Everything you ever wanted to know about gift cards

One thing that many retailers offer is gift cards or gift certificates, but you may not be sure how to do this in MerchantOS. We’ve seen a few original methods that our customers have tried, and while some are very creative, they ultimately do not work out. So how can you, as a MerchantOS customer, get in on the gift card craze? We have a handy-dandy point of sale software module that we can add on to your account, totally free of charge: the Gift Card Module! Okay, the name is a bit anticlimactic, but this module’s convenience and functionality more than make up for that.

For now, you will need to give our support line a quick call to get this module activated: (866) 554-2453, extension 0. It takes about ten seconds for us to enable the module, and you will be able to use it immediately. One day soon, you will have the ability to turn this on by yourself, but that feature is not yet active (it is coming down the pipes in a future update, so stay tuned).

I’ve Got the Module, Now What?

Once you’ve got the module active, it’s quite easy to use. When you want to activate a gift card, you’ll see a new button on your register called ‘Gift Card’. Go ahead and give that button a click, and you’ll be asked for the amount to put on the gift card and for a “card scan.” The card scan is the number of the gift card (we’ll cover that in more detail below), which you can enter by hand or by scanning the barcode if you have gift cards pre-printed with barcodes on them. Once that is entered, finish out the transaction like you would any other transaction.

When a customer is ready to redeem their gift card, you’ll find a ‘Gift Card’ button at the top of your ‘Done/Pay’ menu. When you click that button, you’ll be asked for a “card scan” again. Go ahead and either scan or key the card number, and that card will be used. This will update the balance stored on the card, and will pay for the customer’s purchase.

Card Numbers

The primary thing to know is that all gift cards must have a unique, 12-digit number beginning with 23. So, for example, you might have 230000000001, 230000000002, and so on. You can get gift cards with scannable barcodes (EAN-13 encoding) either from us or from a third-party printer with these codes on them, or you can enter these numbers by hand. If you’re going to enter them by hand, some shops use their seven-digit phone number instead of having to count out as many zeroes. For example, if your phone number is 555-1234, your gift card numbers might look like this: 235551234001. This allows for unique codes ending in a range from 000 to 999, which provides for a total of one thousand unique cards before you have to find a new number combination.

Other Features

The ‘Customers’ tab will have three new buttons on it if you have this module enabled. They’re fairly self-explanatory:

• Gift Cards – This button shows a list of all active (issued) gift cards and their balances
• Check Balance – Yep, it checks a card’s balance
• Recycle Card – Now this one is pretty cool. If a card reaches a zero balance and the customer doesn’t want to keep it, instead of throwing it away (and killing a plastic tree), you can use this feature to de-activate the gift card. This means the number will be ready for activation again as if it were a brand-new, unused gift card, fresh off the press.

Where Can I Buy Gift Cards?

We offer a few designs of pre-printed, generic gift cards that we sell in bundles of 50 cards, $75 per bundle. We have a bike design, a fleur-de-lis, and a couple others that you can check out over at our online store.

You can order these online, or give our support line a call and we can take your order over the phone.

If you’d like more custom gift cards, you can certainly get them printed by a third-party printing company. We don’t have any that we recommend specifically; as long as they can make gift cards with barcodes as described above, they should work just fine. You might want to pass this manual page along to your printer, so they can review the barcoding requirements.

Anything Else I Should Know?

The above information should wrap up the Gift Card Module quite nicely. If you do have any further questions, if you’ve gotten yourself into a pickle trying to sell gift cards in MerchantOS some other way, or if you’re just ready to start selling gift cards, feel free to give support a call or drop us an email, and we’ll help you get going.

As Murdoc would probably say at this point:
Cheers!

Mass importing from the catalogs via Purchase Orders:

The vendor catalogs in MerchantOS can be used as an excellent resource and a total time-saver. Rather than typing in all of an item’s details, you can search these catalogs and simply import items. But you might have noticed that if you go to the standard ‘Item Search’, you have to search and import these items one at a time. Not ideal! But within ‘Purchase Orders’, you can select multiple items, even entire pages of results, and import them swiftly into your local inventory, with or without quantities on hand. Here’s how:

• Create a new Purchase Order. In case you’re brand new, these are found within the Inventory tab, then Purchase Orders. Click the New Purchase Order button near the top.
• Select the vendor that your inventory is going to be imported from, then click Save.

• Go down to the Item Search field. In this box, type in either something specific you’re looking for such as the exact item(s) or something more generic, like “wheel”. If you only want to search this vendor’s catalog, uncheck the “Search All Catalogs” checkbox.
  NOTE: You can technically import/add items from ANY catalog into the same PO — however, they won’t have a VendorID and they’ll be marked as received from the vendor attached to the PO.

• Unless you got an exact match (unlikely), you’ll get a search results page. Now find all the items you’d like to import and check their boxes on the far left of each item. Once all have been checked, go to the bottom of the results page and click the Import/Add Selected button.
  
• NOTE: MerchantOS won’t save the boxes you’ve checked if you move onto another page of results. If you want more results to show up so you can import more at once, change the amount of results per page by clicking the underlined number per page:

• If all you want to do is have those items in your local inventory, then you’re good to go. You can leave this Purchase Order or change its status to Finished and you’ll see those items within your local inventory with 0 quantity. If you’re importing these items as a way of adding inventory, change the quantities to the amounts on hand for each item. Now continue with the PO like you normally would — change the status to Check-In:

• Click Mark All Items Received and Add Items to Inventory

• Change status to Finished

You know have all these new items imported from the catalog with their current quantities.

Accounting Note: If you finished the PO and added inventory, this will reflect on your reports. If you need to avoid a double entry in your chart of accounts in QuickBooks you may not want to include POs in your next export.

As you know, MerchantOS is a pretty rad point of sale system. But we’re not perfect (yet!). There are a few features that we know you’d love to see, but for one reason or another we can’t quite offer at the moment. But don’t lose hope! I’m here to help you trick our software into doing something pretty close. This is the Weekly Workaround.

Rentals!

This is one of our most requested features, but for us to implement this, MerchantOS would need to be rewritten from the ground up (or so the almighty programmers tell me). Here are a couple of different methods to get you there, hopefully one works for you:

Method 1: The Quick n’ Dirty

Pros: Easy! Quick! Fun?
Cons: Doesn’t keep track of anything.

1. This one is simple. First, create a new item, non-inventory type, and call it something like “Bike Rental: 1 Hour”.

1. Ring up this item, before or after the rental, with the amount of time they want to rent for. For example, for three hours, ring up “Bike Rental: 1 Hour” x 3.
2. Finish sale.

(Optional: add a deposit that can be refunded after the rental returns.)

Method 2: The Invoice

Pros: Keeps track of time.
Cons: Lengthy setup time. Two transactions needed if a deposit is required.

1. This method is good if you’ve got to keep track of a rental time down to the minute. Like the method above, you’ll want to create a non-inventory item such as “Snowboard Rental: 1/4 hour”.
2. Open up a new sale and attach the customer’s name to the sale. Add the “Snowboard Rental: 1/4 hour” to the sale.
3. Click the “Invoice” button on the right hand side, and print out the invoice receipt on the next page. This printed invoice receipt can be given to them to keep track of, or kept in store for your records. There’s a time at the top of this receipt that can be referenced as the rental’s “Start time”.

1. When the customer returns with the rental, scan the receipts barcode to re-open the sale. If they don’t have it, you can search for them in your customer database, click their name to  get into their Details, then click the “Invoices” link on the left hand side. Find their rental transaction (should be the most recent) and click the “Re-open” button.

1. This will re-open the original transaction back up in the register. Now adjust the quantity of the “Snowboard Rental: 1/4 hour” to reflect the time passed since the “Start time”. For example, if 2 hours and 17 minutes passed, let’s round down, and charge them for 2:15. That would be “Snowboard Rental: 1/4 hour” x 9.
2. Finish the sale like normal.

(Optional: To do a deposit, you’ll have to do it in a separate transaction after you Invoiced the rental, and you can then refund the deposit when they return.)

PHEW! That may look like a lot, but these methods don’t take much time at all, especially after you’ve created all your rental items in inventory.

Gift cards, we have them. It was a long process going through two different printers but we finally have 500 of each type sitting in Christina’s office. They are ready to be shipped to you just in time for the holidays. I imagine you want to know more than just their availability so I’ll take on your hypothetical questions in this blog-

How do I order them?

We’ll be selling these in units of 50 gift cards at $75 (shipping included). You can order them directly through our web store.

How do I use them?

The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure you have the Gift Card module installed on your account. Not sure if you have it already? Go to your customers tab, if you see this then you’re all set. If not, you’ll want to call or email support@merchantos.com at 866-554-2453 ext. 0 and we’ll add the module to your account. This is a service we provide at no cost to you.

Now that you have the module let’s look into selling a customer a gift card.
1. Go to your Register, click New Sale
2. Attach the customer to the sale
3. Click the Gift Card button, you will be prompted with this screen-

4. Enter the Amount to put on the card and then scan the barcode into the Card Scan field
5. Click Create
6. If you see Gift Card Purchase followed by the barcode number you can proceed to Done / Pay and finish the sale.

Now how do I use these Gift Cards as payment?

1. Ring up your items just as you would normally then click Done / Pay.
2. Click the Gift Card button in the Payment section.
3. Scan or enter the barcode number into the field and click Go.
4. Finish Sale.

I don’t like your designs, how do I make my own?

Our designer Chris may be stung by this request, but that’s no kind of pain that a bottle of Knob Creek won’t numb. You can go through any third party printer you can find locally or online as long as they can provide EAN13 or UPC-A barcodes on your gift cards. We have section in our manual under Ordering Gift Cards that gives the specifics of our barcoding requirements. Any reputable card printer should be able to provide you with these type of cards.

What it comes down to is MerchantOS requires a unique 12 digit number on each card to associate the balance with it. Whether it’s written in crayon on the back of a sheet of construction paper or encoded in a EAN13 barcode what matters is the number. Scanners have just proven to be more reliable than swipes or manual entry.

What about gift cards that you swipe?

That’s a difficult question to answer. If you are using our integrated credit card processors like Element or MerchantWARE, then no. Your swiper will not read the information correctly. It’s encrypted, remember? If you happen to have an old swiper that is not encrypted you could use it to pull that data from the gift cards magnetic strip.

These gift cards should have been available to you much sooner but due to circumstances beyond our control, we weren’t able to fulfill your requests. We want to extend another apology to the customers who have waited this long. If there is anything else we can help with, do not hesitate to give us a call at 866-554-2453 ext. 0

Cheers!

Around this time of the year, we always get a significant number of calls regarding one of the most useful features in MerchantOS, Inventory Counts. It’s the perfect time of the year to prepare your shop for the holiday madness, so I wrote up a breakdown of the Inventory Counts Tabs.

Counts

Here’s where it all starts. If you’re starting with a new Inventory Count, then you’ve got “0 Results Found” on this page. To fix that, start scanning or searching for items in the ‘Count Items’ box and hit the ‘Count Item’ button.

After you find your result, enter the number of items you’ve counted. If its easier you can just scan the items barcode again and it will add the quantities (the same way it does in a Purchase Order).

Totals

Want to see what you’ve done so far? This is the tab for you. You can search here to see if you’ve counted something already. You can also make a correction in the count column should you forget that last shipment that just came in that you want to be part of the Inventory Count.

Missed

Oh my Bodhisattva! You forgot to count the hats! Fret not, those uncounted hats aren’t going anywhere. The only items that will be affected are in the Reconcile tab, which I’ll cover in the next section.

So you missed a few items, this is likely where you true losses are. Make sure you take the time to go through this list and if those products are not there were have a very convenient Zero button and even a Zero Selected Items button if you are confident that you’ve counted everything in your shop.
Clicking Zero next to the item does not immediately remove it from inventory, it will add the changes to the Reconcile tab.

Protip: You can use this in place of doing the Count step. All you have to do is put in the quantities here and it will be counted. It might seem lazy because you don’t even need to use the scanner, but it is amazingly effective for spot counts.

Reconcile

This is where the magic happens. We know you were really looking forward to spending hours going into each item and manually adjusting inventory levels. Unfortunately, that Reconcile Inventory button takes all the fun out of that by changing the quantities in bulk for you.

Notice in this tab you have an adjustments column. We get a lot of questions about this, so I have to make use of the bold + italics emphasis combo. Inventory counts measure discrepancies in inventory levels. Sales or added inventory will not change your shortages. For example, if you found that you were short 2 hats, your adjustment will be -2 to quantity on hand for that silly hat. That won’t change as you sell items or receive purchase orders, the Q.O.H. is still off by -2.

Note: Any action button like Reconcile Inventory that has a lightning bolt next to it means that it cannot be undone. Click it by accident and you will invoke Zeus’ wrath.

Print Item List

This is a real time commitment. If you’re going this route, you want to make sure your shop is closed for the duration of this inventory count. This method doesn’t work like the others, you’re measuring the quantity on hand and entering that information later. Sales and purchase orders will mess up this count so make sure that nothing is going in or out of the shop until you’ve finished entering in your results in the Print Item List section.

I hope this write-up answers any questions you might have and if it falls short of that, do not hesitate to give support a call. You can reach us at 866-554-2453 ext. 0 or send an email to support@merchantos.com and one of us will get back to you.

Cheers!

Personally I hate dealing with tons of “rules” and “policies” within groups and organizations. Making a new hard and fast “rule” to fix a specific problem will slow down progress and create misery.

But I’ve learned, painfully, to love systems and processes. They bring order to chaotic and haphazard ways of doing things, and they give you a way to systematically improve over time.

Mistakes Happen

Everyone makes mistakes. I’ve deleted databases and brought MerchantOS down. I’ve released bugs that make the core of our system unusable. I’ve hired the wrong people. And screwed up in countless other ways.

Being successful is not about being perfect. It’s about caring enough to fix it when you mess up and then learn so you don’t repeat it over and over.

Create Checklists / Processes

After you’ve cleaned up the mess you made, it’s time to step back and ask yourself how you could have prevented it. What do you need to look out for next time? Was someone left out of the loop?

• Create a checklist so when you are in that critical situation you have something you can reference. That’s why buildings have fire escape maps and plans.
• Use your checklist to make sure you’re covering all your bases. Especially if you’re tired or stressed. This is when you’ll miss stuff and when you really don’t want to cause a problem.
• Evolve your checklist over time: as new problems occur add what could have prevented them to your list.

Organizational Intelligence

These checklists (systems and processes) give your organization (and you) intelligence. They let you tackle bigger and more complex problems.

Scaling

Without systems and processes (and automation, but that’s a whole other topic) you can’t scale. As an organization ramps up each task turns into a full time job, and then a whole group of people and at some point a department (yikes!). If the way you do things is just in your head it’s going to be very hard to pass this knowledge on to someone new. Much of the organizational intelligence will be lost if it’s not documented in some way.

The bigger you get the more small problems grow and magnify. What once only affected one or two customers is suddenly affecting 100 and will take days to clean up instead of hours. At some point everything will get out of control. The only way to survive is to take the knowledge you have gained from your mistakes (and successes) and create a system or process to deal with the problem.

Don’t Go Overboard

A word of caution now that we’re on the same page about the importance of checklists, systems, and processes. Don’t over do it!

I’ve also made the mistake of making my systems and processes too complex and all encompassing. We’ve tried CRMs and Project Planning software that try to account for and track everything. At some point you spend more time implementing the system or following the process than it’s worth.

Your goal is to find and prevent problems before they occur, fix mistakes the right way, work faster and more efficiently, and get everyone on the same page. You want to do this with the least amount of overhead or unneeded structure as possible.

Say No To Rules and Policies

Not many people enjoy working in authoritarian or bureaucratic environments. People do their best work when they have the freedom to choose how to do it. Your systems and processes shouldn’t be commandments written on stone. They should be wise advice and guidelines. They should also be living and changing.

Go forth and create your checklists, FAQs, and how-to guides!

Trying to buy merchant processing services can be daunting to any retailer. This guide will lay out some basic facts and tips on how to select your merchant processor if you’re in the market.

What Merchant Processors Do

All merchant processors can get money deposited in your bank account after running a customer’s credit card. They are all selling this service sometimes with very slight variations.

What this means as a consumer of merchant processing

You probably already have experienced the flurry of phone calls. How many processors have told you “We are the largest”, and “We are the cheapest”? The merchant processing sales person is fighting among tons of other sales people for your business. The good news is you have many possibilities to pick from in a highly competitive market.

Things to watch out for

• Merchant Processors who ask for your statements from your current processor to prepare a quote. This is a very common practice in the industry. The processor will use your statements to prepare a quote. Their objective is to show you how much money you’ll save by using them. They are trying to set the prices as high as possible to make the most money for themselves but low enough compared to your previous processor to entice you to switch to them. They should just be offering you the best price without having to see your statements.
• Contracts! Many processors will have you sign a contract that locks you in as their customer for up to three years. Contracts that lock customers in to a service for such long durations are just an easy way for the processor to keep your business without having to take care of you. You could discover you are way over paying for processing services and they would have no motivation to do anything for you if you signed a contract with a long duration. Fortunately this practice is becoming less common as time goes on.
• Other fees (gateways, statements, etc…) It is common for there to be additional monthly fees with your processing. It’s a good idea to find out what these are in advance and make sure they are acceptable.
• Deposit Time Make sure you are clear with your processor how long it takes for money to get from batch out to your bank account.

How To Choose A Payment Processor

Price

Since they’re all more or less selling the same thing, processors have to compete on price. If you spend even a little time checking out your options, you should be able to get a great price. One thing you can do to get the best price is bounce the offering price of a couple processors you like between each other. When one offers you a rate, tell the other the rate you were offered and ask them to beat it. You can then go back to the original processor and do the same until they won’t budge anymore.

One thing to watch out for on pricing is there are several different formulas to calculate your cost. For a while, three tiered pricing was popular. This groups your accepted cards into one of three groups to determine the rate you pay (there are over a hundred different types of Visa and Mastercard types and they all have different actual costs to process). Often this structure leads to inflated pricing as some cheaper cards to process in one of the three tiers can have quite a markup.

The method growing in popularity, though confusing when glancing your first statement, is called interchange plus pricing. With this method, you pay the actual cost of the card being processed plus an additional rate. For example your rate may be ten cents per transaction plus 0.4 percent of the transaction in addition to the actual cost the processor pays to run the card. This is the fairest and most transparent pricing model available so far.

Customer Service

Normally you shouldn’t have problems running your cards. When you do, it is important to be able to get the help you need. The image you present to your customers might count on the customer service of your merchant processor. Ask your fellow retailers about their experiences with their processor and look online for reviews.

Lock in

Some processors compete by giving you no choice or making it very expensive for you to chose another processor. For example they may have an exclusive relationship with a point of sale software company. If you chose to use that point of sale software you must use their processing. Companies that perform coercion like this, might not be the best to work with. Note: MerchantOS allows you to use other processors through the use of a payment gateway. We do not agree with locking and want to allow our customers a choice.

Do you have a story or advice on purchasing payment processing? Please comment below.