10 Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Farm POS
As an Independent Farmer, you're focused on providing the freshest Farm products to your local community, which means capturing sales shouldn’t be a hassle. With an all-in-one point-of-sale (POS) solution you can sell to customers anywhere, anytime, with any form of payment. Capture every sale to maximize your profits and streamline the Buyer experience. To ensure you’re set up for success, ask yourself these 10 essential questions before choosing a POS for your Farm business.
Does the POS you are using / evaluating…
Accept Any Form of Payment?
Offering multiple payment options increases Buyer conversion and offers more flexibility for prospective customers. Whether it is a swipe, tap, insert, mobile wallet, cash or check, your POS should streamline purchasing and enable your Farm to decrease the barriers between Buyers and their choice of products. Your Farm should present the following secure methods at check out with your POS Reader:
Credit/Debit: 97% of Buyers prefer credit or debit. Ensure you can Swipe, Insert, or Tap payments instantly with a mobile reader.
Mobile Wallets: Tap your mobile device with Apple or Google pay to offer Buyers a contactless payment method from their Smartphone or Smartwatch.
Cash: Accept cash payments with POS feature that will automatically calculate change owed to your customers.
Check: Fill out check details such as account and routing numbers at time of checkout to keep records up to date.
Listen: Success, Security, and Simplicity with Barn2Door Point of Sale
2. Support Multiple Price Sheets?
Farmers often sell their products to a variety of customer types - including retail, wholesale and private buying groups. Your choice of POS should support the ability to effortlessly switch between different price sheets and packaging options for your Buyers - whether you’re on-Farm, at the Market, or in your Delivery vehicle. A POS for your Farm business should support all of these use cases effortlessly.
Toggle your Price Sheets. With the Barn2Door POS, your Farm can readily access pricing and packaging for different Buyer types with the click-of-a-button. For example, you may sell ground beef for $12 per pound at the Farmer's market, but also offer a wholesale price for bulk purchase by local chefs (when delivering to restaurants). This ensures you are maximizing the profitability of each Farm product. Whether wholesale, retail or private party, having a variety of pricing sheets on your POS is crucial to save you and the Buyer time during checkout.
3. Offer Real-Time Inventory Sync?
Any POS that you choose must track your Farm sales - online and in-person (POS) - with real-time inventory sync to ensure you know the exact quantities that remain available. This feature is critical to manage your product sales across all channels - retail, wholesale and private customers - to see instantly what is in stock, out of stock, or low in volume. Your POS should make it easier to sell any number of units for any price, and still accurately capture inventory numbers (versus reconciling manually).
POS On The Go: Farmers are able to manage inventory seamlessly with the Barn2Door Point of Sale (POS) App, available on any Android device, iPhone, or iPad. No matter where you are running (e.g. the feed store, deliveries, school pick up) your Farm is always able access your inventory from your Smartphone. And, any sales, online or in-person, are instantly deprecated in real-time, eliminating any guesswork about product availability.
4. Support Mobile Selling Anywhere?
No matter where you're selling, from on-Farm to Markets to the back of your Farm vehicle, your choice of POS should allow you to capture every sale. As long as you have your Smartphone and POS Reader you should be able to ring up products on the spot. You should be able to offer a smooth checkout for customers anywhere and make more money.
Never “Sell Out”: Successful Farmers bring extra product to local pickups and deliveries in case Buyers want a couple extra packs of ground beef, gallon of milk or a dozen eggs. With the Barn2Door POS, as long as the product is on hand, even if it's sold out online, Farmers can still capture the sale in person.
5. Offer Sell by Weight or Fixed Price?
Farmers often sell their products by weight to maximize profitability; this is common for proteins and produce in a variety of quantities and sizes. Your choice of POS should enable your Farm to sell items at a fixed price or sell by weight, while still managing inventory counts separately. This is a particular challenge for many POS devices designed only to support fixed price items, without the concept of tracking weight and units separately. To ensure your Farm can optimize margins and adapt to any product type, look for a POS that supports sell by weight and still automatically tracks your inventory count.
Sell-By-Weight: The Barn2Door POS enables your Farm to capture the full value of every product if you choose to sell by weight (e.g. 1.25 lbs, 1.75 lbs, 2.0 lbs). Your Farm can effortlessly swap a product from Fixed Price to Sell by Weight on the Barn2Door POS, without impacting your inventory. The Barn2Door sell-by-weight feature will automatically multiply weight by price per pound for the Farmer at time of checkout, while keeping your inventory count accurate.
6. Accept Store Credits?
Store Credits provide Farmers with upfront cash flow and Buyers with ultimate flexibility, acting as a digital currency that can be redeemed anytime during checkout. When searching for an ecommerce solution for your business, look for a solution where Store Credits can be utilized both online and in person with the POS device. Provide easy access to high quality food for Buyers and secure more upfront cash for your Farm.
Store Credits: With Barn2Door, many successful Farmers advertise Store Credits as a redeemable gift for holidays, birthdays, special events, or thank you gifts. Other Farms leverage Store Credits in a “Buy-Down” model (e.g. CSA) to sell product upfront (e.g. $500), then empowering Buyers to curate their own purchases, online or in-person (on-Farm or at Markets). Both are powerful methods to build a base of loyal Buyers.
7. Offer Free Email Collection?
Unfortunately, many Farmers opt for a POS reader that doesn’t actually provide unfettered access to their own customers’ details; rather you are compelled to 'rent' your own data. Look for a POS device that enables you to capture customers’ contact information for free. Your customer list should be yours to keep (even if you cancel an account). Your customer list should grow organically with every POS transaction, saving you hours of work. Then, your Farm will have an ever-expanding email list to send routine newsletters, helping your Farm stay top-of-mind and fuel more orders.
Free Email Capture. The Barn2Door POS provides free email capture at checkout that enables Buyers to opt-in to your Farm marketing efforts. These contacts automatically sync to customer lists in your Barn2Door Account, can be assigned to different groups, and integrate directly to MailChimp (for automated campaigns).
Read: Farm Email Marketing: Best Practices to Increase Orders
8. Support Flexible Tipping Options?
Many Farmers may feel uncomfortable asking Buyers for a tip, however, most customers want to provide additional support to the Farms they support. Look for a POS reader that provides your Farm with a range of Tipping Options to customize the amount and language to accommodate different use cases. Several POS readers do not provide sufficient flexibility for Tips, resulting in less cash for your Farm or worse a tax liability. For instance, some states consider Tips as taxable wages that must be paid to employees (with an audit trail).
Tipping Flexibility: The Barn2Door POS offers three different preset Tip amounts (3%, 5%, or 10%) that can be modified, or a custom Tip at checkout (any $ amount). Alternate Tipping language is also available, allowing Farmers to choose between a variety of different descriptions such as Donation, Gift, Help Cover Fees, and Tip. As a result, your Farm can choose the best alternative for your business based on your unique circumstances.
9. Allow Custom Item and Discount Creation?
Several POS options in the market are restricted to preset inventory and/or limited by item counts maintained online. When evaluating your POS options, search for a solution that enables your Farm to create and sell items ad-hoc (e.g. sourdough, baked goods), that may not be available in your online inventory. The same is true of creating and applying discounts for valued customers. You need a POS that can accommodate a range of use cases that enables your Farm to conduct business without unreasonable constraints.
Ad-Hoc Sales & Discounts. At the click-of-a- button Farmers using the Barn2Door POS can add a custom item to a Buyer’s cart (and choose to make it taxable or not). The same is true with respect to creating Discounts that a Farmer may want to apply to honor veterans, retirees, teachers or any Buyer they value. With the Barn2Door POS, your Farm has complete control to conduct business as you see fit, while maintaining an audit trail of all your sales.
10. Built For Farmers?
Today, the POS options available in the market are primarily designed for consumer-products (e.g. apparel, jewelry) service-based businesses (e.g. barber shop, nail salons), or quick-serve-restaurants (e.g. coffee shops, taco trucks). Solutions catering to those industries are optimized for a different class of products and inventory. They are designed for an entirely different set of use cases, inventory considerations, and Buyer expectations.
Built for Farmers. The Barn2Door POS is designed exclusively for Farmers who sell products regularly consumed by people and purchased on a recurring basis (e.g. Proteins, Produce, Dairy). Farm products are perishable, sold by weight or fixed price, sold to different types of buyers, available on different schedules, and fungible when it comes to inventory sizes and quantities. The product roadmap for improving the Barn2Door POS is informed by Farmers (like you), who share their requests with our team to continue improving its capabilities.
Conclusion: Choose a Point-of-Sale (POS) tailored to meet your Farm’s Needs
When evaluating Point-of-Sale (POS) solutions available in the market, your Farm has a lot of alternatives to consider. By asking yourself these 10 essential POS questions you can ensure you are streamlining your Farm operations, maximizing your profits, simplifying inventory management and enhancing Buyer experiences.
The Barn2Door point-of-sale (POS) gives your Farm the ability to make decisions that are best for your business with the flexibility to operate your business as you see fit.
Barn2Door offers software for Independent Farmers to make more money, ditch the office work and look like a pro. If you’re curious to learn more, watch this 5-minute video.
Table of Features to Consider When Purchasing a Farm POS
When evaluating specific features prior to purchasing a POS for your Farm business, see this Table below for reference.
| Feature | Barn2Door POS Capability | Other POS Alternatives |
|---|---|---|
| Accept Any Form of Payment? | Accepts Credit/Debit (Swipe, Insert, Tap), Mobile Wallets (Apple/Google Pay), Cash (with automatic change calculation), and Check. | Most POS solutions accept Credit and Debit Cards. Some accept Cash, but do not support Check. Many legacy POS options still do not support Mobile Wallets. |
| Support Multiple Price Sheets? | Effortlessly switch between different price sheets (retail, wholesale, private groups) for different Buyer types with a click-of-a-button. | No other POS solution to our knowledge supports Multiple Price Sheets. |
| Offer Real-Time Inventory Sync? |
Tracks sales online and in-person (POS) with real-time inventory sync across all channels (retail, wholesale, private), accessible via the mobile app.
This is a patent-pending feature of Barn2Door. |
Most POS solutions struggle with real-time inventory sync in the absence of tracking Units separately from Weight.
No other POS solution to our knowledge supports real-time inventory tracking across multiple price sheets. |
| Support Mobile Selling Anywhere? | Allows ring-up of products anywhere with a Smartphone and POS Reader, supporting sales on-Farm, at Markets, or during Deliveries. | Most POS solutions will support sales anywhere there is Smartphone reception. |
| Offer Sell by Weight or Fixed Price? |
Supports selling items at a fixed price or by weight, automatically calculating price and accurately tracking inventory counts.
This is a patent-pending feature of Barn2Door. |
No other POS solution to our knowledge supports the ability to toggle an Item from Fixed Price to Sell by Weight while maintaining Unit counts separately. |
| Accept Store Credits? | Utilizes Store Credits both online and in-person with the POS device for flexible redemption and upfront cash flow (e.g., Buy-Down model / CSA). | Very few solutions offer the ability to use Store Credits online and in-person at a POS. |
| Offer Free Email Collection? | Provides free email capture at checkout for Buyers to opt-in, automatically syncing contacts to customer lists in the Barn2Door Account and integrating with MailChimp. |
Most POS solutions charge an additional fee to access emails captured in-person.
In some cases, some POS solutions offer no ability to extract or download customer data if the Account is canceled. |
| Support Flexible Tipping Options? | Offers flexible tipping with three preset amounts (3%, 5%, 10%) that can be modified, a custom amount, and alternate language (Donation, Gift, Help Cover Fees, Tip). | Several POS solutions allow tipping percentage adjustments; however, to our knowledge, no other POS offers alternative tipping language. |
| Allow Custom Item and Discount Creation? | Enables the creation and sale of ad-hoc custom items (taxable or not) and the creation and application of discounts for valued customers. | Several POS solutions support ad-hoc item creation at checkout; however, few support ad-hoc discounts. |
| Built for Farmers? | Designed exclusively for Farmers selling perishable products (Proteins, Produce, Dairy), supporting selling by weight or fixed price, different Buyer types, and informed by Farmer feedback. | Most POS solutions are designed for consumer products, services, and quick-serve restaurants. Only a few POS solutions for Farmers exist today, and they serve limited use cases. |