5 Tips to Make Your Square Reader Work Harder for YOU! | Etsy Small Business Owner | Vendor Markets

hi my name is samantha thank you so much for joining me today today's video is all about your square reader let's see how to make it work better for you let's get into the video stay tuned to the end for a bonus tip number six so i have my square reader set up with etsy i ordered it through my etsy account so the square reader itself did not cost me anything this little guy right here if i want to upgrade to one of the square readers that you stick the card in rather than swipe then there is a fee for that i want to say it's 70 and then since you're not paying for the card reader you're paying per transaction and the fee is 2.6 plus 10 cents every transaction so it's not um hugely significant but it is a little bit every time so here are the five features that i have found that you need to make sure that you're using to make your square reader work harder for you the first uh setting that you need to make sure you're using is adding the sales tax i have been using etsy for two years so i've never had to collect sales tax it just does it for me within the application and collects the payment and when i started doing in-person events i don't know you're thinking about so many other things i didn't even think about it for my first couple events so it's definitely gonna hurt me in the long run but find out what your state tax is so i live in virginia and the state tax is 5.3 percent so where how you change this in square i will show you on the screen here you go to more than settings checkout taxes and then there's a little plus and you can add the taxes so i also have done shows in maryland and the maryland tax is six percent so i have two different options and when you turn on the uh sales tax make sure that you click the button that says um apply tax to all items and before you have your first customer go ahead and test it out and click on an item hit checkout and make sure that the tax is added sometimes i don't know if it's like updating inventory on etsy that it ends up not matching up and then the sales tax doesn't get added but make sure that before your first customer of the day that your sales tax is added you don't need to be adding this cost and then as far as collecting cash so um if the total was five dollars and then with tax it's 6.25 you can either just say it's five dollars and then it will hurt you in the long run by not collecting the sales tax or you can just say it's six dollars you can round down or you can say it's seven dollars i found that most people are okay with you rounding up if you just tell them hey it's 6 25 but i don't have any change can we just do seven most people are right with it if they're not just round down and suck it up for the next transaction or add taxes into your pricing so if taxes on average is uh five percent five or six percent add five percent to all of your costs and that will cover the tax the second feature that you need to be using in square is removing your address unless you have a physical business address if it's your house or it is um like your home then you do not want that address showing up on people's receipts you want to protect your uh information so how you shut that off is you go under more settings account and the business information then you scroll up and there will be a little swipe box and you will swipe over and say i have a mobile business and this way it will not show your address when you are doing a transaction what it will do is it will show the gps coordinates of where you are when you did that transaction which they already know because they were at that event with you on the same note in the same section as settings my third tip is to add your email website local logo and socials to that same area this way when a customer gets your receipts they will have all your information and they can come back to you and buy from you again the fourth tip i have for you is to make sure you're constantly updating your inventory i make sure to update so what i do is i take an inventory of all my items before i go to a craft fair and um go into etsy and make sure that all my totals are correct and then you sink your etsy to the square before the event and then i also like to sink it halfway through the day just in the off chance that i don't know napkins with bunnies on them somebody buys them in person and then someone goes to order them online the same day and you only have one you need to make sure that you're constantly updating your inventory and it just takes a second to refresh it you go into the etsy app more sell a square and then hit sync with square and just make sure that it's constantly updated my fifth and biggest tip is to turn on your tipping what you do is you go under more settings checkout and then tipping and what happens is when someone goes to check out you've probably seen it before if you've been a customer at an ice cream shop or any food restaurants most of them have square readers and they flip it around to you and it says on the top like zero percent ten percent five percent all the tip options so turn that on why you should do this is it's not going to help you with cash transactions right unless that they it's 6 25 and they pay seven right and you get a couple extra cents what the tipping is going to help you do is it's not necessarily going to make you more money but it's going to cover your costs so if the credit card cost is 2.6 and then 10 10 cents per transaction this is an average i've seen about like 50 cents to a dollar fifty per transaction so if you turn on the tipping and one out of every 10 people gives you a tip of 10 then you've covered all your credit card fees for the day that makes this guy free so turn on your tipping i have not had an event yet that at least one person doesn't tip me so if one person tips you every event then it will cover your credit card cost and even if it doesn't cover your credit card costs it will make a dent so that you are paying less in fees so for example i've been using my square reader since april i have accrued 17.60 66 cents in fees from square i have made 27 dollars and 85 cents in tips so that means i've made 10 more than what the fees are so this also covers my etsy fees so definitely turn on the tips not to make more money to just make it so that you don't have to include that in your costs like the fee is already taken care of and trust me it works and if someone doesn't want to tip you they don't have to there's an option that's a zero percent tip and it's totally fine if people don't want to tip you if you do go a whole event with no tipping i'm sure the next event two people will tip you so it's not a big deal just turn it on if someone wants to use it they can use it if not they don't have to so that's why i have the tip turned on and the signature so that they're already looking at my phone to sign and then it shows the tip and i say like there's an optional tip at the top so if you feel guilty about that don't because you're not taking that money that money is just cover your fees which makes you a better business owner because then you're not having to pay for things that aren't even doing anything for you so my last bonus tip is to add favorites to your square reader how you do this is on the main screen you scroll over to favorites and you hold on to it and you add the items that sell the most this makes it really quick for checkout because you can go ahead and click that someone bought a napkin someone bought a face mask someone bought a scrunchie and it helps you add up your total rather than typing in and searching through your library and also making sure that your etsy product photos are updated so that when you have your favorites it's an image so that you can see very easily what every product is thank you so much for joining me today if you have any tips to share with us about how to make your square reader work harder for you please leave them down below and don't forget to like and subscribe have a great day thank you so much you

Channel: Samantha Tansley

Views: 54,212

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Id: -kLegY1kVtg

Length: 8min 27sec (507 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 24 2021