Micros 3700 SIM help - need to be able to add funds to a PMS account

[samcgarvey]

I have a SIM that was designed to work with our in house PMS system. We currently link the PMS interface to Micros tenders, which allows purchases to be paid for using the accounts in the PMS system.

What I need to be able to do is to add the functionality to add funds to a PMS account from the Micros 3700 terminal. For example, a customer might want to make a payment against their balance using their credit card or some other type of tender. This is similar to adding funds to a gift card or declining balance account.

Any ideas on how to approach this problem would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Sean

 

[pmegan]

Are you able to edit the PMS system, or does it have that functionality built in already? Micros pretty much just sends and receives messages, the PMS has to know what to do with that data.

 

[samcgarvey]

Yes, I can edit the PMS system. I am having a hard time figuring out how to architect this on the Micros side. On other POS systems I would use a Receive on Account feature to make this happen, but i can't find a similar function on Micros. I don't think I can setup an item so that when it is purchased it initiates a PMS/SIM connection. I guess I could just link all tenders to the SIM/PMS and then have the SIM check to see if a certain item was purchased and then communicate with the PMS to apply the funds to the account. Any ideas would be great. Thanks!

 

[pmegan]

How about writing a SIM inquiry that prompts for the account #, and saves the account in a variable & calls a non-rev service charge if it's found. The non-rev would be used as a placeholder so you could get payment. You could use a final_tender event to check for the flag and update the PMS from there. Something like this:

Prompt for user account #
Account # is saved in global variable ACCT
Transmit an account inquiry to the PMS for account# ACCT
If ACCT is not valid

Set ACCT = 0
Exit with error message
​

Else

Enter a non-rev service charge and the user follows the prompts
​

EndIf

In the final_tender event:
If ACCT <> 0

Query the PMS and save the current account balance to a variable
Send the amount to be added to the PMS
Query the PMS and save the new balance in another variable
Run a print job with the account info, old balance, transaction amount and new balance
​

EndIf

I'm pretty sure something like that will work, but non-rev service charges can be a little bit picky. If they doesn't work maybe you could use a menu item class that doesn't post to gross/net sales. I like using a non-rev here because the employee can't get out of the transaction without payment in full or cancelling, so any global variables will stick around until the end. The downside is that you can't use multiple tenders to add value, but that's really no different than selling or adding value to a gift card.

 

[samcgarvey]

This sounds like exactly what I was looking for. I will give a try and let you know. Thanks!

 

[samcgarvey]

The one thing I am not sure of is how to determine how much $ was charged to the non-rev service charge. I don't want to assume that it was the full amount that is being tendered durring the final_tender event. I toyed with the idea of prompting the user for the amount via an input call and then using something like "loadkybdmacro key(5,#), makekeys(amount), @key_enter" to actually record the non-rev service charge, but I would prefer to just initate the service charge and let the user follwo the prompts to enter the amount, especially since the input command prompts with an alpha/numeric keyboard instead of the 10key that the user should see when entering an amount.

Thanks again for the help!

 

[pmegan]

You can use the @TNDTTL variable. That's one of the reasons I like using non-revs for stuff like this, you can't put anything else on the check with them, no discounts or service charges, can't be service totaled, and they have to be paid with one tender.