[RetailEdge Moderator]

Here is a brief description of when someone may need RECON (Synchronization Engine) and how it works.

RetailEdge can be setup to have as many locations in it as you want or need. This might be useful for someone who has a warehouse and simply wants to track inventory quantities in different locations and transfer the goods between the locations. This multi-location setup will allow you to use all of the back-end functionality of a multi-location business. You can create purchase orders that have inventory allocated to multiple locations and can centrally receive goods into one location and RetailEdge will automatically create a transfer order to take the items to the other location(s).

What you can't do with this setup is have multiple businesses that you sell out of. So if you are truly running two stores and want to track sales from each business then you will either:

1. Simply install RetailEdge as a single location in each store and keep all the data separate in each location.
2. Install RetailEdge a single location in each store and then purchase in install RECON for each satellite location and get the consolidation of inventory, orders, sales by location, customers, etc.

RECON is required for each secondary location. If you have 3 locations, you will need 2 RECONs, 5 locations, 4 RECONs. RECON gives you real-time data for every location in each location.

In order to keep the costs down (although RECON is really affordable for what it does compared to our competitors) and because of varied nature of the businesses RetailEdge works in, there are other alternatives to RECON depending on what you are trying to do. If you really have multiple locations and want to sell out of both and need the sales resolution and real time synchronization of data, RECON is required.

If you are simply logging in with a computer and want to run reports or export your data to QuickBooks, then you can either log into your store remotely and treat the home/remote computer as another workstations or if your connection is slower, just get into your store computer with a remote control software like LogMeIn and run your copy of RetailEdge remotely. This can be easier and very secure if you have two-factor authentication turned on or are using a VPN. If you have established a VPN between your remote location and store, then you probably want to try the workstation option, since you have already created the network. But a VPN can slow things down.

If you are at a trade show and want to get your sales or purchase orders into the main store from a laptop you took with to the show, you can do a REDI Export/Import. More about this is listed here.

http://www.retailedge.com/phpBB/viewtop ... 576&p=1881

This REDI transfer can also be used for the mobile store. Some businesses have wanted to have trucks (mobile store) that go on the road. In this case you would make a backup before you go setup the trucks as workstations and then when they come back to the Main store, simply export the sales and import them into RetailEdge. This will give you the sales resolution by Truck/Workstation. However this does not give you some of the other multi-location type functionality RECON would give you. If you were using RECON in this case, the you would be able to transfer your items onto the trucks, setup the trucks as separate locations, then when the trucks came back into the main location and had access to the network, they would automatically update the information for the day, synch up any sales, orders created, customer information, etc. Much slicker but more expensive (initial software cost). But you probably would save money over time on the time required to manage the data on the back end with the import/export.