Customer Accounts

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Customer accounts hold information about individual customers and keep track of their activity.

What are their advantages?

▪Accounts allow you to use specific, beneficial rates for customers who pay in advance for their time.
▪Customers can log onto the workstation using their account names and passwords.
▪If you purchase the External devices module, you'll be able to log on your customers by scanning their card. CafeSuite supports smart cards, magnetic cards and barcodes. If the reades are installed at the workstations, customers willbe able to log on on their own.
▪It's possble to browse account history to control activity of the customer.
▪Most active customers can be rewarded thanks to the Points system.
▪Customers may feel more attached to your cafe once they get their member cards.

Account types

▪Time account — account with a time limit. This account type should be used if you want to sell time at fixed price.
▪Cash account — account with a money limit. Money can be used to buy time, products and services. This account type should be used if you want your customers to have a cash limit that they can spend. This type of account also allows you to use periodical discounts, which is not possible with time accounts.
▪Use and pay account — accumulates charges to be paid back later.
▪Unlimited account — account without any time limit. It can, however, accumulate charges for sales.
▪Timecode — account identified only by it's name, no password s required to use it. It's owner will only have to enter his account name (timecode) to log onto a workstation.
▪Administrative account — account used by administrator to maintain a workstation. When such account is used to log onto the workstation, the computer is automatically switched to the maintenance mode. Besides that, account of this type can accumulate charges for sales and services.

Administrative account should not be confused with an operator profile, which needs to be set up separately for each employee.

Creating accounts

You can create accounts on the Accounts panel in the main window. Use the Add button to create new account. Account properties window will be displayed so that you can enter account details.

You should enter account name into the Username field and choose account type from the Type drop-down list. Depending on selected account type, you should enter the initial amount of time or cashe to be soterd on the account. You can also leave the Total time and Total cash fields empty to create empty account.

Account can store detailed personal information of your customer. It can be entered on the Personal information tab of the Account properties window. It's possible to add up to six additional fields on the Account properties page in the configuration.

Choosing a charging rate

A charging rate should be assigned to the account. You can choose the charging rate from the Rates drop-down list. If the checkbox next to that list is unchecked, the account will use charging rate assigned to the workstation it's used on.

Setup fee

If you additionaly charge your customers for creatig their accounts, you should enter the fee into the Setup fee field.

Setting account validity

If you want the account to be used only on selected workstations or only during some time, you should open the Account validity tab and choose appropriate settings. You can also limit maximal daily usage time there.

Printing account tickets

If you whish to print an account ticket for your customer, you should select the Print account tickets option on the Account tickets page in the configuration. You can also configure ticket template there.

Using account generator

If you need to create many similar accounts in a batch, you should use the Account generator. This tool can be accessed by using the Generator command from the Accounts menu.

Account templates

IT's very useful to create account templates if you're often creating very similar accounts. The template editor is opened using the Teplates command from the Accounts menu. It's very similar to the Account properties window, you need to fill in the fields that should be remembered in the template and enter the template name into the Account template field. After accepting changes the template will be availble in the Account properties window and in the Account templates toolbar.

Managing accounts

You can manage the accounts using Account viewer. The Account viewer is opened using the Viewer command from the Accounts menu.

See also

▪Accounts panel
▪Account properties window
▪Account generator
▪Accounts page in the configuration
▪Account properties page in the configuration
▪Account tickets page in the configuration