Here’s your year-end checklist of essential to-do items for your small business. Photo by Becky McCray

As you wrap up one year and prepare for the next, your business needs to do the same. You have some accounting tasks to reset and some backups to make.

Must do Jan 1

These are the ones you can’t easily do later, so you don’t want to put them off. The good news: these are the easy ones.

Count your inventory.

If you sell or make products, take an inventory of all products or raw materials on hand at the turn of the year. If you use a cloud-based point of sale system, it’s extra important to write down the end of year inventory total on January 1. Most POS systems only keep a running (current) inventory total. If you forget to write it down now, you’ll have to figure backwards from all purchases and sales (not a fun job.)

Record end of year mileage. 

If you use your vehicle for business, write down your mileage at the end of the year. This provides an important baseline for your mileage records all year long. I always put this on my online calendar so I can find it easily.

Get these done during January

These are the tasks that need to be done soon, but don’t have to happen on January 1. Right now, commit time on each Friday during January to work through the checklist until you are all finished.

1. Financial Data

Backup accounting data. 

Yes, this applies whether you use a program on your computer or if you use a cloud service. Every cloud service is subject to being interrupted at the worst possible time or even close down with no warning. Best to backup now. Do an export of the data in your accounting system’s backup format and CSV.

• Quickbooks
• Freshbooks
• Wave
• Any accounting program

Run accounting reports.

Run year-end financial reports as PDFs. If you need data a few years from now, it will be easy to look at a PDF report that shows the answer in easy-to-read format. If all you have a CSV, you’ll get to re-import, reformat and clean up the data, then run a report to see the answer.

This also gives you insurance against changes in your accounting service. I can’t even tell you how many different accounting services and programs I’ve used over the years! Here are the key year-end reports to run off:

• Profit and Loss, Jan 1 – Dec 31
• Balance Sheet, dated Jan 1 and another dated Dec 31
• Detail of every transaction, Jan 1 – Dec 31
• Export all data as a backup (CSV)

Run payroll reports.

Save these as PDF as well.

• Payroll details for each employee, Jan 1 – Dec 31
• Payroll tax filings, Jan 1 – Dec 31
• Export all data as a backup (CSV)

Download online transactions.

Make sure you have downloaded a PDF report of all transactions for the year. Your bank may restrict how long statements are available, so download all of last year’s bank statements now.

• Online banking
• PayPal
• Square
• Stripe
• Any online transaction processor

Download copies of bills.

We all do business so many places that it’s tough to keep up. Since bank statements alone aren’t enough to satisfy the IRS, you’ll want PDFs of these are and any other online financial data. Make a list of these so you can refer back to it next year.

• Utility bills
• Credit card statements
• Insurance bills
• Supplier invoices
• Tax filings

Update employee and contractor data.

Do you have a current mailing address for every employee and former employee you paid this year? You’ll need that when you issue your W2 forms. Many small businesses rely on independent contractors who may or may not live nearby. For US small businesses, you’ll need to send 1099 forms to each contractor you paid more than a few hundred during the year. (Check with a tax pro for the details.) One thing you can do right now is be sure you have updated data on your contractors.

• Ask employees and former employees for any updates to their W-4 form or mailing address
• Ask independent contractors for any updates to their W-9 form

2. Backup your data

Download cloud files. 

Many small businesses are relying on cloud solutions for collaboration, invoicing, email, and other key functions. Review your cloud services, and download copies of all critical files and data. Make a list of your current cloud services to make this task easier again next year.

• Google Drive/Docs
• Office365
• iCloud
• Evernote
• DropBox
• Password management
• Point of sale
• Contacts
• Any cloud service with important data

Run off your calendar. 

Your business calendar documents your travel, meetings and more related to your work. It is a vital business record. You probably have to break it down by month or by week, or even by day, in order to make all the detail visible. If you use a paper planner, set a consistent and secure location to keep the old calendars available for at least 5 years running.

• Save a PDF of your entire year’s calendar

Backup your files

You’ve just collected a lot of critical financial data for your business. Don’t risk losing those files.

• Assemble all these files into a single folder dated with the year
• Send a copy to a cloud backup such as Box or DropBox
• Keep a copy on a USB thumb drive or an external hard drive separate from your computer

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To-do lists can be overwhelming. They can put too many demands on you, too many deadlines. You’re not the only person who feels this way.

My friend Rob Hatch told me about a friend of his who felt just like this. He hated to-do lists because they made him feel much too pressured, like they were all negative things pressing on him.

So he decided to put some positive things on his to-do list.

He put “have lunch” on his list. Then he could look forward to lunch, enjoy it and check it off.
He put “have a beer” on his list. And he did. And he enjoyed it and checked it off.

To-do lists are a lot less depressing and overwhelming when you only put 6 things and when you make sure at least 2 are things you already want to do.

If you feel the same way about to-do lists, what are two things you like to do that you could put on your list today?

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Still writing out financial records by hand? Time to move to a modern system. Photo by Becky McCray.

Take this simple quiz.

When I think of last year’s tax return time, I’d say it was:

1. A breeze. I just printed out one or two reports and answered a few questions from my tax preparer.
2. A bit of a mess. I had to do some work to catch up and then answer a lot of questions.
3. A nightmare. I worked like a dog to get things sorted before I could even think about filing, months late.

If you’re in category 1, you win. You can stop reading here. Have a great day!

If you’re in category 2, now’s the time to make sure you’re up to date through July 1. Schedule the time one day a week to catch up. Invest in a consultation with a pro to see how you can better keep up during the year. Look into delegating part of the work to a pro who will handle it for you and keep you always up to date.

If you’re in category 3, let’s fix it now. Here’s the plan:

Go sign up for WaveApps.com. That’s my personal choice especially for Category 3 people who don’t want a nightmare again next year. There’s no monthly fee for accounting and invoicing. I use Wave myself, and I recommend them. I don’t get any payment for saying so.

Wave will connect with your bank accounts and credit cards to automatically bring in your transactions. If your bank doesn’t play nice (like my rural banks), then you can export your transactions and quickly import them into Wave.  Then rather than typing out transactions by hand, you just click and sort your transactions into proper categories.

Wave has pros to help you. When you’re logged into your account, look for “Pro Services” on the left hand sidebar. Pay the money for help from a pro and get organized and caught up. Delegate as much as possible to a pro so that you don’t get weighed down with it during the rest of the year. It’s worth it to keep next tax time from being yet another nightmare.

 
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Having multiple email addresses might seem like it would make your email mess even worse. Actually, they can help. Here’s how. Photo (CC) by Glen Wright on Flickr.

I’ve got a new email technique to help those of you who get a crazy amount of email every day. It starts with a framework I’ve used before.

Have your email sorted automatically, before you ever see it, into groups based on the frame of mind needed to act on it. Frame of mind might be “reading” for newsletters that are informative, or “act and reply immediately” for work items.

The problem is your current email inbox isn’t sorted at all. It’s more like a big pile of paper mail. It’s all mixed up. You can’t tell what’s in there. You have to process it one item at a time, in no particular order.

Now, if it was paper mail, your assistant could come in and sort the pile. All the magazines in one box, newsletters in another, bills all together, notes from friends where you could find them, junk mail trashed, letters from clients grouped, and the packet from the boss right on top. Then, ideally, your assistant would only bring you the items you need right away. You could deal with the work items, savor the personal notes, let the bills wait until bill-paying day, and easily skim through newsletters on your lunch hour. Each group of mail requires the same frame of mind, so your brain doesn’t waste a lot of time switching gears.

One tool for doing the automatic sorting is to use separate email addresses. Then it’s easy to automatically send anything that comes to that email address into the right pile.

So you could have email addresses for subscriptions, one for bills, one you use only with key clients, and a different one for social media notifications.

Here’s how to make it work.

Step 1. Create separate email addresses.

Option A. Use gmail? You can add a “+” and any other suffix to the end of your email address. No settings to change. So if your gmail was toomuchemail@gmail.com, you could use toomuchemail+bills@gmail.com to receive your bills notificaitons and gmail would dutifully deliver it to you with the rest of your email.

Option B. Have your own domain name? You can create different email addresses at your host. The tool you use will probably be Cpanel or your host’s own tool. Check their help files for “creating email addresses.”

Step 2. Set up filters to automatically put those emails into the right categories or folders.

In Gmail you do this with Filters. Send your +bills emails to the Bills folder or label. Send the +client emails to the Important Client folder. You can even set up filters to automatically forward emails to another person. Or have your +911 emails sent straight to your phone. (No other email on your phone, ok? That’s important to remember.)

Step 3. Read and process each folder at the right time and in the right frame of mind.

You’ll start with the few items that didn’t get filtered. Put them in the right place, and create the filter to catch them next time. Then hit the critical work items you had delivered to your Client or Work folders.

That’s it. Everything else stays out of the way until you need it.

Let the Bills folder wait until bill paying day. Once a week, you can drop in and skim the social network notifications.

Trust me that it’s 10 times easier to deal with each related group of email instead of flailing around in the sea of unrelated messages.

The unexpected bonus to this technique is that you’ll get a lot more value out of your email. You’ll find time and focus to actually savor the newsletters you want to, because you aren’t in a rush to get them out of your way as you frantically dig for the important business email you just got 3 text messages asking about.

You’ll also find it easier to notice which emails you don’t really need. If you have 12 Twitter notifications in an inbox with 150 emails, that’s different than when they make up 12 out of 14 emails in your social folder. Suddenly you can decide which notices are important and which ones you want to shut off.

Extra Credit:
Send all your reading and review email to a separate address and use a separate device to read it. For example, send all your subscriptions to an address you only read on your iPad. Then you can read and review them easily from the couch or where ever works for you.

Inspired by a post by Ann Handley and the conversation in the comments: 10 Ways to Deal with the Stupid Amount of Email You Get.

Add your own email tips in the comments. I’m always learning from you!

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Be more productive with your tablet. Photo by Becky McCray.

“Man, getting iPads was like discovering fire,” Lance Morgan, CEO of Ho-Chunk Inc., told me years ago. It’s still true that tablets can revolutionize business, but they can also be a boost to your personal productivity. We talked about ways to use tablets in retail businesses, and this time we’re talking about ways you can use them to be more productive.

1. Separate your personal email.

One reason your monster inbox is eating your lunch is because it’s a mixed up mess of personal and business, important and trivial, urgent and “whenever.” Get your personal email out of that by setting up a separate email account for non-work email. With an iPad, you can set up an iCloud email. For any tablet, you could use a separate Gmail or other webmail account. Then setup your tablet to access that email account. Start directing all personal and non-business email to that account. This cuts down on the number of emails in your business inbox. You’ll be able to better manage important business emails, while handling personal emails separately at a time that works better for you.

2. Read it later.

You come across dozens of great articles each day. Well, potentially great, anyway. The problem is in finding time to read them without interrupting your work day dozens of times or leaving them stranded in a sea of browser tabs that weigh on your mind while you work. Set up a read-it-later system like Pocket, Instapaper, or Evernote. Put the clipping tool in your work browser and the reading app on your tablet. Now you can read in the evenings, during your commute, or at any other time that works better. And if you don’t get them all read, you’ll know where to find them later and be assured they didn’t interfere with your work.

3. Move social networks off your computer.

A tablet is a great social media tool. You can access many social media management apps. You can choose to get notifications of mentions and other important events. Plus, when you need to focus on other things, you can move the tablet out of sight (and hearing) or turn on Do Not Disturb mode. This cuts down on the temptation to check your networks every other minute while you are working.

And all those articles you marked to read later? When you do read then on your tablet, you can use them to create social network updates using apps like Buffer or Hootsuite.

4. Use it as a second monitor.

I’ve heard that larger monitors may make your more productive.  If you need to add screen space without adding a new monitor, you could use your tablet to extend your existing computer desktop. There are plenty of apps for both Android and iPad to handle this, and some to even use your tablet as a kind of remote control for your computer.

5. Become a more productive speaker.

If your work involves speaking or making presentations, you know that takes a lot of time, from writing, designing, editing, practicing, revising and then doing the actual presentation. A tablet can help you be more productive here, too.

My friend Leslie McLellan mentioned wishing she had a teleprompter to help her with her new series of two minute marketing tips videos. Turns out, there are bunches of teleprompter apps out there for Android and iPad tablet users. Just be sure to practice reading from them. Any teleprompter takes some getting used to.

Don’t need your full text? Just put your few keywords to prompt you in big type on the tablet screen. Better than a sticky note stuck to your monitor!

There are also a bunch of speaking timer apps available to help you keep from going overtime, whether it’s in a video or an in-person speech.

If you’re preparing for a big speech, your tablet makes a great rehearsal tool. You can work with your slides or from your notes. Use an office program to open your presentation, use a timer or stopwatch (on the tablet, of course) to check your timing, and practice, practice, practice.

You’ll save time of printing out, then reviewing, then running back to the computer to make changes.

Bonus: Take a break.

Goodness knows tablets are great for a quick game, puzzle, or just a relaxing browse through your old photos. Take advantage of that strategically when you need it. You’ll be more productive when you take a break when it’s needed. Just not when it isn’t.

Pick just one of these and start implementing it this week. Me? I’m going to use Evernote as my read-it-later tool. You? 

The Evernote link in this story is an affiliate link that gives me credit if you choose to become a paying customer. 

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Before you break out your shiny new calendar, there are some critical end-of-year tasks to finish off. Photo by Becky McCray.

Each year, there are a few standard end-of-year tasks to complete. Right now, commit time on each Friday during January to work through the checklist until you are all finished.

Count your inventory.

If you sell or make products, take an inventory of all products or raw materials on hand at the turn of the year. If you use a cloud-based point of sale system, it’s extra important to write down the end of year inventory total on January 1. Most POS systems only keep a running (current) inventory total. If you forget to write it down now, you’ll have to figure backwards from all purchases and sales (not a fun job.)

Run accounting reports.

Run year-end financial reports as PDFs. Yes, you should do an export of the data in your accounting system’s backup format or CSV in case of data loss during the year. But accounting services change. If you need data from a few years back, it will be easier to look at a PDF report that summarizes the data you need without having to take the old CSV, re-import, reformat, clean up, then run a report.

Here are the key year-end reports to run off:

• Profit and Loss, Jan 1 – Dec 31
• Balance Sheet, dated Jan 1 and another dated Dec 31
• Detail of every transaction, Jan 1 – Dec 31
• Payroll tax details for each employee, Jan 1 – Dec 31

Download statements.

If you use Square, Paypal, Dwolla or online banking for business, make sure you have downloaded a PDF report of all transactions for the year. Your bank may restrict how long statements are available, so download all of last year’s bank statements now. Download copies of utility bills, credit card statements, insurance bills, supplier invoices, tax filings and any other online financial data.

Download cloud files. 

Many small businesses are relying on cloud solutions for collaboration, invoicing, email, and other key functions. Review your cloud services, and download copies of all critical files and data. Include Google Drive/Docs, Office365, iCloud, Evernote, DropBox, Freshbooks, payroll, password management, point of sale and any other cloud services you use. Make a list of your current cloud services to make this task easier again next year.

Run off your calendar. 

Your business calendar documents your travel, meetings and more related to your work. It is a vital business record. Save a PDF report of your entire year. You will have to break it down by month or by week, or even by day, in order to make all the detail visible. If you use a paper planner, set a consistent and secure location to keep the old calendars available for at least 5 years running.

Record end of year mileage. 

If you use your vehicle for business, write down your mileage at the end of the year. This provides an important baseline for your mileage records all year long. I always put this on my calendar so I can find it easily.

Backup your phone.

If you lost your phone today, you’d still have access to the cloud data you use on it, but what about your photos? Don’t rely on the iPhone’s My Photo Stream, as that only includes the last 1,000 photos. I have a Seagate external drive that backs up my smartphone photos over wifi. Also think through any other data you may have created and stored on your phone and no where else. Back up those files as well.

Backup your files. 

You’ve just collected a lot of critical financial data for your business. Don’t risk losing those files. Assemble all these files into a single folder dated with the year. Send a copy to a cloud backup such as Box or DropBox, keep a copy on an external hard drive separate from your computer, and keep another copy on your computer’s hard drive.

Do you have any special end-of-year items you do in your business? Add them in the comments.

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You probably don’t need to learn anything new. You probably know the processes in your business really well. You probably can list off what needs to happen and in what order. But it’s not happening, or at least not all the time.

Let’s look at a few examples.

• At my store, we had a new person who consistently forgot to do essential things. At the end of the shift, the shelves would be missing a few items that just needed restocked from the back. Or the break area was left messy. It was always something small that was forgotten.

• At a small town church, a friend of mine spends too much of his time fixing technology problems in classrooms and all over, because he’s the one who knows the technology. And the same problems may come up week after week.

• In my work, I sometimes do webinars. I have a whole list of things I usually remember to do that make for better audio and video. But because I don’t do them every day, I sometimes forgot one of them.

In all these cases, a simple checklist would most likely fix the problem. Checklists may be the most boring old business tools that actually work.

At my store, we made a checklist of how to work your shift. It covered everything from “unlock the door” to “lock the door behind you.” The people who use it at work like it, including the forgetful person and some more experienced people. It’s not that working a shift is complicated, but there are a lot of things to remember. So we started making more checklists, covering more processes they need to know. Now we have checklists for how to do most everything at the store, and we’re working on more.

At the church, my friend is drawing up checklists of how to address technology problems. He’s going to post them in the classrooms. That way, he’s not the only one who knows how to handle issues, and the people can solve those repeat problems without having to wait on him.

For webinars, I drew up a checklist of all the little steps to do. Yes, I probably should be able to remember them all, but having a checklist means not having to rely on my memory when taking care of last-minute details.

Having a checklist means I always remember every step.

How about you? What could you make a checklist for, to make your business run better?

Checklist tips

• Write it down. Checklists in your head don’t help.
• Include every step. That means making the list while actually doing the process, comparing and revising the list.
• Pair checklists with longer explanations. Our store shift checklist goes with a long written description of how to do everything. Once you’ve read and learned the long description, the short-form checklist is enough to remind you to do all the little steps.
• Put the checklist in the place where you’ll use it. Print out and post the technology checklist right next to the technology in question.
• Let the users contribute. The people who do the task know the steps the best. Get their input.
• Write in simple, direct language. Edit continually to make it easier to read, understand and follow.

How do you use checklists? Do you have any tips to make them more effective in business?

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Photo (CC) I Believe, on Flickr

Do you own a small business and find you have no free time? Have you recently found yourself too busy to have lunch with a friend? Does your family start dinner without you?

While these are not perfect predictors (life happens), being “too busy” may be a symptom that your business time management needs some adjustments. Depending on how often it happens, it might even suggest that you have lost control of your life.

Today’s society seems to expect any serious business owner to suffer from overload. When we meet someone, whether a network acquaintance or a new friend, it isn’t long before we are talking about how busy we are.

It seems to be a badge of honor if our response indicates that there is not time available for relaxation.

We often give such a response for ourselves as well as others. To the outside world, it suggests how well things are going. Plus being busy often is considered a virtue. To you, the owner, it is reassuring that you are maximizing your efforts.

Today, though, more and more people are beginning to question these statements. And more and more studies and anecdotal information point out that being busy does not correlate to being successful. Some researchers might argue that the exact opposite is occurring.

So what can the business owner do to take back control of his or her schedule?

The first requirement is to realize what is happening. Often the “busy-ness” is self-inflicted. You just can’t say no.

A related issue is the owner’s inability or unwillingness to delegate. How often do you tell yourself that doing a task yourself is easier than getting someone else to do it to your expectations? We want to feel indispensable, plus it feeds our need to be busy.

Another reason we stay busy is based on how we prioritize. Instead of taking on the big tasks, we avoid them by filling our lives with small chores.

The connected world also provides myriad ways to stay busy. And this issue will just continue to grow.

So what can you do to get back some free time?

1.  It starts with priorities. What are yours? There are many ways to approach priority setting. Pick a method that works for you and do it every day.
2.  It helps to go back at times and check some of the red flags mentioned as to why we feel the need to be busy and what we are doing to help us feel that way.
3.  For the electronic overload, pick out the best information sources, then use an online aggregator to pull all of that information into one location, and, finally, allot one time during the day when you go through the information.
4.  Similarly, opening every email the minute it comes into your computer is not necessary. Set aside two or three times a day to look at them. And when you read them, handle them right away if at all possible.
5.  This idea may sound just too simple, but it works for some people: Use small notepads to jot down your daily to-do list. It limits how many things you can list. At day’s end, you maybe can check them all off.

Control of your time starts with yourself. Winning the game of the longest to-do list isn’t the goal. Taking some time away (and leaving your mobile devices at home) is a much better choice for you and your business.

Don’t leave yourself guessing about old financial records. Back up now. Photo by Becky McCray. 

Backing up your accounting data used to mean printing off reams of paper reports stuffed into boxes, and then you had to find a place to keep all that. Today, backing up your accounting data means generating a few PDFs and keeping extra copies electronically.

1. Save PDF versions of year-end accounting reports

Accounting systems change. In over 20 years with computers, I can’t even remember how many different accounting systems I’ve used. There’s no assurance you’ll be able to read your accounting data next year.  Today it’s easy to create PDF that will be readable even after you change software systems. Here are the reports to save:

• Profit and Loss, Jan 1 – Dec 31
• Balance Sheet, dated Dec 31
• Detail of every transaction, Jan 1 – Dec 31
• Payroll tax details for each employee, Jan 1 – Dec 31

Make sure you backup these important reports into more than one location.

2. Download online banking statements

Think about all the banking-related services you use online: PayPal, online banking, Square, Dwolla, and others.  These are key financial records that you don’t want to lose, and most of them limit how long you can download detail. For my local bank, I have access to one year of statements. PayPal recommends downloading your history each and every month. So now is the time to download PDF copies of all your banking transactions.

3. Backup your cloud  

Quick! How many different cloud services are you using? Google Docs/Drive, Evernote,  iCloud, DropBox, and all the others are wonderful, until they don’t work. Take time right now to export and save a copy of all important documents in your cloud services. You can back them up to another cloud service, or to a local hard drive. With portable hard drives under $100 and online backup systems under $100 per year, it’s a good investment in your business.

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In September 2013, we converted our liquor store from using an old-fashioned cash register and paper records to using an iPad-based Point of Sale system. I learned so much in the process that I knew you’d want to me to share.

Our Old System: lots of paper

When my mom bought her liquor store in 1992, it came with a traditional cash register, an adding machine, and no detailed sales records of any kind. Being a good geeky person, she started researching what computerization would make sense. PC-based Point of Sale (POS) systems cost up to $5,000 back then (and that was a lot of money in 1992). They were clumsy and expensive and looked really hard to work with (thus truly earning the name of POS). So Mom designed a paper system. Up to 1200 SKUs (or different items), all on paper. Every time one of us made a sale, we recorded each item on a printed-out spreadsheet we kept in a binder on the counter. We figured prices with another spreadsheet. Want to know what sold well for Thanksgiving last year? Well, dig into the pile of paper and find November last year, then scan through the entire list to find the big sellers. It was a pain, but it was so much better than no records at all. It worked well enough.

By 2006, when Mom retired and we started, POS looked a little more attractive, a bit better polished, but still expensive. Liquor store-specific systems ran from $5,000 to $10,000. And in a small town, I knew I’d be on my own for tech support. I took a fresh look at our spreadsheets, and streamlined them. I got it down to one master spreadsheet, easier to keep up-to-date. It was an improvement, but we still needed a real inventory system. One that wasn’t just on paper.

Our first step toward POS: Square for credit card processing.

Square Got Close

When we finally converted to Square for our credit card processing, I was tempted by all the Point of Sale features that they built into their app. It could act as our cash register! We could even enter all our items, but Square still couldn’t track inventory. I really, really wanted inventory tracking. So I started searching. Is there an app for that? Turns out, yes, there are a few solid iPad-based Point of Sale systems that include inventory tracking features. I looked at Vend, Revel, Intuit, NCR’s Silver and ShopKeep.

If you are looking at different systems, I suggest you start with the company websites and also pay careful attention to how well they treat you on the phone. Phone support makes the difference between a quick resolution of an issue and frustrating hours figuring it out for yourself.

Update: As of May 2014, Square is starting to add more inventory features.

We Picked ShopKeep

After initial research, I decided on ShopKeep Point of Sale. What tipped the scales for me was that ShopKeep was created by a frustrated wine shop owner who decided to build what he himself needed. So surely it would have features that a liquor store would need, right? (It’s pretty close!) I was also influenced by their customer service and terrific phone support.

I started by setting up a test store from my iPad and trying out some test items. As I played with it, I started a list of questions. The more I played with entering items, making pretend sales, and watching how it handled inventory, the more I understood the basics and the more I could ask more detailed questions. I put in a phone call to ShopKeep to ask those questions. My customer service rep Kevin was very good. He answered all my questions and took all my suggestions for improvement.

Think Through How It Will Work

I spent a lot of time thinking through how the system would actually work in our store. For example, all these iPad POS systems use little icons or buttons on screen to represent each item or SKU. In our case, that would mean a product like Jack Daniels would need 5 buttons for all the different sizes, and it would be all too easy for a clerk to tap the 750ml icon when selling a 1 liter bottle (since they look close to the same size), or even the 375ml icon when the sale was actually a 1.75 liter. (375 and 175 sound similar in your head, but 375ml is about a pint, and 1.75l is about a half-gallon.) (Those of you raised with metric system, stop laughing!) That kind of mistake would be very costly. So we decided to go with a handheld scanner to read the barcodes on bottles. That way, there is no need to pick the right button. The scanner is much more accurate than a person. And quicker.

Equipment

We already had an iPad we used for our Square credit card processing. So we didn’t have to buy a new one. We did buy a snazzy new red iPad stand, a fancy receipt printer and a compatible cash drawer. Our equipment costs added up to about $1100. But a smaller business could get away with around half that by cutting out the bar code scanner, or the receipt printer and cash drawer. Technically, all you really need is the iPad.

Changeover Takes Time

To get all of our items (over 1,000) into the ShopKeep system took time. We had to take our old spreadsheet system and copy or retype the info into the format that ShopKeep wanted. We also scanned the bar code off each bottle to add that to the spreadsheet. Since we didn’t have the bar code scanner yet, we used our phones, which was a pain. I recommend you get the scanner you’re going to use and use that for your data entry.

Update: As of May 2014, ShopKeep has made importing much easier. You can import in batches, and you can update items in bulk.

Then we did a small amount of testing and went straight to using the system full time. I will admit it would have been smarter to do more testing and work out bugs without using customers as beta testers. But it was such a step forward we just couldn’t make ourselves wait any longer!

Credit Card Processing

Square and ShopKeep are not integrated. To take a payment with Square, we had to leave the ShopKeep app, and open the Square Register app to accept the payment. This isn’t good for service. So we decided to try out the credit card processing recommended by ShopKeep, a service called Payment Revolution. (ShopKeep has since acquired Payment Revolution.) Having had a very unpleasant experience with traditional merchant processing, I was very, very cautious. But Payment Revolution allows month-to-month service without a long term contract. This was enough reason for me to try it out. I knew I could return to Square at any time. The equipment cost was less than $200, which I could pay up front. No nasty unending equipment lease.

So far, the service integrates flawlessly with ShopKeep and has not hit me with any hidden monthly fees or unexpected expenses. It isn’t as up-front clear about total costs as Square was, because it is a traditional interchange-based processor. That does mean lots of variation between transactions. (Rewards cards get charged at higher rates, and so on. When I look at my monthly statement, I see 7 different rates just for the different types of MasterCard.) My sales rep with Payment Revolution could only give me an approximation of 2.4% effective rate based on our sales volume.

I had to wait for my first full-month statement to figure out what the effective rate turned out to be: 2.32%. (Total costs/total processed=effective rate.) It varies every month, based on how much volume, what type of cards customers use, etc. Then I could compare that back to Square. We were using Square’s monthly pricing, which brought our effective rate down below 2%. If only Square was an integrated payment method in ShopKeep, that would be slightly less expensive. But Square and ShopKeep see themselves, if not as direct competitors, at least as not willing to cooperate. So we’re using Payment Revolution for now. But I’ll be keeping an eye on the effective rates and the cost difference compared to Square.

Update: As of March 2015, we’re still with Payment Revolution and still satisfied. ShopKeep has just acquired Payment Revolution (bought the whole company) so I expect they’ll continue to work together very well. Payment Revolution and ShopKeep have updated to accept Apple Pay and have a special reader that works with Apple Pay and will work with the new chip credit cards as they are rolled out.

Benefits

The people working the front lines love the new system. No more marking down every item sold on paper. No need to train any new person in the arcane organization of liquor items by category. (“Is honey whiskey a straight, or a specialty?”) No need to know the category system to look up a price. No need to write down your clock-in and clock-out times. All of that is handled by ShopKeep.

Customers have commented repeatedly on the high-tech look and feel of the system. We’re also giving customers faster checkouts and fewer out of stock items with this system.

Inventory control is the single biggest benefit for us. The reorder reports point out items that are out of stock that might have been missed. The same reports each week help us catch that we have more of an item in back, when we just thought we were out of stock. Now that we’re about a month and a half into using it, the system has enough previous sales in it to provide meaningful data when planning what to order. (I can’t wait until we have a full year in there.)

Update, March 2015: Now that we have a year and a half of data, it’s a dream. We are much more accurate in managing our inventory with such detailed data.

ShopKeep has also continued to add features, like gift cards, cool email receipts, integration with MailChimp for email marketing to your customers, a better reporting dashboard and marketing dashboard, and lots more.

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