Recently I received a call from a customer who made changes to his control information and was experiencing strange behavior at the registers. Unfortunately this person did not remember what was changed. If he had a "Training" company, he could have tested his changes before making them to his "Live" company.

Having a Training Company created in your CounterPoint Software can Benefit your business in many ways.

• Use it for training new or existing employees to show some of the new features that were installed with a recent upgrade.

• Use it to define customizations needed, and test them as they are delivered.

• Use it for a refresher course on policies and procedures, such as how you want returns done.

• Experiment with different settings without interrupting normal operations, to check if the change made gives the intended result.

• Enable a feature that you have never used (or did not know existed), to see how it will affect the system.

• See what a change in the control setup will have on the way a register will work, or the way a PO is created or received, etc. 

• Use it as a place to create an operations manual of examples and procedures.

There are many more benefits to a Training Company that are not listed. You may be able to think of others.

Creating a Training Company is fairly straight-forward for either CounterPoint Version 7 or CPSQL. You will want to do this when ALL users are out of the software. After hours would be the best time to start the process. 

The Training Company, and its Reports, can easily be separated from the Live Company.  It can be configured with a separate desktop icon that will automatically use the training data.  The configuration data can be changed to say TRAINING USE ONLY on the displays and report headings.. Clearly you do not want test reports to confuse daily operations at the printers. You can use the simulate modes for draft capture, to avoid any credit card processing conflicts.

In summary, by having a "Training" company you can try just about anything you want, without risking problems, by testing your changes thoroughly before making them in your "Live" company.

If you need some help creating a training company and accessing it, please email me or call the CCS Support Department at 800-672-4806

Have a Great Weekend
-Bryan