Dynamics 365 for retail has gradually moved toward a “Seamless Offline POS” experience which requires less user interaction to shift from “Online” to “Offline” mode for MPOS, MGM & Hitachi have identified a gap in the product related to the offline transactions that are created while any one of the registers are operating in “Offline” mode.

While the process of offline transactions being uploaded to HQ is automated for the most part it currently depends on a combination of factors before these transactions make it back to headquarters. On an average business day this does not pose a problem, at End of Month this becomes a critical issue. Many customers including MGM operate under tight financial controls and must meet strict timelines to “Close” their month and report results. It is against operational policy to re-open a closed period once it has been closed and if it was allowed this would skew any reporting that is done with BYOD, Power BI, etc.

In the event that ALL Offline Transactions have not been uploaded to HQ prior to the month end close being completed, those transactions become “orphaned” and require steps by Hitachi & Microsoft to move them to the current open period; this poses several problems:

1. Incorrect Financial Results being posted for the month they were moved FROM and the month they were moved TO.
2. Risk of transactions being moved incorrectly when they have to be moved.
3. Requires extra documentation to justify the altering of transactions between periods in case of audit.

Microsoft has recommended that MGM establish procedures to have all retail locations touch each of their registers and ensure offline transactions are uploaded prior to EOM processing. With over 200 retail locations this is not a satisfactory solution as it would introduce further risks relying on over 200 employees to perform this duty monthly. The costs associated with implementation and training are prohibitive in a fast-paced, high-volume retail environment such as MGM.

We propose that a feature be created that would allow HQ to poll each register and:
1. Report any registers that have offline transactions
2. Allow the user (system admin) to view and execute retrieval of these transactions.
3. Allow the user (system admin) to schedule this process to occur at a desired interval (daily, weekly, monthly, last day of the month, etc.).
4. Allow the system admin to schedule alerts based on:
a. Offline transactions exist (identify where).
b. Offline transactions uploaded successfully.
c. Offline transactions failed to upload.
d. Terminal has been offline for (configurable by hours, days, weeks) time.

This Enhancement pairs nicely with Microsoft’s focus of “seamless” functionality and would be beneficial to all customers and users of the platform.