronised Number Series setting, you should specify the first Invoice Number to be used, you should specify how large each batch should be, and you should specify when the next batch should be sent.

As an example, you might specify that the first Invoice Number to be used is 1000, the size of the batch is 50 and the next batch should be sent when there are 20 free numbers left. When the first live-sync till logs in, numbers 1000-1049 will be sent to its Number Series - POS Invoices setting. The second live-sync till to log in will receive 1050-1099, the third one will receive 1100-1149 and so on. If the second till is the fastest at raising Invoices, it will reach the point of requiring a new batch most quickly (when it reaches Invoice 1080) and it will then receive the next 50 available numbers, 1150-1199.

Once you have configured the Synchronised Number Series setting in this way and after the first live-sync till has logged in, you cannot change the start point of the number sequence. In this example, the sequence began with Invoice Number 1000 and continued from there. You will, for example, not be able to change to a sequence beginning with 10000 at the beginning of the next financial year. Instead, once it has started, the sequence will continue automatically ad infinitum from its original start point of 1000. This is to remove the possibility of using the same Invoice Number more than once. You can however change at any time the size of the batch and the point at which the next batch will be sent.

If you also have desktop clients or tills with live connections to the server, you should take care when configuring the Synchronised Number Series setting. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, once the Synchronised Number Series has been initiated by the first live-sync till, you can't interrupt it or set a new start point. Therefore, it is recommended that you start the Synchronised Number Series from a relatively high number, and use lower numbers in the Number Series - POS Invoices setting on the server. As a result, the desktop clients and live tills will create POS Invoices with relatively low Invoice Numbers, and the live-sync tills will create POS Invoices with relatively high Invoice Numbers. If the live-sync tills will create POS Invoices with lower numbers, there is a risk that they will eventually catch up with old Invoices created by the live tills, resulting in duplicate Invoice Numbers.

This description has so far described using the Synchronised Number Series setting to generate Invoice Numbers for POS Invoices. You should also use this setting to generate unique identifying numbers for Cash Events, Credit Card Slips, Deferred CC Transactions, Gift Receipts, Gift Vouchers Issued and Received and POS Sessions (i.e. records that will be created on live-sync clients where there should be no possibility of the same identifying number being used more than once).

If you do not define a Synchronised Number Series for a particular register, tills will usually not be able to send records in that register to the server. For example, if you do not define Synchronised Number Series for POS Sessions, the first till on which a session was opened will send POS Session record number 1 to the server. The second till will then try to send its own POS Session record number 1 to the server. This attempt will fail, because a POS Session record number 1 already exists. If you had defined Synchronised Number Series for POS Sessions, the POS Session record created on the second till would not have been given the number 1.

If you are using Synchronised Number Series for live-sync tills, you must also use the standard Number Series settings for the live tills (Number Series - POS Invoices, Number Series - POS Sessions, etc). For example, if you leave the Number Series - POS Invoices setting empty, a POS Invoice that is entered on a live till will be assigned an Invoice Number that follows on from the last Invoice entered. In this context, the last Invoice entered is the one with the highest Invoice Number, which is likely to be one that was sent to the server from a live-sync till. If you enter a POS Invoice on a live till, it will therefore "steal" an Invoice Number from the sequence assigned to a live-sync till. The next Invoice created on that live-sync till will therefore have a duplicate Invoice Number, so it won't be possible to send that Invoice to the server.

Also, if you are using Synchronised Number Series for live-sync tills, you must not specify a number sequence for POS Invoices on the 'Number Series' card of the Person record for any user who will enter POS Invoices on live-sync tills. If you do, the user in question will not be able to save any POS Invoices on live-sync tills because an Invoice will try to take its Number from the sequence specified in their Person record. This Invoice Number will probably not be inside the sequence in the Number Series - POS Invoices setting on the till in question.

The Synchronised Number Series setting is in the Technics module. Working on a desktop client before any live-sync tills have logged into the server, change to this module using the [Switch Module] button in the Navigation Centre or the Ctrl-0 (zero)/⌘-0 keyboard shortcut. Then, if you are using Windows or Mac OS X, click the [Settings] button in the Navigation Centre, and then double-click 'Synchronised Number Series' in the 'Settings' list. If you are using iOS or Android, select 'Settings' from the Tools menu (with 'wrench' icon) and tap 'Synchronised Number Series' in the 'Settings' list. When the 'Synchronised Number Series: Browse' window opens, select 'New' from the Create menu (Windows/Mac OS X) or + menu (iOS/Android) to create a new record, or double-click an existing record to modify it. When the record is complete, click the [Save] button (Windows/Mac OS X) or tap √ (iOS/Android) to save it, or click [Cancel] or tap < to discard all changes.

User
Paste Special    Person register, System module and Global User register, Technics module

Sales Group
Paste Special    Sales Groups setting, System module
Use these fields to assign different Number Series specifications to different users.

You cannot leave the User field empty. Instead, you should enter * to mean "all users". In many cases, it will be sufficient to enter a single record in this setting, with * as the User and a blank Sales Group. This will apply the same settings to all users and is the recommended configuration.

If you need different settings for some users, an example configuration might be to have three records in the Synchronised Number Series setting as follows:

UserSales Group
SJ(blank)
*1
*(blank)

On synchronisation, SJ's till will receive number series determined by the first record. Users belonging to Sales Group 1 will receive number series determined by the second record. All other users will receive number series determined by the third record.

If you have defined different number sequence start points in these records, they will be ignored once the first till has logged in. However, the batch sizes and minimum levels will be applied as specified, and you will be able to change these at any time.

To illustrate this, and continuing the example, the three records might contain the following specifications for POS Invoices:

No. SrsQtyMin Level
10001000500
200020001000
300030001500

If the first user to log in belongs to Sales Group 1, their till will receive 2000-3999. SJ's till on logging in next will receive 4000-4999. This follows on from the previous till and therefore ignores the 1000 in SJ's Number Series field, but it obeys the 1000 in their Qty of Numbers field.
Use the matrix to define a Synchronised Number Series for each register, entering one row for each register. If you omit a register from the matrix, the relevant users will not be able to send records in that register to the server.
Register
Paste Special    Choices of possible entries
Choose a register using 'Paste Special'. You should enter rows for the following registers:
GiftReceiptVc
Gift Receipts

IVCashVc
POS Invoices

CouponVc
Credit Card Slips

POSEventVc
POS Sessions

CashVc
Cash Events

GCRVc
Gift Vouchers Received

Number Series
The start point of the number sequence. Changing this number in any Synchronised Number Series record after at least one live-sync till has logged in will have no effect.

Qty of Numbers
Specify here the size of the batch of numbers that is to be sent to the live-sync tills when needed.

It is recommended that you use fairly large batch sizes, for two reasons:

  1. The batch size should be large enough to cover periods when the server is not available. For example, if it is possible that the server might not be available for three days, the batch should be large enough to allow the tills to create records for at least three days.

  2. Small batch sizes will mean that it will be necessary for new batches to be sent to the tills very frequently. Filling the Number Series settings on those tills with many rows may eventually have a detrimental effect on performance.

Minimum Level
Specify here the point at which the next batch of numbers is to be sent to a live-sync till. For example, if the Qty of Numbers is 5000 and the Minimum Level is 2000, 5000 numbers will be sent to each till. When a particular till has used 3000 of those numbers and therefore has 2000 remaining, the next batch of 5000 will be sent.
You can monitor the batches of numbers that have been sent to each till. Working on a desktop client, use the Sync. Allocated Serial Numbers and Sync. Registered Database ID settings in the Technics module and/or the Numbers per Machine report in the System module.

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