New in Infinity – February 2024

Here’s new functionality across the Infinity platform that will help you and your team reduce operational complexity while improving the customer experience. 

Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licencing to access some functionality.  

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INFINITY API

Enhance business continuity during a processor failure 

The Cloud Events Service’s processors will now keep running even if one of them fails. The processors that aren’t directly impacted will continue to operate, lowering the risk of business interruption. You can configure the service so that you’ll be alerted via email to the failure by a fatal error warning. 

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PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Faster access to historical sales impacted by unit cost changes 

When viewing historical sales transactions in item maintenance, you can now see exactly when changes to the unit cost of an item started to impact sales line costs. 

Improve data privacy by concealing stock costs from store staff 

If you want to keep the cost your business pays for stock confidential, you now have the option to hide it from the sales and credits screen at the Back Office so that it’s not exposed to your store staff.  

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INVENTORY

Simplify urgent stock transfers from warehouse to store 

If your business manages all stock requests from the head office, you can now use Infinity’s replenishment request function to order branch stock, instead of raising a purchase order. This can be useful if you want to get an item from the warehouse to a store at short notice and you are happy for the warehouse to send what it can based on availability.

Increase receipting speed and accuracy with audible scan warnings 

Using Cloud Inventory to receipt items that have arrived in a consignment of multiple stock transfers will improve your detection of errors now that store staff get a “bad beep” warning when they scan an item that isn’t supposed to be in the consignment or an item that has an invalid barcode. We’ve also improved your staff’s ability to identify variances for over and under transfer receipts, making the receipting process speedier and more precise.  

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CUSTOMERS & LOYALTY

Meet privacy law obligations by automating customer data retention periods  

We’ve enhanced Infinity Loyalty to give you more options for managing your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) risk. You can automatically remove customer data from POS and Back Office machines when there are no open sales orders and no transactions for that customer within a configurable period.  

Before you can use this functionality, you need to have a stable infrastructure, as the customer search will always use a connection to the Head Office. Also note that these changes should be part of your wider PII programme. 

Streamline mass updating of free prepaid product offers 

Offering free prepaid promotional products can be an effective way of engaging with your existing customers. We’ve made adopting this strategy more seamless now that you can use Infinity Loyalty to update many prepaid product balances at the same time.  

Enhance security by deactivating stolen partner loyalty cards 

If you use Infinity Loyalty with partner programmes, you can now block a customer’s Airpoints or Flybuys card that has been stolen or involved in a fraudulent transaction so it can’t be used as an identifier at your Point of Sale or at an outside payment terminal, thereby protecting your business from potential fraudulent card use. 

In addition, by blocking (and not deleting) the identifier, you remove the risk of it being allocated to another customer. 

Create tailored rewards when resolving customer concerns 

We’ve enhanced the ways you can reward Loyalty customers by enabling you to manually adjust a customer’s accumulator balance at the Head Office. You can use this new function to add a “stamp” for a customer, so that, for example, you can give them a free coffee as a way of resolving a concern or query.   

Speed up loyalty customer scanning during a sale 

Scanning a loyalty customer into a sale is faster and more efficient now that your store staff no longer have to open the customer search function before scanning the customer’s card. If you want to maintain customer confidentiality, this has the added benefit of not exposing customer information to your store staff. 

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PRICING & PROMOTIONS  

Simplify the set-up of quantity-based promotions at any price level 

If you use quantity price breaks, you can now apply those breaks to prices 2-8, as well as to price 1, on the Infinity item master data. Applying breaks across all price fields can be easily managed using Infinity ETL, which saves you the hassle of manually maintaining the various individual pricing scales for an item.  

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REPORTS & ANALYTICS

Improve stock management with better inventory-related reporting  

We’ve made a number of improvements to the end-of-month financial reports so that they’re more useful for inventory-related reconciliation. The Stock Movement Summary Report now offers a transaction breakdown using both quantity and cost values, as well as allowing you to easily see any variance between opening and closing balances. This means the report provides an easily readable view of all stock-related activity and allows you to identify instances where incorrect store processes were followed, such as selling items into negative stock.  

Other changes have been made to support these enhancements. Both the Stock Movement Summary Report and the Sales and Stock Gross and Profit Report now round the cost to four decimal places rather than two, as a way of further improving the accuracy of the reports’ cost figures over a long period, while the Chronological Item Movement Report includes the item on-hand quantity, which will be shown in red if a stock movement puts the item quantity into negative.  

Help store staff make purchasing decisions for future promotions 

Infinity’s new RBP Promotions Report allows your stores to see upcoming and current promotions and helps them make the purchasing decisions needed to run those promotions. They can use the report to understand what they need to order and when they can reduce ordering as promotions come to an end, as well as to check that shelf labelling has the right pricing information. Head office staff can use the report to help stores plan and run promotions, including through advance advertising.

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ADMINISTRATION

Enhance financial integrity with mandatory end-of-day completion 

If you use Infinity’s extended Cash Management functionality, you’ll find we’ve made some enhancements to reduce the risk of errors. Your store staff won’t be able to create a trading day if they haven’t completed an end of day on a POS station that has had sales activity, or if that station hasn’t linked to the Back Office that day. This ensures that all financial transactions are available at the Back Office when the trading day is created and removes the possibility of sales and till adjustments being missed. 

Extend lifespan of stock records for open transactions 

You can now keep stock transaction records open for a very long period if they are associated with open purchase orders and unreceipted transfers. The records will remain active and available for updating for the life of the transaction, even after the configured lifespan limit has been reached.  

Boost security by eliminating barcode login risks 

Staff logins can be a security concern for your business, especially if your people create barcodes by entering their credentials on third-party websites and then use those barcodes to log in. You can now negate the usefulness of these websites by requiring that all users log in manually rather than by scanning IDs.  .  

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To find out more about any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us. 

If you’d like to get our regular ‘New in Infinity’ updates in your inbox, sign up to our newsletter.

New in Infinity – October 2023

Here’s new functionality across the Infinity platform that will help you unify your physical and digital channels to create frictionless customer experiences and drive growth.

Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licencing to access some functionality. 

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INFINITY API

Enhance ecosystem integrations by accessing more transaction source data

As part of our continual expansion of Cloud Events payloads, we’ve included additional information about the transaction source, as well as any information about the use of external loyalty cards and fuel coupons, to allow you to enrich your integration with ecosystem platforms. 

Streamline sharing of sales data with ecosystem partners 

You can now use the Infinity Cloud Events service to securely share sales of specific products with ecosystem partners without having to waste time and resources manually cleansing and redacting data.  

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PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Automate shelf pricing updates with Pricer integration 

Keeping your shelf pricing up to date, especially during a promotional period, can be time consuming and costly. Using Infinity's new integration with Pricer software, you can reduce labour costs by harnessing the power of real-time electronic pricing. The integration regularly sends the latest Infinity pricing information to Pricer, saving you the effort of manually updating prices and ensuring your shelf pricing is always current. 

Boost efficiency with ETL tool item selection enhancements 

Bulk exporting and updating item data using the ETL tool is easier and more efficient now that you can select items by subdepartment and product class rather than just by department, giving you more focused and targeted results.  

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INVENTORY

Streamline inventory management by stock taking any time of day 

Businesses can find it hard to fit stock taking around the need to keep trading. Infinity Cloud now allows you to stock take during trading hours at a time that suits you and then refresh stock data at the Back Office, meaning you don’t miss any sales that happened during the stock take.  

Save time and effort when receipting multiple stock transfers 

If your business chooses to reduce transportation costs by shipping multiple stock transfers from your warehouse in a single delivery, you can now use Infinity Cloud to receipt all the goods in that delivery at the same time. When the consignment arrives, your store staff can simply scan the goods and Infinity will deal with the hassle of matching them to the right stock transfer, saving you time and effort.  

Simplify checks of shelf price labels using mobile devices 

Verifying shelf-edge pricing, particularly during a promotion, can be difficult for store staff, who have to match the shelf price to the price recorded at the POS station. To overcome this, Infinity Cloud now allows store operators to see both the standard price and the single product promo price on a mobile device as they move around the store. 

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CUSTOMERS & LOYALTY

Increase accuracy of fuel loyalty balances via manual adjustments 

Loyalty program administrators in fuel businesses can now create both positive and negative manual adjustments to cents-per-litre balances, giving them more control over suspicious transactions and instances where operator error has inflated the balance.    

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PRICING & PROMOTIONS  

Simplify the setup of quantity-based promotions 

If you use quantity break/price bands, you can now use additional price adjustment options to simplify and optimise the setup of scale pricing rules. By enabling price fields 2-8 on the item master, you can define a single rule to manage multiple items, reducing the overhead in maintaining these rules.   

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POINT OF SALE

Improve security and employee safety with contactless cash recycling 

Handling cash is a financial and security risk for all retailers. Infinity’s new cash recycler integration improves your peace of mind by taking the responsibility for processing cash payments away from store staff and giving it to the recycler machine instead. This reduces both the chance of staff error when giving out change and the risk of theft, while also allowing you to enjoy the benefits of contactless cash handling.   

Boost profits by removing credit option from Windcave EFTPOS 

Customers who use the credit option when paying by EFTPOS as a way of circumventing the credit card processing fee cost your business precious revenue. To overcome this, you can now configure payment options at the point of sale so that when the customer chooses to pay by Windcave EFTPOS they must debit either their cheque or savings account, rather than using the credit option.   

Let customers quickly and easily self-scan loyalty cards on Magellan scales 

Infinity Loyalty now supports the use of Magellan scanner scales for scanning Loyalty cards, optimising the search for Loyalty customers at the Point of Sale.  

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INTEGRATIONS

Speed up GRNI reconciliation in Xero 

Reconciling the GRNI account postings in Xero is faster and more efficient now that the original purchase order number displays on purchase order goods receipts.  

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TECHNOLOGY

Accelerate upgrades with fewer exceptions  

We've enhanced the Infinity Upgrade Service to accommodate situations where applications are running that may block the upgrade from updating files in the Infinity folder. This will result in fewer exceptions needing attention post-upgrade, reducing the time pressures on technical staff.    

Support for diverse scale hardware at site level 

Businesses that configure scales at the site level can now set station-specific scale configurations, allowing for mixed hardware options to be supported.  

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To find out more about any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us. 

If you’d like to get our regular ‘New in Infinity’ updates in your inbox, sign up to our newsletter.

New in Infinity – August 2023

Here’s new functionality across the Infinity platform that will help you unify your physical and digital channels and deliver to changing customer needs. 

Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licencing to access some functionality. 

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PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Streamline stock sorting by setting preferred sort criteria 

It’s now easier to sort and find stock items in Infinity using the criteria that makes the most sense to your business. When you browse for items in the inventory, your previous sort selection will be retained for the next session. So, for example, if you prefer to sort items by description, they will automatically be sorted in that order the next time you open Infinity.   

Empower store staff to control stock at new stores 

We’ve streamlined the effort involved in creating a new branch by providing a choice of which stock items will be sent to the store. When inventory items are copied from a source branch to the new branch, you can choose to only send the active items, or decide to set them all active and send them all. This empowers store staff to decide which items they want to keep, giving them more control over their stock. It also means your Head Office staff no longer have to be involved in setting up the inventory for a new store.  

Manage financial risks by setting store-specific cash limits 

Keeping cash in the cash drawer can be one of the most important financial and security risks your stores face on a day-to-day basis, and those risks can differ across branches. You can now empower stores to handle those risks in the way that meets their needs by allowing them to set their own cash drawer limits.   

Keep promotions running smoothly during franchise ownership changes 

Changing franchise ownership in the middle of a promotional cycle can be disruptive and potentially cost your stores valuable revenue. You can now minimise that disruption by easily transferring existing pricing and promotions when a store moves from one cluster in your organisation to another. This saves you having to recreate the promotions and means offers keep running without missing a beat. 

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INVENTORY

Make supplier searches easy with non-case sensitive name check 

We’ve improved the user experience when creating purchase orders and receipts by making the supplier name check non-case sensitive. This means that you will find the supplier without any trouble when there’s a difference in the capitalisation of their name on the item record and the supplier record.   

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CUSTOMERS & LOYALTY

Speed up loyalty prepay enquiries with full transaction info 

Your Loyalty support staff can answer Loyalty prepay customer transaction enquiries more quickly now that they can see more details about those transactions, including the date, the receipt number and the external transaction code.    

Improve efficiency during cents-per-litre rule searches 

Searching for specific cents-per-litre rules has been made more seamless and less time-consuming now that fuel administrators can easily filter and sort them.   

Customise error messages when external fuel balances unavailable 

Your Loyalty program administrator can now be warned that a customer’s external partner cents-per-litre fuel balance is currently unavailable using an error message that meets your customised business needs.  

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POINT OF SALE

Boost sales by providing customers with estimated arrival dates 

Securing a sale can sometimes come down to being able to tell the customer that the item they really want to buy will soon be available. Infinity now allows your store staff to see more details about the estimated arrival date of goods on purchase orders, as well as quantities on draft orders, allowing them to drive sales by giving customers the information they need to make purchasing decisions.  

Seamlessly switch POS stations for faster transactions via auto-logout 

At busy times, your sales staff may need to switch between POS stations to process a high volume of transactions quickly, while also allowing you to keep track of who processed the sales. To meet these simultaneous needs, Infinity can now log users out after a set amount of time, rather than locking the entire station. This keeps the sales process moving while not compromising on the audit trail. This feature is also useful between shifts if a user forgets to log out and means the next user can log in without having to involve a manager in unlocking the station.  

Customise age-check policies store-by-store 

If your business sells items that have an age restriction and you use Infinity’s advanced age check module, age policies can now be set on a store-by-store basis. This is especially useful if your stores operate as franchises and franchisees want to apply different policies. So, for example, one store can decide to age-check everyone who looks under 30, while another store decides to check everyone who looks younger than 25.  

Enhance fuel transaction monitoring by identifying legitimate test deliveries 

Monitoring fuel transactions using Digifort DVR is easier now that the video footage identifies the pumps used for test deliveries to ensure they were legitimate. 

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INTEGRATIONS

Republish cloud event sales invoice transactions effortlessly 

Cloud event sales invoice transactions can now be republished to either RabbitMQ or Azure should they need to be resent to the system that consumes them, ensuring that all transactions are sent and accounted for.  

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TECHNOLOGY

Support for latest Microsoft technologies 

Infinity now supports SQL Server 2022, the latest SQL Server version available from Microsoft. Note that SQL Server 2016 and higher require a 64-bit operating system.  

Faster POS setup with accelerated data replication 

Infinity Point of Sale will be ready to use much sooner following improvements to the setup process. Accelerated data replication can reduce the time it takes to perform the initial setup data synchronisation down to just a few minutes, depending on network speeds and the amount of data involved.  

Reduce costs with enhanced Wishlist integration 

Infinity’s integration with the Wishlist company now supports a multi-tenanted back-end.  

Effortless safety sheet distribution with API integration 

If you sell dangerous goods, distributing material safety sheets across your business can now be done via an API back-end, optimising the management of these documents and saving you the trouble of having to make them available on a site-by-site basis. 

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To find out more about any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us. 

If you’d like to get our regular ‘New in Infinity’ updates in your inbox, sign up to our newsletter.

New in Infinity – May 2023

Here’s new functionality across the Infinity platform that will help you unify your physical and digital channels to create the seamless and personalised buying journeys your customers crave. 

Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licencing to access some functionality. 

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APIS

Faster performance to reduce resources 

The performance of transactional APIs has been improved under high loads so that the resources required to run the APIs can be reduced and the API processes are faster, improving the overall user experience.  

Enforce domain separation between fuel inventory and sales data 

Businesses that apply domain-driven design and wish to send fuel inventory events to a separate endpoint from the sales data can now configure the Cloud Events Service with alternate API details for the fuel data. This helps to maintain domain separation between the fuel inventory and sales data domains. 

Simpler maintenance of debtor records 

Customers who update debtor records using the Accounts Receivable API no longer have to provide the financial details as part of the update, reducing the complexity and effort involved in maintaining these records. 

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INVENTORY

Let store staff use mobiles for stock transfers 

Stock transfers can now be created in Infinity Cloud while in mobile mode, making creation of transfers more efficient for staff on the shop floor. The ability to scan by pack size has also been added to the stock transfer process to speed up the scanning of products that are being transferred. 

Easier management of purchase orders 

Customers who have their own purchase order references can now use those references when creating, viewing and searching for orders in Infinity, making it easier to find and maintain POs across your business.  

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PRICING & PROMOTIONS

Launch quantity promotions for increased sales 

Infinity Rules Based Pricing now allows you to maintain quantity-based volume price breaks for items. For example, you can set up rules that allow you to sell a single item at $10 each, between 2 and 10 items at $8 each, and between 11 and 15 items for $6 each. Store staff can see thresholds that apply to the sale and then let the customer know about the available discounting, allowing you to drive higher-volume sales through lower pricing.

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CUSTOMERS & LOYALTY

Better visibility of loyalty members within prepay accounts 

Your Head Office staff can now more clearly see which Loyalty member has been selected on the list of prepay account members, helping to reduce confusion when checking the names attached to a prepay account. 

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REPORTS & ANALYTICS

Expand your reporting of customer types 

Customers who use Infinity’s Open Accounts feature can now see sales to open accounts in the Customer Performance Report, allowing for reporting on all customer types used in Infinity.

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POINT OF SALE

Support sustainability goals by eliminating Vault EFTPOS printed receipts 

Businesses using Verifone Vault EFTPOS devices can now decide whether they want to stop printing a customer copy of thermal receipts by default. This can save you the cost that comes from automatically printing receipt copies if your customers rarely ask for them.  

Give store staff more visibility of fuel prepay transactions for easier refunds  

Store staff can now see more transaction information when refunding fuel prepay transactions, thereby helping them choose the correct transaction to refund, improving the speed and accuracy of the refund and providing an improved customer experience. 

Improve staff adherence to daily cash management process 

Several enhancements have been made to Cash Management functionality. You can now configure the system to perform end-of-days only, rather than end-of-shifts. This can help avoid confusion in businesses that do not operate on a shift basis. An extra prompt has also been added to the end-of-day and end-of-shift processes so that store staff are made aware if they create very short shifts by mistake, which increase administrative effort.  

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INTEGRATIONS

Better inventory management and improved operations with enhancements to Xero integrations 

The Infinity Xero integration has been enhanced to push stock receipt, transfer, stocktake and adjustment transactions to reduce manual data entry into Xero when tracking inventory. 

Customers who use Xero to receive payments and accounts receivable statements can now post debtor transactions as individual invoices and credit notes, while Infinity remains the master of the debtor record for all transactions and pricing. Note: customers with a high volume of debtor transactions should ensure their transaction counts fall within Xero monthly transaction volume limitations. 

Supplier invoices that are posted to Xero have been enhanced to accommodate foreign currency suppliers so that offshore suppliers can be paid in their local currency. Freight that has been added to supplier invoices and disbursed across the items, such as landed costs, is now posted as inventory and goods received not invoiced, instead of as a separate inventory line, to provide better accuracy of full inventory valuations and cost of goods sold. 

Cash sales posting to Xero which use duty free mode, or debtors with tax exemption rules in Infinity, now correctly create tax-free and tax-inclusive lines for the various sales lines where appropriate so the tax from sales is accurately recorded in Xero. 

Help stores accepting eWIC cards serve customers faster 

Maintenance of the US WIC (Women, Infant and Children) products has been made more efficient now that the eWic APL file import correctly recognises the UPC PLU flag, thereby removing the need for manual updates of the item master. 

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TECHNOLOGY

Commitment to modern .NET infrastructure 

All Infinity releases now require .NET 4.8 Framework to be present. This is part of Triquestra’s ongoing commitment to using enhancements from vendors and to maintaining technical support. When you receive a new Infinity release from now on, please ensure that .NET 4.8 is deployed to all workstations and servers that operate Infinity. 

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To find out more about any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us. 

If you’d like to get our regular ‘New in Infinity’ updates in your inbox, sign up to our newsletter.

New video series explores why retail is moving to cloud edge for frictionless commerce

If it’s time to make the store your focus to deliver the fast, fluid and personalised experiences that consumers now expect, then our new video series can help you understand how cloud edge ensures the experience is truly ‘zero-friction’. 

Our videos have been prepared for technical and non-technical audiences to answer the most common questions that arise when we use the terms edge and cloud computing. 

Join me as we share how cloud edge is creating buying opportunities that are seamless and lightning-quick. 

Video 1: What is edge computing and why does it matter?   

Video 2: The trends driving retail’s move to edge computing 

Video 3: The top benefits of cloud edge for retail 

 Video 4: 3 reasons retailers need edge computing 

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To achieve frictionless commerce, you need cloud edge 

See how cloud edge can help you create hybrid customer experiences across the entire buying journey. 

New in Infinity – November 2021

Check out the latest enhancements across the Infinity platform designed to help you and your team work more efficiently and create the fast, frictionless experiences customers expect.

Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licencing to access some functionality.

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INFINITY APIs

Easily validate customer addresses

Infinity is now integrated with the Addressify and NZ Post address validation services. This prevents customers from providing inaccurate or incomplete address details, giving you the confidence that web and store orders are linked to the correct customer address. It includes validation of addresses for loyalty customers, orders and quotes, and customers stored in Infinity Loyalty. To use this feature, you’ll need a service agreement with Addressify and/or NZ Post.

Increase efficiency when receipting multiple POs

A new API allows your external suppliers to create a group of purchase orders (or purchase order lines) to make it easier for you to receipt multiple purchase orders at once. Suppliers can generate an Advanced Shipment Notice to provide information about the items included, and their related purchase order lines, so you can be prepared to check and accept delivery.

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INVENTORY

Increase accuracy of inter-branch stock transfers

Your stores can use the new Inter-branch Transfers Report to check for any variances between stock sent to them from another store and the stock that arrives. The report helps reduce inventory leakage between branches and force better stock management practices. It’s particularly useful for retailers who sell high-value items that are routinely transferred between branches. Stores will only see stock movements to or from their own branch.

Simplify stock receipting

You can now configure Infinity so that whole numbers (1,2,3) rather than decimals (1.00, 2.4) must be used in stock receipting. This simplifies stock receipting if you only use whole numbers in stock management and reduces the opportunity for time-wasting errors and confusion. 

Comply with AGDC data requirements

North American cigarette retailers can now use Infinity to meet AGDC (Altria Group Distribution Company) scan data requirements. You can report sales to tobacco companies directly, and then receive reimbursement from them, using an automated process that identifies eligible sales transactions and generates weekly reports in a AGDC compliant format.

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ORDER MANAGEMENT

Full visibility of orders

The Click and Collect Dashboard has been renamed the Orders Orchestration Dashboard to better reflect the wide range of customer order scenarios that it manages, including collection and delivery via store-to-door, drop shipping and click and collect.

Email customers order information

If you capture transaction data in the TH_FieldText fields, you can now include that data in the email that is sent to customers with their transaction receipt.  This allows you to include additional, business-specific information in the email that your customers receive.

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REPORTS

Give fuel sites better AA Smartfuel loyalty reporting

Fuel stores have three new reports that enable them to see transactional details for the  AA Smartfuel program, more easily gauge how the program is performing and assess ways to improve its productivity. The reports include analysis of fuel discounts accumulated by customers, fuel discounts redeemed by customers and non-fuel product sales that qualified for shop-sponsored cents-per-litre discounts.

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POINT OF SALE

Give your customers a single receipt

If your business uses PC EFTPOS NZ, you can now take advantage of the ability to only print one receipt, saving on paper and giving your customers the option to make a more sustainable shopping choice.

And if you want to go paperless and eliminate all paper receipts, Australian retailers can use Slyp Smart Receipts to send digital receipts direct to the customer’s banking app.

Let customers mix and match their loyalty accounts

Fuel retailers who use Infinity Loyalty to offer cents-per-litre discounts via an app can now allow their customers to group together loyalty accounts using the app and redeem saved cents-per-litre discounts from any of these accounts during a fuel purchase. This allows fuel customers who have multiple accounts amongst family members to mix and match how they use their accounts, reducing potential confusion about where their saved cents-per-litre discounts have gone.

Analyse historic foot traffic in stores

You can now record the foot traffic in your stores retrospectively, instead of just on the current day, giving your staff greater flexibility in record-keeping and providing a more comprehensive, reliable picture of the numbers of customers entering your stores. The foot traffic functionality is also now available in Restricted Back Office.  

Allow customers to change their minds during refunds

Your store staff can now cancel out of a refund to Afterpay and Zip, giving customers the opportunity to reverse their decision and preventing unintentional refunds to these two payment methods.

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TECHNOLOGY

• Stock information can be shared throughout your solution infrastructure more readily and seamlessly. The Cloud Events Service now publishes notifications about purchase orders, goods receipts and goods receipt cancellations, in addition to sales invoices. That means external systems, such as ERPs, use near real-time stock management information from Infinity rather than having to use custom integrations, flat files or pulling information using API.

• We’ve renewed Infinity’s certification with Quest Payment Systems in New Zealand, giving users of the Quest pinpad configured for use with Paymark the ability to integrate their EFTPOS solution with Infinity POS.

• Infinity now allows you to proactively prevent accidental mass data updates which can impact the Linker performance and reduce the real-time accuracy of information. Additional protection on the AKPOS database triggers blocks if updates to more than 20,000 rows are attempted within a single update. Block triggers can be removed as well as added.  

• To help retailers improve their security compliance, Infinity Web Integration and Infinity Loyalty now support the ability to work with TLS 1.0 disabled. This enables businesses to disable the now obsolete TLS 1.0 protocol and reduce their security risk profile. 

• Infinity Quickfire has been modified so that you can now automate upgrades by performing a silent upgrade of Infinity ETL and the Infinity Cloud Events Service using the Command line.

• The Infinity Gift Card API has been converted to a REST API for easier integration.

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To find out more about any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us. 

If you’d like to get our regular ‘New in Infinity’ updates in your inbox, sign up to our newsletter.

New guide: Why cloud edge is the new battleground for retailers

Retailers have turned their attention to the store to create the unified commerce experiences consumers now expect across the entire buying journey.

They’re blending physical locations with digital channels and using technologies such as AI, AR, VR and IoT to create new value through frictionless and dynamic interactions. 

However, it’s a challenge to give these latency-sensitive, data-intensive applications the performance and speed they need with a traditional central cloud or data centre. Uploading and downloading data takes too long. And it requires expensive infrastructure and network bandwidth. 

That’s why cloud edge is a game changer. By enabling connected devices to process data closer to where it’s created, on the edge, it ensures the customer experience is truly ‘zero-friction’. 

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Our new guide, The retailer’s guide to cloud edge: Why cloud edge is the new battleground for retailers, explains what edge computing is and why it matters, what’s driving adoption and the benefits it delivers, with retail use cases and architecture considerations.

It’s been written for technical and non-technical audiences who want to create lightning-quick ‘phygital’ experiences that cut costs, delight customers and grow revenue. 

DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE

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Want a taste of what’s inside?  

Watch Mike Baxter, Triquestra’s CTO, as he explains how edge computing works and why it’s important for rich retail experiences.

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New in Infinity – August 2021

Here are the latest enhancements we’ve added to the Infinity platform to help you create the frictionless experiences your customers expect.

Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licencing to access some functionality.

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INFINITY APIs

Extend product pricing options 

The Products API now offers greater versatility when determining prices. Previously, users could select Price1 at the Head Office or an alternative (eg Price8) at a specific site. Now the API returns all prices set up from Head Office (when left blank) or all prices set up for a specific site (when the site code is supplied). So, for example, you can use Price8 at the Head Office to produce a single global price for a product.  

Faster troubleshooting following database error 

The Cloud Events Service now stops on a fatal error. Previously, it only logged an inability to connect to the database and when the maximum retries were exceeded it entered a state where the service was still running at the Windows level, but it wasn't doing any work. Now, if the service fails to connect to the database for more than the configured retries, the Windows service will stop, allowing OS level monitoring to raise alerts and perform recovery operations.  

Easier sales to non-debtor customers  

Using the Infinity pricing engine and pricing conditions to price a cart on a web store then pass the resulting sale to Infinity is now simpler when selling to non-accounts receivable customers for integrations that use Infinity APIs. Output from the Infinity Carts API can be used as input to the Invoices API with only a few additional pieces of data added. Previously some manipulation of the accounts receivable account code was required for non-debtor customers.

More control when retrieving price change records 

The Product Price List API has been enhanced to allow a consumer of the API to retrieve recent price changes while also specifying the maximum number of records to return. This enables the consumer to control how many records to receive at once and tune application performance.  

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ORDER MANAGEMENT

Customer online orders now visible at POS

POS users can find and view online orders on the POS Sale screen. This offers a more seamless experience for both the customer and the POS operator, for whom there is no distinction between an order the customer made online and an order placed at a physical store. 

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PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Easier parent-child items adjustments

Infinity now allows you to automate parent-child items adjustments. With just a few steps, you can assign a new parent item to existing child items with no need to manually perform stock on hand and cost adjustments.

Increase control over point of sale refunds

Using the Returns Extended module you can now define if a particular item is refundable or not, giving retailers the ability to prevent particular items from being refunded at the point of sale.

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PRICING & PROMOTIONS

Increase personalised customer promotions

The Infinity Rules Based Pricing interface has been enhanced to allow retailers to create and maintain customer-specific promotions that could previously only be maintained via integration. This allows you to create more personalised promotions and enhance customers’ purchasing experience.  

Allow staff to apply discretionary total sales discounts

Infinity Rules Based Pricing now allows you to manually apply total sale discounts to all items in a sale, including items that are already part of a promotion. This enhancement gives your staff more discretion when it comes to offering customer discounts; for example, when the customer signs up for your loyalty program.

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POINT OF SALE

Allocate refund items to correct location

POS users can now assign items to a specific location using the Returns Extended module. This enables more accurate and less time-consuming stock adjustment. POS users are prompted to allocate the item to the correct location at the time the goods are returned and are not tempted to keep the item to the side for location details to be entered later. 

Give customers summaries of epay transactions on a receipt

You can now print more than one epay transaction reference on a receipt. This means that if a customer buys more than one epay product it is easier to query the epay system and resolve any potential problems by easily identifying the items in the sale.  

Increase accuracy of cashout transaction records

POS receipts have been enhanced to display the word "Cashout" instead of "Change" when an operator processes a single EFTPOS transaction with a cashout, thereby providing a more accurate record of the transaction. If the transaction was a split payment, the word "Change" will not be replaced even if the cashout was part of the transaction.  

Provide staff with information when Wishlist provider unavailable

POS operators are now given more helpful error messages when the Wishlist provider is unreachable or the Wishlist service name is invalid. The length of time your system will wait to receive a response from the Wishlist provider can be configured, and the POS operator will be prompted when the timeout is met, allowing them to communicate more effectively with the customer when the Wishlist isn’t available.  

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MESSAGING

Easier management of bulk emails

Infinity Messaging can now send a configured number of emails per minute only. This enables retailers whose email service limits the number of emails per minute to automatically send a large volume of emails, such as monthly debtor statements, in managed chunks.

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TECHNOLOGY

MESM RPB SQL Runner is now .NET 4.6.2 compatible and does not depend on installation of .NET 3.5 Framework on the target PC.

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To find out more about any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us. 

If you’d like to get our regular ‘New in Infinity’ updates in your inbox, sign up to our newsletter.

New in Infinity – September 2020

We’ve added new features and made enhancements across the Infinity platform to help you and your team work more efficiently and offer better experiences to your customers.

Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licencing to access some functionality.

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CUSTOMERS & LOYALTY

Let customers add items to their wishlist in stores

When a customer visiting a store is undecided about purchasing an item, your staff can now add the item to their personal wishlist. This gives the customer a convenient collection of items that acts as a reminder for future purchases and can be easily shared with family and friends. When they make a purchase, the item is automatically removed from the wishlist.

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PAYMENTS

Give customers frictionless payments with Adyen

You can now take advantage of the Adyen global payments platform for both online and in-store payments. Infinity’s new integration with Adyen’s global payments platform lets you accept local payment methods from customers around the world, and gives you the benefit of consolidating all your payment provider costs into one bill. When customers shop in your stores, they can use their credit or debit card to make the payment, no matter where they are from. The transaction details are automatically displayed in their language and currency, making the checkout process fast and easy. Adyen supports all popular payment methods, including payment wallets such as Alipay, WeChat Pay and Google Pay.

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PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Provide customers with more details on product prices and stock availability

If you use the Infinity Product Price Lists API, your customers’ shopping experience across online and physical channels can be enhanced by exposing additional pricing and stock availability information. You can now show alternate pricing for a product, such as promotional pricing, country-specific pricing and loyalty pricing. If they want to buy a product that is not currently in stock, they can see when it is likely to be available. They can also see if a product is available as an individual product or in a box. 

Search for stock items is faster and easier 

You can now quickly search for stock items by product code, alternate product code and SKU at the same time. We’ve created a new Any Code filter on the Stock item screen at both Back Office and Head Office. 

Regulate your minimum and maximum stock levels 

If you use Infinity to regulate your stock levels, you can be confident that the minimum and maximum quantities you enter will work together correctly for all items and all branches. Validation has been added to the quantity fields on branch-specific items, so Infinity will let you know if the minimum amount is higher than the maximum amount, and vice versa.

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ORDER MANAGEMENT

Stores can now select the best delivery option for each customer using Shippit’s shipping platform

When an order is created at a point of sale and the customer wants their goods to be delivered, your store can now send a quote request to Shippit. Once they’ve selected the delivery option that best suits the customer, they can book the delivery and print a shipping label. Using Shippit not only automates the quote and booking processes, it reduces keying errors and removes the need to enter information into multiple systems. Shippit is only available for orders created using Infinity Order and Quotes.

Better visibility of items on pick list

Your store staff can now more easily see what needs to be picked as part of an online order. The full details of items with long descriptions can now wrap over multiple lines on the pick list, meaning team members can see items at-a-glance.  

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INVENTORY  

Easier product returns to suppliers

You can now search for items to be returned to a supplier using the supplier’s product code. This is helpful in situations where the simplest way to find items that need to be returned is by looking at the documentation that has been sent with the goods. 

Faster identification of stock source

It’s now easier to tell where stock has come from when you receipt a stock transfer. The name of the transferring branch has been added to the Receipt screen so that you can see the source of the stock at-a-glance.

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POINT OF SALE

Infinity is now accredited for Samoa’s new Tax Invoice Monitoring System

Samoan retailers can now use Infinity to give their customers instantly verifiable invoices required by the government’s Tax Invoice Monitoring System, introduced to ramp up tax collection and reduce tax evasion. Sales completed at the POS are sent to the Sales Data Controller which transmits a fiscal invoice back to the POS so the receipt can be printed. 

More accurate stock levels

Your POS operators will now be warned if they add an item with a zero or negative count to a sale using the Advanced Item Search. This will act as a reminder to staff to process stock receipts so that your stock levels are correct.

Faster collection of Goody loyalty points during customer purchases

The Infinity integration with Goody loyalty cards has been made more seamless by allowing card numbers and fuel coupons to be scanned straight into the product search box at the point of sale. 

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TECHNOLOGY

As part of our continual improvement, we’ve made a number of technology enhancements 

The AKPOS database can now be installed and upgraded in a cloud environment. This option is available to clients who host their HOS database on a supported SQL Server environment where full admin access to the SQL instance and the file system is not possible eg a SQL PaaS platform.  The supported SQL Server installations include:

• Microsoft Azure: SQL Managed Instance 

• Amazon Web Services: RDS 

• Google Cloud Platform: Cloud SQL 

• Plus any on-premise deployment using SQL Fail Over Clustering Services. 

There’s more:

• Infinity APIs have been upgraded to use .NET Core 3.1. 

• Infinity Cloud installer now supports SQL Server 2019.

• Multiple instances of the Infinity Identity API can now be run on multiple servers, removing the possibility of a single point of failure in high-availability environments.

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To find out more about any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us. 

If you’d like to get our regular ‘New in Infinity’ updates in your inbox, sign up to our newsletter.

New in Infinity – August 2020

We’ve added new features and made enhancements across the Infinity platform. Here are some of the main improvements so you can offer better experiences to your customers. Scroll down for the complete list.

Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licencing to access some functionality.

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INVENTORY  

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Mark the lines on a purchase order as ‘Done’

Infinity users can now mark the lines on a purchase order that have been ‘Done’ when the purchase order is receipted. This feature helps prevent confusion about which lines have been processed and which still need to be actioned. 

Numeric stock entry for improved user experience

The Cloud Inventory Stock Take field that’s used to input counted quantities now displays the numeric keypad instead of the full keyboard to make it quicker to enter stock counts.

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ORDER MANAGEMENT 

Local stores can now determine the best supplier for orders from any channel

If you manage orders from multiple locations or channels, your stores can now determine the supplier, instead of the supplier being automatically assigned. This change is useful for retail call centres and businesses that use an endless aisle model and distributed supply chain because it enables staff to capture customer orders, and then lets the local store determine the best supplier to source the products from.    

Infinity EDI Service now uses SFTP & SSL certificates

The Infinity EDI Service can now use SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) with a shared SSL certificate, as well as the existing shared key and secret option. This enhancement allows the EDI system to connect to suppliers’ SFTP servers to send purchase orders.

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CUSTOMERS & LOYALTY 

See a live summary of a customer’s reward accumulator balance

Infinity Loyalty users can now see a live summary of customers’ reward accumulator balances on Infinity Cloud Membership screens. For instance, if customers get a free coffee with every tenth coffee purchase, you can see how many more coffees a customer has to buy before they qualify for the free drink. 

Fraud prevention has been improved

Prepay accounts were being locked sooner than they should because pre-authorised debit transaction activities were being counted towards standard debit transactions. Now only debits that aren’t related to pre-authorisations contribute to the fraud protection lock-out feature. 

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PRICING & PROMOTIONS

The promotional cycle is now retained when a promotion for a cluster or a branch is created.

Previously, the promotional cycle was set to 'None' when a user created a new cluster or branch promotion, even if a promotional cycle had been selected. 

We’ve fixed an issue where the internal ID field on pricing rules was overwritten when updating data through the Infinity screens.

Integrated systems can now synchronise pricing data, including rules that have been edited in Infinity.

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REPORTING & ANALYTICS

Identify potentially fraudulent use of fuel CPL discount coupons

Enhancements have been made to the Fuel CPL Multiple Transaction Report to help you identify potentially fraudulent use of CPL discount coupons. The report also shows which identifiers were used for various transactions to help isolate exceptions and reveal high-use identifiers that require further investigation.   

A new report lets you see one-off payments to customers

A new Till Adjustment/Paid Out Report lists till adjustment transactions where money is paid out of the till only. This report can help you identify when POS operators have made one-off payments to customers for items such as scratch cards, and gives you better information for cash reconciliation.

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POINT OF SALE

Improved POS process for customers using the Infinity Loyalty prepay account and check-in

This workflow has been improved to let a customer check in again after deciding not to use the prepay account, without needing to generate a new check-in. Previously the customer needed to start the process from the beginning. This makes the POS process faster and simplifies the customer experience.  

Fuel pump number is now included in Digitfort DVR information

Fuel sale information that’s sent to the Digifort DVR system will now include the fuel pump number that was used for the transaction. This improvement makes it easy for auditors to investigate any issues relating to a specific fuel pump.   

You can now prevent payment types from being used to pay debtor accounts 

This feature means you can restrict the use of payment types for which financial, contractual or legal risks or issues may apply.  

The advanced cash management functions at POS can now prompt the POS operator to go immediately into the cash drawer and safe at the end of the shift. This enhancement helps speed up end-of-shift and end-of-day processes where the operator does not count the cash separately in the back office. If the operator does count the cash separately, they can cancel the prompt and return at a later time to add the counted values as per the original workflow.  

We have modernised the look and feel of some POS screens in micro-modules so they look like the main POS and give you consistency across all POS screens.   

The POS messaging for customers eligible for fuel CPL discounts from exclusive CPL rules has been improved. When a customer is configured as spend-only, the POS now displays ‘Customer cannot Stack daily offer as only Spend is allowed’. This message will be displayed regardless of the minimum spend configured against the rule. Previously, the POS would show ‘Customer cannot Stack daily offer as fuel purchase is less than {fuel minimum limit}’, even if the customer could only spend CPL discounts. This wording could be difficult for the operator to explain to the customer.

The message that the POS operator sees when the fuel CPL API is offline can now be customised, so the operator sees information and messages in a context relevant to them.  

Non-printable characters in the Dangerous Goods handler field were causing issues with integrated systems and reports. They will no longer be accepted and the user will receive a prompt showing the validation error.

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ADMINISTRATION

The Infinity branch cluster functionality has been extended to include Infinity customers 

All customer types can be assigned to clusters – debtor, normal (other account), layby and open account customers.

Branch specific button editing now with preview

When a head office user edits branch-specific buttons, the preview screen now shows the correct layout for the selected branch instead of the default master branch, so the user previews the correct layout.

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TECHNOLOGY

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Infinity now supports installations using Microsoft SQL Server 2019

Infinity still has support for SQL 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017, and ships with SQL 2014 as standard.  

Now you can send all sales transactions to a cloud-hosted API in Azure Event Hubs

The new Infinity Sales Invoice Notification Service lets the back office (or head office) send all completed sales transactions to a cloud-hosted API in Azure Event Hubs using the CloudEvents v1.0 standard. This feature lets you have a single central repository of all Infinity-completed sales transaction events that sit within the Azure Event Hubs platform. Sales transaction data can be provided to any client application that works with CloudEvents 1.0 standard event information, including analytics, electronic marketing systems, financial applications, and alerting systems.

Logging within the fuel CPL API has been extended

Now to include more information about requests received from the External Loyalty Fuel CPL Discounts API. This enhancement will make it easier for IT support to determine communication issues between these APIs.    

Enhanced the speed and performance of a number of GET endpoints

As part of continual improvement, we have enhanced the speed and performance of a number of GET endpoints in loyalty-related APIs when data is retrieved from the databases. These improvements provide faster API processing times and allow systems to accommodate a greater workload. 

New POS lanes ready faster

New POS lanes will be ready for use more quickly after Infinity is installed. The Point of Sale installer now bulk copies extended data and loyalty balances, which will make the initial data replication process much faster so you can use new POS lanes sooner.  

Flybuys loyalty caching

Caching has been added to the Fly Buys loyalty customer search function at the POS for speedier customer transactions. 

Daily database fix

We’ve resolved an issue with the automated daily database maintenance, so where configured, the daily tasks keep the system tuned for optimal operation. 

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There’s much more that’s new in Infinity – see all the new features and enhancements.

To discuss any of these enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us.