Cafe Manager Pro

Cafe Manager Pro configuration guide:

CM Configuration Menu

After installation Cafe Manager has some pre-configured options. You need to change them to suit your environment. There is only one place where you can access configuration settings : CM Configuration menu.  
You can access this menu through tools menu or by clicking CM Configuration button on a tool bar.
  
Note:
Access to the settings is password protected. When you first time access configuration menu it will prompt you to create Admin password. By default Admin will have access to everything. Later you can differentiate access rights for Manager, Supervisor and User on Logons tab
Attention:
If you forgot Admin password and cannot access CM Configuration - you can download default configuration database file where Admin password is set to 1. Please visit http://www.cafemanager.com/cybercafesoftware/cafesoftware_faq.htm

 All configuration settings for Cafe Manager are split into a six groups. Bellow is a small tutorial on how to quickly configure Cafe Manager Pro:

1. General [view]
 
 Three important changes you should make here:
  1. Select your default way of billing customers.
    In majority of your business, do you accept money from customers in advance (Pre-paid) or you allow customers to pay at the end (Pay-As-You-Go)? Select appropriate option. Cafe Manager will load PC-panels accordingly at the start. However, you can always switch between two modes for every single PC-panel during program's execution;
  2. Enter number of client PCs you have;
  3. Currency sign.

 2. Billing [view]
 
  1. Charge Categories - This is where you enter your charge settings into Cafe Manager. By default you should have three Charge Categories set up already: Guest, Member and Student. You can delete or edit them and add more (unlimited).
    For each Charge Category you need to enter charge rates. You do it by clicking on Rate button. This brings a Rate Settings window. 
    You can have 3 different types of charge rates: Simple, Use Day Time and Link time slices.
    Basically, you enter a time-slice and rate for that slice. You can continue for all 24 hours or just fill few hours and then link them (i.e. program will use those rates in circle) 
    With Use Day Time option you enter rates for different time of the day or night. Program will automatically calculate applicable charges as day goes by. Typical use for this option would be "Happy Hours" offer.
  2. Services. - Again Cafe Manager has some pre-configured services. Feel free to change them.

 3. Screen Shield [view]

Another very important set of options. If you going to use Shield as a client-side software in your cafe you can select two ways of accessing it from Cafe Manager: Network Path and IP address. Select one of them and click Shield Config button to enter Network path or IP address of client PCs. 
Note:
Please note - same connection mode must be selected in Screen Shield configuration wizard.

 4. Logons [view]

 Here you can set up up to 4 logon accounts. This could be useful if you have staff personnel with different responsibilities like: Manager, Supervisor and User. You can give access to programs and specify what functionalities are allowed for each account. You can leave it as it is for the moment. 

 5. Advanced [view]

 We would suggest to leave them all blank for now and come back here after you get familiar with how Cafe Manager works. So you will know what changes you want to make here.

 6. Other [view]

 Nothing is very important here. All settings are self-explanatory.

Few more things to remember:
  
Note:
At any time you can click on Test Configuration button to actually test the settings you have just selected or entered. You will see a small window  with PC-panels as in Cafe Manager's main window. You can also see log entries for default Log file and for Copy of Log file (if you selected it). Do few test runs and check that you are satisfied with charges program calculates. One small tip: in Pay-As-You-Go you can enter End time manually, so you do not need to wait hours to calculate the charge. Later you can disable this functionality in Advanced Options. 
Attention:
Don't forget to click Apply for every section of Configuration screen. When you done with it click OK. 
Shield connections settings will have immediate effect. However charges, log files and some other settings will take effect after you restart the program.
Note:
If you are using Shield please check that you can switch Shield On and Off from Cafe Manager. (Screen Shield has to be installed on client systems and configured to accept same connection mode as you selected in Cafe Manger).