The Tools menu contains links to the Signs and Labels programs, both of which can also be found on the Switchboard. It also has a links to the Customer Rewards utility, the Barcode Generator, and the Register Item Sheet tool.
This page is under construction.
The Register Item Sheets tool lets you create pages of product information with a barcode for each item. They are very useful for cashiers. You can create a sheets for commonly sold items, large items that are hard to scan, items that aren’t located at the register, or even services your business might offer. Each sheet can fit up to 14 stock items on it, each including: a scannable barcode, a stock number, a Cougar description, the interchangable stock number, the alternate stock number, and the product type.
To create a Register Item Sheet, input the stock numbers. You want to appear on the sheet. Keep in mind that you will have the option to print the items in the order you input them, or you can sort them by a variety of field types.
Once you have all your desired stock items listed in the table, press the Load Descriptions button located in the top right section of the window. This will search your Cougar Mountain database for all of the stock number and load their respective descriptions. If the item is not in the system, the description will read “INVALID STOCK NUMBER”.
When you are ready to print your Register Item Sheet, click the Printer button. A Print window will appear. Choose the method you want the items to be sorted by (”Natural” means the order in which you input the items) and click the Printer button to print or the Magnifying Glass button to preview.
The Barcode Generator is a useful tool for generating barcoded stickers to use in your place of business. You can use them to create barcodes for items with out UPC codes suck as bulk goods, or you can use this tool in conjunction with the Customer Rewards utility and the AR module of Cougar Mountain to create scannable cards to give to your customers.
To create a barcode label, input the series of alphanumeric characters you want the barcode to read as into the table. This could be a stock number, an alias, a non-inventory code, a customer number, or even a word or phrase.
Note: Make sure that the barcode you create is in the system or else the cashiers won’t be able to scan the item.
Once you have all your desired barcodes listed in the table, press the Printer button located to the right of the table. A label positioning window will appear. Place a sheet of blank labels in your printer. Choose the location of the first blank label on your sheet and then click the Printer button to print or the Magnifying Glass button to preview the labels.
Note: Labels can be purchased directly from Substruct Systems.
The Discovery Planner is a tool designed to help your manage your inventory by merchandise class. It allows you to load a Discovery assortment off of Acenet for any merchandise class number, adjust mins for the items you need to order, and automatically discontinue any items that are in the merchandise class but not in the Discovery assortment.
This process requires several steps: finding and exporting the appropriate Discovery assortment, importing it into the Discovery Planner, and then updating any changes you have made into Cougar Mountain.
To find a Discovery Assortment and export it to your hard drive, follow the steps below.
Note: While you can change the default Discovery Assortment Level for each category on Acenet (by going to Ordering > Discovery > Change Discovery Format), you can access all three assortment levels in the Discovery Planner, regardless of your Acenet settings.
Once you have exported the Assortment table from Acenet, you are ready to import it into the Discovery planner. Open the Discovery Planner by selecting it from the Tools menu. Click the Import button in the lower left-hand corner of the window. Use the Import Discovery Assortment Wizard to walk though importing the file.
Now that you have the assortment imported into the Planner you must choose and assortment level by clicking Convenience, Neighborhood, or Super. Each level contains a different (but often similar) assortment of items, all based on store size.
Once you have set your Assortment Level, you can begin reviewing the assortment. Adjust mins and default mins to order products you don’t have or need more of. Be sure to do this AFTER you generate your Min/Maxs in Inventory Control or else your changes could get over written.
The most powerful feature of the Discovery Planner is the ability to discontinue all items that have that same merchandise class but aren’t in the discovery assortment. This is a great merchandising tool, but be careful: look over the items that will be discontinued (marked with a asterisk [*]) and make sure you want the item(s) to be discontinued. Otherwise you might discontinue an item you want to keep ordering. To prevent an item from being discontinued or updated, delete it from the table.
When the Discovery Planner discontinues and item, it used the discontinued code DD (Discontinued by Discovery). For more information on discontinued code, click the link below.
Once you have finished looking over the assortment, adjusts mins and default mins, and deleted items, you need to update the changes into Cougar Mountain. Click the Update button in the lower right hand corner of the window. This will update the mins and default mins to your changes, update all items not in the assortment with the same merchandise class number to discontinued code “DD”, and remove and discontinued codes on items that are in the assortment.
The Customer Rewards Utility is designed to track the amount of money you customers spend, and then reward them with gift cards.
The Sign Maker can easily generate attractive signs for your sales floor. With Promo signs, you can create signs straight out of a promo code that is setup in the PS module of Cougar Mountain. These signs can be 3 different sizes, and you can print an entire promo code worth of signs or just a select few.
From the Promo Code drop down menu, select the promo code you wish to print signs for. After selecting a code, the table bellow will show all of the items in that code. Click “Check All” to print signs for every item, or go through the table and pick just the items you want to generate signs for by clicking the “Print” checkbox in the right column. Once you have the items you want checked, click the Printer button in the bottom right of the window to generate and print the signs. The signs will contain the following information:
After clicking the print button, a print dialog box will appear. Select the number of signs you want per page. “1 Per Page” will make the signs each a page big, while “4 Per Page” will fit four separate signs onto a single piece of paper. After you have decided on a size, select print or preview and press OK.
Tip: Try using thicker, colored paper and a paper cutter for a more professional look!
The Sign Maker can easily generate attractive signs for your sales floor. By inputting either stock or alias numbers, you can create signs of different sizes without having to look up information such as price and description.
Input either stock numbers (Ace numbers) or aliases (UPC codes) into the stock table. Once your are finished, click the Printer button in the bottom right of the window to generate and print the signs. The signs will contain the following information:
After clicking the print button, a print dialog box will appear. Select the number of signs you want per page. “1 Per Page” will make the signs each a page big, while “4 Per Page” will fit four separate signs onto a single piece of paper. After you have decided on a size, select print or preview and press OK.
Tip: Try using thicker, colored paper and a paper cutter for a more professional look!
After you have finished printing your signs, press the red X button to clear the Stock table.
The Sign Maker is a useful tool for generating signs to hang throughout your store. It can generate two different kinds of signs: Normal and Promotional. Click on one of the links bellow to learn more about each of these kinds of signs.
With Subtruct Mobile, you can use a wireless handheld device to collect data for creating labels. To start adding data to the Label Maker, follow the steps below.
As you add labels to the Substruct Mobile Labels program, they simultaneously appear in the Label Maker on your main Substruct Utilities computer. Follow the steps belew to add new records.
Note: If you use a handheld with a built-in scanner, the Find will get clicked automatically when you scan an item.
Once you are finished inputing records, you can print then using the Label Maker in Substruct Utilities.
For more information on the Labels Tool, click the link below.