Willo O'Brien

Recognize a face in those phones below? Yes, that’s me on Square’s site, which has been getting quite a bit of press the last few days now that it’s launched.

What is Square? It’s this cool way to process credit cards on the iPhone. I’ve been on their beta for a few weeks now and I love it (and so do my customers)!

It comes in SUPER handy at my craft/sales events, of which I have 3 coming up… come out, do some holiday shopping & try it out!

UPDATE: A lot of people have been asking me about Square, and it was interesting to see the commentary on this TechCrunch article, so I wanted to add a little more to this post. Specifically about how Square has made a difference in my business so far.

In the last two years doing events – selling my WilloToons t-shirts, baby gifts, jewelry & cards at craft & music festivals around the country – I’ve been able to take credit cards, but I had to do it the old fashioned way. At first I actually had to manually write down CC numbers, but then finally got myself a fancy “knucklebuster” (see photo). So while those are handy to quickly get the card number, thing is I still had to hand enter all those credit card numbers in after the event – making the post-show work even more laborious (the time saving aspect is HUGE).

Now, not only do I have to manually jot down the CIN (Card Identification Number on the back), or handle that clunky knucklebuster, but I also don’t have to take down the customer’s phone number for the off chance that the credit card transaction didn’t go through when I finally got around to processing them one by one (via PayPal’s Virtual Terminal) later that night or the next day. More importantly, there’s not paper lying around anywhere with my customer’s full credit card & contact information on it. I always keep it safe, but still – such an outdated and unnecessary risk… whenever any buyer requested a copy, I would warn them to keep it safe or scratch out their info just in case.

Another cool thing is that customers are happy to provide their email addresses for a receipt. Which, beyond the futuristic novelty, is also way more eco-friendly – less paper! I recommended to the Square team that they build a newsletter/marketing authorization into that part, so that right there they can say yes or no to receiving future communications from me. At this point I can ask at each transaction, but it’s inefficient to have to make note (by hand) who has said yay or nay.

Last week I met up with Cameron & Randy (my awesome friends & Square developers), over a coffee at Blue Bottle, and I communicated that, along with a few other feature requests. The most important one, in my opinion, is having the application calculate sales tax. I cannot wait for that one! But other than those, the actual app itself is awesome. Super simple. Easy to use. Pretty. And my customers seriously love it. Seriously, it’s SUCH a hit at shows, that everyone literally oohs and aahs. Gotta love any way that makes people paying you money an even better experience! All of my other feature requests are simply focused on accessing the transaction info in a batch post event… which their working on.

Time is money, and between all my pre- & post-event preparation*, my not having to deal with entering in the credit cards manually AND know the transaction has already been approved is so key.

*In case any of you are curious… here’s what goes in to an event:

Pre-event Prep: preparing inventory bins, signage & displays, marketing the event via Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, my blog, my newsletter.

Event Day: loading up all my inventory, tables, racks, banners/signage, etc, driving to the event, setting up, selling, breaking down, packing it all back up & unloading it again.

Post-event Tasks: cleaning up/restocking inventory bins for the next event, entering the event sales into Quickbooks**, adjusting sold inventory in my online store, typing in the collected (hand-written) newsletter sign ups, and following up with any customers who have requested something custom (and/or logging their request to follow up with them when a certain style or size is back in stock). **So that the both money and the inventory is being accounted for. I usually do one invoice for the cash sales, and one for the credit card sales. This makes it easier for those transactions to reconcile/match the deposits.

All of the above is why it’s so awesome when you buy something
from an independent vendor at a local craft show! :)

It also should be noted that while I could process credit card transactions in Quickbooks on my laptop (which would be ideal, considering it would be saving one of those post event tasks), often when I’m at an event I don’t have power or wi-fi. Nor do I have the space for my laptop (most events only give vendors a ~6’x5′ space). So, my using the iPhone – that I know will last the whole day, and most all the time have a signal over the Edge or 3G network – is a total win. Also, to be honest, I actually don’t have my QB set up to process CCs just yet – I’m looking into all of that right now. I’m looking to find a provider that can give me a gateway for that AND my online store for one fee (and be able to deposit into my Chase bank account)… but that might be more info that you bargained for. ;) All the little fees related to credit card processing, in order to evaluate the competition, is so complicated.

OK, speaking of pre-event prep, I’ve gotta stop blogging and start prepping for my next event, which is tomorrow! Hope to see you Bay Area folks at one of the three holiday shows I have coming up in the next few weeks. Come say hi, and try out Square! I’ll try to have someone take pics & a video of it in action for those of you who aren’t local.

Thanks for reading all of the above, and if anyone out there is a business owner with advice/feedback/questions/comments on any of the above, I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment on this post, or contact me directly.

Read all my posts about using Square »

Photo credit: The photo used on the Square site was taken by my friend, Randy Reddig (@rr), who also is one of the talented brains behind Square!