First Steps

Just getting started on MicroBiz Cloud? Here's are the basic settings and set ups to go through.

• Review training videos - especially front register tasks like returns, exchanges,split tenders.
• Learn about setting up Sales Tax - rates,rule and customer and product tax classes.
• Set your store addresses, time zones and currency settings.
• Modify the receipt template to match your needs and add a logo.
• Add additional users - so everyone has a log in name and password (no worries - they're all free).
• Speed up your register by adding handy buttons to your Quick Pick Panel for commonly sold goods and services.
• Add suppliers and distributors if you plan on logging in vendor shipments to update your inventory.
• Organize your Categories! They're important groupings of activities.
• Did you sync your data from Magento? You products might not have cost, supplier or UPC attached - you may want to add these by hand or import these values.
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Products

What data do you put in which fields? What fields do you need to fill in and what fields do you want to fill in. What kind of products should you make to track the activity in your store - we'll try to answer it all, here.

Things to Know about Products

• MicroBiz Product Catalog uses attributes like Magento - attributes are fields that are part of your product record like season,material and even colors and sizes are all attributes.
• Most common type of attributes is a drop down list where the user picks one option from the list (like sizes: small,medium,large).
• MicroBiz products are broken into 2 types:Inventory products and non-inventory products. Only inventory products track your stock balance, cost of goods, gross profit and return on investment. Inventory products are used when you want to track your stock levels Non-Inventory products can be used for labor fees, delivery charges, service fees, repairs and miscellaneous parts and items whose inventory you do not wish to track.
• If you have a linked Magento site you can create products, attributes, attribute sets,and product categories in both MicroBiz or Magento. In either cases you can designate whether you want the product or attribute etc to sync between MicroBiz and Magento. 
• MicroBiz will create all simple products for a configurable product automatically - this can save you time.

Name, Style & SKU

Think about what you will put in these fields. These 2 fields show up on tags, receipts and in search suggestion of the scan panel so it's important that you can completely recognize your product based on  seeing these fields. When MicroBiz Cloud auto-generates configurable variants it appends the configurable attributes automatically to the end of the product name so the configurable product Nike Dry Fit Polo becomes Nike Dry Fit Polo Red XL and so forth for each variant option.  

SKU must be unique. No two products can share a SKU. You can place the manufacturer UPC in this field though many manufacturers have a Product ID or their own SKU that you will want to place in this field. 

The Style field provides a place for a searchable field that is non-unique across multiple products. Often a product name shared by different colors or finishes of a product.

New Simple Product  New Configurable Product    New Non-Inventory Item

Supplier, Brand

Create suppliers and assign them to items you will order from those suppliers. The easiest way to add stock to your system is to receive supplier shipments. You can either assign suppliers to your products or if you wish you can create suppliers that are 'distributors' and any item no matter it's assigned supplier will be order-able and receive-able from the distributor. When the customer facing 'Brand' is different than the supplier use the Brand to help the staff and your customers identity the stock.

Cost & Price

If you imported data from your Magento site your products may not have a valid cost. Many reports that show gross profit and return on investment use this value and cost is important on purchase orders.

You can have different prices in different stores by using store price grid in the prices tab.  

Barcodes & Alternate ID's

Products can have several different ID's all of them can be searched and scanned throughout the MicroBiz Cloud application. All the ID's are visible in the alternate ID tab for simple items. If you have created a Configurable Item the alternate ID for all simple variants can be edited in the configurable item's Alternate ID's tab. 

Product Types

• Non-Inventory/Services - Use this product type for items where you do not wish to track inventory balance. 
• Inventory - Use this type of product when you do want to track inventory!
• Simple - This item comes in no consumer variations and has a single inventory balance per store.
• Configurable - this type of item has multiple variations each of which has a separate inventory balance per store 4 medium and 2 large in the Boston Store, 2 medium and 3 large in teh New York store.
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Useful Stuff

• Prompt for Price - this setting is available on non-inventory items only - when adding this item to a receipt or order the clerk is asked to enter the price. This can be used for miscellaneous items with different prices or for services with variable charges. (General Tab - Cost/Price Widget)
• Allow Fractional Quantities - this option is available on both inventory and non-inventory products - when selected the product or service can be sold in fractional increments such as 1.75 hours of repair labor or 2.5 yards of mulch. (Settings Tab)
• Add to Quick Pick Panel - places a button on the register quick pick panel for the product. Configurable parents can be added and the variant selection dialogue will pop up when the button is pressed.  (Settings Tab)
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Root/Main/SubCategories Categories

Managing your categories is very flexible so you can assign an item to many categories if needed. All you need to do is create categories and sub-categories. 

• You can have only 1 root category in MicroBiz for inventory products and only 1 for non-inventory products. This does not have to be the same root category you are using on your web sites.  
• Main Categories are the next level of organization below root categories. Register closeout shows sales totals by main categories and these should represent the primary departments in your store. 
• Sub Categories are typically used as the 'customer mission' category - if you ask a customer why they came to the store their answer would be a customer mission category. "So I need a jacket" would mean you would probably have a subcategory in your store 'jackets', the main category might be 'Men's Clothing'. 
• Third Level Categories are used to monitor significant sub groups within a subcategory - such as "tweed',"blazers" and so forth. 

Manage Categories

Attributes & Attribute Sets

• Attributes can be used to provide consumer choices: colors, sizes, logo etc.
• Attributes can be used by consumers to filter products on your web site: material, origin, fuel (think graphite or aluminum; France,California; gas or electric)

• MicroBiz will create your simple items automatically when you define the configurable item. All simple items will get the same cost and price - these can be changed later if you like. You can also go through and change the SKU,UPC or anything else in the simple item if you like. In some cases this will be an easier way to work than creating all the simple items in Magento.

  
  
  Hint: Be sure to organize your attributes!  Don't make one big attribute called sizes with 50-100 sizes in it - it's too hard to quickly find what you want. For more information on attribute strategies click here.  

Magento Sync Settings

So you have a Magento site - great!  You'll need to decide about some settings. Most of these settings are in MicroBiz >> Linked Apps >> Magento API >> API Settings or in Magento >> Admin >> MicroBiz POS >> Configuration

Sync Products

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2. In API settings turn on Sync Products - there are separate settings for MicroBiz->Magento and Magento -> MicroBiz.
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4. In Create/ Edit Product in MicroBiz there is a 'Sync to Magento' field and in Magento there is a 'Sync to MicroBiz' field. Supporting data like attribute sets and attributes will also sync if you set the 'Sync to ..' field to yes.

1. Map MicroBiz Inventory Category to one of your Magento Root Categories in Linked Apps > Magento API >> Api Settings tab.
2. Set the Root Category to Sync to Magento (in MicroBiz)
3. Set the Root Category to Sync to MicroBiz (in Magento)

1. When the Magento Categories are sorted in a different order than the MicroBiz categories new or changed categories in MicroBiz do not effect the sort in Magento

2. You can choose to sync your categories or not and so Sync to Magento can be ‘No’ in MicroBiz and Yes in Magento so the Sync will only go one way
3. Don't Sync categories at all - remember that for a product to show up on your web site it has to be in a category that's part of the main navigation.

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• Sync Customers - limitations here are that MicroBiz doesn't require you to enter phone, email and full address but Magento does - so Magento will reject records it considers incomplete. To sync items there are 2 steps:
  1. In API settings turn on Sync Customers - there are separate settings for MicroBiz->Magento and Magento -> MicroBiz.
  2. In Create/ Edit  Customer in MicroBiz there is a 'Sync to Magento' field and in Magento there is a 'Sync to MicroBiz' field. 
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• Inventory - there are a 2 inventory update options that can be set independently..
  • Sync MicroBiz Stock Balance -> Magento 
    1. Set the API Inventory Sync settings to yes and indicate which stores inventory to include in the web site inventory. 
    2. The product itself has to be synced before an inventory update will sync (See Sync Products? above)  
  • Update MicroBiz Stock Balance when you sell items in Magento 
    • This option is used when you do not want to sync the orders back to MicroBiz - it requires the user to select a MicroBiz ship from store on the Magento Order ship screen. To use this:
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    1. MicroBiz Set API Sync Inventory Magento -> MicroBiz set to yes
    2. Magento >> MicroBiz Config > Set Select MicroBiz ship from store to yes.
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• Orders - If you create a virtual store/sales channel and define it as your Magento web site your Magento orders appear in your MicroBiz system when they are new and update to complete when they are shipped and invoiced in Magento. Complete orders show up as sales in inventory reports.
  

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  • Send new and completed orders to MicroBiz - easy for clerks to see and prepare orders
  • Magento Orders show as sales in your MicroBiz Reports
  • You can define your Magento stores as separate sales channels in MicroBiz for separate reporting and default ship from locations.
  • Ship from store automatically deducts from default ship store (you can transfer goods to adjust stock when you fill the order from another location)
  • Set up
    1. Create a Virtual Store/Sales Channel in Manage Stores and select your web site.
    2. From your Magento Admin Panel >> MicroBiz >> Configuration set Sync Orders to yes.
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• Gift Cards - You can sell and allow your customers to redeem your Gift Cards on your Magento site. Gift Cards sold on line work in the store and cards sold in store work on line. Available Gift Cards in your MicroBiz system are visible on your web site and users can purchase them as if they were in store. Set up:
  1. Make sure your gift cards have a pin defined for security in MicroBiz >> Store Operations >> Sales >> Manage Gift Card Ranges
  2. Magento Admin Panel >> MicroBiz POS >> Configuration you'll find control to allow both the sale and redemption of gift cards on your site. 
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• Store Credits - you can allow your web customers to use store credits as payment on your Magento site as well  in Magento Admin Panel >> MicroBiz POS >> Configuration.
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Sync Limitations

• Attribute set must be set to Sync = yes and saved before you sync products using that attribute set.
• Pictures are not synced between MicroBiz and Magento at this time.
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Are you importing products into MicroBiz from your old POS system and syncing data from your Magento site?

You will need to consider whether duplicates exist between the two system and decide how to omit one of the duplicates - typically the SKU is used to skip importing the product from file and teh product is imported from Magento.

Do  you have a new Magento site with no products?

Entering the products in MicroBiz is often faster if you have a lot of configurable items and these products can be synced to your Magento site.

Importing Product into MicroBiz from your Magento Site

• These products are often missing UPC, Supplier and cost you may want to import those with a simple csv of SKU,cost,supplier,upc. 
• Other fields you may want to add are restock levels and stock balances.
• You can import your Magento stock balance to MicroBiz 
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Customers

• Customer types can be used to designate which customers may get sale pricing
• Customer tax class designates which customers pay tax and which are exempt
• Customer alternate ID's provide a way to to look up customers by some other identifier besides name,email phone and so forth. A membership ID, loyalty club number and even facebook name can be entered in alternate ids.
• The walk in customer is special - it gets assigned to a cash and carry receipt when no real customer is assigned automatically. 
• You cannot issue a store credit to the walk in customer
• You cannot place a work order or order in progress using the walk in customer.
• You can change the walk in customers name,customer type and tax class. 

Setting your Beginning Stock

If you have a stock balance already there are a number of ways to set it in MicroBiz

• Import from your Magento site (contact support for help with this)
• Enter Beginning Stock Balance in the product record as you create it. (this is easiest with simple items.
• Enter an Inventory Adjustment with the new stock balance - this is often easier with configurable products
• Import your stock balance as an Adjustment to Inventory.