For some unknown reason, POS will lose its database connection. You know this has happened when you try to log in and POS goes into the connection wizard.  There are a couple of things to try.  You can go to control panel in windows and click on Administrative tools.  Double click on services and find the qbpos database manager.  Try stopping and starting it to see if that helps.  Another way I have fixed this problem is to just create a new company file.  After the connection wizard fails a couple of times, you get a change to create a new file.  Name it something very different that your file name.  (Bogus file, bad data, etc)  Then when it creates the connection to POS, you can go to file, company data and open.  It will list your company file.  Choose that and it should open.  In very limited cases, this doesn’t work.  If so, you may have a data corruption issue.

I have come to the conclusion that you should never reverse a transaction.  The problem is that when you reverse a sales receipt and/or receiving voucher, it creates reversing transaction on the day that you reversed the transaction even though the original transaction maybe weeks ago. 

So what is the harm??  Let’s say you create a receiving voucher and then realize the following week that some of the items are the wrong price.  You go back and reverse the voucher, but some of those items have been sold.  POS has the wrong cost for those items and therefore your inventory value as well as Cost of Goods sold are now off.

So the proper way to fix this problem is to go back to the original transaction, copy it and then change all of the items to return items.  Change the date to the original date.  Record the transaction.  Then copy the original voucher and put the proper costs in.  Now inventory is correct.  You will need to manually adjust the costs accounts as it will not correct the balance automatically.  To do so find the Cost of Goods entry for the day of the sale and change the amount to match your new adjusted cost.

While I advise all of my clients not reverse receipt and instead do a return receipt, occasionally they will have a problem with a receipt that needs to be fixed.  For example, you rang up the wrong item with the same price, but now your inventory will be off.  If you reverse a receipt where you have processed a credit card, it will refund the customer credit card, so this is not a good idea.  What you can do is to do a return receipt on the same day and process the refund as payment on account.  You can either use the customer that was the problem or create a customer called sales receipt corrections. POS will prompt you to use this customer with QBF if you are hooked up to the financial product.  Also may prompt you for a credit limit.  Finish the return refunding to the “customer’s account”  Then ring up the sale correctly and in the take payment on account. The refund and payment will cancel each other out and now the inventory will be correct. This technique can be used for many purposes such as changing the date of a sale, etc.

When we are called into consult with a new client who either set up POS themselves or had another consultant work on it, the most common problem we see is a negative amount in the POS inventory adjustment expense.  This indicates that the client has not been receiving inventory in properly.  Most commonly, the client will just enter quanities of items in the on-hand field.  While POS does warn you that you are creating an adjustment, you can hide the message and most do.  What is happening is that you are telling POS that you have X qty at Y cost and therefore it increase the inventory and the offset is placed into POS inventory adjustment expense.  Since both accounts are debit accounts, the expense is driven negative. 

How to fix:  First of all, you must receive all inventory in on receiving vouchers.  Secondly, depending on how long this has been going on, the fix can be as simple as changing all of the check/or bills entered from whatever is listed to POS inventory adjustment expense.  We can consult with you regarding the specifics of your case as well as provide training on POS done right.  Give us a call