Video Transcription

Hey, it’s Allen Kopelman here today, B2B Vault The Payment Technology Podcast, providing educational information for business owners and merchants and today’s podcast. We’re going to talk about point of sale systems. Again, you can follow us on all the popular podcast networks and on social media to keep up with all the podcasts and get the latest podcast or see the latest video, whichever way you like to listen or watch. So the point of sale systems, this is always something that’s, you know, hard to deal with sometimes. And it’s not always easy to understand for business owners. So let’s get right into it. What kind of point sale systems are out there? So retail point of sale restaurant hotels, you know, which are complicated, and they’re their specialty solutions for, you know, businesses that require special solutions. So one of the things that with a point of sale that can be frustrating for merchants is, you know, when, when I talk to merchants, I always tell them, you know, what’s your budget, you know, so that’s going to depend on, you know, how much money you want to spend for your budget. You know, merchants need to understand, like, you know, there’s server-based systems, which are going to be more expensive but give you more features, and you have iPad solutions or Android solutions, and you’ve got the DYI, do it yourself, DIY do it yourself. Point of sale, you know, where you’re just thrown to the wolves. Here it is, do it.

You know, what integrations do you need? Do you need to integrate some bar software? Is there some particular accounting software that needs to be integrated? Some kind of inventory software that maybe needs to be integrated? There are all kinds of things. You know, payroll integration, you know, it depends how big your business is and what kind of needs you have. And then, from a functionality standpoint, what do you need it to do? Do you need to pay at the table? People are just going to walk up to the counter. Do you need printers in the kitchen? How many printers do you need in the kitchen? Do you want one of those screens? So people can, they can, the cooks can touch the screen after they make the food, you know, what kind of functionality do you need? So, and then you got to make sure, like, we didn’t even put it on the list here, but wiring knows you got to make sure your facility’s wired. If you’re going to use wifi, you know, you got separate, secure wifi coming in, so your customers aren’t on the wifi. That’s the point of sale using, you know, some restaurants take security, you know, cause you need to be PCI compliant, but they take security to a better level where they put in one, two routers, one for the public network. And you know, and they’ll put in a second router just for the business, which is preferred by a lot of business owners who don’t want to spend the money. You know, I don’t blame them, but Hey, let’s get into a different point of sale system. Clovers.

A lot of people I’ve heard of can use it in table service, restaurants, counter service restaurants, quick service, you know, come up, order, pay, wait for your food kind of deal. You can; some of these have even been used as kiosks. You can do some retail with this. I would not call this a super robust system. If you have a smaller type of menu, this can work. This is pretty much like, kind of like a do-it-yourself, kind of deal because you buy it. And then unless you’re going to pay somebody to do all the programming and all that, it can be a lot of work. So many people use this and like smaller type businesses, although I’ve seen quite a few of these, and I would call it like the most expensive credit card machine that I ever saw sitting on somebody’s counter. Cause a lot of times I’ll ask somebody like, oh, that’s nice. You have like a Clover. Did you put all your inventory in there? No. Did you put your all your menu, you know, all your menu items in there, did you do all the, you know, do all these things, and they say, no, no. I said, what do you do with it? They say, oh, bring up the payments. So, you know, you gotta, you know, when you get the point of sale system, you know, you want to make sure you put it to work lingo. This is a system, and this is an iPad system.

You can use this in bars, restaurants, bubble, tea, coffee shops. It has special, you know, programs in the backend that enable, you know, for that to get set up cigar lounge, which is a unique kind of a business because you could be operating a cigar store and then a lounge at the same time. So different rules and different taxes are being collected. You know, the retail store has to charge tax on the cigars and everything because it’s a retail sale, but then you’re not charging the same amount of tax in the restaurant. Cause that’s just restaurant tax because they’re consuming the cigar at the restaurant franchise businesses. Cause it has a back end that can support multiple locations, and you can go in the back, not all software has that kind of like franchise mode where let’s say, you own five restaurants or, let’s say; you have a franchise. And then franchise owners all have to use the same point of sale this way, and you can keep track of all their sales. This works in full-service restaurants and quick-service restaurants, and in bars, it works well. Let’s say you have a small bar, maybe with a small food menu. This works well.

Pizza, even like delivery things in there where you track the phone number and all that, is a system we sell. We configure, we set it up. We give you; we tell you how to wire up the restaurant to have success because that’s the most important thing. And one of the things we developed with this with iPad systems is a unique way so that you don’t have to have all these iPods on the wifi because it’s tough to make sure the wifi signal. So we developed a plan to run wires out to each physical station and then link it all in. So cause you can buy some of these systems online doesn’t mean that they can be successfully integrated, you know, to work and be efficient, give X, this is hot. This is a higher-end type of system that can be used for QSR. You know, this one, you have to have a minimum of three or four stations, minimum nightlife, places, large nightclubs bars that also offer a lot of specialty solutions. We’re a dealer for them. They have a solution for stadiums, for events, for all kinds of huge, big places, ticketing, and all kinds of really cool things in the specialty software realm of doing business. It is a unique point of sale system. And they have like we also have stored value cards and things like that, which is good. Harbor touch, you know, this is a good system too, for if you’re on a budget, you know, you’re not going to get all the bells and whistles you’re going to get from an enterprise point of sale system, but this system works well, bars, restaurants, it has paid at the table. And as quick service restaurant delivery has integrations into some of the pockets, most popular delivery platforms where you can set different prices for people ordering off door dash and Uber eats and stuff.

They have excellent salon point of sale software, which is works well. And they also offer liquor store software. Although I would say, the liquor store and retail are on the very basic side. So, you know, very, very basic zoos. This is another product that we work with. This company will help you put in all the inventory and your menu and programming and all that. So it’s a unique kind of product. You can run it on an iPad or Android. You could run, you can run it with pay at the table. Devices can do many cool things with Zaza, like small retail. We have it in some smoke shops, and some small retail stores work well in a small restaurant environment. I would not use this in a massive restaurant, but a small restaurant. It works fairly well for health and beauty businesses. And you know, this is a good, excellent product. You know, if you’re looking for something that runs on like iPad or an Android tablet, you know, this, this can work, and you’re a little bit tech-savvy, you know, so that’s what this is good for. And that’s one of the things, you know, I talked to merchants like, what’s your level of expectation? What do you need out of the point of sale? Zoos offer marketing too, which is cool because you can collect people’s email addresses and do some marketing with their products, swipe simple. This is a fundamental, basic product. I like this product. It runs on Android terminals on a variety of them. You can also run it off your desktop if you want to do a few things. So it’s versatile. They have a dashboard that’s easy to use. You can put, run the swipe, simple on a terminal. You can also have a smartphone with a little dongle. So it’s a little dongle, a little square thing. If you’re out in the field, you can do that. So let’s say you got a business, like a car dealership or something, and you change do oil changes at all that. And then you drive the car over to the person’s house or their business and drop it off. Or let’s say you wash cars. You know you can be, you know, you have the little thing with you run a transaction right on your smartphone.

It also allows for invoicing. So you can log into the dashboard send somebody an invoice. They can click on it an easy-to-use supports cash discount. Most of the point-of-sale systems offer cash discounts where you can charge your customer a small fee to cover the credit card processing fees to help you reduce costs. But this is a fundamental basic product. It doesn’t have a ton of, you know, inventory capability. Still, many businesses like the flexibility, especially if you have a versatile business where maybe you need a terminal, then you want to have to invoice. Then you need maybe a smartphone, a dongle, and then all your payments are in one place. So that’s, it’s a cool product. If that’s what you need to do. We have a ton of businesses that you swipe simple as a great product. We’re getting ready to launch a new point of sale. That’s good for some retail convenience stores. It also gives you the ability in a convenience store, smoke shop point of sale system, liquor stores, or gas stations.

Those are the verticals for this point of sale but also give you the capability to offer your customer some additional services there’s marketing. You can get, you could run some additional services like money orders, selling people, bill payment services, and all kinds of really cool stuff with this software. But it’s good for convenience stores. The company also will help you load all your inventory into the system. So it’s very, very good. From that standpoint, we have a lot of merchants that use this system, and we recently made a deal with them to resell this. We had smoke shops that use this, and what’s good with the smoke shop or a cigar shop. If you have reporting requirements that the state requires you to do some tobacco reporting, this system will do it. It also supports cash discounts, and liquor stores have all the features liquor stores need with case breaking and all that. It’s a perfect detailed point of sale system for liquor stores and gas stations. So a lot of convenience stores also have gas outside. So now EMV is required this year by visa, MasterCard, and the government, all the gas stations have to comply. So last, most new gas stations already have EMV because they’re new, and DMV started in 2015. So they’re ahead of the game, but there are many gas stations out there still swiping cards, no EMV, because they found that, oh, I’m going to have to replace my whole system. All the pumps, all this, that controller inside the this the that.

Now you don’t have to do that. Now they’re retrofit kits. So you get a retrofit kit, have that installed on your existing gas pumps, right. Then put a payment device inside the store, and then you can be EMV compliant. And then from the standpoint of, oh, how am I going to pay for that? You know, leasing and financing are available, so you can get that done. So if you have a gas station and need an EMV upgrade, this is the way to go. We can help you do the full EMV upgrade. Microsoft Oracle. This is, this is like an example of an enterprise system. Okay. Server-based, you know, multiple different options of iPads, you know, to computer-based PCs, running your payments large restaurants, hospitality bars, nightclubs that very, very big in the hotel business. So while we don’t sell micros, we can do the credit card processing for gross, and we offer a special deal. If you have micros in your hotel or restaurant, we can get you free payment devices. A lot of Microsystems are not. Some of them are aging, so the version is too low to be PCI compliant. So by using our integration, you could be using an updated payment device with a semi integration that we do. And then you get, we, we give you free payment devices. So that helps you with your business. You don’t have to replace your entire point of sale system. You can take your existing point of sale system.

That’s not PCI compliant might be 5, 6, 7. We just did one that was like eight, nine years old. And we brought them back to where they’re now compliant and integrated payments. So they’re not using a side terminal. So another product that we’re going to start that we’re starting to offer too is a lot of merchants don’t want to put in. I pads. They don’t want to put in Android terminals for their restaurants and bars. They want to, they want to get into, they want to use a more traditional type of point of sale system. Okay. And the reason for that is, is that, well, these iPad systems have, you know, there’s, there’s a benefit that, oh, it’s all in the cloud and it’s cheaper to buy. Okay? So a lot of people have been going for those systems. And then they find out that, oh, I needed to do this. I needed to do that. My restaurant is more sophisticated than that. You know, I need this kind of reporting or that kind of reporting, you know, or I need these kinds of different features. I need specific integrations. So this kind of system is what you need now. It’s more expensive, but this works in restaurants, large nightclubs, bars, QSR franchises. Even as its special integration for PayPal and Venmo works well as counter service, it will do a cash discount. So let’s say you’re a sub shop or something, and you have a younger crowd. They’re all into the Venmo thing.

You install a small little scanner at the counter. When somebody comes up, if they want to pay with Venmo, they open their Venmo app and scan the total of 2287. They open their Venmo app, pops open a QR code, the scanner scans it. Boom done. And they’re out the door. So it’s a perfect and convenient way to pay. So, it works. It’s a very stable system. This company’s been around for about 15, 16 years. And you know, this is more for businesses who, you know, you try to iPad system, it’s not working for you. You try to Android system, and you don’t want to spend, you know what? You don’t want to spend tons and tons of money, but you’re willing to spend some money. This is the point of sale system for you. If you have a restaurant, a bar, or a nightclub, you want to get a top system in your place.

So that’s today’s episode of B2B vol talked about point of sale systems. If you need consulting on a point of sale system, contact us @nationwidepaymentsystems and npsbank.com. You can fill out a form, or you can schedule an appointment. We’ll go over it with you. Exactly what we talked about in the video. We’ll talk about your budget. We’ll talk about functionality. We’ll talk about integrations. You know, what you need to do in your business, how big your business is. And then we’ll show you, you know, here are some, the systems that will fit into what you want to do at your business. So thank you for listening to the B2B vault. The payment technology podcast, have a great day, everybody.