Apps for your Barefoot Biz

Do you have an iPhone? and iPod Touch? If you do you might want to look at the "Ring it Up" app. Good Gracious - now this is getting good!

There are two versions of this app - The "Ring it up Free" - you got it, the app is free to down load. It has all the functionality - but can not interface with an additional app and account that will enable to you process credit cards.

The paid version of "Ring it Up" can partner with another app (they recommend) that will allow you to process credit cards, live and on the spot at your events.

So where do I begin? I have "Ring it Up" on my phone. In many cases it is just what the doctor ordered. It does allow me to ring customers up a little quicker (in that I need not hand write everything) A 'ring it up" transaction REQUIRES me to to get my customer's e-mail - because I e-mail them their receipt from the iPhone. This little nugget is great in two enormous ways:

1. I love getting a customer's e-mail! So often I feel I miss such opportunity when I meet a customer at an event, have great conversation sell some wonderful titles and then they walk away never to see me again - Now I get their e-mail and they can potentially be a long term customer!

2. It makes me paperless, it's green, it's easy, and throughout the event and at event end I can run all sorts of report and then e-mail the reports to my computer - I have a constant glance of how my sales are what is selling - etc etc etc!

It's really quite cool.

Down side. You have to enter inventory into the app. I chose to go by price point instead of entering every SKU. Mine looks like this:

Vendor: Barefoot Books
Product: Paperback with CD
Price: $9.99

Vendor: Folkmanis
Product: Puppet
Price: $14.99

and so on . . . It gives me a real nice look at what I sell without being too nitty gritty.

Other downside is that if you do a large event and have lots of sales (how could there be a downside to that ?) the sending off all the e-mails can take a lot of time. You have to send them one at a time . . . Additionally I have not found a way to "export" the emails I collect on location - but rather had to e-mail then print a sales report and manually enter them into my e-mail account ready for the the next e-campaign.

Looking Ahead - adding on a credit card processing service is music to my ears - I can think of no better solution when at large scale events (or any event really) than to be able to process credit cards right there on the spot. There are additional fees, apps and services to investigate. I could not justify the cost for myself in the summer which is my slow season, but when fall/holiday hits I will certainly sign right up.

With the new Barefoot credit card acceptance terms - we are now required to collect the customer's full billing info in order to process cards through Barefoot - might as well do it electronically on the spot!

If you don't have an iPhone . . . well, sell some books and buy yourself one and write it off at the end of the year!

"There's an App for that"