book selling at conferences, how done?

[NaphtaliPress]

Long time since I've been to any conference (pre cashless exchanges). Is book selling at conferences, where vendors like RHB sell books, still cash or is there a cashless way by phone everyone can use? What are folks experiences? I need to figure something out for our church's conference coming up in a few weeks.

 

[Jake]

Haven't specifically paid attention to booksellers at conferences, but Sqaure is the most popular option for taking credit cards. You get charged a fee of 2.6% + $0.10 per transaction with just a free account and a cheap piece of hardware you either plug in to your phone or connect via bluetooth. There may be a free one you can get from them, but you can also pick up a cheap reader at Best Buy or similar.

You can also take cash equivalents for less fees using something like Venmo or Cash app and a QR code people scan. But not everyone is familiar with these, but Square will take any credit or debit card.

 

[Polanus1561]

Am I missing something? Why is this your responsibility as the host?

 

[NaphtaliPress]

Am I missing something? Why is this your responsibility as the host?

In this instance, RHB has kindly offered a book table for our conference and will ship books down for it. However for the two day event, RHB won't be at the conference the second day, so any leftovers we need to handle the sales and square up with them later.

 

[Deleted member 13126]

At a pastor's fraternal in Jacksonville, Florida, this year, Solid Ground Christian Books came up from Port St. Lucie and I believe they were using Square to process electronic payments. It was a small device connected to their phone, if I recall correctly. Similarly, at a family conference this year RHB accepted both cash and electronic payments (completed via phone). As a customer, I prefer a cashless, digital option.

 

[Mr. Great-Heart]

I would also recommend Square, but if you are just standing it up for a one off, one day event, and it's the 2nd day of a two day conference and most folks may have already made their purchases on day 1.. might not be worth the time and effort.

You could probably get by with having a PayPal, Zelle, and Venmo account available for transfers because if someone doesn't have cash on them, they will generally at least have a PayPal account (and probably Zelle and Venmo, depending on their age). Not the greatest customer experience but it might be good enough. Venmo has a QR code that you should just have constantly displayed on a device so people can quickly scan it and make their payment. Not sure about the others.

Using a personal account is also not ideal in terms of maintaining supervision and control over the sales proceeds, but if RHB will know exactly how much should be paid to them based on what was sold, then that is a good mitigating control.

 

[NaphtaliPress]

Thanks all. I created a qrcode for a paypal enter your own price link. That or cash will have to suffice. RHB left it up to us what to do with the leftovers; ship back at our expense or retain and dispose of as we see fit (again balance of books our expense).

 

[davejonescue]

Also, you might want to check in your local area. I think people can rent ATM's for their events. Looking at it, it seems the fees are fairly low ranging from $50-$150 a month, so it might be feasible to do for a 2 day event. Dont really know anything about though.