Restaurant Maid Changelog

What's new in Restaurant Maid 2.353

Apr 11, 2019

Based on very popular demand, we have expanded the 3 end-messages at the bottom of the receipt, to an infinite text capability, instead of them just being one-line messages. So you can use these receipt end-messages for much larger text now, as large as you need it. You can fit promotions, detailed return policies, warranty policies at the end of the receipt.
We have added the feature of editing/changing/swapping or assigning new pictures to the Quick Buttons ‘on-the-go’ or ‘on-the-fly’, without having to delete the quickbuttons, but simply edit them by clicking the edit button.
The Cash Drawer Counting Tool now has an option to Save the over-night drawer balance, as the starting balance for the new day. You can Edit and Save this balance now, with a date/time stamp of the change, in drawer starting balance.
We have fixed a discrepancy in the profit reports calculation for uncommon situations of credit card payments with insufficient funds or credit on the side of the customer and a scenario of not a full, but a partial amount approval being processed on the customer’s card. The profit reports will now accurately reflect such partial approval events.
Improved and simplified the task of reaching TLS 1.2 compliance for the Cayan integration.
Improved and simplified the Cayan Genius Terminal integration setup. It is much easier to setup this great terminal and get started with all it has to offer.
Improved the Search Inventory function for cases where the search results are too many and exceed one-page-view, this feature will now smoothly scroll up/down the two windows in perfect synchronization.
We’ve added the much requested feature of Editing Quantity on-the-go, after an item has been scanned, for Pos Maid for faster retail operations, in busy environments.
Pos Maid and Restaurant Maid now have a feature that used to be only available for Salon Maid, which is the feature to ‘Import Customer Info from Excel”.
For Restaurant Maid, we have now added the highly demanded feature for Recipe/Ingredient Deduction. This feature allows you to set a list of items that are existing in inventory for any item in inventory to deduct from when being sold. Example : If you sell the item Cheese Burger, you can set up that item in inventory to deduct: (qty 0.25) lbs Ground Meat, (qty 1) Burger Bun, (qty 0.05) lbs Cheese, etc.
We’ve added a new feature for Restaurant Maid, which in the process of the checkout can shorten the tickets for a smaller and easier to read receipt. Example : If someone orders 3 beers [not all at once, but consecutively] among other items, then the 3 beers will be put in one line at checkout with quantity 3, instead of them being in three separate lines with quantity 1 at each line. Of course this, as many other great features, is optional, so you can set the software to shorten receipts in this manner or not to shorten them and leave them to print items exactly as they were ordered.
Although it is important to mention about the above new feature that upon upgrading to this new version of the software this setting will be turned ‘ON’, so the Restaurant Maid program will start shortening receipts in this manner by default and if you do not like this, you will need to go to Setup> ‘Invoice / Receipt Setup’ and change this to your preferred mode of work.
For Restaurant Maid, we have added a separate setting for the font type and font size used in the kitchen and bar order printout/slip. This is response to ever growing requests to separate the font settings between these order printouts and the actual cash register final receipt, since many businesses expressed the need to have kitchen/bar order printouts that have larger font size so to be easier to read from far.
For Restaurant Maid, we have made it possible now to turn ON/OFF the Waiter Copy of each order, as the waiter orders items from the kitchen and bar. Even though we thought of this as necessary, for each waiter to have a copy of what they ordered from the kitchen/bar, some establishments insist that this causes redundancy to the way their business is setup to work and the requests to have a choice to turn OFF/ON the Waiter Copy printing of each kitchen/bar order, have been very popular for some time.
We’ve added a ‘View Total’ feature & button, in the table view and the pickup/delivery ordering screen, for Restaurant Maid.
Made the Salon Maid software not allow / prevent users from mistakenly double or triple scheduling employees for their work-time (day at work) on a certain date, on the appointment grid.
Fixed a problem with automated sales restriction (more specifically with restricting days of the week for an automated sale feature).

New in Restaurant Maid 2.352 (Dec 3, 2017)

Automated discounts are here, like BOGO (Buy One Get One X% OFF), they are fully customizable and automated.
Our Cayan Credit Card Processing Integration is now certified for their new mobile/wireless device.
Our ChargeItPro Credit Card Processing Integration is now EMV ready & certified
All of our Software titles now support the Pole Display communication protocol known as EPSON D202. We used to only support EPSON D101. Now that both EPSON D101 and D202 modes of communication are supported, our software supports virtually ALL pole displays or customer displays on the market, because virtually all of the displays in the industry, work with the one or the other Epson communications protocol (if it is not D101, they’ll support D202 and the other way around).
The pole display feature, now shows the ‘Cash Collected’ and ‘Change Due’ info at the end of a cash sale.
Added a short note to inform the user of the number of failed recipients in a case of mass SMS sending job.
As of 3/27/2017 we no longer work with Mercury due to their acquisition by Vantiv and our substantial differences in vision with the later company.
There was a bug in the discount calculation for percentage coupons with restrictions (fixed price coupons and no restriction coupons, were not affected). This bug has been fixed now.
Fixed a problem with editing the invoice number in ‘Setup’ > ‘Main Setup’.
In POS MAID we fixed a problem with sending SMS messages to a Mailing List.
In Salon Maid, we fixed a problem with commission and tip calculation in transactions refunded under very specific circumstances.
In Salon Maid, we fixed an issue that stopped the feature of Customer Import from an Excel table if duplicate entries were found. Now the duplicates will be avoided as they were before, but the feature will continue the import to the end of the excel file, instead of halting at the first duplicate record.
In Salon Maid and POS Maid, we fixed an intermittent issue with showing of the usage of Membership Packages and Service Packages.

New in Restaurant Maid 2.35 (Nov 30, 2016)

Shortcut Function Keys are here:
F1 – Tender
F2 – Clear All
F3 – Print Last Invoice
F4 – Log-Out
F5 – Cash
F6 – Charge
F7 – Check
F8 – Multiple Funding
F9 – Gift Receipt
Both Browse Confidential Inventory Data and Browse Non-Confidential Inventory Data reports now include the Sale Price or Retail Price of each item.
The ‘Mailing Lists’ feature can now send email and/or SMS messages to the compiled lists, to better serve any modest small marketing needs for reaching out to your existing clients.
POS Maid now prints the balance due on the layaway deposit receipts.
POS Maid can now import picture file paths for your products, through the Excel Inventory Import feature, used for massive inventory imports.
In Restaurant Maid, the option for adding ‘Service Charge’ to the bill was added to the Order Menu as well [it used to be only available on the main checkout screen before].
This version/release of the software is a major overhaul of Salon Maid. It has the most changes and improvements for Salon Maid, read on…
A complete re-build of the section for Scheduling and Appointments in Salon Maid:
Border-free and Grid-free table-view.
The employee work time and off time are clearly defined now with different colors on the grid.
You can no longer schedule appointments by accident, which are out of the bounds of the working time of your establishment.
There is a warning system in place if someone tries to schedule a client when the certain employee is not working (however for flexibility reasons, over-riding this is always an option, by simply ignoring this warning).
The appointments are color coded now for easier graphical view in the appointment grid. The user has the option to customize this choice of colors assigned to each specific service.
There is a new feature for placing a check-mark on an appointment. We leave it to you to decide what the check-mark will mean in your business (it can be useful to mark which person has arrived in your salon and awaiting for their appointment or it could mean which client is done or checked out, etc.)
An Edit button was added for editing appointments in the Salon Maid Appointments section.
Now the Salon Maid Appointments section, has a new comprehensive feature of employee scheduling.
The time off (including breaks) and the working time are color coded now.
The Salon Maid Appointments section, is now capable of sending email and SMS alerts/reminders to your clients for their upcoming appointments.
The Salon Maid Appointments section, now has a Check-out button, so you can easily checkout finished appointments.
Backed by popular demands, now the Salon Maid Software can take multiple salespeople in one single sale/invoice.
Due to the above new feature, also commission and TIPs can now be properly portioned and divided among multiple salespeople that are involved in one single sale/invoice. (for Salon Maid)
In Salon Maid, the commission rules, which so far generously allowed you to assign a different commission amount for each item in Inventory, were not enough for many of our users and based on popular demands, we have expanded the commission rules capabilities to also allow different levels of commission for different employees. So now not only that you are able to assign different commission based on each different item or service in inventory, but you are also able to set different levels of commission for different employees, so your employees do not get equal commission, if that is your need.
We have now added a “Import Customer Info from Excel” feature for Salon Maid.
Fixed an intermittent problem with calculating profits for international tax users.
Fixed a problem with coupons, using a percent discount.
Fixed a problem with Mercury’s newest credit card processing integration, called BlackLine.

New in Restaurant Maid 2.348 (Sep 23, 2015)

Our Cayan and OpenEdge / X-Charge Credit Card processing Integrations can handle Partial Approvals from now on.
In Restaurant Maid, the kitchen and bar printers now print the server’s full name, instead of just the server’s employee number, so the cooks and bartenders will know who’s order is up.
In Restaurant Maid, we fixed a problem with item columns not synchronizing in the table order menu.
In reports, the credit card processing transaction log, now can filter results by date.
Pre-Authorization / Post-Authorization Tips are here for our largest processors Cayan/MerchantWarehouse and X-Charge/OpenEdge. Which means our users can add tips to the transaction, after the customer leaves as well.
Our Cayan and OpenEdge/X-Charge Credit Card processing Integrations are now Certified to be EMV Compatible, for the coming Visa and MasterCard Mandate in October. EMV processing stands for Europay MasterCard Visa, also referred to as “Chip and PIN” or “chip cards” and is applicable for US merchants only.
Due to overly popular demands, the receipt printing in Restaurant Maid will no longer print two lines per item (one line showing ItemID and the other line showing Description). It seems this is overly redundant for the Restaurant industry and makes it seem as if each item is printed twice since usually the ItemID and Description are the same or very similar text in the Restaurant businesses. From this version the receipts will contain only one line per item, containing the quantity, the Item Description and the price.
In the Close Register / General Report, we have added a help link (in the form of a ‘?’ question mark) to the right of every one of the complex totals, in order to thoroughly explain how the particular total came about, for any instances where the user feels this is necessary.
The Database Repair function was removed from the Data menu and removed from the access of the end-user. However, it was embedded into the program as a permanent function that executes every time the program starts (so the user will not be able to initiate the Database Repair function anymore, but this function will execute automatically every time the software starts and it will check for and fix any data discrepancies in the background while the software operates without disruption). Users with a lot of data may experience slower startups of the software from now on, because of this new way of executing the Database Repair function.
A time format validation has been added to the Edit feature of the TimeClock Table, to better control time format errors in manual user input.
We have added a Cancelled Orders Log. In order to curb employee theft in restaurants, but still allow for easy/fast deletion of mistake orders (that were already prepared by the kitchen/bar). Our software now has a “Cancelled Orders Log” feature. This feature allows for a faster and easier deletion of placed orders, in just a few clicks; however, in order to keep everyone accountable, it requires the appropriate credentials/permissions and it logs the event for later review by higher management.
Due to the overwhelming requests of our users, now our software won’t print two receipt copies for credit card transactions done with a separate machine/brick on the side (non-integrated processing). This is our new norm because of the assumption that the separate machine/brick on the side will print its own 1 copy.
The 3rd Discount option now executes in one line (in the same invoice line as the item it discounts), in order to simplify the invoice and simplify returns/refunds if and when they occur on such discounted products.
Added the official verbiage for credit card transaction receipts under the signature line : ‘Buyer agrees to pay total amount above according to cardholder’s agreement with issuer.
Fixed a problem with splitting bills in Restaurant Maid.
Fixed a problem which occurred by the event of refunds and reprints of old receipts changing the currently logged-in employee to the employee that made the original sale that was refunded or reprinted.
Fixed a problem with the profit reports calculation in cases of international tax system usage for use outside of USA (a.k.a. Pre-Sale-Tax insertion).
Fixed a problem with the Update button not showing up on Customer Records menu.
Fixed an issue with adding a quantity with decimal value in inventory.
Fixed an intermittent problem in the Quick Button Setup, with moving of existing buttons.
Fixed a problem with the ‘Delete’ credentials check-box for employee permissions in employee setup.
There was a printing problem for Letter size (8.5in x 11in) and A4 format printers, where the printing of more than 17 lines would not print all the lines on an invoice, this is fixed now.
As the Antivirus and Anti-spyware industry is growing to be more ‘paranoid’ instead of exact and efficient at detecting real threats, users of various software everywhere, which have certain anti-spyware programs and under certain ‘paranoid’ settings, have experienced confusing messages from their anti-spyware programs with many different desktop software programs (among which is our software). The confusion arises from the fact that a regular, clean and legit desktop program, like ours, may need to access the Internet and get some up-to-date information. For this action, some new anti-spyware programs using ‘paranoid’ settings, will report every Internet activity of a desktop program as ‘suspicious activity’ and a possible threat of spyware or other malware. Our own software, so far, used to access the Internet on regular basis, to be exact our software accessed only our own website via the Internet to do automatic check for Updates and let you know if there are any new updates. Novice users, out of lack of IT knowledge and understanding, see these possible general and generic, paranoid messages of ‘suspicious activity’ as a sure sign of ‘virus’ or ‘spyware’ and then they think the software in question has a virus, after which it is very difficult to regain their trust and there is great confusion that remains uncleared. In order to adjust to this new way of working of the newer Antivirus and Anti-spyware programs, where they are more paranoid, then useful and they report every use of the Internet from a desktop program as ‘suspicious activity’ and confuse Novice users with these messages, we simply removed the software’s capability to check for Updates automatically. Now the user needs to initiate the update-checking process, by simply going to the ‘About’ section and clicking ‘Check for Updates’ Please note that even now with no automatic update checking, on certain newer Antivirus and Anti-spyware programs, when you manually initiate a ‘Check for Updates’ and our software accesses our website to check for updates, this use of the Internet by our software to access a website, may still trigger a general, generic, paranoid message from your Antivirus or Anti-spyware program of the likes of ‘suspicious behavior’, ‘suspicious activity’, etc…

New in Restaurant Maid 2.347 (Dec 11, 2014)

Pos Maid users can now track Serial Numbers on all inventory (enter/scan serial numbers of stock in inventory and later scan/type serial numbers at sale time).
Due to the addition of the Serial Numbers feature, for added user convenience, the “look-up past invoices” feature, can also search by serial number now.
GENIUS TIP (Our software is ready to handle TIPs from the genius device directly. The only thing you have to do to start utilizing the TIP function from the genius device is to call the MerchantWarehouse Tech Support and have them setup your Genius device to prompt for TIPs, have the TIP function enabled on your Genius device. After that you do not need to use the TIP receipt button, because the genius device will ask for the TIP.)
IMPROVED FULL-SCREEN MODE. NEW/BETTER SCREEN UTILIZATION FOR WIDE SCREENS AND LARGER SCREENS (enlarges buttons and all objects proportionately and utilizes the entire screen area).
The overwhelmingly popular request to fit more text in the quick buttons has finally been executed as a part of the option mentioned above (Improved Full Screen Mode), so in full screen mode, the buttons get larger and fit more text, meaning the larger your screen, the more text you can fit in the buttons in full screen mode.
Users can now change and rearrange the order of any Quick Buttons and SubMenu Buttons at any time, with ease.
Users can now delete any Quick Buttons and SubMenu Buttons, without having to follow any specific order or other restrictions.
Bulk Deletion is here. DELETE SALES RECORDS, CUSTOMERS OR INVENTORY, WITHOUT ACTUALLY DELETING ANYTHING ELSE that you do not want to delete. THIS IS VERY USEFUL FOR USERS THAT WANT TO START FRESH WITH SALES FOR WHATEVER REASON AND FOR PEOPLE THAT HAVE JUST FINISHED TRYING THE SOFTWARE AND WANT TO ERASE THEIR MOCK-UP SALES.
For added user convenience in looking-up past invoices by customer last name, the customer last name is no longer case-sensitive in the search.
The 2nd Discount option now executes in one line (in the same invoice line as the item it discounts), in order to simplify the invoice and simplify returns/refunds if and when they occur on such discounted products.
The 1st and the 2nd Discount option now add wording on the screen and the receipt, which shows the customer that they received a discount of a certain amount (the 3rd option did this already, so it remains unchanged in this respect)
For Restaurant Maid users, the Quick Menu and the Order Menu, merge into one source of data, so they will use the same buttons. Meaning no more creating and maintaining two separate menus (both quick and order menu now have the same content, and they read and are edited from the same data source). So your quick menu and order menu now will merge their data into one same data (both menus will be the same and have same buttons, they will combine – of course you can edit things that you dislike after this merge).
For Restaurant Maid users, the main sales screen can now PRINT ORDERS to the kitchen and bar as well, which is highly functional for restaurants doing sales that do not require a table and waiter (more like McDonald’s, KFC, SubWay, etc… “fast food” or “quick serve” style of ordering).
For Restaurant Maid users, the printing to the Receipt printer for the waiter, to the Bar for the bartender and to the Kitchen for the chef, is now determined by class in inventory (what prints and where – to what printer(s) is determined in inventory by the class now), so no
longer is everything printed to all locations (the bar will not get food items any longer printed with the drink order items and also the Kitchen will no longer get drink items in the printout mixed with the food order items. The kitchen will only get food content and bar will only get drink orders. Both new and Existing customers must set these options in inventory for each class and set them accordingly to their desires.
For Restaurant Maid users, there are two options for Table Invoice or Table Receipt now. You can choose between printing a Table Invoice with a Tip Line OR choose to print a Table Invoice without a Tip Line.
Fixed a problem in membership packages for Pos Maid and tanning packages for Salon Maid.
Fixed a problem with receipt printer paper width detection and utilization, which occurred in some receipt printer brands and models.