We moved from paper record to Quick Books POS.
It makes things pretty easy, though isn't as easy to reconfigure and match to old hardware (like our receipt printer) as some POS systems. This is a problem especially when you're cobbling together hardware from various source.
Our Departments match those of Bici Centro and work well.

My only comment is following up on the cost - the TechSoup cost for QB Point of Sale is currently $80. It does take a while to get approved by TechSoup if you're not already registered.  As far as categories that will let you get the donation, keeping the "education" part and calling the "service" part "advocacy" or similar (which it is) would probably keep you in the clear. If your org has a fiscal sponsor, you can ask them about getting it through them.
Our register drawer and receipt printer came from a shop that went out of business (sadly, there's probably something near you).
And PC came from a volunteer. It was a pretty sad machine, but we stripped it of all extras, and since we only use it for the QuickBooks stuff, it does fine.

Also, on a security note, we don't actually use the the cash drawer to keep money in. The drawer has a switch in the back that opens the drawer. This led to some theft last summer. This put the shop in a pretty crappy spot. So, until we disable that switch, whoever is the shift leader at the shop keeps the cash envelope on person, and at the end of the day deposits it in a safe. (Volunteer/staff would be put at risk if it's widely known that each Friday after bike sales day they are carrying a bunch of cash down a dark path, late at night, on their bike). We have a volunteer pick up the cash from the safe in the daytime and deposit to the bank.   We don't do the safe-drop quite as consistently in the winter when there aren't large-ish amounts of bike-sale money.

Working pretty well so far. We have our youth mechanics (ages 12 and up), use the cash register to make sales and input donated bikes. (we individually input the donated bikes when they come in, as 'inventory', but not the used parts). Its easy and fun - but you do need someone supervising to make sure its done correctly (hard to modify transaction after the fact with QB POS), and setting it up so it exports into QuickBooks takes a little accounting knowledge.
 
That's it.
- Colin

--
Colin Dixon
Phoenix Bikes
Barcroft Park
4200 S. Four Mile Run Drive
Arlington, VA
www.phoenixbikes.org

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 5:53 PM, Dave Bourgeois <stdaveb@gmail.com> wrote:
We track money using computers.  This mail is kind of long and
rambling on that topic, so skip it if that doesn't sound interesting.

Caveat:  I had a career as a software engineer.  None of what I
describe here involved writing code, but I did spend considerable time
configuring hardware and software.  Read on if that doesn't scare you
off.

Last year Bici Centro acquired a departmentalized cash register, on
our accountant's advice.  I set it up and everybody pretty much dove
right in and used it.  Departments are:

* New Parts (taxable.  We get from J&B, a distributer)
* Used Parts (taxable.  We strip bikes for these.  Some will argue
these are not taxable.  Consult your accountant.)
* Bikes (taxable.  Bikes could be "Used Parts", but we wanted to keep
more accurate statistics on them.)
* Cash donations (non-taxable)

About once a week, I would generate a Z report which totals sales by
department since last report.  I then would manually enter that info
into QuickBooks (QB) accounting software and deposit the cash register
money in the bank.  Once a quarter, QB tells me how much sales tax to
pay to the government.  The hard part is setting up QB.  I had help
with that.  You could forego QB and keep your books by some simpler
and/or cheaper method of your choosing.  We inherited QB because we're
fiscally sponsored by the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition, a nonprofit
advocacy group that already keeps its books that way.

I can recommend this approach to most community bike shops.

We would handle credit cards by PayPal.  This requires a few hours of
hacking to set up, and it is generally a pain to use.  Customers who
don't have a PayPal account (almost all of them) have to type in their
detailed CC billing info into a web form on a PC.  It takes a few
minutes.  This sucks, but some people will only buy stuff if they can
charge it.  As a minus, this system is separate from the cash register
and requires separate accounting.  PayPal does not make this easy,
does not integrate well with QB or any popular accounting software, to
my knowledge.

Then I recently replaced all that (except QB)...

I went off the deep end, and Bici Centro acquired the QuickBooks Point
of Sale system.  This basically turns a PC into a cash register on
steroids, connecting to a cash drawer, receipt printer, credit card
reader, and barcode scanner.  This system keeps very detailed records
of our sales, tracks inventory, handles credit cards simply, and
automatically sends all the info to QB for accounting.  I hope the
time and money invested up front in this thing will lead to less
drudgery later.  I hope the level of sales detail recorded will allow
us to manage our business better and write more persuasive grant
applications.  I hope it will be easy for our volunteers to use.  Time
will tell if I am overly hopeful.  It is certainly possible.

How much does all of this cost?

Departmentalized cash register: ~$250.
PayPal: ~3% transaction fees
QuickBooks accounting software from TechSoup: $45
QuickBooks Point of Sale system:
* Donated PC & monitor: free
* QuickBooks POS 6.0 from TechSoup: $80
* QuickBooks POS hardware bundle (cash drawer, credit card reader,
etc) with 501(c)3 discount: ~$500
* credit card processing: ~$30/mo + ~1-2% transaction fees

I would have used open source software, but nothing I evaluated
promised to do the trick as well as what we bought.  I'd love to hear
of your successes that prove me wrong.

If your nonprofit purchases software, consider joining TechSoup.  They
act as a low-cost middleman, connecting companies that donate software
with nonprofits that receive it.  The only trick is to place yourself
carefully in a category, as we don't fit neatly into their existing
ones, and registering in the wrong category will disqualify you from
receiving useful donations.  As a bike education and repair center, we
are categorized as "Other Instructions and Training Activities".

I could provide more detail, if anybody is interested.  I would also
be happy to share data files if anybody wants to emulate our setup.

Dave Bourgeois
Treasurer, Bici Centro of Santa Barbara


On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 2:55 PM,  <veganboyjosh@gmail.com> wrote:
> at Community Cycles, we've had a cash register for a while, but no one ever
> knew how to use it except to hit the "cash" button, and use it as a
> glorified cash box. over the course of the 6 months after we bought the
> thing, several people read through the manual, took it home to play with,
> and no one could ever figure it out. one week, two people decided to take on
> the project of figuring it out. they worked on it for about 1 hour each day,
> and finally figured out how to enter sales, how to specify that some sales
> were taxed and others not, and most of the workings of the thing, so that we
> now run all transactions through the register. we even run sales reports at
> end of day, which zeroes out the drawer. we have yet to have a day where our
> sales number from the register matches the amount of cash in the drawer, but
> we're getting closer.  the register we got also allows us to check during
> the day to see how much cash/check/charge we should have in the drawer. this
> is helpful for super busy days, or days when there's a lot of people in the
> office...if we find a lot of cash in the drawer, we'll take it out, just to
> make sure it doesn't walk away on it's own...
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 1:48 PM, Stuart O Anderson <soa@ri.cmu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> At Free Ride we used a paper log for a long time, but it was never very
>> accurate.  We bought a used cash register, despite some concerns about how
>> difficult it would be to learn to use and maintain.  In retrospect, I think
>> it was a really good decision for us - we do a much better job of tracking
>> our cash flow now, and there's never been much of an issue learning to use
>> it.
>>
>> Stuart
>>
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