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Starting over - Help Please

Hello! I've been tasked with fixing our school store. It started out with just a few items. Then it got bigger. Then they added a Square account to help process payments. Then they opened a web store. It is my understanding that it was pieced together without really understanding any "best practices." And while it is working - they do not feel it is working at its optimal potential.

 

Please note I'm willing to research and read - I'm not asking anyone to spell everything out for me - I just thought I'd see if I could get pointed in a general direction.

 

I think we need two main things:

 

1. Optimized inventory naming/grouping (I'm not sure we have everything listed/grouped/labeled to the best of our ability

2. Easier checkout at our physical store resulting in less selling errors to improve our inventory reporting

 

I am new to Square myself and I'm a bit overwhelmed with all of the options. I'm looking for help in pointing me in the right direction for redoing our account/POS/online store. It is a small physical store inside of our school. It is usually open one day a week and often ran by a volunteer/parent. We also offer the online store available at any time. Once items are purchased online they are delivered to the student in their classroom. 

 

Inventory is one of our largest problems. They use an iPad Mini and the card swiper. I'm understanding that they inventory errors might be due to selecting the wrong item at checkout because of chaos or just accidentally choosing a wrong item. I believe a scanner would be an incredible help with this situation. I think it would reduce errors and processing time as the volunteer would not have to scroll through the store to find the correct item to sell. 

 

They are not opposed to spending a little money to update our process. We are discussing the contactless and card reader. I'm trying to understand if a scanner will work with the iPad Mini. It looks like the Square stand only works with the larger ipads. I'm trying to understand if the mini just doesn't have the functionality needed - or if we could still use it - just not the stand. 

 

Thank you for any advice or direction you may have!

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Hello @AVAfoundation!

 

An Item Library audit is always a good idea. I recommend checking out Create and Manage Items Online on our Support Center.  This article goes over the basics of how to create items and assign them to categories. You can also use these steps to edit existing items. While you're creating and editing items you'll be able to update the inventory as well. Basic Inventory Management and Inventory Management 101: How to Manage Small Business Inventory are great resources to lean on. 

 

Currently you would need a full sized iPad to utilize a bar code scanner. All of the USB bar code scanners require the Square Stand, and the one Bluetooth scanner only supports the iPad 2 and newer. 

 

The checkout issue is tough, because there isn't much you can do when an item is accidentally added to a cart. I think a bar code scanner would be helpful considering they would have to scan the item to add it to the cart. It doesn't leave much room for error in this case. 

 

If you want to save money, you could try re-organizing the item grid on the iPad to display the popular items that the school sells in-person. It might make things easier for the volunteers to navigate.

 

If you have any other questions feel free to reach out to me. I'd be happy to help. 🙂

 

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Best Answer

Hello @AVAfoundation!

 

An Item Library audit is always a good idea. I recommend checking out Create and Manage Items Online on our Support Center.  This article goes over the basics of how to create items and assign them to categories. You can also use these steps to edit existing items. While you're creating and editing items you'll be able to update the inventory as well. Basic Inventory Management and Inventory Management 101: How to Manage Small Business Inventory are great resources to lean on. 

 

Currently you would need a full sized iPad to utilize a bar code scanner. All of the USB bar code scanners require the Square Stand, and the one Bluetooth scanner only supports the iPad 2 and newer. 

 

The checkout issue is tough, because there isn't much you can do when an item is accidentally added to a cart. I think a bar code scanner would be helpful considering they would have to scan the item to add it to the cart. It doesn't leave much room for error in this case. 

 

If you want to save money, you could try re-organizing the item grid on the iPad to display the popular items that the school sells in-person. It might make things easier for the volunteers to navigate.

 

If you have any other questions feel free to reach out to me. I'd be happy to help. 🙂

 

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Thank you! I think I got our item library and online store in a much better place. 🙂 I worked in the physical store today to try and better understand the needs. A scanner will be a must. There are only about 10 different items - but the majority of those come in 3-5 different colors and 9 sizes. What a mess when the physical store is open (Fridays after school). We are in a tiny room (under the stairs like Harry Potter :). While it is a super space to have - we are pretty crowded. We sell out of a small window like a concession stand. Trying to locate an item and then get it entered properly and finally process a payment with a card swipper is just a bit stressful when the line is a few families deep.

 

I think now that I have the items all categorized well and the online store is more usable - I will focus on understanding how to get a barcode scanner working. We will also need to figure out labeling our items in the physical store. I think stickers will be the best option - as many of the clothing items are folded to save space - I think stickers will make it much easier to quickly find and scan an item. 

 

Thanks again for your response and I look forward to your thoughts on implementing a scanner/ipad/chip reader 🙂

 

Meagan

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I have a thought for you about implementing a barcode scanner system.  While it's a great tool, you need to be able to print labels with the barcodes on them, and the scanner and label printer can be expensive.  Another way to go may be by utilizing the item grid.  You have a pretty small inventory and may be able to devote one key per item.  If not, you can further use Variants (i.e. small, medium, large for a given article of clothing), and you'll be able to reduce your key usage further.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Judy T Shumway
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