Global Settings - "Miscellaneous" Tab

Figure 3-23

The "Miscellaneous" tab will allow you to set several other preferences for your MicroBiz software.

Closeout Type
A centralized closeout closes out all registers and reports the combined totals. This is much easier than individualized closeout but it is less secure. Using individualized closeouts allows you to pinpoint any inaccuracies in the cash drawer totals for each station individually.

Rounding Method
Several methods of rounding options are available.

• Banker's Rounding
  • When you add rounded values together, always rounding .5 in the same direction results in a bias that grows with the more numbers you add together. One way to minimize the bias is with Banker's rounding. Banker's rounding rounds .5 up sometimes and down sometimes. The convention is to round to the nearest even number, so that both 1.5 and 2.5 round to 2, and 3.5 and 4.5 both round to 4.
• Arithmetic
  • When rounding always down or up, the resulting number is not necessarily the closest to the original number. For example, if you round 1.9 down to 1, the difference is a lot larger than if you round it up to 2. it is easy to see that numbers from 1.6 to 2.4 should be rounded to 2. However, 1.5, which is equidistant between 1 and 2, by convention, the half-way number is always rounded up.
• Round Up
  • The simplest form of rounding is truncation. Any extra digits are simply ignored.
• Round Down
  • Always rounds fraction values up (more positive) to the next value.

Global Settings - "Flex Decimal" Tab 

The Flex Decimal enables you to have more than two decimal positions for the COST and the PRICE of all inventory Items.
This feature is especially important to those retailers whose inventory is priced at the thousandth of a cent, etc. An example would be for hardware retailers dealing with nuts and bolts that have wholesale values of $0.0450 cents and retail values of $0.0643 cents. In this example, the wholesaler would round up to $0.05 cents and when selling the item at retail, a value of $0.06 cents. Using the Flex Decimal capability requires rounding as times. This is quite obvious, as a customer cannot be charged a half-cent when paying for an item.
Another example would be any gas station utilizing the MicroBiz Controller Series for gas sales. Gas sales always, it seems, have .9 cents tacked onto the end. The total sale is, of course, rounded up.
When the Flex-Decimal System is used, certain reports in the system have been modified to reflect the selected number of decimals. However, any reports concerning sales (i.e. receipt processing) must be rounded. Receipts will reflect the actual decimal amounts, but the totals, for payment, will round to two decimal places. Other modified reports will show actual decimal amounts in the detail, but the final total amounts will reflect whole cents as they have been rounded up or down, as the case may be.

Figure 3-24 

To implement Flex-Decimal into your Controller Series:

1. Go to the Main Menu screen, then Customize, Global Settings and select the Flex Decimal tab. Be aware that this feature requires a Level 0 Security clearance to initiate, by default. With this in mind, make sure that you have set up your "Login" and Password" for a Level 0. This will allow you to go anywhere in the Controller Series and make any required settings or modifications.
2. Place a Check Mark where it says Enable Flex Decimal. The window will change. Using the up or down arrows, adjust the number of decimal positions desired. The number shown there will keep adjusting to reflect the current selection. It is strongly suggested that if you elect to change the Cost setting that you change the Price setting accordingly.
3. After you have selected the number of decimal positions that are desired, click on the APPLY button. A new window, Convert Files Now, will appear. This window will show the number of decimal places that you have elected for your system and also ask if you are ready to convert files now. If you click on No, the system returns you to the previous window to modify your selection. If you click on Yes the system will bring up an additional window, asking if you are ready to Reindex all files, apply the Flex Decimal File Conversion and Clean and Pack Files. If you select No, you are returned to the previous screen. If you select Yes, you are advised that no other machine should be in the MicroBiz System. It gives you this last opportunity to check the system status and make sure that everything is ready for the actual file conversion to begin.
4. If you elected to continue with the Flex-Decimal conversion, the system will go into a Clean and Pack of the necessary files that require modification for Flex-Decimal operation.
5. When the Clean and Pack is complete a new window, Flex Decimal File Conversion, will appear.
6. This is the last opportunity to NOT convert to the Flex Decimal system. If you click No at this point, you are returned to the Global Settings window. Selecting Yes will make the system go into the actual required file conversion of expanding the decimal position to what you have selected and once again re-index those converted files.
7. If you have gone through the Flex-Decimal conversion of the files, and decide that you want to modify the files again, repeat the entire process above.

Global Settings - "File Backups" Tab 

Figure 3-25

This setup screen is where you can configure the MicroBiz backup utility. This is a great feature that should at least be considered by every user. A MicroBiz backup will store a copy of all of your "System Files" in a location you specify, should you ever need to restore them. Your system files are basically everything important, like your inventory, customer data, sales history, etc. The most important part of your computer is your data, and for MicroBiz users, this means your MicroBiz data. Using MicroBiz backups could save your business!

The backup utility will create two folders in your selected backup folder (your Business folder by default). One folder is called TEMPBAK, which will contain the most recent backup in an uncompressed form. The other folder is called ZIPBACK, and this one has the last thirty backups, BIZBAK01-BIZBAK30, the most recent being BIZBAK01.
Backup System (Common) Files

• Never do any Backup (1): Turn off MicroBiz backups. Use this options if you are backing up your MicroBiz data with another utility (you are doing backups, aren't you).
• Ask me each time after every Closeout (2): This will not force backups, but you will be asked if you would like to do a backup following each Closeout. This is OK if you do Closeouts frequently but don't want to backup every day.
• Automatically after every Closeout (3): Backups will be done after every Closeout. If that is every day for you, then you know you'll have a fairly fresh backup each day!
• Ask me each time before every Closeout (4): Just like option #2, but for those that prefer to backup before the Closeout is done. This would give you a chance to redo your Closeout, should anything go wrong (but you have to wait for the backup to finish first).
• Automatically before every Closeout(5): Just like option #3, but these would occur before your Closeout instead of after.
  • This option should be selected by default on a fresh installation of MicroBiz.

Backup Directory
This is the place where backups will be stored. The default is your Business folder, but you can change this to whatever you like. You can set this to a removable drive, for example.

Back-up Now
Click this button to create a backup whenever you like. This is a good idea before making major changes to your data.

Global Settings - "Back Orders" Tab

Allow Backorders on Invoices
Check this box if you want backordered items to appear on invoices.
If the option to "Automatically create P.O..." is enabled then MicroBiz will automatically bring up the Purchase Order screen for creation when backordering a product on the Work Screen. When the Purchase Order has been received (or item is in stock), you must load the customer on the Work Screen and use the FILL command to complete and fill the order.
If the option to "Automatically fill backorders Qty...is enabled then MicroBiz will automatically fill an outstanding order when the product is sold on the Work Screen, without the need to use the "FILL" command.
For more information on backorders, see Auto-Fill Backorders article.

Business Type Settings

Changing these settings can dramatically affect the way the business controller is presented to the user. If your system is not functioning as it should, please contact MicroBiz Technical Support.

Figure 3-26

The Business Model is selected when first installing MicroBiz, but you have the ability to change this here:

1. Click on the model description.
2. Then click on Okay. (You have currently selected the appropriate Business Model. To confirm your selection the name will appear in the upper-left part of your Work Screen).

The various Business Models, other than the Standard Retail Model, will allow you to track items owned by your customers and the services you provide for each item, whether it be a shoe, a car, etc. If you do not need this specific tracking, choose the Standard Retail Model.
It is recommended that all workstations on a network use the same Business Model.

Setup Wizard

The Wizard will assist you in setting up some of the devices you may have attached to your computer such as the printers, cash drawer and the magnetic stripe reader or Cherry keyboard for swiping credit cards. The following pages include examples of dialog boxes found in the MicroBiz Setup Wizard.
This tool can get your hardware set up quickly, but it doesn't allow you to configure every possible hardware setting in MicroBiz. It is a good idea to use this Wizard for a quick and simple setup, but refer to the above setup categories for a more in depth settings.