On January 14, 2025, we’ll be hosting a ‘software year-in-review’ webinar for our current clients. During the meeting, we’ll discuss material improvements made during the calendar year, challenges that we’ve overcome and focal points for the coming year. You may register for the webinar here. 

Coming Soon - Development continues on eState ammunition logic with an anticipated go live by SHOT Show 2025.

Coming Soon - Prior to SHOT Show, we anticipate the release of the following new features:

1. An automated NFA production report to facilitate filing of Form 2
   
2. Ability to make corrections to Sections A – D, prior to completing a 4473
   
3. Adding a Multiple Sales Form aging alert, to ensure that all forms are submitted. (Note, users who have enabled the auto-MSF feature, would not need to be concerned)
   

Listing Products Online

Previously, the election to display one (or all) of their products online would take a considerable about of time for the initial, first time propagation from the POS to an eCommerce page. We’ve refactored this portion of the code, making the display almost instantaneous.

Product Page Load Speeds

We performed an analysis on the page load speed for both marketing and product pages, and found that both were below expectation. While the programming for each page was done with best practices in mind, we found that the design of the end-user filters (i.e, filter by manufacturer, etc), were not. Every page was making a call to the database to analyze the products shown to determine which data should populate the optional filters. The original design was suboptimal, causing pages to load slower than necessary. This has been rewritten with significant enhancements to overall speed. 

Global Search

Atop some client websites is a global search option. This search differs from the search bar found on the product pages, that makes it easy to perform a sub-search within a product group. In any event, the global search option was not configured properly to work with the toggle setting that hides out of stock products. This has been corrected such that a consumer using the global search, will not see out of stock products unless the retailer has selected the option to do so in their Product Visibility & Availability page.

Dropship Controls

As many of you know, some industry manufacturers will not permit Drop Shipping from a vendor to a consumer (via a third-party FFL and 4473). We have added a control to prevent such behavior in the eCommerce. Should a consumer attempt to place a drop ship order for one of the following manufacturers, they will be asked to pick up the item in your store or to remove the item from the cart. Note – this will not affect B2B customers (i.e, mostly distributors in our case) who use Orchid POS/eComm to drop ship from the manufacturer to a retailer, which is permitted.  Manufacturers affected by this change include:

The following manufacturers do not allow drop shipping.

1. AAC (Advanced Armament)
   
2. Browning
   
3. Franklin Armory only restricts drop shipping in these states
   
1.  California
2. Connecticut
3. Washington DC
4. Delaware
5. Florida
6. Hawaii
7. Iowa
8. Illinois
9. Maryland
10. New Jersey
11. New York
12. Rhode Island
13. Washington
    
4. Gemtech
5. GLOCK
6. IWI - Israel Weapon Industries
7. Q LLC
8. Trijicon
9. Sig Sauer
10. Winchester
    

New Menu Structure – Important Updates

As you likely know, our menu structure was simplified and went live on December 16. One of those changes was to integrate the former Cpanel (for eCommerce customers) in to the main POS. Access to the legacy CPanel will be turned off on December 31, 2024. Additional enhancements since the major release include:

1. Moved Orchid eBound Home to the top of the Comply menu
2. Moved FFL University to the Comply menu
3. Added a “Search All” (customers) atop the Customers menu
4. Moved the POS SN History to the bottom of the Inventory menu
5. Added an option that reads “Do not show products online if it lacks an image” to the following screen Online > Configure Products, Variants & Courses > Product Visibility & Availability
6. Change the following toggle found on the same page from “Do not display out of stock items” to “Do not display in-store out-of-stock items (Doesn’t affect live vendor inventory display)”
7. Fixed a bug that was displaying the phrase ‘Sales Order’ instead of ‘Layaway’ on the respective menus and pages 

Global Product Search Online and as found in the Manage Products Area

The search bar would previously function as soon as a third character was typed in. However, this was preventing the search for brands that only have two letters (e.g., “FN”). This has been modified.

Product Group Selection in the Manage Products > Sales Channel Area

During our menu simplification, we had removed this feature as it was duplicative with some functions found in the Online menu. However, based on various client requests, we have turned that feature back on.

Additional Enhancement to House Account Credits for Returns

In the last sprint, we release new functionality, allowing the return of items to a house account. This functionality has been expanded to include partial returns.

ShipStation Fields for Height, Length, Width, Depth and Weight

Customers who use our ShipStation integration know that shipping prices can be based on these dimensional characteristics, depending on the price options selected. Previously, each user would have to add these characteristics as custom fields to their instance. We have now made them default fields which will appear on the product Attributes tab of the Manage Products area.

Card Reader Selection

A new bug was identified that would intermittently require the user to reselect the card reader to be used (or ‘remembered’) by register. This has been corrected.

Physical Inventory Enhancements

For the second sprint in a row, we made enhancements to the Physical Inventory tool. Our long-term plan is to rebuild the feature, modernizing the code and eventually allowing users to scan firearms in the POS (in lieu of the eBound Serial Number Inventory Tool (SNIT)). Additional enhancements for this sprint include:

1. Addressing visual column shift errors
2. Correcting the formula used when a manager override is used
3. Ensuring that all manager adjustments get saved
   

User Access

As part of the new menu design, we’ve also rebuilt the user access page. The new layout aligns with the design concept found in the store setup options, classifying toggles by like categories for ease of use. 

Add Dropship Capability to Purchase Order

Enhancements to purchase orders was made two months ago, and has been in the Beta stage. The enhancements include the addition of a ‘-DS’ suffix to a purchase order that is being used to drop ship product from a vendor to a customer. This is most often used in B2B scenarios. In addition, a “DropShip PO” is set to automatically close rather than wait for the receipt of goods, as inventory balances should not be impacted by the transaction. This beta functionality has now been pushed to live production.

QuickBooks Integration Popup Warning – Important

Those clients who use our QuickBooks (QBX) integration know that product taxonomies must be mapped to a QBX general ledger account so that the system can properly route transactions. If an item is missing a completed taxonomy or has not been mapped to the general ledger account, the daily QBX post will alert the user and not process. 

To help users address this issue we have added two important changes:

1. If a user tries to process a register transaction without a completed taxonomy, they will be alerted of the issue and request that they escalate the matter to store management. The user will not be prevented from completing the transaction, as we know that could interrupt counter transactions and sales.
2. We have added a new popup on the QBX posting page, letting the user know the reason for any related failures to post, citing that the taxonomy must be fixed for a given item. Please note, this does not mean that transactions need to be reprocessed. Simply navigate to manage products, select the item, update the taxonomy and the QBX post will then process. 
   

Coming Soon

Prior to SHOT Show, we anticipate the release of the following new features:

1. Significantly revamped catalogs, catalog sync workflow and catalog sync speed, beginning in the middle of this week. 
2. Addition of an automatic price formula applicating to anything imported or sync’d from the catalog. This feature will also take advantage of the new, ‘true Category-level’ price formula.
3. Enhanced Drop Ship features, a ‘waterfall’ fulfillment and online price listing feature that will allow users to set priorities by preferred vendor or margin optimization.
4. User customizable descriptions for online stock status.
5. Automated Drop Ship orders with vendors and automated replenishment.
6. Enhancements to website speeds, product loading, shop page filter/search selection and checkout design and performance. 

No changes