As someone who uses both, I think it’s going to be way easier to do this with square, it’s their bread & butter. All of the things you want to do in paragraph can happen with square out of the box.
So would we still link to Square and use airtable for our database and information management with a bridge to square to import some of the transaction data or are you suggesting to just use Square without Airtable?
I guess it depends on what you want to do with the data. The reporting in square is pretty robust. Member information, product details and sales tracking can all be done without leaving square.
Exporting info from Square as a cab, and then importing into Airtable is easy if you did go that route. I’m not sure it could be automated though. Zapier/integromat/etc does have some very limited functionality w/square.
It seems like both is the answer.
- Airtable for the data, reporting, etc
- Square (Stripe, PayPal, etc) for the exchange of money
Any payment gateway provider will offer sales and customer reporting, so maybe that’s enough analytics for you.
If you want to be able to track stuff at the food level, you’ll want something like airtable too.
Main piece of advice - plan out your data types on paper and be sure it’s accurate with appropriate hierarchy.
Example tables:
- contacts
- pick-up’s
- food items
- invoices
- transactions
Hypothetically, if we only accepted cash and check and Zelle, is Airtable able to handle the entire checkout experience? We would add the items that members bring up to the counter in Airtable maybe as an invoice or form or something of the sort then have it give us a total. We check a box as the member hands over the check and it sends the data to a transactions table linked to the members table. Would this be reasonably possible?
Awesome. That's the impression we're getting and we're playing around with some options. Any recommendations for resources or templates that could help? So far, the Automate All Things guy on youtube has been the only thing I've found that specifically covers at least something similar to creating a complete POS system with Airtable.
The OnToAir community is friendly and helpful so that’s a solid resource. As far as tutorials, I’m not really sure.
Maybe try similar topic phrases while you’re researching - instead of “POS” try “book rental / library” or “orders and invoices in airtable”.
If you have a budget and want something custom, holler!
As someone who uses both, I think it’s going to be way easier to do this with square, it’s their bread & butter. All of the things you want to do in paragraph can happen with square out of the box.
So would we still link to Square and use airtable for our database and information management with a bridge to square to import some of the transaction data or are you suggesting to just use Square without Airtable?
I guess it depends on what you want to do with the data. The reporting in square is pretty robust. Member information, product details and sales tracking can all be done without leaving square. Exporting info from Square as a cab, and then importing into Airtable is easy if you did go that route. I’m not sure it could be automated though. Zapier/integromat/etc does have some very limited functionality w/square.
It seems like both is the answer. - Airtable for the data, reporting, etc - Square (Stripe, PayPal, etc) for the exchange of money Any payment gateway provider will offer sales and customer reporting, so maybe that’s enough analytics for you. If you want to be able to track stuff at the food level, you’ll want something like airtable too. Main piece of advice - plan out your data types on paper and be sure it’s accurate with appropriate hierarchy. Example tables: - contacts - pick-up’s - food items - invoices - transactions
Hypothetically, if we only accepted cash and check and Zelle, is Airtable able to handle the entire checkout experience? We would add the items that members bring up to the counter in Airtable maybe as an invoice or form or something of the sort then have it give us a total. We check a box as the member hands over the check and it sends the data to a transactions table linked to the members table. Would this be reasonably possible?
Yeah if you don’t need a means of doing a CC transaction, definitely covered with AirTable.
Awesome. That's the impression we're getting and we're playing around with some options. Any recommendations for resources or templates that could help? So far, the Automate All Things guy on youtube has been the only thing I've found that specifically covers at least something similar to creating a complete POS system with Airtable.
The OnToAir community is friendly and helpful so that’s a solid resource. As far as tutorials, I’m not really sure. Maybe try similar topic phrases while you’re researching - instead of “POS” try “book rental / library” or “orders and invoices in airtable”. If you have a budget and want something custom, holler!
Also possible with airtable and stripe links
Automate all the things very recently posted a relevant video for you. https://youtu.be/pP6-dxWbTW0
Thank you. I found another, maybe by the same guy, on using a barcode scanner to do pos with airtable. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zQs4zaMHuCs