DRIVER CHECKOUT AND HOUSE ACCOUNT INTERFACE CHANGES

This month, I would like to document the changes made to the driver checkout screen and the House Account Transactions screen.

Driver Checkout - more and more customers seem to be embracing the idea of extending the length of time a driver might checkout.  For example, many RDS's are branching out and running out of satellite offices, only coming in to the primary office once or twice a week to reconcile monies.

Because of the number of RDS's that are changing their operations, we have modified the Driver Checkout Screen to help eliminate some driver shifts from falling through the cracks.

If you go into driver checkout, you will see an interface that now looks like this:

The first thing you might notice is that the list of employees is no longer a single drop-down box, but now a full list of drivers.  This list is filtered by either selecting the check box on the left, ("Only show drivers not checked out"), or the date selection box on the right.  By default, the 'Only show Drivers not checked out' is selected, which will present to the manager a list of all the shifts that have not yet been checked out -- regardless of date.

This means that a driver that has worked a total of three shifts over the past three days will have ALL THREE SHIFTS show up in this list.  This interface prevents a driver shift from being "missed", as the shift will only be dropped from this list if they are specifically run through the check-out process.

There may be times, however, that you wish to see the list of the drivers that worked for a particular day.  (An error that must be corrected on a shift even after the checkout has occurred, for example).  In this case, you can UNCHECK the "Only show drivers not checked out" box, and select the specific DATE you need a list for.  This will give you a list of drivers that worked a shift on that particular day, regardless of checkout status.

House Account Interface

The House Account Interface for House Account Transactions has also been altered to allow for easier viewing and sorting of House Account Transactions.  If you select House Account --> Accounts, and select the "Transactions History" tab, you will see the following interface:

This transactions list is now a grid report that allows you to group on any of the columns listed.  This enables the user to quickly see outstanding charges, by grouping the list on order number, or by seeing a list of payments by grouping on the 'Type" column.

DID YOU KNOW

DMS has dropped the use of the "Fax Server ID" in workstation setup.  No longer are users required to give a Fax Server ID for their fax servers.  This has removed the restriction of being able to only use 4 simultaneous fax servers on a network, and makes the process of configuring a new fax server much simpler.

DID YOU KNOW

Customers that are using the On-Line ordering engine now have their delay times synchronized with their DMS time entries?  This means that a delay time set in the DMS software is immediately posted to the internet.  For example, if you set the "Restaurant Delay" time in restaurant setup, this information is posted to the web server instantly, causing the web site to display the same delay and time information to your web customers as well.

Web Services

The process of caring and feeding your own web server on your local network can be an expensive and daunting task.  Not many companies have the financial resources to purchase and maintain the hardware necessary to run a web server our of their office, in addition to the technical savvy necessary to keep it secure from hackers on the internet.

DataWedge has created our On-Line Ordering engine to solve all of these problems.  Your restaurant and menu data is uploaded and hosted securely on our professionally hosted internet server, away from your office internet connection--giving hackers no place to scratch away at your network.

Our system is billed on a "pay-for-what-you-use" system.  This means for as little as $50 a month, you can have a professional web presence available on the internet including restaurant information, menus, and on-line ordering.  Use of our templates and get on the internet in a matter of days!  For an example of a template site, you can click here, or click here.

Do you have an existing web site, but just want to include on-line ordering functionality?  No problem... our On-Line Web engine has the ability to be wrapped inside a frame.  Measuring only 720 pixels wide, you can easily integrate your own web site around an instance of an ordering engine, and have the ability to push DMS data out to the internet, and have orders push directly into your system.  To see examples of companies that have integrated their own web sites with our ordering engines, you can click here, or you can click here.

If you would like more information on our on-line ordering engine, please don't hesitate to contact us at (208) 874-4185.

Meal Monger

Meal Monger represents our aggregated web site, aimed at being the target of national marketing campaigns.  Because DataWedge utilizes a "pay-for-what-you-use" billing system, it's in our best interest to drive as many transactions as we can towards your service. 

We currently employ an aggressive marketing campaign utilizing a "keyword match and click-through" model on Google.  We also have "re-marketing" campaigns designed for customer retention.  These marketing efforts are designed to bring existing customers back to your delivery service, and are typically sent out prior to holidays or major events.  Example mailers can be seen by clicking here, or clicking here.

If you would like more information on being a part of Meal Monger, please contact us at (208) 874-4185.

Credit Card Processing

DataWedge has teamed with Nova - the nation's second-largest credit card processing system - to provide a seamless charge authorization system that accepts a full range of bank and T&E cards.  The DataWedge/Nova partnership offers a number of advantages over other card processing alternatives:

• Low transaction/discount charges resulting from the purchasing power of one master contract for DMS clients
• Elimination of  ICVerify as a card processing gateway.  DMS is certified with the NOVA system for direct data transmission to their system.
• The ease and efficiency of a "seamless" process from order entry to authorization to funds transfer into your account

If you would like to know how much you can save over your existing credit card services, please click here and fill out our request form.

Off-Site Backup

Too many times we have seen a client simply ignore the duties of backing up their system.  Make no mistake:  every single hard drive on the planet will eventually fail... it's only a matter of time.

DataWedge has pre-purchased the internet bandwidth and server capacity on the internet to offer off-site backup services to our clients.  For a small service fee of $35 a month, DMS can now upload an encrypted copy of your DMS Database to our internet server each night during the nightly maintenance routine.

Each morning, our internet server then scans each upload and generates an e-mail notification that is sent back to each customer.  That means for roughly $1 a day, you can arrive at your office each morning and be notified that your data is safe and secure at an outside facility.

If you would like more information on this service, please contact us (208) 874-4185.

Copyright 2005, DataWedge, LLC