Welcome to Front Counter Basic Training. Included in this section is a series of videos showing you how to use basic areas of FocalPoint's front counter functionality.
Why videos? If a picture paints 1000 words, then a video paints about a million.
Please view this video on overview on the Front Counter:
The chapters are in order that reflects the natural progression of your day, and the natural progression of a transaction. For example, a typical front counter day may flow like this:
•Open the store
•Count your cash drawer.
•Assess what's going out and coming back today, what's late, and so on.
•Process customers requests (quotes, reservations, orders, returns, etc)
•Count your cash drawer
•Close your store.
The natural life cycle of a rental transaction may flow like this:
•Search for items
•Create a reservation (if a request for future), an order (if an immediate request), or a quote (customer is just checking)
•Convert reservations and quotes to orders
•Change orders when needed
•Close orders when your rental items come back
Other front counter activities also covered are things like:
•Pickup tickets (stopping the rent)
•Exchanges
•Credits
•Sales and "Quick Sales"
These are covered in separate chapters.
The following terms will be used during front counter training. To help you get the most out of your front counter training, please refer to the definitions of these terms as needed.
Quote
A quote is a non binding document that has no affect on availability, but can be later converted to a reservation or an order when the customer wishes to do so.
Reservation
A reservation is an order with a future starting date, similar to a reservation for a car or a seat on a plane.
Order
An order, or a contract, which is an active, open rental agreement.
Pick Ticket
A pick ticket is a document you print while you are creating or editing an order. It will show all items on an order, but it will show them without prices, and in a format that would be used by warehouse personnel to "pick" the items prior to delivery or customer pickup.
Sales Order
An order with no rental items on it, only sales items.
Pick Up slip
A pick up slip may be generated when customers call you to pick up items that you may or may not have previously delivered. Generating a pick up slip will also "stop rent" on items so that no additional rental charges are assessed after the date and time for pickup has been established.
Exchange
An exchange is typically what would happen if you needed to swap one item for another because the first item stopped working correctly. The two items (the one being exchanged and the one replacing the first item) would be treated as one item with respect to calculating rental charges. At the time an order is closed, revenue would be divided up between the two items based on the number of days each was on the order.
