CRS

Welcome to the New CRS Website!

September 27, 2007

Welcome!

We’ve upgraded our Web site to better serve you. It’s now easier to find the POS programs that match your retail needs by utilizing the many resources and tools at your fingertips.

Some of the features include:

*Up-to-date information on the industry-leading Retail Pro® and Microsoft RMS technologies
*Tips to help you avoid many of the common mistakes made by retailers
*Tools to make the decision making process easier for you
*Contests
*Highlighted media stories
And More!

To ensure your online experience is optimized, we have a few recommendations.
This site is best viewed at 1024×768 resolution or higher.

Recommended Browsers

Windows
CRSRetailPro.com requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher, Netscape Navigator 6.0 or higher, Opera 6.0 or higher, or Mozilla Firefox.

Macintosh
CRSRetailPro.com requires Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 or higher, or Netscape Navigator 6.0 or higher.

Accessibility for Customers with Disabilities

Canadian Retail Solutions strives to make its products and services, including its Web site, accessible for all users, including people with disabilities. This Web site, complies with federal regulations on accessibility standards for electronic and information technology.

Retail Pro® 9 Coming Soon!

September 21, 2007

Retail Pro® 9 Series Scheduled for Release in January of 2008.

What are the advantages of Retail Pro® 9?
Retail Pro’s new 9 Series advancements represent the most significant and monumental progression in our application suite in nearly two years. Series 9 contains an amazing wealth of powerful new features and functionality, many of which were developed from the input of actual Retail Pro end users, along with industry proven best practices.
Most notable is the new inclusion of the Oracle based platform, a superior architecture delivering maximum performance and scalability not before achievable. The relational database can scale virtually without limits as a business grows.
Retail Pro Version 9.1 introduces powerful new point of sale features and enhancements, including the integration of payment authorization services directly into Retail Pro. Version 9.1 is also more easily configured to work with specific hardware devices used at the point of sale.
Details of the new features of Retail Pro® Version 9.1 include:

System

All Modules Necessary for Store Operations in One System

• Integrate all your key store operations – Sales, Inventory, Purchasing, Receiving, Transfers, Customer Management, Employee Management – in one product.

• Navigate seamlessly between components, with no need to back in/out of components or launch/exit other applications.

Multi-currency, multi-language

• Manage all of your subsidiaries and stores, regardless of the currency or language used.

• Select any currency as your base currency and assign as many exchange rates as needed for each foreign currency, and the date the rate takes effect.

• Assign a currency to items and vendors to facilitate orders of foreign items.

• Import/Export Translation Files in XML Format. This enables a translator to translate Retail Pro using programs such as Notepad or Excel.

Architecture

• Oracle® 9i relational database scales virtually without limit as your business grows.

• Open design for easy integration with legacy systems to maximize existing resources. For example, Employee Payroll, Merchandising, ERP, or CRM.

• Low administration and easy installation takes the burden off your IT staff. Built-in Technician’s toolkit provides easy access to a variety of tools for maintaining the database (tuning, re-indexing, performing backup/recovery, rebuilding control and password files, adding data files, and checking/compiling schema.

• Supports SQL (Structured Query Language) and XML (eXtensible Markup Language), which provide access to standard development platforms for any custom development.

Communication Using ECM

• Exchange data between stores/stations at any time without disrupting store operations.

• Specify the types of data to exchange, and designate which station controls inventory.

• ECM encodes data to XML (eXtensible Markup Language) in a compressed format, then transmits the data by whatever device (Internet, modem, disk, etc.) you select. At the target station, the data is decompressed and decoded.

• Exchange data with a variety of systems, including CRM, ERP, and Payroll.

Inventory Management

• Store your master inventory list and assign the complete inventory list to a store or an individually tailored subset.

• View each item’s order, receiving, transfer, adjustment, and sales history. This makes it easy to quickly locate the source of an unusual change to quantity or cost.

• Assign an image to items or styles, aiding identification of items without tags, etc.

• Assign multiple price levels to items. Each price level is a complete set of prices for items, such as retail sales, wholesale sales, sales to employees, and so on.

• Make immediate or planned price markdowns. Price Manager enables you to automatically mark down prices for selected items for immediate or future sales, and optionally restore former prices at a later date.

• Calculate and assign Min/Max levels in inventory, based upon past sales history. Retail Pro can then auto-generate purchase orders to replenish stock when items reach Min levels. The Best Replenishment feature identifies stores that currently have a surplus of the items being ordered, providing the option of generating transfer orders.

• Use serial/lot number tracking for items such as computers, cellular phones, and vitamins. Lot number tracking lets you set expiration dates, with the option of preventing sale of items past their expiration date.

• Built-in stock ledger enables you to view each change in item quantity and cost, including drilling-down to the individual transactions impacting inventory. This provides a verifiable audit trail of changes to inventory price and cost, and helps you identity unusual changes (such as when a clerk mistakenly adds an extra zero to an item’s cost.

Employee Management

• Assign security on a feature-by-feature basis.

• Define sales commissions and assign to employees.

• Define time shifts, including overtime rates and assign to employees.

• Create sales targets for the company and assign a portion to each store. A portion of each store sales target can in turn be assigned to each of the store’s employees.

Reporting and Analysis

• Oracle 9i database is ideally suited for high-performance reporting.

• Built-in Report Viewer provides a variety of ways to view and create reports (subject to licensing) and free access for all users to more than 100 predefined reports. You can apply filters, parameters, set sort options, and view charts and graphs.

• Control user access to certain reports and selected features of reports.

• Export a report file to a disk and e-mail the report to another location.

Security/Loss Prevention

• User logon required, so you always “know” who is using the program.

• Control employee access to specific program areas and features. Only the employees you authorize are able to access those program areas and/or feature.

• Control refunds by requiring a customer be listed on any return receipts. Using the customer history feature, you can quickly verify the details of the original purchase, even if the customer doesn’t have the original receipt.

• Track excessive returns by employees. Retail Pro tracks returns for all employees. By running a report and filtering for total returns, you can identify employees with significantly higher number of returns than other employees.

• Track all changes to quantity, price, cost. Retail Pro tracks items from the time they are received into a warehouse or store inventory, to when they are purchased by customers. Changes to any of these key values are recorded on adjustment memos, reducing incidents of price switching and other forms of fraud.

• If a manager performs a security override, Retail Pro can create a log entry, providing information about the event. This helps ensure that security overrides are being performed for valid reasons.

Point of Sale

• Retail Pro decreases transaction time by minimizing the steps needed to create a new receipt. You can set up your system so that when an associate starts a new receipt, most of the information needed to complete the sale is already entered, thus decreasing training time for new employees.

• Define custom POS flags to capture important information at point of sale.

• Use Drawer Manager wizard to simplify drawer opening/closing, entering of currency and non-currency media counts and reconciling totals.

• Perform line item returns to handle situations where a customer wants to return one or more items while at the same time purchase one or more items. This helps speed up the return process, helping to maintain good customer relations.

• Disbursements feature enables employees to easily perform Paid Ins, Paid Outs, Cash Drops, and Misc Drawer Openings.

• Check-in/out feature keeps track of employee hours worked, facilitating payroll processing.

Retail Pro Planning

• Integrated Merchandise Planning, Store Planning and Assortment Planning

• Graphical User Interface uses color-coding of measures for consistent and intuitive ease of use; provides the ability to change layout of windows and views, and hierarchies can be collapsed or expanded.

• Uses workflow to guide users through the steps to plan, re-plan, approve and reconcile according to the enterprise-defined business processes for planning. The ability to reconcile between plans and create separate versions is built in for ease of use.

• Intuitive templates reflecting planning best-practices are included and may be customized as required for specific business requirements.

• Three-tiered architecture can scale from small retailers with a few users to very large retailers with hundreds of users.

Customer Management

• Track each customer’s total sales and total returns, year-to-date sales and returns, total number of visits, average purchase amount, average discount amount, and the average number of unique items purchased each visit to help you identify the best-performing customers and allocate marketing dollars more effectively.

• Track contact information, such as name, multiple addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail address for use in direct mailings, credit card billing, etc. Store a customer image as part of customer record, enabling easy identification and improving security.

• Assign customers to regions and/or districts for use in direct mailings.

• Assign a default discount percentage to customers (such as an employee discount) that is automatically suggested at point of sale. You can also assign customers to one of your defined price levels (such as a VIP price level for your best customers).

• Assign store credit to a customer that can be used as a form of payment on future purchases, with Retail Pro automatically updating the store credit balance. This enables you to give store credit to a customer rather than a straight return.

• View a customer’s entire order and purchasing history in both summarized form as well as a list of individual transactions. This enables you to drill-down and locate a particular transaction to facilitate returns, exchanges, gift receipts, etc.

• Divide your customer list into segments that share common characteristics, such as total sales, number of visits, region, district, etc., to help execute marketing campaigns.

• Divide customers into bins based on metrics such as the date of the customer’s last visit, the number of visits, and how much the customer spends each visit.

2007 Retail Pro Partner / User Conference Announced

September 1, 2007

Don’t miss this opportunity to attend the User Conference in La Jolla, California to see what is new with Retail Pro. As the thought leader in specialty retail for over 20 years, Retail Pro is constantly evolving to help your retail business run more profitably and achieve impressive returns on your technology investments. Read more…

Retail Pro Partner Conference
October 12 -14, 2007

User Conference
October 14 – 16, 2007

Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines
La Jolla, California

World's Largest Hockey Store to Open its Doors

August 21, 2007

Toronto Maple Leafs attend grand opening at Vaughan Mills

VAUGHAN, ON, Aug. 21 /CNW/ – On Thursday, August 23, the puck will drop at Vaughan Mills for the grand opening of Pro Hockey Life, the largest hockey specialty store in Canada. With over 30,000 square feet of space, fans of Canada’s favourite pastime will have the largest selection of equipment and products to choose from.

“Pro Hockey Life is an exciting opportunity to change the hockey retailing market in Canada. We want to present consumers, whether male, female, professional or amateur, with all of the gear they could ever possibly need, all under one roof,” said Gilbert Rousseau, CEO and President of Pro
Hockey Life. “Consumers will no longer have to travel from one general sports outlet to another to find appropriate hockey equipment.”

The interactive, mega store will bring “shoppertainment” to the hockey consumer, separating itself from the current selection of hockey retailers. Players will be given the opportunity to test skates on Pro Hockey Life’s indoor “synthetic ice,” to get a sense and feel of the equipment before committing to a purchase.

Pro Hockey Life is also one of the few locations in Canada to feature the “RapidShot” training system where players have a chance to improve their shooting skills. With computerized technology, “RapidShot” offers customers feedback on every shot regarding accuracy, speed and reaction time.

Breadth and depth of product selection will truly be unmatched: for example, the store will carry over 14,000 sticks and 5,000 pairs of skates in stock, with over 1,000 different model/size combinations in both categories.

With equipment for players of all ages and levels, consumers will be able to find what they are looking for. Whether it’s skates, sticks, protective equipment, accessories or performance apparel – Pro Hockey Life will carry everything hockey from the industry’s leading manufacturers. Pro Hockey Life also recognizes the large and growing number of Canadian women dedicated to hockey and will stock products designed specifically for them. Rousseau said “but don’t look for women’s gear in a separate section; at Pro Hockey Life, we cater to one clientele: hockey enthusiasts – period.”

The launch of the hockey specialty retailing chain is the result of a partnership between Sports Gilbert Rousseau, a group of private equity investors led by Champlain Financial Corporation, as well as with Jack Steckel, a founding member of Golf Town and Capital Canada Limited, an independent investment banking firm.

“We believe Pro Hockey Life is the largest concept of its kind in the world and are very excited to be able to combine an interactive shopping experience with all of the equipment any hockey enthusiast could ever need,” said Jack Steckel, Capital Canada Limited.

The grand opening of Pro Hockey Life will also be attended by a few of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who will be signing autographs and may be testing their shots with the “RapidShot” system.

Alexei Ponikarovsky
Toronto Maple Leafs
1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Brought by Nike Bauer Hockey
Carlo Colaiacovo
Toronto Maple Leafs
3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Brought by Nike Bauer Hockey

Alex Steen
Toronto Maple Leafs
5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Brought by CCM/RBK

Al Iafrate
Former Toronto Maple Leafs
2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Brought by Warrior Hockey

About Sports Gilbert Rousseau

Sports Gilbert Rousseau was established 30 years ago in Montreal, Quebec. Since its inception, Sports Rousseau has established a reputation as the premiere hockey retailer in Canada. Pro Hockey Life at Vaughn Mills is the first of Sports Rousseau’s stores in their new hockey speciality chain, Pro Hockey Life.

About Vaughan Mills

Vaughan Mills is the first enclosed shopping centre built in Canada in more than 16 years, located just north of downtown Toronto at Hwy 400 and Rutherford Road. This 250 store mecca combines fashion, outlets, dining and entertainment. Many are the first of their kind in Canada, including; Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World, NASCAR SpeedPark, Lucky Strike Lanes, Designer Depot, the world’s largest Tommy Hilfiger Outlet, Holt Renfrew Last Call and the First in Canada and Largest in the World Pro Hockey Life!

For further information: Julie Bellissimo at (416) 848–1462 or jbellissimo@national.ca

Gift Card Solution

August 16, 2007

Add value and keep customers coming back!

Canadian Retail Solutions and Givex have teamed up to offer a gift card solution to all our customers. This gift-card program is a simple and effective way to increase your sales. Many of our customers have experienced an increase of up to 90% in gift certificate sales as a result!

How does it work?
* Gift cards can be branded with your logo or design.
* Denominations can be ‘pre-set,’ or ‘flexible,’ or a combination of both.
* Activation and redemption occur through POS key-entering, magnetic card reader, bar-code reader, telephone or web interface.
* Cards can be re-used and customer can add value to their card in-store or online.

Who is Givex?
The Givex Corporation is a premiere gift card and loyalty program transaction processor featuring:
* Real-time transaction processing
* Integration with your Retail Pro POS system
* In-store, online and IVR (Integrated Voice Response) transactions
* Reduced fraud and duplicate use
* Declining and reloadable card balances
* Pre-determined or flexible card value
* SKU-based loyalty

Learn more about the CRS Gift Card program.

Find out how CRS can help raise your bottom line – contact us today!

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Retail Pro Integrated Payment Processing

August 16, 2007

Attention all Retail Pro® users!

Canadian Retail Solutions has partnered with Tender Retail and Moneris to provide new and innovative, state-of-the-art payment processing software for your business operations.

This exciting new product allows you to:
* Seamlessly integrate between your Retail Pro® POS system and the Moneris Payment Processing Service to complete Debit and Credit Card transactions in mere seconds
* Reduce bank equipment costs with top quality pin pad technology provided by Moneris
* Produce simplified receipts from one printer
* Eliminate double entry errors that your accounting and management team spend valuable time chasing
* And use the optional Gift Card functionality with the Givex gift card and customer loyalty system

Now available in Canada for all Retail Pro® users, this comprehensive new product is being offered at a one-time low installation price with an optional annual maintenance fee…which means no additional transaction fees for your business!

At CRS, we are committed to finding solutions that will lead to greater success for you and your business.

If you would like to learn how to save money, improve your efficiency, and enhance your business operations, please contact us today! A member of our sales team will be happy to discuss the significant advantages of this integrated payment processing solution!

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King Tutankhamun: A Retail Success Story

August 16, 2007

When Arts and Exhibitions – the organization behind the eagerly awaited Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibit – selected a retail Point of Sale (POS) system provider, they chose Canadian Retail Solutions (CRS), the reputable Canadian company that had given them success with previous exhibits… and it has certainly paid off.

“When we brought Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs back to North America, we knew the gift shop operation was going to be very complex,” says Curtis Bechdel of Arts and Exhibitions. “We had a great experience with CRS, who helped us select the Retail Pro® POS program when we began the touring exhibition commemorating the life of Princess Diana in 2003. Although we knew our new exhibit would be even more elaborate, we had complete confidence in the CRS Team and Retail Pro® to meet our needs.”

The retail store at the King Tut Exhibit opened in Los Angeles on June 15, 2005, to a record opening month of over $2,000,000 in retail sales. “On opening day, the sales were so numerous, that we quickly realized we needed four additional stations!”

In record time, the CRS technical team delivered the stations and converted all of the systems to the proper network servers, located in both our Ohio and Los Angeles offices,” explained Bechdel. “The change literally happened overnight and the service was a real testament to the flexibility and attention to detail I have grown accustomed to in dealing with CRS.”

Specializing not only in sales, consultation, training and technical support for both the Retail Pro® and Microsoft RMS POS systems, CRS is also dedicated to providing other integrated retail solutions such as e-commerce, security, and automatic web back up.

“I was so impressed with the attention to detail that my account manager at CRS and the rest of the technical team paid to my business,” said Bechdel. “It is for this reason that I have continued using CRS for other projects, including our seamlessly integrated web store: www.kingtut.org which has brought another stream of income to our business; as well as a security system to protect the ancient artifacts of the King Tut exhibit.

“We strive to create lasting partnerships with our clients,” says Scott Smith, General Manager of CRS, “and our customers appreciate the focus we place on streamlining their retail processes. Our job is not finished once a POS system is in place, in fact, that is only the beginning. Our signature platinum support program ensures continued support and assistance to our clients, and helps them realize their goals and protect their investment in a professional, cost-effective way.”

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