What to do When the Total Price is One Cent Off

Call Type: Support Call

Call Reported On: 9/16/20

Products supported: Variable Price Barcode Parser

 

Problem Statement:

Merchant: We have an issue with a Clover system using the Variable Price Barcode Parser app with a Kitchen Scale. The issue is that the scale weighs and calculates the final price for the product, yet when the barcode is scanned on the Clover, for some reason one cent is subtracted from the total price.  It only happens occasionally with random items, so we suspect it might have something to do with a Rounding Error/Issue. I have attached 3 images that show exactly what is happening. 

Image3Image1Image2

Solution:

CSI Works support: Yes, I am very well familiar with this issue. You are correct, it is in fact a rounding issue because of double rounding, once by the scale and once by our app on clover.

The scale figures out total price by calculating weight to unit price. We take the total price and calculate down to figure out the total weight. Sometimes the number is off by a cent either direction very rarely or even in one merchant not on all items.

 

There are 2 ways of solving this

  1. Switch your item price type from “Per Unit” to “Variable” This is the quickest way to solve the issue. The reason why this works is because we will stop reverse calculation to a number that the scale started from and simply will pass total price into variable priced item.

OR

  1. Change your scale to encode weight instead of price into the barcode. On clovers end, switch from Variable price barcode parser to Weight embedded barcode parser. That way the scale will stop doing an extra calculation because it will send total weight and our Weight Embedded Barcode parser will pick up total weight and calculate total price which will always match what the scale calculated because we are both using same base number “total weight”

This solution is more involved and requires setting changes on the scale and an app swap on clover. The inventory part will remain intact, you will just need to switch apps after the scale has been reconfigured to encode a different barcode (weight instead of price)

 

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