Is it time to upgrade your point of sale system? | QuickBooks POS (Point-of-Sale) calls it QUITS! | B2B Vault | Episode 159

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Joe Namath of payment processing himself. Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, small business payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we'll be discussing everything that you could possibly imagine when it comes to point-of-sale systems. Um, POS— I'm not going to say it, I want to say it— your pizza Anyway, I didn't say it. I did say it. Sorry, I said it.

It is what it is.

It is what it is, kid. So yeah, man, Allen has 20 years of experience in the merchant services world, and there's a few things that are coming up that will be changing about your point-of-sale system if you have one of those in your business.

Yeah, well, point-of-sale covers everything, whatever, you know, devices and systems, right?

Typically when I think of a point of sale system, which most people probably will, they'll think of an actual cash register, right? Yeah, so it covers more than that, but there's a lot more to it than just that. Yes, there's— anyway, he's gonna get into all that stuff, the nerdy stuff, and, uh, we're gonna listen and we're gonna ask questions if we need to. And then, uh, yeah, man. So let's get into, uh, Paint It, the point of sales, and everything you need to know about it.

So we had a good time yesterday. We went out to the Multi Chamber Trade Show.

The trade show— shout out to the piano man. That guy was going crazy.

Yeah, that was a little bit too much.

Well, the, the volume was on 10, right?

But the—

it was lit.

It was about 5 chambers. It was a lot of people that came through, talked to a lot of business owners, showed them different technology that's out there.

Yeah, they— yeah, it was amazing.

People seem to be quite enthused about a lot of it.

So, I mean, there were a lot of people there, to be honest. I was surprised. I, I didn't think that that many people— where did all the kids come from though? Well, there were some schools there, and I guess that's cool, but where did all the— no, no, no, no, no, no, there was just kids.

Yeah, they were from the school.

No, not them kids.

Which kids? The other kids.

The other— all the kids from the schools had on uniforms.

I guess some of the people brought their kids with them.

Yeah, I—

that was Take Your Kid to Work Day.

That was, uh, that was interesting. You know, they were spinning the wheel and winning.

Yeah, gave away socks and some socks and some pens.

I gave that one girl a mug. She was not impressed. That was funny. She's like, a mug? Like, hopefully she thought I'll give it to my dad or something, or mom. Um, yeah, uh, what's new otherwise, man? What do you got going?

We got some new products we're working on bringing forward, and that's what, you know, it's all, all about technology. Technology, technology changes all the time, just like the book Who Moved My Cheese. The cheese moves, technology changes, we go with the flow.

Speaking of that, what's changing in this, uh, POS world?

So things change with like PCI compliance, which is the payment security compliance that, so, you know, software and hardware has to be certified. So what happens is, is we're coming into a period now where there's going to be a lot of things expiring, and a lot of the things expiring, expiring for various reasons. Reasons being the equipment's been around a long time and they can't upgrade it because it can't hold enough memory.

Okay.

You're gonna have companies— there's a lot of companies who got sold. So the people who bought those systems are not going to re-up the PCI compliance on the old systems. Those systems are going to have to be upgraded to new, new software or replaced. Okay, new, new stuff. Um, you're going to have, you know, other hardware that's going to be sent out to pasture because, you know, credit card machines basically, you know, until a few years ago, we're not really like Android. But now all of them, all the new stuff is all Android-based. And the reason it's all Android-based is those systems can last longer, which is not so good for the manufacturer. They last longer and You know, they've doubled in price since the, you know, the pandemic.

I believe it.

So that, you know, prices have doubled. Stuff that was a couple hundred bucks is now $400 to $500. Things that were $1,200 are now $2,400. So the, you know, so prices have changed, and that's, you know, and then new, newer things come into the market, and then, you know, so let's talk about it. So you're going to hear, you might hear things like, oh, my PIN pad broke and I need a new PIN pad. And then they might have to say, well, besides the PIN pad, you gotta— you might need a new PIN pad, a different type of PIN pad, because the PIN pad's no longer supported. So they're like retired. There was a list of about 20 of them retired for, for 20— at the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024. But you can use them until 2026. So there's nothing wrong with the equipment, just if it breaks, you're gonna, you know, unless you have to get some news, you have to get— if they're— if who you work with, if they have a replacement, obviously they can replace it. But if they don't have a replacement, then you have to upgrade to the newer model.

Got it.

So that's just what happens when, when that happens. What can also happen is, is the PIN pad breaks And then you got to replace the terminal and the pin pad. That's why a lot of times I tell merchants, you know, well, you don't— might not like it being in the rental program. It's a lot better to be in the rental program because if anything breaks, then it gets replaced.

Yeah, I like that. I would, I would definitely, uh, hop on the rental.

Yeah, because that way if anything has to get upgraded You get upgraded automatically, no charge, because you're paying a rental fee. And, you know, so that's not— it's not too much to worry about, but don't get scared when people say, oh, well, that device is end of life. You can look it up online and you'll see it says, oh, it's end of life, but you can still use the device for 3, 4 more years. They're just not manufacturing it anymore. You know, the company's not manufacturing it.

But if I were your business, I wouldn't even risk any of it? Why would you, you know? Well, no, it's like a company, like a web developer running on a Windows 7.

No, I just say like with iPads and stuff, if it's not broken, don't fix it. If when it— when— if you see you start to have some problems with it, then it's time to do an upgrade.

Well, yeah, no, I mean, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, right. But it's—

they're not—

if it's not getting updates, bro, I wouldn't be messing around with that.

No, they're updating it. They're just It's, it's just in retirement.

You said no. Oh no, okay.

Yeah, they, they're not— they upgrade the software and everything, but they're not making any more of them. So the stock's going to run out at some point. That's the whole point, you know. And then you're going to have to upgrade. So, you know, one other thing is like the Point Terminal. So that company Point got bought out by GoDaddy, and then so now there's no more Point Terminal. It's GoDaddy's terminal. So there's a lot of people that were using the Point Terminal, now their terminal breaks, then they can't get a new one unless they go to GoDaddy. But then, you know, I was talking to one of the merchants who had it, and then he starts telling me about the software he's using in there, and I'm like, well, that software is retired. Not you— that software is not—

it doesn't even work anymore, right?

Yeah, it doesn't even doesn't exist anymore, right? So because they changed the whole thing, the whole— the terminal is different, has a bigger roll of paper in it now. Well, no, I'm just saying, like, they improved the terminal, and then the software in the terminal is different than what was in there before.

They got an old version, hence it being new, right?

So some people have said, oh, what do I replace it with? So, you know, we've given Various different suggestions. You can switch over to GoDaddy Payments, who we work with, or you can get, you know, move up into a full point of sale system. Or SwipeSimple is also a good option, you know, put it on a—

what's SwipeSimple?

So SwipeSimple is like a simple type point of sale program. We just installed— we just put it in this, um event venue out in Vegas. So they used, uh, an 8-inch Samsung tablet and then put it on a stand because they're not taking cash. And then we put a little square— a little Bluetooth device that's on a charging stand and next to it. So then people can come up, they can ring the person up, they can flip it over, show them how much it is, and the person could just tap their card on the thing or stick their card in and do that, or wave their phone on it and do a charge.

Nice.

So, so, and then, you know, no paper receipt. You know, we're, you know, we're in, uh, whatever, Green America now, right? So you can get, you know— yeah, we should be, right?

So you, you guys are the ones that ruined it.

Oh, come on.

No, I'm just messing with you.

So the No, but I'm just saying, so like with SwipeSimple, you get text and email receipts, just like The Point did text and email receipts. I mean, I think other credit card machines need to catch up. I mean, obviously some businesses, let's say you're at a strip club, I don't want a text receipt from the strip club. Why not? Or an email receipt.

Why not?

Maybe my wife will see it. I'm not married, man.

All you men that can't go to a strip club should be ashamed of yourselves, man. Come on, man, take your wife with you. I bet you'll have a ball.

Yeah, some people might not want that receipt in there when their wife scrolls through.

If it's that bad at home and you're hiding to go to the strip club, man, get a divorce.

They say, oh, what is this? You were at Vegas Cabaret.

The day I can't go do something because— never mind. But I'm just saying, I love you, Justina.

But some, but some, some of the other credit card machines need to kind of catch up to this text email receipt thing because I think that's the wave of the future. We do a lot of the Swipe Simple because people like it with text email receipt. So people like that.

Yeah, I know. I don't ever hear anyone really complaining about Swipe Simple except for Dave.

Well, he, he, he complained about it till he installed it in that place in Vegas and they love it.

So now, so now he's all— he's happy with it.

Yeah, well, he never used it. If you know—

there you go, Dave.

I like it. I use it all the time for places. It's a great— it's a great tool because you can have it in a terminal, on a tablet, in your office, have a little mobile device. It's pretty flexible. The only thing they don't— that, that they should add to it is, is they should have an e-commerce plugin, and then it would be a fully functional thing for small businesses. But that's, you know, that's one thing. But You know, also, you know, you could upgrade from that, from a point to a point of sale system, which we're working on a couple of, two new ones to bring into the fold. Nice. So, you know, 'cause we look for things that are gonna be, we looking at a couple now, you know, so the one that's gonna come first, the price is very affordable, less than a Clover station. Which is doubled in price and has text email receipt. So it's a very efficient and good customer service. There's— but we're going to get into stuff like that. Now here's the next one. This one actually shocked me when I read it. I saw it, I saw an article about it, and then I was like, that possibly can't be true. And then I Googled it about QuickBooks Point of Sale. They're putting that thing to pasture.

Laying— there ain't no reason to kicking a dead horse.

So they're October 2023, you will not be able to get any support for QuickBooks POS. Cutting the support and they're cutting out if you have payments rolling through there, that's gone too.

Donezo.

So I would say if you have QuickBooks Point of Sale, You need to do an upgrade and holler at us, man.

We can get you right.

We got a trade-in program.

Trade-in program for your QuickBooks Point of Sale.

Yes.

And it ends in 159 days, 160-something days, October 2023. October.

Now's the time to look for a replacement because replacing a point of sale sometimes cannot be— can, can be easy. Sometimes it cannot be— can be a big job, depends how many inventory items you have. And it— so, but we have— we came up with a way how to do it where you can format your invent— you know, download your inventory, reformat it onto the—

I was gonna say, there's no way to download like a spreadsheet or something.

Yeah, yeah, you, you download it onto a spreadsheet or a CSV, then you might have to move the columns around., right, for the new point of sale, and then you send it in, upload it, you're ready to go. Bang! Restore your whole—

Bing bong!

So we came up with a way to do it pretty easily. I like it. So, you know, retail point of sale has been, has been, you know, a challenge for us, and, you know, finding an affordable solution, but we found two affordable solutions that we have right now. And they're good, uh, good solutions to replace QuickBooks or even Clover in some cases, because we're going to get to Clover in a minute. And we'll— well, I guess we could go to Clover now and come back to the— come back to the next subject. So with Clover, this is another system the pandemic, you know, threw this thing into a loop because The parts come from China, comes from China, it's all made in China, and people couldn't get parts. And then they came out with 2 new Clovers, and then now they release Clover version 3. And then we had a client call us the other day who we don't want— we didn't want them to buy Clover, and now they're freaking out because they're opening up another location. And we told them how much a Clover is, they they were like, huh, because the price is like almost double what it used to be. And then they also have something broken on one of their other Clovers, and then we tried to get a part for it and there's no parts. And the problem is, is you can't take one from somebody else because all the serial numbers are— they, they take the serial number for the printer and assign it to your business. So you can't take it from Justin's business. He has it. He went—

I can't resell mine or something?

You could to somebody who's used— wants to use the same bank you used with the Clover system.

The same bank?

Yeah, the same credit card processor. Oh, it's assigned to them. You can't do—

if you bought it from Bank of America, you got to use it with banking.

It has to be used with a Bank of America merchant account, and Clover won't reprogram it. No, only to that bank. Yep, that's how they assigned them all. It's crazy.

You can't—

that's—

that is not okay.

Most equipment that you buy today, point of sale, all of the vendors have aligned themselves with credit card processors. So very few things— that's why there's, there's a big changeover. So, so Clover has these, you know, a lot of older systems out there And now the parts are running out because they stopped making the parts in China, right, during the pandemic. So the parts are running out, and then they've had version 2, which was really cool. Then the parts ran out on that, so now they came out with version 3. The version 3 stuff, you can't use the parts from version 3 on the version 2, so that's done. You got to buy a whole new system. And then they made another change in the new system And that they have two levels in the system. So you have to— if you want like all the features for like a sit-down restaurant, you got to get the highest Clover.

What was the prices for like before the pandemic?

Oh, it's like $1,200 for a station.

And how much does it cost now?

Close to $2,400 with all the fees, because you got to pay encryption fees, deployment fees, blah blah blah. And they raised the price on all the apps. So the app for the restaurant used to be $44, now it's $64, and that's per station. Plus you got to pay the Clover fees if you're using the dual pricing cash discount.

Come to Nationwide Payment Systems.

Yeah, so Clover is not as affordable as it once used to be, and the price for the Flex was around $500, and now those are like almost— those are about $950.

What is that?

Is the small handheld. Oh, so, you know, but you, you know, because I was talking to a merchant, not a client of ours, somebody had called me up and said, hey, what do you know about this Clover? I bought a Clover and then some of the features aren't working and blah blah blah. I said, I never heard, I never heard that before. And then sure enough, I said, well, let me find out. And I said, well, you better talk to whoever you bought it from because they sold you the wrong Clover. I sold them the one in the middle and he needs the highest one because apparently the app— some of the apps don't work on the middle version. That's ridiculous of the hardware. Why they came out with two versions of hardware, I don't know, but they did.

Freemium and pro.

Yeah, pretty much that's what it is.

That's every, every software development company Software as a service company, that's the business model.

They do freemium, but this is basically like the hardware. Obviously something is not sufficient in there to run some of the apps because they tried to install some of the apps and it didn't work. So now they're gonna deal with— I told them, I said, I hope you have the boxes because if you don't have the boxes, Clover ain't taking it back. I tell merchants all the time, man, don't throw the boxes away. 'til you know that you're gonna keep it. There's no, you know, there's usually like a 30-day, you know, like 30 days you could send it back if you have the box. We had a client one time, they bought 5 point-of-sale devices, then they never opened the place up, COVID hit, then we ended up trying to, took us a couple of months to get them back, we got them back, then the guy didn't have the boxes. I go, dude, I says to the customer, I go, we can't send these back now. We have to— we can only sell them as used because we don't have the boxes. So we ended up having to sell them, and then, you know, whatever. We gave the guy some of his money back, not all of it. He didn't like that, but you threw the boxes away, you idiot. You can't— I mean, if they had the box, we could have sent it back.

You told them to keep the box, right?

Yep, we told them keep the boxes.

Keep the box, man. I mean, like, I don't know, you buy a new iPhone, you're not throwing away the box the first week you get it, you jackass. Sorry.

Yeah, keep the box. Another big change that's going on is restaurant point of sale. So it's restaurant point of sale. There's been a bunch of companies that got bought up, and now the company— one, the companies who bought those softwares They're not renewing the PCI. They're— so those are going to end of life. I know because I have two customers right now that have a point of sale. I don't want to say the name. It got bought by another company. We don't do business with them, so we're not going to say their name. And so they told them, they said, well, you have to upgrade to this other thing and buy a new POS system. So they don't want to, and, and the And they like don't like that, so they don't like that system. So you—

sounds whack.

Well, there's a lot of that going on where, you know, you have couple of companies like that got absorbed all by Shift4. So they're taking all those softwares and they're going to try to bundle them all into one software now, like 5, 6, 7 restaurant softwares, and then just have one restaurant software. Called, uh, what are they calling it? No, I can't remember the name of it right now.

I mean, that kind of makes sense though. It's just going to be expensive, probably.

Well, I don't know if it's going to be expensive. I don't know if it's going to be as good as the ones that people were using before, because one of the things people, you know, we'll get into some stuff about point of sale. So with point, with restaurant point of sale, you know, you just have to, you know, you need to You need to, you know, not wait till the end. You need to find out like what, you know, like when they tell you, oh, you might have to upgrade, it might be time to shop around and look at some other stuff. We have a partnership with a really nice restaurant bar point of sale that's a hybrid. And one of the things I don't like that I see in the restaurant point of sale industry is most of the stuff that's out there is all cloud-based.. And if you have a really busy restaurant or you have a really busy bar, that doesn't always perform the best when everything is up in the cloud.

Oh yeah, I can imagine.

And then, you know, but we're going to talk more about like internet in your business, but you can't, you know, but we're working with a company as a hybrid system. So being that it's a hybrid system, two of the— you have to get a minimum of 2 stations with this system because those act as the servers. That helps the system run faster, makes sense, be more reliable that way, you know. And then if you ever have to replace— let's say you have 5 or 6 of them in a place, you have to replace one, you just bring it, you know, get a new one, come— a new one comes in, plug it in, hook it up, and then ba-boom, you know, they can get— take everything, can go into there, and you're not downloading it all off of the internet. They can just suck it off one of the, one of the, you know, one of the, uh, servers. It's very smart, and it'd be a lot faster. So that's, you know, things to consider. You know, restaurant— you know, restaurants, you know, they're restaurants. I see a lot of them struggling, like Aloha POS. They had like 2 outages recently where the whole— their whole backend system went down, and that caused a lot of phone calls to people who were on their backend. So, you know, when you— when, you know, when you're using different systems and everything is proprietary, make sure what— what's going on. Make sure— I always tell restaurants, have a backup plan. Like, your internet goes out, make sure you put in a router that has a prepaid 4G, 5G card on it. So that if your internet goes out, you still have 4G, 5G, right? You probably won't even notice it if your internet goes out for a couple hours because the router just switches over to that.

Very— yeah, that's—

because it's very important to do that. That's key in your, in your business. And many times, like, restaurants will say to me, oh, why do we need that? Why do we need— just in case.

I mean, you live in South— we live in South Florida, so yeah, during this last storm I'm guaranteeing some companies, businesses went out of power, right?

And then also, you know, for your business, do you have a backup like handheld credit card machine, credit card device you could just put on your phone, use with your phone or a tablet or something and go off cellular so you can still charge credit cards? I tell people like, you gotta— back in the old days, it used to be get it, do you have an imprinter and some slips, you know? Now it's— you have like a, you know, a device to use with your phone, or you could get it, you know, or you could get an extra merchant account with us and you just install an app on your phone and boom, you can take credit cards. You don't even need a device.

Done.

So there's a lot of options to, to do to make sure you have credit card processing when they're, you know, when, when the internet is completely out. And so let's talk about— now let's say you're out and you need to shop for a new point of sale system. Some of the things you should consider: do you want a cloud system or a hybrid system? So cloud, everything's up in the cloud. Hybrid means there's an actual computer there and some of the information or all of the information is on that computer or computers and also in the cloud, right? So that's one thing to consider. Some people don't want to use— like Dave was, we were talking about the SwipeSimple, it's like, oh, 8-inch tablet, it's small. Young people don't care about that, you know. Maybe somebody that's old doesn't want to use an 8-inch tablet.

Yeah, I don't care about that.

I know, but some— but you know, so you got to consider like what kind of devices Is it an 8-inch tablet? Is it a bigger tablet? You know, what, what kind of devices are you using? A 17-inch, that, you know, like most— like a point of sale for like a bar restaurant, if you have a lot of items or you need to do things fast, maybe you want to have a 17-inch tablet instead of an 8-inch tablet.

I could see how you'd be beneficial, right?

Because you have more items to deal with, you know, more items. So those are things to consider, screen size and all of that. You know, I don't like— personally, I am not a fan of iPads being used for point of sale because one of the dangers with iPads is Apple will upgrade the iOS. Then you get a message on your iPad, upgrade the iOS. The question you should be asking yourself is Should I upgrade to iOS or call the point of sale company first and make sure I can upgrade to iOS? Because let me tell you, we've had customers using an iPad point of sale, they upgrade to iOS, then the point of sale stops working, and then it's a, it's a big process to dial it back to the old iOS. You got to call like Apple support, you got to know what you're doing, like you have to go in and like install the one, the previous version, because then, because Apple upgrades the iOS and then everybody who's got apps got to scramble because then all of a sudden you got a bunch of apps that don't work.

That's—

Apple's famous for that.

Yeah.

So now a lot of the point-of-sale companies switch to Android because Android is pretty generic platform and they don't have to— and you don't have to deal with that. That. You just have to be on version 5 or up on most of the point-of-sale stuff.

Nice.

Version 5 and up. So those are things to consider, you know. Do you like a small tablet? You don't like a small tablet? What size do you want the screen? Cloud? Hybrid? It's a lot to think about.

Cost?

Cost. Well, we'll get to that. Then next thing you got to think about is internet. One of the things restaurants and a lot of businesses don't think about is, you know, when people come into your business, there's, you know, you have to have, you know, you need to have, you know, you want to be secure. So you should have 2 internet, internet, or even 3 internet circuits. If I owned a restaurant and/or business where I had cameras, internet for my business and point of sale, and then guest internet, I would have 3 separate internet So I'd have 3 Comcast come in and put 3 things in, or even say, oh, I'm gonna put 2 Comcast and 1 AT&T, right?

You can't do that though.

You can. Oh yeah, I'd see business work well. Well, you just— you don't— you use it for the guest internet that way. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying, because you'll be constantly fighting for the Right, so the, so the whole thing is you want to make sure that you don't have your guests on the same internet that you're running your point of sale. And a lot of times you don't want to have your cameras because maybe you're remote— remoting in from your house looking at the cameras. You don't want to have— and then that opens up the circuit. You don't want that on the same router with your point of sale. It's not suggested. If you do it, you better have a good IT person that knows how to secure that down really, really well.

Yeah, I don't— that doesn't sound like a good idea.

So it's better if it's separate. So, you know, those are things to consider with your internet connection. Then the next thing is, you know, a list of things that you need to think about. What is my budget? Are you going to buy this system? Are you gonna— you do to get on a program where it's hardware and software as service? What are the pros and the cons of all that? What's the warranty look like? Okay, then you got to think about, are there any monthly fees that go along with this system? Um, are there SaaS fees? Most companies now have SaaS fees. Yeah, right. So what are those SaaS fees? You know, software as a service fee. That's why sometimes it's better if you do hardware and software as a service, you're getting a bundle. Like one, the company, one, the company we're working with for restaurants, they have a 3-year package, hardware and software as a service, and then the equipment's fully warrantied. So anything breaks, they replace it.

Oh, that's nice.

So it's a nice thing, you know. So you want to understand what's the warranty. If I buy it, what's the warranty? The warranty might only be for a year, you know. Do you want to take that chance? You know, in a bar restaurant atmosphere?

No.

You know, you might have to replace a printer, that could be small, but what if somebody smashed a screen? That's a $1,000, you know, item. Features. Now here's the thing I always talk about, like, I was never a fan of Clover because you had to buy all these apps, and I would see customers telling me spending $150, $200 per station on apps. So that's a lot of apps to pay for. And if you have 5 stations at $200, that's a lot of money. So what do the features— are there— what features are you getting? What features do you need? Do they— does anything cost extra? And what is that extra, right? So you want to make sure about that because You know, it starts to add— like I tell people, with Clover, it all adds up. Anything you want to add on is an add-on. A lot of the other newer systems I see coming out, a lot of the stuff that's extra on Clover is included. So, wow. So, so those systems work, you know, they, they, they look and feel like Clover, you know, because people have sat back and watched them and copied them now. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then made it less expensive because they put all the features in. So now it's not just an app store, you know. Ease of use, you know, how easy is it to use the system, access the system on the back end? Like, what is that? Scalability, that's another thing that you need to make sure about. Like, we— I met with somebody recently and they said, oh, we have We want to put 3 stations in the restaurant, then we need 1 station to put in the, uh, on the another state, a 4th station in the restaurant for— they have a lot of people that call up and order over the phone, which I didn't know was so popular. I saw a survey and the survey said, what's the percentage, you know, someone took a survey, so what was the percentage of people that like to order online versus people who call on the phone? What do you think the answer was?

I'm going to say 70-30.

Well, it was actually about 45% for the online and 55% for the phone. And I get, you know, might be like some city, you know, people that I guess they don't like calling, they like ordering over the phone their food. Maybe they have special diet or whatever.

Yeah, I guess you're right, because I can't order over the internet usually unless it's a vegetarian restaurant.

Because I know, like, we order food for the office and Anna always calls up on the phone and says, oh, I want to make sure, you know, this, this, and this is done. Right, you know, because it's special and they don't always follow instructions. So because of that, you know, a lot of people like order over the phone. Makes sense. And probably age-wise too, like my son, he'll order off an app, some, you know, I don't always trust it, but you know, if I'm going to change something, I don't think I've ever ordered food off of that before. Really? Off an app? Scalability is another thing. You want to make sure, like, how easy is it to get another station to do an add-on? Oh, do you— I don't want to do pay at the table now, but maybe I want to do it later. How does that get added on, right? So what is it? How's the scalability work? Another guy we met with wanted to do— he says also has a food truck, so how can he use one of the stations on his food truck? So we told them, like, take a handheld and do it, or use it on the food truck, huh?

Right.

Then just create another food truck menu, like you create breakfast, lunch, dinner food truck menu.

Smart.

So it's pretty easy, you know. Integration. So integration— oh, so after that, scaleway support. What's the support look like? Who— how do you get support? You know, what is What does support look like? You know, I always tell people, you know, there's two kinds of support: basic support and emergency support. Basic support is, oh, I forgot how to run this report, and, you know, either you look online or you call up during regular business hours, right? But you don't call at 2 in the morning. It's not an emergency. Emergency is the system's not working.

I might troll you so hard you call me at 2 o'clock in the morning, man.

So you have to, you know, you just need to, you know, it's important that, you know, merchants have the right expectation of, you know, what the level of support is going to be. And then the next thing is, in a great— most systems have 24-hour support, but it's mostly geared towards like emergencies, you know, basic things. Usually you can go to the FAQ and get the answer, or you wait till the next business day, or you wait till your sales rep wakes up in the morning, you know, and you send them a text, hey, I forgot how to do this, you walk me through that real quick, you know, that kind of thing. But, you know, make sure you get trained. Training is very important. Make sure you get trained on it, the staff is trained, managers are trained, you understand the system, you know how to use the system, because because when you know how to use your point of sale system, that's how— that's when you can really get the most out of the point of sale system. Run the loyalty program, you know, use the time clock, do use all the things that can help you effectively run your business and save you money and build loyalty and get customers to come back. Um, integration. So integrations are very important at restaurants, even retail. If you're a retailer, oh, can I link my shopping cart to the— how can I connect my— does my e-commerce and my retail talk to each other with inventory? We're working on a solution for that. Uh, let's say you use a bunch of delivery services in your restaurant, right? Like what, Uber Eats, Dine— what are they called?

I have something in my eye, sorry.

I'm saying like different things where you order your food.

Grubhub, Grubhub, Uber Eats, um, Postmates, DoorDash, right? DoorDash, right.

So if you use a bunch, use those, what's the integration look like? Let's say you're in a hotel, you have a hotel management system. Now you want to change what you're using in the restaurant, right? How does that integrate with your hotel system? What others— and are there any other systems that you're using that also integrate there, like your website? Yeah, like your website. So you want to make sure what's the all the integrations. Mobility for ordering and pay at the table. You know, everybody's experiencing, uh, you know, staff shortages, right? So if your servers can take orders at the table, they can handle probably more tables.

More efficient.

Yeah, be more efficient. Send, you know, they don't have to walk over to the station, punch everything in. They're just doing it all at the table. So, you know, efficiency is very, very important. Customization. Now let's say you go and you get— you go get Clover or you go get one of these other out-of-the-box, you know, which come, you know, it just comes in a box, here you go. There's not going to be a lot of customization, right? So if you need customization, you need to find out, hey, do you offer customization, yes or no? We have a company that does offer some customization and they will do it. Access to the backend— how do you put in the backend? Do you track your inventory? How do you do that? So, you know, you need to, you know, you need to ask all the questions. We'll put in the— on the podcast, or we'll do some social posts. We'll post the list, you know. Yes, we'll post the list of, you know, what questions to ask your point of sale company when you're going to buy a point of sale. You know, it's not always about price, it's about features, cost. All of these things come together. That way you get what you want, you know. And a lot of times you get what you pay for.

Yeah, that's the oldest saying, you know.

Yeah. And the other thing—

get what you pay for, buddy.

Yeah. The other thing is, is, you know, people are all worried about rates. Well, I look at one of the biggest point-of-sale newest players in the business is Toast. They're not so cheap on the credit card processing. So, you know, you have to look at the overall picture of what you're getting. You know, you know what I mean? The overall picture of what you're getting and what you need. You know, do I want hybrid? Do I want cloud? What do the devices look like? What does the warranty look like? And then, you know, make your— just, you know, make your decision based on that, right? Don't, don't worry too much about the, the credit card processing fees and all that. Well, that, you know, you want to get treated fairly But you know, you have to remember, you can't get everything that you want. You know, I had a friend of mine, he used to tell me, he'd go, price, value, and service, right? Well, you can't, you know, it's like you can't tell somebody like, oh yeah, I want the price from this system, and then I want the features from this system, and then I want the service this company offers. You have to figure out, like, you have to figure out which one's gonna work for you, what's gonna work for you. And a lot of times, you know, businesses focus too much on the price, and then they go and they go, well, I made a big mistake because I focused so much on price, I didn't get what I want feature-wise.

I can imagine, like, all the people just starting a business, they don't know what they need either though, right?

So, well, no, you have to think about it, what you need today. You might say, "Well, I don't need a loyalty program right now." What if you want to add one on?

Yeah, and you know, most of those times, like, the people selling them, the stuff, they're just selling you at a point-of-sale system. They don't even care what your business does. They're just trying to get you signed up.

Yeah, well, we try to, you know, do an in-depth dive with you and see, like, "Oh, gift cards. You're going to offer gift cards?" "Well, not right now." "What about in the future?" Well, if the answer is yes, then you need to make sure the system is going to do gift cards. Yes, you do. So you want to make sure, like, what are the things that you want to do now? What are you going to do down the road? That's why scalability is important. Like, oh, I'm going to franchise my business, right? Okay. Is there franchise mode? How do I set up? You know, if you came to me and said—

Franchise mode sounds like a John Madden.

Yeah. Well, you know, like there's a there's a commercial now, Playoff Mode, the basketballs.

Oh, NBA Live. Yeah.

So the thing is, is you want to make sure, like, can that system give you Franchise Mode if you need to have that down the road? Um, or how can you set up Franchise Mode? So you want to think about those things because the last thing you want to do is make a whole big giant change, you know, after you go put in a system and then you go, oh, I hate it, I don't like it, this this is a mistake. Oh, I don't know, we, we're dealing with somebody now that has like 5 restaurants. They're all— the guy owns 2 of them, the other 3 are franchises. They, they didn't think about what to do, and now, now it's, now it's a hot mess because the guy can't— the guy who owns the franchise can't see what the stores do because it wasn't set up correctly. They didn't buy the right system, and the whole thing's not set up right. So we're making suggestions about what to do and how to do it.

That's just sad.

But other ones, like, we'd set up another franchise, we set up everything beautiful. They log into the reporting on the back end of the credit card processing and they can see all what's going on. They can log into the back end of the point of sale and they can see everybody's point of sale, all their sales and everything.

So that's cool.

All the reporting is there. That's, that's what's important with point of sale. So that's the point of sale roundup.

Check us out on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, and please don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel at B2B Vault— blah, blah, blah— @B2BVaultPodcast. What were you going to say?

I was going to say, if you want a consultation, we give free consultation. Go to the website, go to b2bvault.info, or hit us up on social. Say, hey, I need to get a consultation, and get a free consultation.

Follow @AllenKopelman on Twitter. Myself, @JRowings. Yeah, it's a lot to follow. I'll put it on the thing underneath us. Like right here when I'm going like this.

Yeah, cool graphics.

Cool. It'll be like insert cool graphic here, and then it'll be right here where my hands are.

Yeah, all right. Yeah, peace out. Carpe diem. Peace.

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