The day is over and the cashiers have finished for the day, so now it is time to process all of the transactions in Advantage. You perform communications in Comm 2000, UDatamod processes the files, and you begin your work in Advantage 5. Everything is going smoothly when you realize that an entire Cashier Shift is missing! You have the shift before it , but where is the missing one?

Don't worry, it's not gone forever. There are a few simple reasons why the shift may not be appearing. Logic would tell us that something happened to it between the Cash Register and your Remit Computer, and that is the case. Here are the top two reasons why your shift isn't there;

1. The Cashier on that shift did not run their Z-Report: When we run a Z-Report, we are basically telling the Register that the shift is ready to be transferred out. If a Cashier neglected to run this simple process, the shift will not transfer.  Someone needs to return to that register and run the report before trying to communicate again.
2. There are communication problems with your network: This is the biggest reason why a shift may be lost. If the network commonly drops throughout the day it is possible that you tried to communicate at the same time your network decided to go down. With this problem, you should wait for a moment and try to communicate again. If you experience the loss of a shift often, we highly recommend that  you upgrade your network in some way. Having a strong network will make your job a lot easier because many of the errors you have will no longer happen. 

These fixes are good when your most recent shift or shifts are the missing ones. But what if the missing shift is sandwiched between two that communicated successfully. This requires a little more work because it means that you will have to enter that shift manually. Using the printed Z-Report you will need to enter the product sales one by one.

Please don't hesitate to call us when you are experiencing an issue. We can help you identify what went wrong quickly and help fix it.

It is great when we work on an install that goes as seamlessly as this one. The fact that Arches has invested in a park wide Network System makes our work go much more smoothly. We are always happy to come and work up here and proud to have Arches National Park as a client.

As the holiday season approached, DJ and John flew out to Shenandoah National Park to upgrade their registers and systems, streamlining the Fee Program. There was a lot of work to be done, but with the help of Ryan McKelvey, Mindy Bogue, Maryanne O'Connor and Solim Garcia the installation went very quickly. 

With the installation of EliXR Duo's across the park, Shenandoah has prepared itself for when EMV finally rolls out. Their new touchscreens will make day to day fee collection and even occasional maintenance much easier. With the new touchscreens, they also received a version of our most recent keyboard layouts. The new layout will make transactions and reporting much more simple and efficient.

As with many of the National Parks, Shenandoah has some fee collection locations that are not ideal for an internet connection. For some we were able to set up Cradlepoint antennas, but a few locations aren't even in cell range. For these we were able to create a solution using USB Memory Drives. They can simply download their batches for the day and then send them to the central remit computer with any other computer connected to the internet. This will seriously cut down on the time needed to send this data.

We always enjoy visiting the parks and working with the wonderful people in the fee programs. We look forward to our continuing relationship with Shenandoah National Park and working with their team to keep their program as efficient as possible.