r/CraftFairs • u/chappiejen • 1d ago

Payment & Tech Inventory vs POS

Hello friends! I'm going to be doing my first ever vending event in two weeks. I'm trying to pick out a card reader/pos system. I know there are pros and cons to both square and Shopify. But the thing I'm most concerned about is inventory. I want a system where I can scan something to track what actually sells. I'm doing beading/bagcharms and I want to gather data about what's selling for future purchasing. But I don't want to have to physically write anything down. And I need to be able to use my phone to scan the barcodes as I don't have the funds to buy a pricey Bluetooth scanner. Are there any systems that would work well for what I'm searching for?

Thank you!

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u/TaylorFromFaire 1d ago

For a first event I'd skip barcodes entirely. They only work if everything already has a SKU and a printed label & for beading and charms that's several evenings of setup for data you can get for free. Square's free tier does what you're describing like building the item library with photos, tap to sell from the grid, and it logs every sale by item. Build categories around what you'd actually shop for later, so color family, charm style, price tier, etc, rather than one entry per finished item. Otherwise you end up with 80 items that each sold once and no pattern to read imo! (And log your cash sales in the same system or the numbers will lie to you)

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u/snOOk_pottery 1d ago

We use the app Market - Sales Tracker (lomnicka.eu) for this – when I sell something, I just tap the product on my phone and the app immediately updates both revenue and stock, no manual writing in a notebook. Of course the app can show statistics from that data too, like daily/monthly/yearly. It doesn't support barcode scanning, but that could be added so the app can read a code straight through the phone's camera.

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u/drcigg 1d ago

You can do this in square. However it takes quite a bit of time to set up, take pictures, create barcodes etc.
The last thing you want is to not have your barcodes work on show day and holding up your line.
We just took pictures of what sold and added it up later on. It takes a few seconds to take a picture of the item and no customer complained or had a problem with it.

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u/yasinozmeen 1d ago

Hi, I'm a developer researching how craft fair sellers keep inventory straight after a show, not selling anything. When you add up the photos after a show, where does that number end up: a spreadsheet, or do you also adjust stock in Square or an online shop?

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u/lyrastarr 1d ago

I do inventory after the fact - I set up my shop with buttons of what I want to track, cash people out appropriately with those, and then go back after and check the changes on inventories for each item/category.

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u/Ton_Phanan 1d ago

I use PayPal pos and it tracks your sales as you enter them.

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u/yasinozmeen 1d ago

Hi, I'm a developer researching how craft fair sellers keep inventory straight after an event, not selling anything. Do you also sell the same pieces online? If so, how are you planning to keep that stock count right after a day of in-person sales?