ALOHA General Questions

[RMRazavi]

Hi there,
I just found these forums and it seems to be quite a valuable resource. Anyhow, here is my situation:

I'm a computer programmer and a regular at a local restaurant/bar that uses the ALOHA POS system. The restaurant has a beer club in which you drink 100 different beers and are given your own mug (extra 4 ounces per draft beer). There is also a 200 beer club in which you get another mug (another extra 4 ounces per draft beer).

The issue with their system is that if the internet is down (which seems to be fairly frequent), the beers do not get saved into the system. I guess my question is how easy is it to interface with ALOHA? I was thinking to write a visual basic application that would contact the ALOHA server once a night and verify whether or not the beers have in fact been added to the system. Does this seem like a feasible idea?

I'm not too familiar with the system and have been attempting to read up on this a bit. Are there any must-reads out there for me? I'd like to find a general guide or starter guide for reference. Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you,
-Rod

 

[DTSMAN]

The part about the internet does not make sense. Did you leave something out?
Aloha can be setup two different ways the default way uses flat files that are not easily accessed, the other way is to set it up as a relational database and then things like you are talking about can be done more easily.
I am not a programmer, but that is how I understand it.
The best way to track those is to create another submenu with the draft beers renamed. In other words the item would be in the item list twice, ie. Bud and S-Bud (for special Bud) That way these two items would be seperated in the p-mix report. Now you can see how many 12oz beers you sold and how many 16oz beers.
Is that what you are trying to accomplish??


Bo

Remember,
If the women don't find you handsome,
they should at least find you handy.
(Red Green)

http://www.redgreen.com

 

[RMRazavi]

Thanks for the feedback DTSMAN,
I need to clarify with the owners of the restaurant, but I believe their system reaches out to some website which handles how many beers have been had by each person. My thought here is to attempt to contact the server that hosts this information and ensure each night that the list is up to date.

The system is already configured for different sized beers (i.e. S-Bud).

 

[Dem0s]

they are most likely using the e-frequency program or a like product. if the internet is down the aloha system should cache the transaction and update the data to the site at the next available time. you "should" not loose transactions when the internet connection is down.

 

[awbbar]

I would find out why their internet is down frequently.