Getting Started with Polygon POS Management

The Users file records the names, passwords and privilege levels of the people you authorise to use your Back of House (BOH) system.  This file can be used to create new BOH user accounts and alter existing accounts. See section BOH User Accounts File for more information about managing BOH Users. Note: Polygon POS Management is delivered with a default account with a User Name of “1” and a Password of “1”.  Use the User Accounts File to change this to the details for the person who will have access to all aspects of the system.  Then create any additional User Accounts for other staff members who will use the BOH system.

Polygon POS Management and Polygon Back Office allow each user of the Back of House (BOH) software to have a different user account with different access permissions that determine which software features can be used.  e.g a user may be allowed to add new products to the system but not allowed to view sales records.  Each user account is assigned a security role which determines which features they can access.  If you will be placing access limitations on some user accounts, see section Security Roles File for more information about configuring user permissions.  

Polygon POS Management places the items you are going to sell into a four-level hierarchy.  These levels are described below:

It is recommended that the POS system is configured in this order.  

1.  PLU Classes - Classes represent the main groups of PLUs that you can have in the system. They are a logical grouping of a set of related PLUs. You assign each PLUs to a Class.  There are seven pre-defined classes;

•Beverages:

•Entrees;

•Mains;

•Desserts;

•Other;

•Special;

•System.

You may also program your own classes in addition to these, and determine the order in which they will print on your production dockets.  Classes are added and managed from the PLU Classes File.  See section PLU Classes File for more information about setting up PLU Classes.  

2.  Reporting Categories - A reporting category groups a set of related PLU’s, strictly for reporting purposes.  Reporting categories have no impact on how PLU’s appear on the POS Terminal.  See section Reporting Categories File for more information about setting up Reporting Categories;  

3.  Keypad Category - A keypad category groups a number of PLU’s and allows them to be viewed together in a pop-up box for ease of use at the POS terminal.  See section Keypad Categories File for more information about setting up Keypad Categories;

4.  PLU - Price Look Up (PLU) refers to a unique identification number for each product that is to be sold.  See section PLUs File for more information about Setting up PLUs.  

If you have purchased the Polygon Inventory add-on module, the next step you will want to carry out is actually part of the previous section “Setting Up a PLU”.  When you sell items or use them as part of a recipe (including things like cocktails), it can be very useful for the system to adjust the appropriate levels of stock automatically. For example, if you want to keep track of the bottles of Carlton Cold in stock, you can link the sales to the stock control system.  See section PLU Details > Inventory Tab for more information about configuring links from Polygon POS Management PLUs to Polygon Inventory Stock Items and Recipes.  

Product Keypads display available products and sale options for POS Staff to select from when recording a sale.  You are able to set up the type and layout of keys on the keypad to meet the specific requirements of your business.  This is done by creating the Categories and PLUs which represent your normal business, making these active on individual keys and adding whichever ‘system’ keys you desire. This will enable the staff members to quickly & efficiently process an order.  You may create as many keypad layouts as you desire. For instance, you may design one keypad for your Food items and another for your Wine List.  

Product Keypads are managed from the Product Keypads File.  See section Product Keypads File for more information about setting up Product Keypads Keypads.  

If you will be using Stand Alone EFTPOS you will need to tell the system which types of merchant cards will be accepted and how to handle GST and commissions associated with each card.  This is done from the Merchant Cards file which is accessible from Polygon Back Office.  See section Polygon Back Office > Merchant Cards File for more information about setting up merchant cards.  Once merchant cards have been configured, they can be made available to the FOH by configuring the Media Keypad which is described below.  

Clients are people to whom you are prepared to extend credit to. Rather than paying for their goods at the time of purchase, they are permitted to run up accounts with you to be invoiced at a later date.

Members are people for whom you accrue ‘loyalty points’.  The system recognises a member when his/her membership card is swiped at the POS Terminal and accrues loyalty points accordingly.  A person may be both a client and a member.  See section Polygon POS Management > Client/Members File for more information about setting up Clients & Members in Polygon POS Management. Once the Client/Member accounts have been setup, they can be made available to the FOH by adding buttons to the media keypad which is described below.  

Management Accounts are accounts that you may use to charge items for which no revenue is received but for which you want to track stock usage.  Examples of these accounts are Staff Drinks or Staff Food where the items “sold” do not represent actual revenue but the need to track the stock usage is still required.  When PLUs are charged to a management account, the system will NOT send the amounts charged to the Polygon Back Office system as revenue, it will ONLY deduct the stock usage of the items sold.  See section Polygon POS Management > Management Accounts for more information about adding management accounts.  Once the management accounts have been setup, they can be made available to the FOH by adding buttons to the media keypad which is described below.  

The media keypad is presented on a POS terminal's pay screen when a sale is to be finalised. It is comprised of ten buttons per page which contain the types of media with which sales may be paid. These buttons allow you to program media types of your choice such as Cash, Client Accounts and EFT Cards.  See section Media Keypad for more information about setting up the media keypad.  

POS staff members are the staff members who use the Terminal or who have sales recorded against their names.  Terminals may be configured to require each staff member to log on to the system every time they are about to enter a new sale item or finalise a bill. This may be via a keypad button (where the staff member chooses his or her own name), or via entry of his password or PIN.

This is also where each staff member chooses and maintains his or her password/PIN. This is the password required to enable any ‘special’ functions on the terminal (such as discounts) that you have chosen to password protect. Please note that staff member password must be NUMERIC.  

Each staff member must have a password – blank passwords are not allowed. It is recommended that management assign and retain a password for a member of staff who will not have any privileges.

Special privileges for each member of staff are assigned here.  See section POS Staff File for more information about setting up POS Staff Accounts.  

Note: If you have purchased Polygon Payroll, the staff member will also be set up as an employee in the Polygon Back Office system. Click Here to read more about Polygon Payroll.  

Your FOH hardware configuration is setup from Polygon POS Management in the POS Network File.  This file allows you to choose how of the physical POS system will operate and how the FOH equipment is connected.  This file allows you to manage POS Locations, POS Areas, POS Terminals and POS Peripherals.  See section POS Network File for more information about the POS Network File.

The Polygon Promo player enables promotional content (images, videos, web pages or PDF documents) to be presented to customers along alongside sale information and and loyalty account information.  This information is displayed to customers using customer facing computer monitors.  See section Promo Player - General Information for more information about enabling the Promo Player.  

VERY IMPORTANT: NONE of the changes made within Polygon POS Management will be sent to the POS Terminals until you instruct the system to do so by using the Terminal Updates window! Also, MAKE SURE that ALL the Terminals are TURNED ON when issuing the update, otherwise some terminals will not be updated.  

Also, you should ALWAYS check your Terminals after sending any update to them, regardless of how small the update is, especially if you have a network of terminals. If there is a communication error some of the terminal settings may not be accurate. If errors are detected, send the update again until the problem is rectified. Sending a FULL update is strongly recommended in this instance.

Please note that sending an update will automatically reset the handheld terminal sessions. Polygon POS Management needs to do this to ensure that each handheld unit receives the updates.  See section Sending POS Network Updates for instructions explaining how to send Terminal Updates.  

If you have purchased Polygon Back Office, the accounting package which integrates with Polygon POS Management, you may have departmentalised your revenue, expenses, costs and stock ledger accounts.  Throughout this manual any detail which relates to multi-department functionality is shown under the heading “For Multi-Departmental Users” and is displayed in a font different to the rest of the manual.  

Using Polygon POS Management with Departments (For Multi-Department Users)

Only one set of PLUs are created in Polygon POS Management and used to create your keypad layouts for the POS terminals. When you choose the Revenue account and Stock Item (or recipe) to which the PLU belongs, the list which is displayed is that of the Admin or ‘master’ department (Department 1).  

When each POS terminal is created, it is assigned to a Department. When the POS sales data is loaded and committed to Polygon Back Office the system reads the Department which the selling terminal belongs to for each PLU and routes the ledger information through to that Department.  

For example, a single PLU for Carlton Cold, linked to a stock item belonging to Department 1 – Admin, can be assigned to the keypads you create for use in the Restaurant (Department 2) and the Bar (Department 3).  Two Carlton Colds are then sold in the Restaurant and six in the Bar. When the POS data is loaded and committed, two units will be decremented from the stock item in Restaurant|Beer and six units from the stock item in Bar|Beer. Similarly, the revenue resulting from 2 of the PLUs will be assigned to Restaurant|Beer and the revenue for 6 will be assigned to Bar|Beer.

See Also:

Departments can be added from the Polygon Back Office > Department Accounts File.  

General Ledger Accounts can be exported to departments from the Polygon Back Office > Departmental Export form

POS Terminals can be assigned to a department from the Polygon POS Management > POS Terminal Details form

Polygon POS Management is highly configurable which enables you to customise the system to meet your needs.  General settings which control how Polygon POS Management and the Polygon POS FOH terminals behave are divided into three groups:  

•Polygon POS Management Application Settings - Settings which effect the Polygon POS Management BOH Application;

•Location Settings - Settings which effect a particular POS location.  Each POS location has it's own set of Location Settings;

•Default Location Settings - Can be used as a template of default values which can be quickly applied to a location.

Click the links above to read about how each setting effects the system.  This can be helpful when getting to know what Polygon POS Management can do, and making sure you get the most from the POS system.  

Polygon Back Office users also have access to Polygon Back Office Application Settings which effect the Polygon Back Office application.  

Each PLU in Polygon POS Management can be assigned up to 5 different prices for each location where the item will be sold.  The POS terminals can be used to manually change the price level used, or automatic price levels can be configured so that the prices of items will increase or decrease automatically based on the time of day and the day of the week.  See section Automatic Price Levels for more information about setting up changing POS price levels based on the time and day.  

If you will be printing hard copies of reports you can select the printer which you wish to print to by selecting File from the main menu, then select Print Setup... This will display the print setup form where you can select a printer to use.