Language: English (United States) Files installed by Cash Register Express 64-bit • CRE2004.exe - DesktopPOS (pcAmerica.Desktop.POS) • Interop.CRELegacyPrinter.dll - Assembly imported from type library 'CRELegacyPrinter'. • dbiScheduleE.dll (by DBI Technologies) - dbiSchedule Enterprise Windows Forms Control for.NET (dbiScheduleE) • Interop.DSICLIENTXLib.dll - Assembly imported from type library 'DSICLIENTXLib'. • Interop.OPOSDRWLib.dll - Assembly imported from type library 'OPOSDRWLib'. • Interop.Paymentech.dll - Assembly imported from type library 'Paymentech'. • Interop.VXNCOMLib.dll - Assembly imported from type library 'VXNCOMLib'. Or, you can uninstall Cash Register Express 64-bit from your computer by using the Add/Remove Program feature in the Window's Control Panel. • On the Start menu (for Windows 8, right-click the screen's bottom-left corner), click Control Panel, and then, under Programs, do one of the following: • Windows Vista/7/8: Click Uninstall a Program. • Windows XP: Click Add or Remove Programs. • When you find the program Cash Register Express 64-bit, click it, and then do one of the following: • Windows Vista/7/8: Click Uninstall. • Windows XP: Click the Remove or Change/Remove tab (to the right of the program). • Follow the prompts. A progress bar shows you how long it will take to remove Cash Register Express 64-bit. Should I remove Cash Register Express 64-bit by pcAmerica? Learn how to remove Cash Register Express 64-bit from your computer. Buy PcAmerica Cash Register Express Professional Edition from. Cash Register Express™ has integrated time-clock and labor. Windows XP Professional 32 bit. System Requirements. Below are the minimum and recommended specifications for pcAmerica's POS software. If you have any questions regarding these requirements, please feel free to contact us. Recommended Desktop PC System Requirements are: Windows XP Professional 32-bit, Windows Vista Business 32-bit,. Sep 09, 2017 Cash Register Express is a retail point of sale system that helps increase efficiency and accuracy, lower operating costs, and helps you manage your inventory. Overview: Unlike most of the reviewed on Merchant Maverick, pcAmerica’s Cash Register Express (CRE) and Restaurant Pro Express (RPE) are old-fashioned software that need to be purchased and locally-installed on a computer operating system. Built as a fast and powerful POS systems, CRE and RPE perform all the basic functions involved in completing transactions alongside inventory tracking, customer tracking, employee management, advanced reporting functions, and much much more. Founded in 1985, pcAmerica is a division of Automation Inc. And has been making POS systems for over 30 years. David Gosman led pcAmerica as its CEO for ten years until the company was acquired by in 2014. Now, Gosman serves as Senior Vice President of Heartland Commerce while Chairman and CEO Robert Carr heads up one of the nation’s largest payment processors and merchant business providers. Both systems have been highly acclaimed in the retail services industry. The CRE Restaurant Pro system won a 2010 “Best of the Best” Innovative Solutions Award, and the RPE system was voted #1 on the restaurant POS scoreboard by Hospitality Technology Magazine. The RPE system allows servers to be trained quickly, manage high volumes easily, and keep service moving at a quick and efficient pace. Naturally, locally-installed POS systems like pcAmerica come with their own advantages and drawbacks. Increased functionality is probably the biggest advantage—with such a huge array of features, the system can be tailored for practically any business. Drawbacks usually include the need for servers and backups, the additional cost of continual upgrades, and high start-up costs. In fact, pcAmerica’s total costs for software, hardware, supplies, installation, and tech support can result in a POS system priced in the tens of thousands of dollars. This is often the price of reputability and reliability, but it is a subject of some debate whether pcAmerica software should be called reputable or reliable. Don’t have time to read an entire review? Take a look at for a few quick recommendations. Every option we present here offers excellent customer support, detailed user interfaces, and easy-to-use software, all for a reasonable price. Table of Contents • • • • • • • • • • • • • Pricing: Unlike cloud-based software that offers its services at a low monthly fee, pcAmerica charges merchants upfront. All prices are per station: • CRE Professional, $599.00 • CRE Enterprise, $799.00– Contains functions for multiple stores & server redundancy. • RPE Professional, $599.00 • RPE Enterprise, $799.00– Contains functions for multiple stores & server redundancy. Free online (with limited capacity) of all software can be accessed from the website. Cloud-Based or Locally-Installed: pcAmerica is locally-installed and must be downloaded onto each terminal. This means you’ll have to remember to backup all crucial data on a daily basis. If you’re using several registers within one store, you also need a server for a shared database between all the computers. Fortunately, the Enterprise edition of both the CRE and RPE systems come with automatic redundancy built in so that cashiers can continue ringing up customers should your server crash. Registers will continue to operate and process sales transactions with data synchronizing between registers as soon as the server is back up and running. Things like servers and backups require additional time and cost, factors you’ll want to consider when choosing between traditional POS software and. Another thing to keep in mind are software updates (that you’ll need to install yourself), and the general upkeep required of locally-installed POS systems. Specific Industry: pcAmerica’s functionality is so robust that it can be tailored for use in virtually any retail (e.g. Gas station, apparel store, market, convenience store, rental store, electronics, grocery, liquor), restaurant (e.g. Cafeteria, café, bar, lounge, quick service, fast-food, upscale), or rental (e.g. Furniture, party supply, equipment) business. Specific Size of Business: There’s virtually no limit. Any size business will work with this system. Just remember the bigger your business (i.e. The more registers and stores you have), the more the system will cost. Additionally, businesses with multiple stores require the more expensive Enterprise editions. Ease of Use: Unfortunately, in my own experience, and that of many of the reviews I’ve found online, the system is not all that reliable or easy to use. Many users describe the interface as cluttered with no means of hiding/minimizing unused functions. One reviewer even reports that there are “many features... But they don’t work!” This is a common problem with systems that contain almost too much functionality: both the user and the interface become overwhelmed. “Unstable” and “buggy” are also frequent utterances from users complaining of constant error screens, freezing, slow operations, or complete non-functioning. Although the RPE system receives slightly more praise regarding its ease of use, it doesn’t excel by much. With so many complaints about system glitches, you’d think the customer service would need to be stellar to address everyone’s problems, but apparently it’s not (see “Customer Service and Technical Support”). Hardware and Operating System Requirements: pcAmerica software has recently become compatible with PC tablets along with the traditional desktop system. Compatible operating systems include: • Windows Vista 32 or 64Bit • Windows 7 32 or 64Bit • Windows 8 32 or 64Bit Depending on whether you’re using a tablet of desktop, these are the minimum requirements for processors: • Desktop PC – Intel Core 2 Duo 2.93 GHZ Processor • Tablet PC – Atom 1.6 GHZ Dual Core Processor All systems need at least 2GB of RAM, and pcAmerica recommends different systems for front-end registers and back-office servers. You can find a complete list of supported and compatible on pcAmerica’s website. Product Features: Both the CRE and RPE systems contain so many features I can’t mention them all, but I’ll list some of the most notable features. I’m going to leave out the basic POS functionality you’d expect to see in most systems so if you don’t see a feature, that doesn’t mean pcAmerica doesn’t have it. All features are available in both systems unless specified. • Multi-Tender Fully Functioning POS – Payment can be made by cash, check, debit card, credit card, EBT (food stamp), or magnetic strip gift cards. Transactions can be placed on hold (temporary suspension) and returned to later. The CRE system also has the ability to store item vendor serial numbers by scanning them when they are rung up. So if people bring an item back without a receipt, you can verify that it really was sold by you and allow the exchange/return. • Cash Management – The POS comes with full cash management tools to account for opening till amounts, cash drops, petty cash expenditures, closing till amounts, and to identify discrepancies per shift/cashier. A built-in cash counting calculator makes closeout quick and easy for cashiers. • Mobility –Tableside ordering is now possible with the integration of portable tablet devices with the pcAmerica system. This mobile POS solution synchronizes in real time with stationary POS stations, allowing servers to view their open tabs and send orders to the kitchen from anywhere in the store. • Inventory Management – Storeowners can see at all times what is selling, what needs to be reordered, and what is missing (or possibly stolen). For a bar environment, ingredient tracking keeps a record of how much liquor should have been used for drinks ordered. When later compared to the actual liquor quantity left, this can help bar owners identify over pours, comps, and theft. • Purchase Order Integration – In cahoots with the inventory side of things, the system also tracks vendor lists, manages item costs, and has the ability to generate purchase orders. Preset re-order levels can either give alerts when stocks are low or automatically complete and send purchase orders for one vendor or multiple vendors at the same time. • Advanced Pricing Features – The pricing options with pcAmerica include sale pricing (a percentage off on certain dates), bulk pricing (a special price for a certain quantity sold), and mix ‘n’ match pricing (a discount on a special group of related items). Time-based pricing means any price change can be scheduled to take effect (and end) on whatever day or time you prefer. You can also implement time-based coupons/discounts that can be set to expire on certain dates. For the RPE system, menus can be similarly configured to automatically switch in the system based on a preset time schedule (like breakfast 6-11 am, lunch 11 am-5 pm, and dinner 5-10 pm). • Customer Management –The system can set up customer accounts for membership or loyalty programs using unique customer data (i.e. Email or phone number), assigning member ID numbers, or providing membership cards with swipable/scannable serial barcodes. Special customers (like restaurant critics or VIPs) can even be assigned special discounts within the system. The built-in AR system allows customers to charge purchases to their account, and the system can generate monthly professional statements for customers buying on store credit. • Employee Management – The system comes with a full suite of employee management functions including secure login, time clock, and scheduling. Login can be set by each employee’s user ID or swipeable ID cards. Using the job codes function, managers can delegate employee responsibilities so employees always know what tasks to complete. Access parameters can be predetermined based on employee position level. Additionally, the system can create and track commissions that can also be split between two or more employees. Finally the system also has an age verification feature that prompts cashiers to check for ID, swipe ID, or scan ID when selling any alcohol or tobacco products, be it in a store or a restaurant. • Weight Scale Compatible – The pcAmerica CRE system is NTEP certified by the National Conference on Weights and Measures, meaning the system is approved to work with 3 kinds of weight scales: POS interface scales, scanner/scale combos, and deli scales. • Reporting – Both systems come with over 75 different variations of reports based on category (sales, inventory, customer, employee, restaurant, rentals), date/time range, and additional criteria (cashier, dept., station, group, vendor, category, store ID). • OnCloud Portal – This web tool synchronizes with both CRE and RPE, allowing business owners online access to data and reports even when outside of the office. The cloud software handles employee management, reporting, and inventory management all from the web. • Rental Business Compatible – The CRE system can even be used for rental businesses. In the inventory maintenance tab, simply decide whether you want to sell an item or rent it. Prices can be set on the number of days rented, and you can implement extra charges if an item is returned late. When combined with the customer tracking feature, owners can see who has what and contact late renters. The rental system will provide details on what’s in the store, what’s rented, what’s late, and rental histories. • Gift Registry Capabilities – CRE can create and store gift registries that automatically update with every purchase, so there are no duplicate gifts/extra returns. • Restaurant Specific Functions – pcAmerica can help you set up an online ordering system so that customers can order and pay online, with orders automatically printed out to the kitchen. Additionally, the special “reorder round” button makes reordering a round of drinks quick and easy. Integrations and Add-Ons: pcAmerica integrates with the following applications and services: • – With this integration you can reward customers with loyalty points whenever they shop/eat at your store/restaurant. Customers signed up with SNAP can rack up points at your business whenever they “check in” or mention your business on Facebook and Twitter. They can even set up their account so automated posts are made to Twitter and Facebook whenever they complete a transaction. • – Available for Pro, Premier, and Enterprise systems, pcAmerica’s integration with QuickBooks allows for the export of general sales, itemized sales, customer information, inventory, purchase orders, time sheets, and accounts receivable to this popular accounting software. • – pcAmerica features the option to email payroll reports to Payroll City, a service that performs all payroll calculations and delivers full reports, deposits tax payments, reports new hires, and files quarterly tax returns. • – The latest edition to pcAmerica’s tool belt, NitroSell allows merchants to engage their customers anywhere with a fully-integrated web store. Compatible Credit Card Processors: pcAmerica works with a variety of credit card processors depending on the type of transaction being completed (i.e. Credit card, debit card, EBT).,,, and are some of the bigger players, but the is much longer. PcAmerica is also fully. Although pcAmerica is offered worldwide, our neighbors to the north have found the system does not provide enough Canadian tax support, as well as a limited selection of compatible debit/credit vendors in Canada (currently only and ). Customer Service and Technical Support: Tech support for this software is reportedly dreadful—the number one complaint by the majority of unsatisfied customers. This has something to do with the fact that tech support, although available 24/7/365, is only free for pcAmerica customers for the first 90 days. After that, users must purchase a tech support contract (prices per station): • CRE/RPE Lite/Pro Tech Support/Upgrades for 1 Year, $250.00– This includes 10 incoming calls (you call pcAmerica) or a maximum of 120 minutes, whichever comes first. Available 24/7/365. • CRE/RPE Enterprise Tech Support/Upgrades for 1 Year, $300.00– This includes 10 incoming calls (you call pcAmerica) or a maximum of 120 minutes, whichever comes first. Available 24/7/365. Charging for tech support is one of my biggest pet peeves. Maybe tech support wouldn’t be so necessary with a more stable and easy to learn software. Oh, and speaking of learning, pcAmerica also charges $100 an hour for over the phone training! There is also a, but it certainly doesn’t contain thorough documentation on all of pcAmerica’s functions. Chances are, you’ll still need to invest in tech support in order to operate this system. In terms of the blogosphere, pcAmerica’s and offer general tips on retail and point of sale, new products in the industry, and other newsworthy items, but minimal help articles in relation to their own software. Negative Reviews and Complaints: The CRE/RPE systems have one of the largest Internet hate-bases I’ve seen. Users have called the product “a disaster,” “terrible,” “a joke,” “a borderline scam,” and “useless.” Directives to “avoid!” and “do not buy!” were also fairly common. One user even created a decrying the “extremely cumbersome” software. The main reason for all this hostility seems to be a result of: • Poor Tech Support – Whether people are just angry about the exorbitant tech support fees or the unresponsiveness of the tech support team, not getting reasonable help when you need it is definitely a deal breaker in the POS world. Tech support is reportedly very difficult to get a hold of, taking hours just to speak to someone. Of course, you can’t believe everything posted on the Internet (especially when people are more likely to post negative comments than positive ones), but with such a high volume of similar complaints, there must be some truth to the criticism. • Unstable Product – The tech support probably wouldn’t matter so much if the product were more stable. We been using Cash Register Express for last your years in our grocery store. Software it self is very good. Does all the things need for our store. But I have to spend significant time on the phone with tech support to get things working. We have two registers working fairly well after that. Looks like lately thing going south. Yearly Maintenance has been more than dabbled. Customer support is been moved to USA, but helpfulness still low.More half of the peripherals are not certified for Windows 10. If you newer peripherals you are on your own.Looks like they are going to sunset direct support of current payment processors in favor of Heartland. You have to pay more as Datacap licences to use non Heartland payments.Looks like it is time migrate out of PCAmerica. Any suggestions or recommendations for alternate for CRE. Any suggestions. I am the manager of Marshalls Creek Plumbing Supplies and we 1st purchased Cash Register Express from a PC America sales back in 2012. With this purchase were spec that inventory would be able to support scanners. Pc America sold use a Honeywell scanner ($2,000.00) and then after several months they (PC America) could not get it to work with their program. Several other problem came up and then we got a lawyer only to find out the salesman was and (ISO agent) not and employee of PC America. PC America told us that we were not the original owner as the product was sold trough a contractor (ISO agent). We abandoned the product & mothballed the equipment. It gets better! A Heartland salesman came for our credit processing business and through the conversation he told us that they now own PC America. After going over some of the above he said that if we want to get it up and running he would make it happen. Well we figured that we have the stuff we might as well try it. So we got it running and have a large part of the inventory installed ( no scanner though) and the owner went on vacation for a few months. I got the notice that the yearly service/tech support payment ($948.00) was due, we were not using the system for sales. I contacted the owner and he said that as long as we can keep installing the inventory keep going and he will make the payment when he gets back. We got the 2nd notice that payment was due and (guess what) the system will not boot up now. No error code it just will not start. I called PC America and they said it was just a coincidence (it happens he said) we don’t turn off your system because of nonpayment for support. However if you pay us the fee you will be up and running today. I contacted a IT guy we use and he said that he knows that PC America uses a time bomb in their program and if no contact with home base by a set date it shuts down. So much for ownership. Here we are again with $10,000.00 worth of junk. Don’t deal with this company! But if you want some barely used equipment and software give me a call. We have been with PC america for years and the service has always been terrible we just never wanted the trouble of switching. Now we have had enough. For 6 months we called talking to our rep about getting a chip reader that would be compatible with the outdated software on the POS they sold us only to be told they were not available yet (nothing will connect to it so you have to pay for the tech support so you can get things to work). Finally we gave up for a couple months and tried calling today only to be told that this whole time we needed to call pnc bank our merchant for it. The bottom line is the POS software is outdated and they PC america reps suck they even answer the phone very point blank with an attitude like why would you call us. BUYER BEWARE! THE WORST, WORST, WORST company I have ever done business with. A take-the-money and run company, I spent 6 thousand dollars on a system that didn’t do what the sales rep said it would do, that’s been unused and not implemented. It did give us the opportunity to upload our inventory into the program, and now, we can’t get it out. We are buying a new system and want to export the data to an Excel file – can’t. I called PC America for help, and offered to buy a limited support policy just to be able to gain access to the data. After several phone calls, and being cut off after 10-15 minute wait on hold times, I finally reached a sales person who told me, “find someone familiar with SQL open architecture who can figure out how to export the data. There is nothing we can do.” They basically told me to hack my own system and refused any assistance whatsoever. Beware POS Agents too, the shysters who fronted the product and didn’t deliver on a single promise they made about the functionality of the POS and their service and support. I should have known better when I called all the extensions at the company and they rang back to a single line. Shame on me for still taking people at their word, even when their word means nothing. Cash Register Express is a disaster, and Heartland PC America is too. Spent many years, money and agony learning maintaining and dealing with pc america tech support with numorous software and hardware issues, so yes you need their tech support contract due to the fact the software isnt reliable at $250/terminal per year on top of buying their software upfront supposely. Made the mistake of buying a website thru another company they partnered with so my storefront business inventory could sync with a website inventory.Again cost alot and took alot of time to set up. Things went downhill when heartland payment system bought pcamerica software.They promised me for 8 mos that they were working on getting one chip card terminal that I could use that they would be setting up to work so i could continue to use chase for my chip card processing with the pc america software. I wanted to stay with chase as they gave me great rates and service so I didnt want to switch to heartland. I own a string of Vape Shops. I opened my first location in early 2014. We started with CRE from PC America. And we used There Best Systems too! And after we opened our other several locations we used there Portal to connect the data from our several locations.PC America And ALL there Products are the worst ever. There Still Using Windows XP! PC America and all there staff are so Old School it is Ridiculous! Every time you call for customer support your on hold for at least 30-40 min. They could not fix some issues with the POS.There Portal is so poor we can’t use it.There programmers are so old school they program in DOS still!We just switched to another system. We had to!We had to switch to another system. As PC America is so far behind the times And there POS is just so poor. And customer service so slow.DO Not use PC America for ANYTHING. If you are, Switch.We now use Clover Systems. And these are Great!Call First Data to get the best deals on these.We have been so happy with these. My employees and customers are so glad we switched.We can do so much more and so easy with these Clover Systems.We can now do reward cards and digital punch cards. Keep track of customers and sales like never before. And the fees are much less too!Michael W. I am now into my fourth year with the product, and it has always worked as described, which is as expected and required. There are a lot of incorrect statements in these posts. Not true about only XP, not try they only support EMV with Heartland, not true you can’t configure much of the main screen, not true the SW is unstable, etc. I do agree that dealing with their technical support is usually annoying. However, I have never failed to resolve an issue with them, but it is almost never a pleasant experience. Cloud based SW is great when it is viable, but some of us still need to install our SW. PcAmerica is at the top of the list for price/performance in that world. I paid $3000 for a system that is a NON functioning. All the excel files that had product upc were never entered. When a call PC America They say that it’s the sales rep. You call the sales rep and there is just a VM and he refers you back to PC America. PC AMERICA and POS Agents cashed the checks but never activated the system. I have reach out to PC America and spoke with their national sales manager Steve. He said that there was nothing he could do, but he would call the rep. I have been given the run around by PC America and POS Agents. They have both failed to honor just the basics of their warranty. Buyer Beware. The program itself is not bad but it is only compatible with Windows XP (ancient). Since Windows XP is no longer supported by Windows they have sent me new and replacement systems with Windows 7 Installed. These have a “low memory” problem which seems to be unsolvable and causes the POS to crash in the middle of my sales days, requiring a 10 minute reboot. I am currently looking into canceling my lease. I am lucky to have the resources to devote a full time emplyee to these issues. If i was on my own I would just be screwed I guess. DO NOT GET THIS SYSTEM. CRE works just fine with Windows 10. I am not sure what your problem is, but you may want to look at your configuration and setup again. We used to run 3 registers on a dedicated server under Windows 7 with absolutely no problem with performance or memory issues. I don’t know why some are so eager to upgrade their software to newer versions when the current version runs just fine. Upgrading will always be a problem trying to keep all the applications and modules compatible. If your system runs fine, leave it alone!!!!! Turn the internet and automatic updates OFF so that you do not get surprises when Windows sends you an upgrade (i.e. Server upgrades) that are not compatible with your softwareand stay away from playing games. This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated. My PCamerica rep called me last week and said I have to switch my payment processor that they recommend when I first bought the product to Heartland. The reason is that their software will no longer provide EMV functionality with Mercury and they are unsure when they will. Heartland purchased PCAmerica and appears to not want to provide support within their software for the competitors. Wished they had told me that before I signed back up for their 1 yr support and purchased another terminal. I have the latest software update loaded by their tech support in July 2015. This is by far the worst company I have ever dealt with for tech support. You will spend a minimum of three hours on the phone every time you call to have someone who has no knowledge of the system nor the ability to speak clear english waste your three hours with no fix in the end. Both times I was up for contact renewal they forced me into purchasing another year contract by making the printer stop working the day it expires then when you make the call to correct the issue they remotely access your computer and destroy any chance you have of operating your business. This has happened both times my contract expires. It is not coincidence that this occurs every time your contract is up for renewal. This treatment is unlawful to say the least. Small retail store, been using pcAmerica CRE for just over a year now, and satisfied for the most part. I will attempt to break it down, while also explaining why I think the company I work for has had better success than most (Or at least more so than the reviews here). The system was purchased through a fantastic company called “Insight”, through which we have a representative. Insight normally doesn’t work in the POS side of things, but the pre-established relationship between that company and mine allowed us to take the plunge forward (Seriously, look them up, Insight is fantastic!). The pricing was phenomenal compared to what we found elsewhere, although this could be more due to Insight than pcAmerica. The initial setup was absolute misery. The system itself shipped with a 32bit (x86) operating system (Windows 7), which was absolutely shocking in this day and age. I list this as a negative/con as most operating systems and applications these days require more resources, and with the. We inherited the PCAmerica RPE software from a previous owner, and in need of getting things rolling quickly, we paid the yearly fee ($600 per PC) for support and upgrades.Support emails have gone unanswered. If you call for support, you talk to someone outside of the US, and all they can suggest is what’s already in the poorly written manual or tell you to pay to take classes on how to use the software. If you need to upgrade, you have to upgrade you database which only PCAmerica can do, and they want to charge you $1200 to do it.This company is a RIP OFF. STAY AWAY from it. BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE, BAD POS. I AM SHOCKED THAT DELL COMPUTER SELLS THIS POS. IF THEY KNEW HOW BAD IT WAS I AM SURE THEY WOULD NOT SELL IT. DO NOT BUY THIS SOFTWARE. THE KITCHEN TICKETS ARE NOT READER FRIENDLY AND FORGET ABOUT RUNNING REPORTS FOR FUTURE ORDERS. SO MANY TIMES THROUGH THE YEARS WE HAVE HAD BUGS. ONCE WE LOADED THE UPDATES AND IT WOULD NOT LET US PUT A TIP ON A CREDIT CARD TRANSACTION. THEY TOLD US IT WAS A BUG IT DID NOT KNOW WHEN IT WOULD BE FIXED. WAITRESSES DON’T LIKE WORKING FOR FREE!! AFTER FREAKING OUT THEM THEY GOT IT FIXED! I have been a reseller of PC America for a number of years now. Maybe I am missing something because I have dozens of customers who use the software with few complaints. Especially seeing the price of some of the larger packages, some costing ten times as much. They aren’t posting because they are happy with the product. I am not saying it is perfect or the absolute best, but I have a lot of clients using it and get few complaints when it is set up professionally by an expert like me.I think the key here is proper set up and installation. I had a customer with PCA software that was complaining it took 30 minutes for the software to load. Sure enough it did. But he had 6 years worth of transactions in the database. After doing some database maintenance it loads now in seconds.The same went for a system that was amateur installed at a grocery store. Once I cleaned up the database, removed counterfeit Prolific Serial card adapters, and changed some settings, everything works great.I think the important thing to understand here is that you NEED a properly qualified reseller who knows the product. This software has hundreds of functions, some you may never need, but others you may want to fire up later. I have several customers who after using for a few years are now leveraging new features, like eliminating the need to lease a time clock and payroll service; they now just use the software for that. That saves them hundreds. After collaborating with their bookkeeper we now generate time reports for the client, along with labor costs for the owner. Not all the features should be set up by amateurs. Inventory for instance has many powerful features. But if inventory isn’t set up correctly in the beginning, it will never work properly. Things like inventory item numbers, alternate skews, and par levels won’t work unless set properly. Yes that will cost a little money to set up, but since I sell the software I support it. I am every bit as knowledgeable as the call in support so my clients deal with me directly.Part of the problem with PC America is its perception by customers. A lot of resellers sell on eBay or online and just want to move units, not sell working systems. They get dumped off on tech support and have a bad experience. They are cleaning that up now by demanding resellers provide better support. I can tell you this right now, don’t buy any POS system unless you get local support from the company that sold it to you. If you have to dial a 1-800 number for support, think about having a restaurant full of customers wanting to use credit cards and your POS is down while waiting on hold for an hour on Friday night. Have a local contact person reseller/merchant processor or don’t buy it!POS Systems are inherently complex to set up and organize to make them work trouble free and be easy to use. Now that is a mouthful, but read what I said, and think about it. I can train someone to use the system in 30 minutes. It takes 2-3 hours to train a manager and several months to a year to train a programmer and system installer. If you want the rich features and convenience a POS has to offer, you have to be willing to make the proper investment in both time and money.Most of the hardware issues arise when clients are using older terminals and computers, printers that are 10 years old and on generally ratty equipment with a patchwork network held together by duct tape and 15 year old routers. Or the system they purchased came with equipment not certified to work on the hardware and not configured properly. Once I address those issues, the software works fine. I have stores that do 1000 transactions a day with no problem. They have service agreements with me that are reasonable and inexpensive. Let’s face it, unless you are a computer expert, your POS will need 1-2 service calls a year for maintenance and database cleaning. You service your car don’t you? Most of the gripes out there are from people who don’t have a proper local reseller, or haven’t done the service work necessary to keep the system running.I once went to work on an Aloha system (NCR). The owners were afraid to call them for support because it cost them nearly $1000 every time they pick up the phone. One client had a touchscreen that went out on his computer because the USB bus burned out. He was billed $389 by the tech, whose solution was to install a keyboard and mouse and told them to type everything in. I was able to take an old terminal with a bad hard drive and clone it to the working terminal and got everything running for about $150. The difference was I left him with a working POS, not some band aid job the guy should have been ashamed to have left. This client just ordered a brand new system from me, because I can fix stuff, am good at it, and don’t leave my clients hanging. My customers who bring their merchant processing to us, get 2 free service calls a year and phone support. That’s a win win. I make a small residual, and they get the piece of mind knowing they can call us for minor issues (which become big if not addressed) and programming help.Software is software, I have been developing and designing it for decades. The important thing you must remember is that POS software is not just a simple cash register but an important business management tool. Take the time and make the proper investment and it will serve you well. For instance, PC America is good for small single location restaurants and stores. It is not the best solution for a larger multi-store enterprise, for that we have proper solutions, and they cost a lot more money. Sometimes there are tradeoffs you have to make to keep costs down. Sometimes you cannot afford to keep certain costs down when it raises the cost of everything else. I do have an IT background and also started a small rural store. I chose CRE for the basic functions and it is very inexpensive compared to others. I highly recommend a small local IT outfit that knows POS or at least has experience with a small business. CRE is very intuitive as my wife that is NOT an IT literate person was able to learn things once I got her started. She took it upon herself to figure out many functions I did not have time or the desire to learn. I have a single terminal and I back it up and do the “Computer” things. My costs were no where near what others are paying so I have to assume like anything else, as you add a middle person to “sell” you add cost. This does not mean you add value. So that said, I believe CRE is a great value for the small retail person (small is relative ) if you understand that you pay ether the big vendor or pay a small local guy. I think for most small places the local guy will give a much better value. I agree with your assessment of CRE but I also see the point of a lot of people and their issue with customer service. We have used it for years and found it really easy to teach the basics to all our new employees. I will agree that a lot of the features are buggy or just don’t work but for our basic stuff.and some less than basic stuff it is great. Customer service has never been a big problem for us, and they have always fixed our issues fairly quickly, mostly involving installation quirks. I can see some of the security issues being a problemwe have been trying to figure out some ways to tighten that up ourselves. I would love to discuss a few system things with you if you have the time. We are planning on getting a new complete system very soon and some Input would be great.Melisa. We own and operate several food store’s and restraunts, We installed Cash Register Express in one of our busier locations ( big mistake) to test the program out as after hours of review it seemed as a good choice. Well im here to tell you STAY FAR AWAY it is JUNK if you are looking for a software that has decent graphics with a full screen for customers, but no working features to view this is a great software. The biggest issue we had was with our Loss Prevention department as they could not lock down many features even though PC America states features can be locked out employees can still access them and all support says is they are working on it. Our loss prevention has identified 14 areas where an employee can steal from you or your company and get away with it with this software and even more if you have the loyalty enables and the loyalty is another story if you have one program such as earn 1 point for every $1 you can not run another promo such as buy 10 within 30 days and get 1 free. There system will only let you run one loyalty promotion such as that at a time even if they are on totally different non combinable or combinable items. Unfortunately purchasing pcAmerica may not be in the best interest of CRE and RPE users. Heartland, also owns Liquor POS, a well established POS product for the liquor retail business. From a financial point of view, it would only make sense to them to combine these two products (Liquor POS and pcAmerica(CRE)) and develop a new product. Whether or not it is better would remain to be seen.This in turn means that support for the current products will cease and users forced to purchase the new product, or another product. Something to keep in mind when reviewing pcAmerica for potential purchase. This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated. I have been working with this system for over a year now and if I could leave no stars at this point I would. When we first got this system it was like heaven on earth, we didn’t have to use calculators anymore and write down prices by each menu item on the tickets. After a years worth of use the system has become terribly slow, we have customers complaining for how long they have to wait just for a receipt to print out for them to receive. At this point we have tried contacting tech support and they told us they couldn’t speak with us because our “contract had expired.” Which is completely ridiculous, so we called our account manager who then charged us over $200 to sign us up again for tech support. We then called support back and they said it was the computer and not the software and they couldn’t help us until we called someone in our area ourselves paid them to fix whatever was going on, and then they would speak with us. There are way to many loops for this program to give it a good review. Yes when it is working, it is great to have and totally easy for everyone to use. But all in all I would never recommend this program after what we are currently going through. Hope this review helped! If you read my review and the review I commented on I hope you get a better understanding of software packages. There is no software that works perfectly in every situation and if you have more features you need more skills to bring out the value of it. You can pay what you and I think are huge sums of money but compared to the big packages are so minor. $200 for support is minor compared to the bigger vendors at $1000 a month. Beware of reviews that do not understand this. If you can find a local IT service that charges $65-$110 an hour to help you with the hardware, network and backups they are well worth it. You want to focus on what you do best (If you are not technology trained) and let others take the technology worries away. The only thing I wish I could offer is great local support. There are some people that just give you good technical advice and service and others just like any other occupation it is terrible service. If you need technical help and find a good one pay them well as they are worth their weight in gold. I think CRE is as good as anything else and will get better. I do not have any ties or interest other than I purchased it for my store. I pay the support cost every year ($250) because I think it is worth it. We currently offer this software as our primary software. I wanted to give insight of pcAmerica and exactly their chain and structure.1. They don’t have a sales team; but rather you have a account manager. This is the reason why you get transferred. If they are on the other line then you get a voicemail. That account manager will reach back out to you as soon as they get your voicemail. PcAmerica depends more on their dealers then anything. So if you need instant sales support then you should contact a dealer. Our phone number here is 1-888-753-8401 and we have reps here 24/7/365. Again pcAmerica is more for dealers then end users that need sales right away. Support is from India however they do what they ARE ALLOWED to do. They can’t support your hardware if its not a verified piece of hardware. What this means is if its not on their list then they can’t install drivers, troubleshoot, or suggest any fixes. Software related questions they will resolve. NO they don’t care about what your dog ate last night or what your wearing tomorrow as they have phone calls constantly and also supervisors watching call times. They will fix your problem and say good day. This is another reason why if you need someone to talk to then you need to deal directly with a dealer. If you do a “self install” and experience problems then 98% of the time its because you did a “self install”. If you hire a professional that does this everyday for living then you will be golden. We have hundreds of clients that haven’t experienced “bug” issues or really issues. Of course there is a share of problems but most of the time is user caused; or hardware failure. NEVER had a bug problem tho. If you just wanting to use this software partially then it will be a pain for you. This software has been built to manager your business; NOT JUST PART OF IT. FINALLY no software will ever be perfect for everyone. I strongly suggest that you view the demo before moving forward with the sale. The downloadable demo is available to have up to 200 invoices before it requires you to buy it. It can work on your current pos hardware in most cases. Actually use this software before purchasing it. Nobody goes into business to work for free therefore I hope you can understand pcAmerica doesn’t. When its suggested that you buy the training; then BUY THE TRAINING. When its suggested that you hire someone to install THEN HIRE SOMEONE TO INSTALL. These guys have people calling in everyday; every minute to ask how to do this and how to do that. Thats a problem because even a dealer isn’t doing their job OR the end user didn’t pay attention during training. DEALER NOTE: We provide the following in each sale to prevent ALL ISSUES ABOVE.1 x 24/7/365 Tech Support1 x 100% Tested Hardware 1 x Instant Remote Support1 x Customer Portals & Much More. PcAmerica is a great software but you must allow a professional to set the system up and also you much purchase from a professional to insure the system runs correctly on the hardware. IF NOT then you should not even waste your money because on ANY pos system when a untrained; non professional is doing the set up then there will ALWAYS be problems. We here at Electronic Business Solutions would rather set you up on something that your going to be happy with 3 years down the road and have you return and refer other business owners then to make a single sale and have a unhappy client. If we feel that this software isn’t going to fit you well; then we will refuse to sell it to you. As in our account manager WON’T sale it to you regardless if you want it or not; Again what we set you up on; you will be happy. 95% of the time this what is pcAmerica. End of story. Its Feature Rich. Budget Friendly. Merchant Maverick, this website, claims this to be a product review. Nothing is further from the truth. It is a list of functions and features from the pcAmercia website. I have recently purchased the CRE Express for a liquor store business. 2 registers and a server. I have done extensive testing on the hardware I purchased separately on my own. I focused on the main functions and talked several times to a sales rep and technician. All were very helpful. Many of my questions were answered and I took the answers to be accuratemy mistake. While I made the product workable, I find many functions missing or difficult to use. For example, setting up a 6-pack product to be sold as a single bottle, 6-pack or case requires that the product is entered 3 times into the inventory and then linked. Entering the initial inventory could have been much easier. Only some information can be imported from an ASCII file, the remaining information must be done by hand. Very lengthy process. The product sometimes crashes unexpectedly. We leave at night, come back in the morning and the program has closed. Many times the scanned barcode is not found in the DB, when re-scanning it is. Very annoying. Biggest problem for us is giving item discounts. The only way to do this is to select each item from the sales screen and discount it, then on to the next item to be discounted and so on. We are selling several dozen items several times a day. Having to discount each item, instead of the whole sale, is time consuming and easy to make errors. When making price or cost changes the markup/margin percentage displayed on the screen is not updated in real-time. One has to make the change, save the change, go to another item and then re-select the changed item to confirm or view the markup/margin. I am using a calculator so that I don’t have to go through all these steps. Very important for us is the means to use a hand-held inventory scanner and be able to send the data from the inventory scanner to the DB for update. This function is not available. My mistake, I should have looked into this before I purchased the product. I have transferred of 20K items from an older system to pcAmerica. Many of the items can be deleted. I was hoping to do this over time since it is not an urgent function. Deleting an item is extremely cumbersome. First each item needs to searched for in the DB, then selected for display before it can be deleted. Jumping from screen to screen makes this a very, very, very slow process. It would be so nice to to have a list of all items, work down the list and mark each item for deletion. There is NO export function for the inventory. With SQL knowledge it is an extremely easy function to implement. I can only imagine pcAmerica wants to make it very hard for those planning to go with another product and being able to import their inventory. There are other little things, but I found workarounds or adjusted the way we do business. Hope that some of this feedback helps others make a good decision. This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated. First of all, Sales people are very pushy and tell you what you want to hear. If something breaks under warranty and they expect you to send it back and be without a register until they decide to send you new parts. I have a honeywell dolphin pocket inventory handheld that I have had for 10 months and have never even used it and it cost me $1200 and nobody can help me learn to use it including there tech support. I have never worked with a horrible company such as this! I am looking to replace everything and get rid of this crap!!!! I am seriously disgusted and mortified of all the unneeded stress this has endured me! This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated. We are desperately looking to change from PC America. We’ve been open 19 years and about the last 8-10, we’ve used RPE. However, the software is so buggy and most of the features don’t work. The most amazing oversight and lack of consideration for customers I’ve ever experience – they don’t alert you when there is a new patch and they don’t bother to fix any of the bugs. Also, now that XP support is going away, not a word from PC America as to what we are to do. They put out a newsletter (or used to) and you would think they would announce, at least in the newsletter, that hey, there is a patch to download this week. Nothing in their newsletter about why you can only run about 10-12 reports before getting an error, you have to close out of RPE and re-enter to restart the reporting feature. Nothing on why you can’t have a labor report based on department – even though the selections are on the reporting screen. Nothing about how the software is VERY dependent on Windows being updated constantly and what will happen to all their customers or their software when Windows can’t be updated anymore. Stay away – years ago, when I requested help, I was sent a rude email back. I outlined the issues I had with the software in an email to the owner and got an even worse response from him. This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated. Cash Register Express is not software I would recommend to anyone. The support is horrible. Today, I’ve called in for sales/support (simple presales question) and the person who answered the phone didn’t address my problem and just blind transferred me to someone else who wasn’t available and required I leave a voicemail. This was hours ago and my question is still unanswered. Last year, we called for support and were forced to pay over a grand for a 10 minute fixnot to mention we spent hours trying to get ahold of an account rep to pay first so that we could then get support from someone else. Cheap product, cheap quality. It is unbelievable how poorly this software works, considering the version I purchased is VERSION TWELVE!-The re-order round button drops random items when forwarding the ticket to a remote printer.-Items CANNOT be split from one check and transferred to another check without combining both checks entirely and keeping them combined. PC America is the most pathetic system I have ever used. It has not worked correctly since day one. Anyone who would buy this sysem is asking for complete failure. It crashes as soon as business is busy and the helpless desk is just that. The cost of doing business with this system is far more expensive than spending 10 times the amount for a system that actually works. The owners of the company are a joke. They could care less once they have your money. Calling the help line is like calling an alien planet. Even if they speak engllish they are completly clueless!!!! No point in going on their is not enough memory in all the computers combined to handle the amount of issues with this worthless system. This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated. I too start reselling PC America, as Dan noted, if its properly installed there should be no issues. There’s couple of things I think the company needs to imporve on 1) Tech Support coming from INDIA, the worsefirst These people are very hard to understand. Look into other outsource, the Filipinos are 100 times better sspeaking the language, alot of BIG companies now sourcing their support to the philippines moving away from india due to the people are just hard to understand. The second improvement is the reporting. I have several clients loking for better reporting as in payroll and also simple reportssuck as average checks, how many covers, whats the average check per customer/cover.etc. I m yet not able to find someone to work with me on this issue. Further more we upgraded to Enterprise version. That didnt help.ANy suggestions of anyone knows how to program the database? Maybe crystal reports to draw from the database? Any suggestions?Ping meAl Poblete. Al, Im also a PC America Reseller and we use PC America primarily for our software. I find Restaurant Pro Express and Cash Register Pro to be very Point of Sale Systems if set up and managed properly. When a user sets everything up themselves errors are made and general setup is missed to make the system more functional. I agree, Tech support is very bad if you get someone over seas. If you upgrade to enterprise version you will be able to write SQL command reports to draw specific information that you want but you will have to write these reports yourself. If you know SQL server you could access the database and white query commands but that would take additional management tool install and knowledge of SQL server. If you need anything contact us via out website Thanks! Brandon This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated. I agree with Dan. I was hesitant to pick up the software due to the reviews on here. After all the extensive research, I found PC America was the best fit for my business (small C-Store).I built my 3 PC to run the softwares (2 registers and 1 server). Hardware is very important especially in a business setting. So it is necessary to have at least the required system hardware or a bit stronger to run the software.Tech support has been very well for me. Although they are outsourced from overseas, they are knowledgable and have been able to fix everything for me. Ranging from connecting 2 PCs to the server, importing inventory, and linking the handheld.Overall, the software is good for small businesses. Instructions need to be a bit more organized. There are so many features but they aren’t explained properly or executed well. I had to create a couple of workarounds to get what I wanted to do. It isn’t so bad because it made me learn more about my business and inventory management. I hope they integrate some type of Relationship Linking in the future.Just like any software, there will always be a learning curve and you have to learn it to fit your needs. For example, Microsoft Excel can be a simple spreadsheet for regular consumers. But Excel can be a very powerful software for your business if you know what you want from it. PC America is the same way. I am an authorized reseller of PC America software and would like to comment on the software. Like any complex system it needs to be set up and programmed properly on equipment that has the requisite power to support the system.I often get calls from individuals who self installed the software and are utilizing about 20% of its capabilities. In those cases, sure they aren’t happy but it is their own fault for either not setting up properly or not programming it right.The software is fairly simple as far as programming goes. You do have to understand certain concepts and orders of operation to make it work properly. Functionally this software is about the same as most comparable packages on the market. I work with tech support all the time and have good luck with them, although sometimes there is a wait, they do a decent job of fixing any issues that come up.I like the software because it is fairly compact and runs on lower powered POS terminals. That being said, at least one of the terminals needs a good strong computer to run the database server (SQL) and serve the terminals. Most performance issues can be assigned to old old computers and servers running weak Intel Atom processors (think netbook).My advice to anyone looking for a good sturdy, reasonably priced POS, PC America is a good fit. I deliver anywhere from 2-4 systems a month, it is my favorite POS for small retail or restaurants. Just make sure you have someone around your area to service and support it. Don’t attempt to install it yourself unless you have some experience with POS, things are not readily apparent and bad programming gets you a bad system. Once properly set up, the systems need very little support and you can learn to make minor price changes and add inventory. Almost all POS do the exact same thing, the POS by NCR costs about $1600 per terminal vs PC America for about $600. A good authorized reseller is the key to keeping your retail systems healthy, it’s cheaper than the system not working. How much do you know about Cash Register Express? I recently had to start over with mine when my computer crashed. I had it professionally installed and it is up and running but I am not able to run any of the admin functions. It appears that someone went it and changed the admin password without my knowledge. The only way I see to reset the password is with the old password, which I obviously don’t have. Seems stupid to have to pay $250 for tech support to answer my question. Any help would be greatly appreciated. This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated. We were totally lied to about this product! When we tried to get tech support they were unable to answer questions for us. Finally, when I reached a tech on the telephone he told me the POS was not compatible with our EMR. All this was told to me AFTER we took down our old system and spent an hour setting up the new POS, spent over a thousand dollars on the POS, paid overtime for my staff to “train”. Ultimately, I had to take down the new POS and set the old system back up so we could see patients on Saturday. When I spoke to the sales rep she said, “Sorry. I’m busy with other customers, this will have to wait until Monday!” What a nightmare. I am sending this (useless) POS back to the company, that is IF I can ever reach anyone to how to do that!!!! BUYER BE WARE!! This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated. I guess mom was right if its too good to be true, it probably is. Got bids for Pos system software. PC America came in the lowest. Started out great was slightly annoyed with hold time for tech support. Now 3weeks after opening, I have one working station, PCAmerica tech support downloaded a printer driver which left my 2nd station useless. I have yet to ring up a sale on the 2nd station. When I call my rep to address the issue, I’m told that I have been helped plenty. If it works I shouldn’t have to call so muchhead my warningpay the extra money. Do not run this software unless you are selling 1 or two items. Worst customer service ever!!!!!! This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated. Greetings, We are a authorized PC America Re seller and specialize in supporting the software internally. I spend 9+ hours a day in PC America software and manage inventory and menus for clients on Restaurant side and Retail side daily. If you have an internet connecting I can remotely access your terminals and work on your system. We have very affordable prices for data management and tech support. Please let me know thanks! Branden RNROS This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated. We have 27 Retail Store locations and their support of their product has been horrible. We have a fulltime Sr. Sys Admin, a SQL Developer and a Desktop Support guy on the IT Staff that has to deal with this horrible product everyday. They want to charge us $5,000 for moving our SyncService tool which will take them 1-2 hours to do. They roll their support phone calls to India which then creates more of a problem. Their phone support goes through the same type of troubleshooting as that of a computer’s printer not having enough printing paper. It’s so irritating and yet we do not have the funds to switch at this point. We are working hard to switch. Do not go with this software unless you sell Pizzas. This is what the software was made for. We are mostly happy with Cash Register Express. We have been using it for 4 months. The main problem we have is that about 3 days a week, when we come in to work and launch the POS, it has lost the activation code. We are required to call tech support, ask them to reset the activation code, and then we can login again. This is very frustrating and there are many other companies that have the same problem. We like the features and ease of use, but they need to re-engineer how their software activation works. We have pcamerica and had numerous issues. You are usually speaking to India when you call for help. We had to call several times to get the Pocket Inventory installed and set-up. Once we actually had one of their techs wipe out one of our backstore computers. It was horrible. We contacted the Tech Manager and never received a reply back. They do not supply you with manuals, so you have to rely completely on your training, which never seems to cover everything. This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
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