Vigilant Point of Sales Software has been a leader in the Canadian Point of Sale software market for over 20 years and it continues to meet the needs of both retailers and wholesalers. However, many Vigilant customers need to go further – larger, bigger, better and stronger. The result was the birth of Oneir Solutions Inc.
Oneir makes use of the extensive business rules and logic from the older Vigilant product, but it has been rewritten in a robust language and heavy duty, stable environment. It provides a superior solution for retailers and wholesalers who have grown beyond the smaller independent business stage or have more than one location.
It provides a full featured business solution – from invoicing to inventory control, CRM, back office accounting (AR, AP, GL), and several optional plug-ins to provide specific vertical functionality.
Oneir’s invoicing family includes Point of Sale for retailers, Sales Orders for wholesale and distribution, Repetitive Billing for memberships or contract billing, an eCommerce interface to electronically pull orders from a Web store, and an EDI interface for the electronic delivery of invoices. Each of these invoicing methods can be used concurrently to accommodate multi-channel selling within one company.
Point of Sale provides sales rep and cashier tracking, product and customer lookups, adding customers “on the fly”, manager and sales tax overrides, product scanning, domestic and foreign currency transactions, sales tax and change calculations and multi payment methods. Business control is enhanced with POS reporting for till closeouts, voids, detail transaction and payments received. Taking AR payments and postdated checks at the Point of Sale contributes to tight cash control. POS offers layaway, short term rental, work order and other transactions that involve inventory commitments and deposits.
For companies with mobile stores or multiple locations, Oneir’s POS offers a fallback processing mode when a connection to the server is unavailable. Used for trade show sales, trucks on the road and connection interruptions, this fallback mode provides the capability to continue making sales. When the server connection is detected, Oneir will, in the background, automatically post these locally processed transactions to the main database.
Sales Orders offers bill to and ship to capability, delivery scheduling, special ordering, back ordering and quotations. Quotations can be converted to a sale in one easy step. There is full reporting on orders booked, quotations outstanding or lost, sales register and profit commission reporting and order shipped. Oneir’s eCommerce and Web store interface brings Web store orders into the Sales Orders module for reporting and fulfillment. Sales Orders works in real time with inventory, sales history tracking and back office accounting.
Contract and membership billing is handled with Oneir’s repetitive billing module. Billing is available for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually and annual contracts. Meter readings and maximum billings are other features of this module. Repetitive billing fully integrates with inventory, sales history tracking and back office accounting.
The EDI interface has been expanded to include the delivery of customer invoices and the receiving of customer orders. Using industry standard 810 and 850 formats, Oneir also provides reporting on EDI events.
Sales history tracking allows reporting on what items were purchased from what supplier, and what each customer has purchased. A complete inventory history from product creation, stocktaking, adjustments, sales history and purchase history is maintained. The extensive reporting includes statistics for suppliers, customers, categories, territories, sales reps, year to year comparisons, and price changes.
The CRM module includes customer contact management and user defined information fields. Notes are searchable and have extensive classification capability. Reporting is comprehensive and includes specification criteria by sales rep, customer, date, classification, customer type, currency and string searches on content. Peak performance and statistical reporting is included in this module.
Accounts receivable tracks the complete customer activity. Account details and aging can be reported by date, customer, customer type, territory, term and sales rep. Write-off of payment discrepancies and finance charges received can be made at time of payment processing. Customer statements are elective and can be processed with finance charges or without – with an option to post finance charges at time of statement processing or at time of payment receipt.
Accounts payable provides tracking and complete detail for vendor purchases, debit notes and payments. There is now a contact management feature that enables the tracking of conversations, vendor verbal commitments, etc for each supplier.
It handles size & color matrix for shoe and clothing stores, cut size control for fabric companies, tile add-on for tile and flooring companies and a petroleum cardlock module for petroleum industries. There is an interface to Key-Man software for building supply companies, a portable data terminal interface for wireless warehouse receiving/shipping use and an interface with shipping software.
Oneir makes use of the speed, reliability and robustness of Linux to provide a fast and robust database engine. The Oneir Solution is delivered already configured and ready to go. The “box” is an Oneir server that contains pre-loaded customized components of the operation system and management utilities as well as the business software. An internet connection provides the customer with online support, updates and system management. Customers work from their Windows workstations to access the Oneir solution, as with any of their other applications.
Oneir is specifically designed for companies bursting at the seams or those who have more than one location. It provides real time data updating from all locations. However, if the server goes down the remote location will sense this and “fallback” in local mode allowing sales to be made while the connection is down. Once the connection to the main server is re-established, Oneir again senses this, switches back to the online real time mode. In the background, Oneir sends all the locally processed sales on to the main server where they are seamlessly posted.
With its advanced technology platform, comprehensive feature set and complete reporting Oneir is a logical choice for companies with multiple sites or who needed an enhanced Point of Sale Solution.
Quick Info
Oneir Solutions Inc.
Sales: 1-877-322-3580
E-Mail: [email protected]
Web Site: www.oneirsolutions.com
Alan Salmon is a leading authority on accounting technology. He is the CEO of K2 Enterprise Canada, a North American consulting firm providing technology training to accountants. In addition to his work with consultants, accountants, and software companies in both Canada and the US, he is the chairperson of the Accounting Technology for the 21st Century seminar series. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or by visiting www.salmon.ca.
