How to Automate Conqueror X

A bowling centre is four businesses sharing one front desk

There is the bowling itself, sold by the game, by the hour or by the lane. There is a grill and a bar, with food cost and stock behind them. There is a pro shop selling balls, bags and drilling. There are leagues and tournaments, really a membership business with standings and a season. All four ring through the same till, run by the same two people on a Friday night.

Conqueror X is QubicaAMF's management and point of sale system for bowling centres, and it sits under all four. Lane Management opens play by game, by frame, by time or unlimited, per lane or per bowler. Bowling Modes and Lane Options save how a lane behaves, so nobody configures anything at seven on a Saturday. The point of sale handles food and merchandise, league and tournament management runs the season, with Tournament Manager for bigger events.

Whoever is on the desk runs all of it from one screen.

The pins reset themselves, the reordering does not

The lanes are the automated part of a bowling centre. The office is not.

Somebody logs into a food distributor's ordering site on Monday to see what went up and what is out, then the beverage side, then pro shop supplies on a third portal. Somebody reads the reviews left over the weekend and decides which of them needs an answer today. Somebody checks the payment processor to see whether Saturday's card takings landed, and whether as one deposit or three.

Then the slower ones. An amusement or liquor licence with a renewal date on an authority's website. A gift card balance that is a real liability, looked at once a quarter. A party enquiry that came through a third-party booking site into an inbox nobody owns. League standings that need posting. A supplier invoice carrying a case price that does not match what was ordered.

None of it is hard. All of it is somebody's evening.

Conqueror X

Price rises caught before the order This week's distributor price set against the last invoice, so an increase on bar or kitchen stock is named before the centre commits to it.

The weekend's reviews, read by Monday New reviews gathered each morning with a reply drafted from the booking or transaction detail for the night being complained about.

Settlements that match the till Card deposits from the processor set against the day's totals, so a missing payout becomes a question that same week.

QPortal and the Business Dashboard report what rang through the till

To be fair, it reports on the centre thoroughly.

The Business Dashboard gives key performance indicators, historical comparisons and real-time operational statistics, so open play against league revenue against food is a question you answer rather than estimate. QPortal is the cloud layer over it: data-rich dashboards, secure online backup and user management, reachable from anywhere rather than the back office. Conqueror QPad puts front desk, back office and point of sale functions on a mobile device, so staff can take an order at the lane. The Performance Monitor dashboard pairs with the Tech Wizard app to show pinspotter status in real time and flag faults with guidance on fixing them. There is a QuickBooks integration for the accounts.

The pattern is consistent, and it is not a criticism. Every one reports on something that happened in your building: a sale, a game, a league entry, a machine. The distributor's price list, the review left on Sunday night, the processor's deposit and the licensing authority's renewal page all happened somewhere else, on sites that tell you nothing unless somebody signs in and looks.

The desk opens to a list it did not have to build

The office half of the week is all reading: price lists, reviews, settlements, renewal pages. Reading is the part that can be handed over whole.

Distributor portals read before the order goes in, with last month's price next to this week's, so a rise gets queried at the order and not absorbed on the invoice. Stock counts checked against reorder points and turned into a shortage list split by supplier. Supplier invoices compared with what was ordered and received, because a wrong case price repeats every week until somebody catches it.

The guest-facing half is the same trick. Reviews read each morning across the sites that carry them, with the angry one about a Saturday birthday party flagged that day and a reply drafted from the booking detail for that night. Card settlements set against the day's till totals, so a short deposit is a question on Monday rather than a discovery at month end. Gift card liability tracked as a running number instead of a quarterly surprise.

The rule is simple. Reading, comparing and drafting can run unattended overnight. Placing the order, posting the review reply or charging a card is a person's call.

The reordering happens while the lanes are full

All of those checks want doing on a Monday morning, exactly when a manager is dealing with a dead pinspotter and a league secretary who wants a word.

WebRun is an agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens the distributor's ordering site, the review pages, the processor's dashboard or the licensing portal, reads what is there, and turns it into what you wanted: a reorder list, a drafted reply, a settlement comparison, a renewal date with weeks against it.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, and you can watch a run and stop it mid-way. Anything a guest or a supplier would see is drafted and waits for you.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names the sites it opens.