Category: Uncategorized
Designing a Gift Card?
Are you looking to design and implement a gift card for your store? If so, think about these things first!
- Pay for, and get, the original, LAYERED art setup files. This is crucial if you ever need to make changes down the road.
- Think about the back of the card. In most cases you can wrap color around the back for a true custom card.
- Think before you put locations and phone numbers on the cards. You may add a second location, move or close a location. Customers usually know where they got the card!
- Look at the proof but realize that colors look different from monitor to monitor and from the monitor to the card itself. If you are a stickler, supply the exact color information. We don’t know what “blue” means to you!
- Order in quantity. They don’t go bad!
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EMV & SelbySoft
Here is some great EMV information from Novera Payments, a valued partner of SelbySoft.
Four Frequently Asked Questions about EMV
Visa and MasterCard have begun to bring the new EMV technology to the United States. For financial institutions, this means issuing cardholders new credit cards and updating networks to process EMV data. For merchants, this will mean purchasing new EMV-capable credit card processing equipment. EMV will benefit you in the form of increased security, reduced fraud, and even expanded marketing opportunities for small businesses. Here are four frequently asked questions to help you better understand this new program.
What is an EMV Credit Card?
In light of several recent major data breaches, you may have heard the term “EMV credit card” used in news reports. When it was created, EMV stood for Europay, asterCard and Visa. It is a global standard for credit cards equipped with computer chips, as well as technology used to authenticate chip-card transactions. Simply put, this technology better protects consumers and makes it more difficult for people to counterfeit cards and commit fraudulent
activities.
What Makes EMV Cards Different?
When you look at your credit card, if you see a small metallic square, that’s a computer chip and it is what makes the card an EMV card. The basic difference between traditional credit cards with magnetic stripes and EMV cards with computer chips is that the magnetic strip cards hold static data and the computer chipped EMV cards hold dynamic data. If the magnetic stripe card is compromised, the data can be used over and over again because it doesn’t change. This makes it easy for fraudsters to profit from stolen card holder data. For the EMV card computer chip, with each transaction, a unique transaction code is generated and cannot be used again. That means if the credit card data is stolen from a single sale or transaction, the next time it is used, the card would simply be denied because the transaction code is no longer valid. This makes it much more difficult for nefarious people to profit from stolen card holder data.
What Does this Mean to Me?
For merchants and financial institutions, the switch to EMV means adding new in-store technology and internal processing systems, as well as complying with new liability regulations. For consumers, the switch to EMV means receiving and activating new credit cards and
learning new payment processes. The fundamental difference in the way the cards are used is with the magnetic stripe the consumer swipes the card through a terminal for the data to be read. With the new EMV cards, the consumer will “dip” the card in a terminal slot and wait for it to be processed. It is a little slower than the magnetic stripe swipe, so consumers will need
to get accustomed to it. Technology also exists called “contactless card reading” where the consumer taps the card against a terminal scanner to be read. However this “contactless” technology is not as prevalent in the United States as of today
When is the EMV Shift Going to Happen?
The shift to EMV technology has already started. This first issuance of EMV cards will have both technologies, magnetic stripe and the computer chip, but will ultimately transition to the computer chip only. The deadline set by major U.S. credit card issuers MasterCard,
Visa, Discover and American Express was October 1, 2015. That doesn’t mean that EVERYONE had been transitioned by then, but what it does mean is that the fraud burden shifted on that date. Basically the liability will shift to whoever is the least EMV-compliant
party in a fraudulent transaction. Novera and Selby Soft have an EMV implementation plan in place. Please click below to request more information.
www.noverapaymentsolutions.com/selbysoft
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: credit cards, emv
Protect Your Cash with Locking Lids
We know that a lot of stores don’t have room for a full safe. Or, they have one but then put multiple cash drawer inserts in them for shift changes. The trouble with that is that sometimes it is the employee that may sneak that money.
A locking lid can be a great solution to this. Locking lids seal the cash in the insert until a shift change comes up. This means you don’t have cash out in the open.
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Have A Spare?
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Training with SelbySoft
Our point of sale system does a lot. After 20 plus years of development, we have had to add feature after feature to stay current and to accommodate the industry (and customers) needs. I’m guessing that your business has had changing needs as well. I know that many of our customers have concepts that have changed with the times. With this in mind, I thought I’d address how easy it is to go back through a training session with SP-1.
Training modes: Our support guys can install a training mode on your point of sale or on your back office machine. This allows you to train staff, explore menu revisions and tweak settings with out affecting your live system. This is a great way to make sure you have live training options in your store.
Live training with our staff: Our customers frequently want to setup training sessions with our staff. Our staff is happy to do this! Our support staff can even pull a backup of your data and train your while you are not at the store. This eliminates the need to interfere with the SP-1 by SelbySoft point of sale system while training.
Questions? Call us!
Posted in POS Features, Uncategorized Tagged with: Training
5 Reasons for POS
Don’t have a Point of Sale system yet? You are missing out! Here are five reasons you need a SelbySoft POS system:
- It will make you money: Don’t believe me? Just add up every time your employees don’t charge for an up sell. How many extra shots of espresso or add on items to sandwiches are you missing? How many times does ranch dressing get added with no charge? We know it happens. It may not seem like a lot but it adds up and it’s coming out of your bottom line. Alternatively, when is the last time you paid attention to how many times your employees charge the wrong price for an item? This is just he tip of the iceberg in saving money.
- It will save you time: How much time do you spend going through tickets, entering figures in excel or updating QuickBooks? If you are spending more than 20-30 minutes on this, it’s too much time. If you don’t do any of this at all, then you are potentially missing problems that come up.
- Theft controls: It can be a touchy subject but your employees are probably stealing in some way. A good POS system will help eliminate theft by making your employees accountable for what is happening. Audit reporting will allow you to track what is happening and who is doing it. There are a number of tools available to track and identify theft in SP-1.
- Free gift & loyalty system: It’s simple – a good, free, gift and loyalty system can help you in a variety of ways. Increase speed of service, assist in cash flow, encourage loyalty and more.
- Training: Nothing is faster to train on than SP-1. Cut the time you spend training and increase the time the employee is working
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: pos, reasons
SelbySoft Sponsored Coffee Schools
School. . . I know, you want to think you are done with it right? If you are opening a new business or have an existing business and need a refresher, then it might be beneficial to head back to school – a coffee school. SelbySoft sponsors two of the most respected coffee schools in the country.
Both the American Barista & Coffee School and the Cascade Coffee Business School have the tools you need to be more successful in your coffee shop venture.
ABC is operated by Bruce and Matt Milletto. Two of the most respected people in this industry. They have classes that are designed to give you and your staff the information you need to succeed. Lessons, demonstrations and hands on practice are all part of the various courses that they offer. Everything from roasting to latte art can be learned from them and their team of expert instructors.
The CCBS is run by Ed Arvidson. Ed has over 20 years of specialty coffee business consulting experience and over 15 years of hands-on food service management experience. The courses offered by Ed an his team will help you understand business development, location search and more.
We at SelbySoft are proud to sponsor both of these organizations and can’t recommend them enough!
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: school, Schools
America’s Best Coffeehouse – New York!
Do you have what it takes to win America’s Best Coffeehouse competition?
America’s Best Coffeehouse competition is taking off for the second time! This time around it will be held on the east coast and the final competition will be held at the New York Coffee Fest.
Once again SelbySoft is proud to be the official POS sponsor for the competition. We are excited to see how the east coast represents itself. These competitors will represent the best of the best in the coffee field. Once the entries are tallied, the voting will being. Check back here or at Coffee Fest to see how it is coming along.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: abc, americas best coffeehouse, coffee fest, shows
Increasing Revenue in Your Coffee Shop
I’m always amazed by some of the techniques that our customers use to help increase revenue.
1) Sampling – It’s amazing how effective sampling can help drive sales of a specific (hopefully high profit) item. To do it right you have to track it. Before you sample an item, run a report for that specific menu item for the last month. That will tell you how often it is ordered. Divide that number by the amount of days in the month and you have an average order per day on that item. Now start the sampling of that item. After sampling for a few days, run that same report for the month after the sampling – did the numbers change? If so, continue to push it! If not, move on to a different item and then evaluate if you need to keep that item on the menu at all. Either way, you are learning more about what your customer s want.
2) Advertise – Three ways to easily do this with SP-1. First, create a coupon at the bottom of the ticket that you can hand out. Even if you don’t usually provide a receipt, this can be something that you do every once in a while and then hand out to customers. Second, use our forced modifiers to help your employees effectively push that item. Lastly, and this might require you to spend a little money, setup our order confirmation monitor and use the slide show to entice customers at the point of purchase.
Give a couple of these methods a try and let us know what works for you.
Posted in Order Entry, POS Features, Uncategorized