A New Charge Terminal and Organization? We'll See

Happy St Valentine's Day Eve to all of you. I hope you have a wonderful Tuesday. DH picked up ribs for Sunday dinner and they're taking over the refrigerator. It's basically because he has no room left on his side of the refrigerator. But he's intruding onto my side, and that's not going to last for long. I'll be working on that tomorrow. Grrrr - LOL. 

I really hate it when DH intrudes on my morning 
space, and he's here making noise on his computer 
in the other corner of a rather small room. He was 
also attempting to carry on a conversation with 
me, but NO. I squashed that quickly. I have a 
swimming pool calling my name and have to get 
my blog posted before I can leave. 

I set up our new charge terminal at the shop yesterday, heart-in-hand. It's always a bit frightening when you have to switch over from one major piece of equipment to another. There are several items that are essential in the lifeline of any shop, and being able to accept and process credit cards is a major factor to success these days. With bank cards so prevelent, and on-line checking so common, everyone has plastic of one type or another and rarely carries cash any more. We do our share of cash sales, stopped taking checks more than two decades ago, and still accept cash - although not many people use it. 

We haven't accepted paper checks for more than a decade 
now, possibly more than two decades. We operate with 
cash or card only, and most people are using credit or 
debit cards these days. Having a sales terminal that accepts 
these forms of payments is essential. 

Especially since COVID, the use of cash has diminished. It hasn't stopped - I doubt it ever truly will. But it did drop in use, as more and more people switched over to plastic payments instead. So my new terminal will get a lot of work. I was able to review the process of payment with DH a bit yesterday, although he's rarely using the terminal or interacting with customers. Still, it will be up to him to batch the charges at the end of the day, so I'll have to write up some instructions for that process today so that he can do it efficiently tomorrow. 

I treasure my "alone time" in the mornings, and having 
DH awake and determined to populate my time with 
his conquest of Middle Earth (lots of battles while he 
slays whatever creatures are threatening the "free 
peoples") is intruding on my nice, quiet morning. 
I'm wrapping this up and heading to the swimming 
pool and my inner thoughts. ARGH! 

At 4:45 pm yesterday, he took it into his head to start rearranging our product bins in the back shelving. This is where we get the products for our customers, so knowing where each bin is located is rather essential. I left at 6:15 pm and he was still working on his project. He got home almost a half-hour after me, grumpy that I didn't stay with him. No. No reason for me to stay, it was his project. So, I went home and he grumped home about half an hour later. Well, it's time for me to get moving. Now he apparently couldn't sleep, so he's up at 4:00 am and intruding on my quiet time. GRRRR. But I have a swimming pool waiting for me which is a positive thing. Have an excellent Monday and I'll be back tomorrow. Slava Ukraini and חיים למען ישראל.

New Equipment - Are We Jumping Off a Cliff? We Don't Have a Choice

I received my new credit card terminal early yesterday morning. It's lucky I was there before 9:00 am because the FedEx driver was at my door at 9:15 am and I don't unlock my doors until 10:00. He delivered a large white box which, when I opened it, contained a much smaller brown corrugated box and some documentation. There was mo empty space in the shipping box than there was product. An amazing waste of cardboard. But, that's neither here nor there - it just irritated me. 

This is a photo of our new credit 
card terminal, the Ingenico Moov 5000 
(4G Wireless). It takes up approximately 
the same amount of counter space as 
our last terminal, and most of the 
operations are quite similar as well. 
I think it will be a minimal learning 
curve. 

The phone instructions said to plug it in to charge immediately and allow it to charge for up to 16 hours. Well! OK ... I set it up oh DH's desk since he doesn't work on Thursday, and plugged it in. Glancing through the directions, I was a bit concerned - how is this going to communicate with the internet? How will I be able to run charges through? I decided to phone customer service later in the day after I had a chance to catch up on my work, and to thoroughly read through their directions. 

Customer Service is a tough way to make a living, but 
most of the time, I've had great people to chat with on 
a variety of issues over the years. I was a customer 
trainer in one of my jobs way back when, and it's not 
an easy thing to do. My main concern with the new 
charge terminal was how it would work with our customer's 
credit cards and how we would retrieve our end-of-day 
reports, etc. But it seems like those will actually operate 
almost identically to what we currently do. So, we'll see, right? 

Around 2:00 pm, I settled down and contacted Customer Service, asking my questions. I didn't have my account number handy, but I had a case number that had been assigned from the previous agent, and that worked well. The new agent was able to access my case immediately, and reassured me that since the new machine has a SIM card, it was no problem. Just plug the machine in and it's ready to go. He also gave me the link to look over the operational manuals (2-4 pages in length - WHOOT). I'll print those out today so that Chickie and DH can refer to them if necessary. It seems pretty easy, though. 

New equipment can always be a bit scary at first, even 
though it seems quite easy. I'll download and print the 
small user's manuals today, and those will be good 
reference for Chickie and DH if they have any questions in 
the future when I'm not there to answer them. I think 
it will be quite easy for them, though. 

So, since it seems like it will work well, I'll set it up on Monday morning and use it beginning Monday. That will allow me to train DH in it on Monday, and train Chickie in it on Tuesday, leaving the two of them to "swim in the deep end" on their own for Wednesday. I'm actually a bit excited. It will be fun to have one piece of updated equipment in our mausoleum of a store. In essence, we're an equipment graveyard - so much of what we have is 10, 25, 25 or even 50 years old (including the staff - LOL). It's time to feel younger once again. So, as I head off into my day of minor cooking, some serious housecleaning, and a relaxing evening, I wish all of you a wonderful Friday. I'll be back tomorrow to wrap up the week. Until then, stay safe, be kind, Slava Ukraini and חיים לישראל.