FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
8-19-2008
Contact: Dave Grimm
dave@accubar.com
(800) 806-3922, x7110
www.accubar.com
AccuBar Loads New Features Into Latest Version
Wine, revamped reporting are a major focus of v4.0
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. – Notice from your hotel room in Seattle that your Atlanta bar is missing a case of Jack Daniels? Check. See on your iPhone that your nightclub stocked out of a popular beer? Check. Print a wine list in 2 minutes that only includes what you have in stock? Check.
Hospitality companies who upgrade to the newest version of AccuBar’s beverage management system will be able to do all this and more.
Version 4.0, which was released in August after more than two years in development, represents a major push to give AccuBar a variety of tools to managing a beverage operation successfully. "Version 4 represents the first major overhaul of the AccuBar architecture in four years, and will provide the structure for major enhancements in an operator's ability to analyze data and maintain corporate oversight," said Dean Grimm, chief technical officer and a partner of Englewood, Colo.-based parent company G4 Technologies.
AccuBar has been an industry leading bar management tool since its inception in 2001. Clients from all sectors of the hospitality industry have used the barcode scanners and web-based back end to save labor and illuminate problem areas, all with the ultimate goal of controlling costs.
Dr. Jan Scholer, owner of three Wild Wing Café locations in Virginia, put the upgrade in sports-car terms. “… A long time ago I drove a Pinto always wanting a Jaguar. A few years ago I started with AccuBar and I was amazed and impressed with how much time I saved and how much more accurate my bar cost analysis became…. Then Version 4 came out.” Now Scholer feels like he has his Jaguar after all.
Among the broad range of added features, AccuBar’s developers put a heavy focus on making the system a powerful tool for wine management. “More and more places are carrying significant wine lists,” Grimm said. “The downside to this is the massive effort it takes to manage that list. Version 4.0 aims to help you get the situation under control with much less time investment.
“For instance, you can now print your wine list based only on what you have in stock, as often as you like,” said Dan Grimm, partner and president of the company. “That’s one new feature that’s creating a lot of buzz.” Version 4.0 also adds the ability to assign a bin number to a wine, to search the handheld by bin number, and to distinguish between different vintages of a wine.
Another main area of focus is reporting. Users will have more analytical tools, enhanced by AccuBar’s ability to interface with numerous top POS systems. “Many of the reports can now be viewed online, which has the benefit of being able to click on a number and drill into the data behind it,” Dan Grimm said. “This will make the system much more capable of pointing you more directly to a problem and possible causes.”
Scholer also mentioned the upgraded reporting capability as a major plus. “[Before] if something was not quite right, you would have to go back to AccuBar, fix the problem, regenerate the report and go through the whole procedure again. With version 4, reports can be web based so you can look at them right away and drill down to the problem and make corrections. A very nice feature.”
The list of new features also includes more powerful reordering capabilities, support for the Firefox browser and mobile phones, and a revamped approach to managing banquets and events.
The inspiration for many improvements is the AccuBar user base, which has grown beyond 1,300 accounts, Grimm said. Scholer offered an example: “In my particular county and state, the department of revenue wants how much alcohol we received into inventory in gallons or liters. In the past even with AccuBar I had to calculate gallons purchased. This was fairly complicated with 750 ml bottles, one liter bottles, 12 ounce bottles etc. The folks at AccuBar actually listened to my needs and have included the option of gallons purchased in their receiving report. This shows me that the company has the interest of the customer in mind to make their product better.”
“We always attempt to implement new capabilities with the same attention to keeping it easy to use and intuitive,” Grimm said. “We have already started work on the next set of enhancements, which will include more wine management features, draft beer management tools, more analysis and trending reporting, and more corporate/multi-unit functionality to help the corporate operators.”
Background: AccuBar was created in 2001 by G4 Technologies LLC in Mountain View, Calif. Its customer base now includes more than 1,300 clients across North America and adjacent regions, including some of the top names in the hospitality industry: Ritz-Carlton, Wolfgang Puck, Hyatt, Wynn Resorts casino, and Tao nightclubs, to name a few. Website: www.accubar.com.
##########