If you run a retail store, you probably know on some level that your software is based on Microsoft Excel, or something very similar to it. What you might not know is just how many of your everyday activities are Excel-based -- or could be.
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The Basics
These are the things that you would expect Excel to be doing around your store already. Nothing jaw-dropping, but the solid basic functionality of the spreadsheet program is worth mentioning.
Accounting
It's almost a given that your basic accounting program utilizes Excel to track, manipulate, and examine numbers. It's simply the best tool for the job, given it's ability to perform calculations, display graphs, and compile information form a wide variety of sources.
Point of Sale Many POS systems around the world use an Excel-based program -- essentially a 'mask' that goes over an Excel spreadsheet -- to generate everything from accurate sales tax calculations to printable receipts.
Inventory
Excel is also perfect for tracking the inventory of all of your store's items. With Excel's ability to send an automated Email any time a particular item gets low, it's easy to ensure that you have adequate stocks of all items at all times.
Invoicing
With a little templating, Excel can produce very professional invoices for your various secondary services like carpet cleaning and other maintenance.
Scheduling
Excel's graph-making capacity makes it easy to put in employee's hours and get an immediate visual representation that will show any gaps or overages in your coverage.
More Interesting Purposes
Here are some things Excel could be doing for you that it's probably not already involved in -- but if you think a little outside the box, you'll see how they could improve your business.
Customer Tracking
If your business is small, or the kind that brings frequent repeat visits, it might be worth your while to set up a customer tracking system that gives your employees the ability to take notes about your customers -- the more they feel like you know them, the stronger the loyalty they'll feel!
Employee Performance
Whether you track it by the tips they bring in, by how well they meet the goals of specific promotional drives (see below), or simply by how much money you bring 除甲醛方法 in while they're working, Excel gives you the power to recognize which employees are the most valuable to your business.
Promotional Tracking
Speaking of promotional drives, Excel can easily be set up to track specific goals and how close your employees -- as individuals, groups, or as a whole -- have gotten to meeting those goals.
Projections
Excel's ability to extrapolate on data and project likely future numbers can help you to plan for special events or just regular seasonal changes. Given more and more details, Excel's ability to create accurate projects gets better and better.
Sales
Creating sales -- discounting your merchandise -- is always a risky business. It can bring in enough extra customers to net you an overall profit, or it might just drain away what profits you are making. Excel's ability to craft and test scenarios can show you exactly what you need to do to make a sale successful -- or when to pull the plug if it's not working.
Excel has such a wide range of capacities, from the mundane mathematical functions to beautiful templates to advanced extrapolations and scenario-testing software, that it's ability to assist in almost every aspect of retail sales is unparalleled. If you're not using Excel in your retail store, perhaps you should look into what it can do for you.
Slow downloads are not only annoying but can also cost you a lot of time and effort. Fortunately, there's a very simple way to fix this problem which even a beginner can do. Here are the steps you should take to fix the slow downloads on your computer:
Step 1 - Check Internet Speed - The speed of your Internet connection is essential if you want fast downloads. Nowadays, a typical broadband connection is considered fast if it's over 1mb/s in speed. This basically means that the connection has the ability to download files at 100kb/s (the download speed is 1/10th of your overall connection speed). To test what speed you're getting to your computer, you should Google "Broadband Speed Test" and then click on the first link. Run the test on the website and if it's below your expectations, you should contact your Internet provider.
Step 2 - Check Download Server Speed - If your connection is okay, the problem might lie in the "server" speed" of the download server. Whenever you download a program off the Internet, you PC is basically connecting to another PC (called a 'server') and downloading a series of files from that. If the Internet connection of the other PC is poor then your downloads are going to be very slow. This is a problem which cannot be fixed but you can try and avoid it by using another download server. You'll have to Google the file name you want and it should show you some different servers (known as "mirrors").
Step 3 - Clean Out The Registry - One of the biggest causes of slow downloads is actually thanks to Windows itself. Many computers end up making their downloads run slow because the settings inside them are unable to be read quickly or smoothly. This is a problem which even the most advanced of Windows systems cannot avoid and is where your computer will actually save many of its most important settings in the wrong way, corrupting & damaging them. This will make them unable to be read - which means that when you PC wants to download a file and it needs to read a series of settings to do that, it will end up taking a lot longer than normal.
Most slow downloads can be fixed by cleaning out the 'registry'. The registry is where all the settings for your PC are kept, and is where Windows looks for a series of 'download settings' each time you want to download a file. These settings show Windows how to download files at the fastest rate possible, and its vital that they are in the correct standing. To clean out the registry, you can use a 'registry cleaner' which is a software application that scans through all the settings on your PC and fixes them.