Aloha 6.7 Order Entry Time and Promotion Pricing Issue

[Linkpoint]

I am a Former Radiant Authorized Service Partner, and I have service contracts with many restaurants in my area to maintain/install/troubleshoot the Aloha Table Service software and POS servers/Hardware. I am very familiar with Table Service and Configuration Center. I am a former Microsoft Certified System Engineer (dropped certifications once I left the corporate world years ago). I am Cisco Certified, holding a CCNP Certification, CCNP Data Center, CCNP Security and working on my CCNP Service Provider Certification. I, of course, have A+ and NET+ Certifications. I am 42 years old, and I have been building PC's since 1984 (Yes, 14) when I built my first PC through Heithkit, the H-89 as a science project in school.

With that said, I just wanted to explain that I am not a dummy and I know a little bit about what I am doing. I have signed up here in these forums to help others, and today, I am asking if anyone has ever come across this issue and how they fixed it. If I can not find a solution, then I will have to call Radiant for help with this issue as the local service provider in this area want to charge huge fee's to my clients just to answer a question or even do minor tweaks to their systems (the reason that I am hired by many companies, as I am less expensive)

The Issue -

I searched the forums before posting to see if this issue has ever been addressed, but I could find no answers. I have a restaurant that has an elaborate activation and event schedule. The events are used to turn on and off various promotions at different times of the day. One of the promotions is a Happy Hour promotion. The Happy Hour promotion turns on at 4pm, and off at 7pm. If a customer has been ordering drinks during the Happy Hour Time, and is still ordering after the happy hour time, the system continues to discount the drinks ordered AFTER 7pm as Happy Hour Drinks.

The Promotion is a Quick Combo that changes the price when someone buys two alcoholic drinks that are on the Happy Hour Special and applies a price of $3.50 for both drinks. Now, if you open a NEW check after 7pm, the system does not apply the Happy Hour pricing, so I know the event/activation schedules are working properly, and shutting off the promotion at 7pm as it should.

Solutions I could use - if neccessary

I know I could simply tell them that the Bartenders need to close the checks after 7pm and start a new check, but that can become a big hassle for a busy bar and an inconvenience to the customer and bartender.

I know that I could simply make a sub-menu containing buttons for all of the Happy Hour Specials and Pricing - and have the activation/events simply hide the menu after 7pm, and re-activating the normal menu.

I also know that I could remove the tick mark beside the Auto-Apply if possible feature, making the bartender apply the promotion manually - again, this is a step that requires the bartender to be very aware of the time and in a busy bar, this could be an issue.

I am aware that a new feature is supposed to exist in the Aloha TS 6.7 that allows you to apply a setting to apply pricing based on the order entry times... but I have yet to find this setting. I use configuration center that this restaurant, so possibly the setting is only available from the normal Aloha Manager on the server.

Any help or ideas would be welcomed!!!

Thank You

Dale

 

[posrescue]

I like to use price levels for pricing all bar items for this reason. That makes it very easy to use price changes to change price by time of day with no need for special menus or submenus.

I am guessing the issue is when they reorder the item already on the check? If events turns off that promo is should not still be applied even for a reorder. Sounds like you found an undocumented featue in that version.

 

[Linkpoint]

Thanks POSRESCUE for your reply...

I like to use price levels for pricing all bar items for this reason. That makes it very easy to use price changes to change price by time of day with no need for special menus or submenus.

I normally would use a price levels change, but the type of promotion this is, and the way this store was originally setup, we went with the Quick Combo to apply a price change, and it works fine... with the exception of the issue we are having at this location.

I am guessing the issue is when they reorder the item already on the check? If events turns off that promo is should not still be applied even for a reorder. Sounds like you found an undocumented featue in that version.

Yes, you are correct. It happens when they have already ordered the item, and the system has applied the Happy Hour promotion to those items. If they order those items again (they have to order two more to make the promotion apply) it auto applies the promotion to those new items as well, even after 7pm. It should not be doing this, as the promotion has ended. Instead of a feature, this sounds like a bug.

I may have to contact Radiant about this one, unless someone else has an idea of what might be causing this - or how to fix it. I may have to redo the way the promotions are being handled at this restaurant.

If I end up calling Radiant, I will post the fix - if any.

 

[kposnet]

Linkpoint...they are not bugs. They are undocumented features

CFC is just a shell. What version of 6.7 are you using? I'll check the bulletins for you.

 

[Linkpoint]

CFC is just a shell. What version of 6.7 are you using? I'll check the bulletins for you.

Yes, 6.7... but I found the issue...

I am not the person who set this up in the first place... the previous owner of the restaurant set it up and the new owner, trying to make changes, went in and messed up the Event Schedule and Promotions, not know exactly how it all worked, then called me when things started messing up the next day, after a nightly refresh.

I had to go and visit the restaurant to actually see what was going on at the terminal to make the changes. What was happening was, the Happy Hour was being turned on at 4pm, but at 7pm, he had is shutting off a "similar" promotion... so, it was actually shutting off a promotion that was never on in the first place, leaving the Happy Hour promotion on.

So, I removed all similar promotions, and fixed it... refreshed, and at 7:01... all new drinks were rang at normal price, and not under the Happy Hour price.

My thoughts: He should have just had me make the changes to his Happy Hour instead of the way he did it... Job Security

 

[techinaz]

When entering the items into Aloha after HH, are they highlighting and reordering or ringing in manually?

TechInAZ