“The goal of ShopKeep POS is to provide store operators with competitive advantages that older retail cash registers cannot offer,” says Jason Richelson, CEO and Founder of ShopKeep POS. “That’s why we’ve forged partnerships with PayPal and Perka, to provide tremendous added value to both merchants and their customers.”

Merchants who use ShopKeep POS are more efficient than those who use traditional cash registers to manage their business, partially due to the increased automation of store processes. For $49 per month, ShopKeep POS rings sales, processes credit cards and mobile payments, prints receipts, and prints orders remotely. Merchants can also manage sales in real time on their mobile smartphone, track inventory and customers, as well as view ClearInsight(TM) reports.

For those using both ShopKeep POS and Perka, loyalty programs become more successful with higher customer engagement and repeat visits. Here’s how it works:

— Merchants sign up for monthly subscriptions with ShopKeep POS and Perka and set up custom loyalty programs through a personal Perka advisor.
– Customers check in using the free Perka smartphone app or via SMS text messaging from any mobile device.
– At that time, the ShopKeep POS system alerts the cashier to the customer’s arrival, provides the customer’s name and displays the frequency of visits.
– At checkout, customers receive a loyalty program credit and the Perka app alerts them to how close their next perk is.

Limited-time Discount ShopKeep POS and Perka will be promoting their partnership at Coffee Fest Chicago at the Navy Pier this weekend, June 8 – 10. First-time Perka subscribers will get a discount of 30% when they sign up for both systems by June 30, 2012.

Contact Shopkeep POS Certified Retail Solutions Provider Technology Fits to find out how to get started with Shopkeep POS.

Harbortouch, a leading national supplier of point of sale (POS) systems, today announced it has been named a finalist in the Best New Product or Service – Business-to-Business Products category in The 2012 American Business Awards for its new Harbortouch POS Elite free point of sale system. Harbortouch will be among those considered for ultimate selection as a Gold, Silver or Bronze Stevie Award winner when the final awards are announced later this year.

The American Business Awards are the nation’s premier business awards program. All organizations operating in the U.S.A. are eligible to submit nominations – public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small.

For the first time, The American Business Awards will be presented at two awards events: the ABA’s traditional banquet on Monday, June 18 in New York, and a new tech awards event on Monday, September 17 in San Francisco.

More than 3,000 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories, including Most Innovative Company of the Year, Management Team of the Year, Best New Product or Service of the Year, Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year, and Executive of the Year, among others.

The newest member of the Harbortouch line of free POS systems for retail and hospitality businesses, Harbortouch POS Elite features a sleek, all-in-one, ultra-responsive touch-screen design and powerful processer that provides an ideal point of sale platform for merchants of all types and sizes.

The system is available at zero up-front cost to merchants and can be bundled with a number of proprietary, innovative features such as an integrated online reservations module and Tableside iPad ordering app for restaurants, as well as the Lighthouse remote reporting and POS management tool. POS Elite can also be customized with quick and easy implementation of one of Harbortouch’s numerous plug-and-play software modules, specifically designed for Hospitality, Retail, Delivery, Spirits and Convenience Store businesses.

“Our state-of-the-art free POS system is changing the way business owners think about and handle sales transactions,” said Harbortouch CEO Jared Isaacman. “This recognition is strong validation for our product innovation, and we are thrilled to be honored among this elite group of industry leaders for our unique approach to merchant services that puts the needs of merchants first.”

Finalists were chosen by more than 140 business professionals nationwide during preliminary judging in April and May. More than 150 members of 10 specialized judging committees will determine Stevie Award placements from among the finalists during final judging, to take place May 14 – 25.

Details about The American Business Awards and the list of finalists in all categories are available at www.stevieawards.com/aba.

For more information about the Harbortouch free POS system, visit harbortouchlehighvalley.com.

About Harbortouch

Harbortouch is a leading national supplier of point of sale (POS) systems, serving thousands of businesses across the nation. The company offers an unparalleled “free” program that supplies a full-featured POS system to restaurants and retail businesses with no up-front costs. Custom programming, professional installation and onsite training are included with every order and award winning customer service and technical support are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition to offering state-of-the-art POS systems, Harbortouch also delivers a full range of merchant services such as credit/debit and gift card processing. For additional information, visit www.harbortouchlehighvalley.com or contact (484) 819-0332.

About the Stevie Awards

Stevie Awards are conferred in four programs: The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about The Stevie Awards at www.stevieawards.com.

Sponsors and partners of The 2012 American Business Awards include American Support, Business TalkRadio Network, Callidus Software, Citrix Online, Dynamic Research Corporation, iolo technologies, John Hancock Funds, LifeLock, PetRays, Primus Telecommunications Group, SoftPro, and VerticalResponse.

Visit us at Technology Fits LLC to get your FREE Harbortouch POS system. At Technology Fits we work with you one on one so you get the right system at a great price for your business.

– via PRNewswire

Harbortouch, a leading national supplier of touch-screen point-of-sale (POS) systems, today announced three new versions of its industry-leading free POS system program for the retail, spirits, and convenience store industries. The new software packages offer numerous time and money saving features to accommodate the industry specific needs of these markets. The three new versions are titled Harbortouch Retail, Harbortouch Spirits, and Harbortouch C-Store.

Harbortouch Retail is designed for retail environments of any size and includes a color/size/style matrix that allows merchants to build custom attribute matrices for a particular piece of apparel. This function helps to streamline order selection for a more efficient process. Additional features include gift receipts, registries, rentals and consignment functions, and layaway.

Harbortouch Spirits offers many of the same benefits of the retail system but adds some features to meet the unique needs of wine, beer and liquor stores. A key functionality of this version of the POS software is an age verification process that prompts cashiers to ask for consumer identification and alerts them if the consumer can legally purchase age-restricted products. The system can also differentiate between single drinks and multi-packs when checking out customers.

Another version of the POS software called Harbortouch C-Store meets the needs of the high-volume transaction environment found in convenience stores. It also includes the age verification function for age-restricted products along with many of the same features offered in the other packages.

Additional capabilities found in all three Harbortouch software types include:

• Advanced reporting with a wide range of reports to provide a top-level view of business operations;
• Employee productivity and hours can be tracked through the solution via a built-in time clock;
• Automatic inventory tracking for real-time updates of stock on-hand;
• Customer database that records comprehensive purchase history and personal/contact information to identify sales trends and best customers, making it ideal for loyalty and other incentive programs;
• Dynamic pricing capability to customize product pricing within seconds to accommodate coupons, limited-time sales and other discounts; and
• Integrated vendor management system that allows a retailer to put all suppliers into one database for much cleaner management and easier reporting.

Harbortouch CEO Jared Isaacman states, “While our free POS program has been a tremendous success in the restaurant and hospitality arena, we were always committed to developing a solution that fit the needs of retailers, convenience stores and liquor merchants. We include customizations in each of these three advanced packages that perfectly suit them to their unique business. Our age verification feature helps convenience stores and spirits retailers remain in legal compliance, protecting the business and the community at large. The sizing and color matrix available for retailers means new efficiencies for the order process. All of our features are fundamentally based on improving efficiency, boosting revenue, and ultimately encouraging end customer satisfaction.”

Each system is available with the merchants’ choice of two hardware options: the standard Harbortouch POS equipment or Harbortouch POS Elite, an all-in-one system developed for high-end and high-volume merchants. Both systems feature powerful processors, ample storage space and a five-wire resistive touch-screen monitor. Standard accessories such as a cash drawer, laser bar code reader, customer display pole and high-speed thermal printer are all included as part of the free POS program.

Harbortouch offers free setup and implementation, including installation of all hardware and training for all POS customers. Complete customer service and technical support are available 24/7 by phone and email. The Harbortouch POS hardware is backed by a lifetime repair/replacement warranty for as long as the merchant maintains a merchant account with Harbortouch. An approved merchant account and monthly service agreement are required to participate in the free POS program.

Visit us at Technology Fits LLC to get your FREE Harbortouch POS system. At Technology Fits we work with you one on one so you get the right system at a great price for your business.

From PRNewswire

iOS doesn’t make it especially easy to edit documents and save them to your favorite cloud service, especially when it comes to Word files, slideshows, and spreadsheets. There’s iCloud — which saves files automatically — but it only works with specific apps and doesn’t allow you to work with friends or coworkers on other platforms. Today, Box is announcing OneCloud, the first “round-trip” document editing platform for iOS that gives apps like QuickOffice iCloud-like features. Until today, you’d have to manually pop a document out of Box, edit it in QuickOffice, then re-import it into as a separate file. With OneCloud, you can tap “Save back to Box” which seamlessly saves your edits into the file stored on Box’s server. This means Box’s useful version tracking is left intact, whereas before, you’d be left with multiple files out of order.

OneCloud launches today alongside more than 30 iOS apps that can point to Box for cloud storage and even access files offline. Box’s updated iOS app includes a mini app gallery with iTunes links for all apps compatible with OneCloud. Below each app are various icons illustrating what kinds of files the app can edit like DOC, PPT, PNG, JPG, GIF, TXT, and MP3. The gallery is meant to help you find various ways to work on the go while accessing your Box storage.

OneCloud also launches with four premium partners — “Quickoffice, Adobe EchoSign, Nuance PaperPort Notes and PDF Expert support the deepest level of integration with Box through a new round-trip workflow,” Box said. By “round-trip workflow,” the company means that changes you make to documents are instantly stored and secured in your Box account like we alluded to earlier with QuickOffice. You can even work with Google Docs assuming you have an app that can handle them.

Looking to the future, Box is building OneCloud for Android and is open to integrating with any app that’ll help your business manage its files — whether these files are straight-up Word documents or even video editing files somewhere down the road. In effect, Box has given iCloud-esque storage to any app that decides to integrate with it. And while OneCloud isn’t as automatic as iCloud, it’s the first viable solution for people forced to constantly edit, copy, and save documents between third party apps and cloud storage services.

See below for a video of OneCloud in action. Below the video, you’ll find a complete list of apps compatible with OneCloud as of today.

Apps compatible with OneCloud:

• Adobe EchoSighn
• Attachments.me
• AutoCAD
• BuzzContacts + Agenda by Savvy Apps
• Call Trunk
• DocScan by IFUNPLAY
• Documents to Go
• DocuSign
• EasySign
• FileBoard
• Game Plan
• Genius Scan
• GoodNote
• GoodReader
• JotNot
• Lemon
• Live Project
• MightyMeeting
• Mindjet
• Moprise
• Nozbe
• Nuance Paperport Notes
• Openera
• PDFExpert
• Podio
• Project Catalyst
• QuickOffice
• Receipts
• SlideShark
• Smart Recorder
• TouchDraw
• WAB
• Whiteboard HD

by the verge

Contact Technology Fits LLC to get your ShopKeep POS account setup today. We will get your businesses outfitted with all the gear you need for your ShopKeep POS installation.

Give us a call today to get started at 484-819-0332 or email info@technologyfits.com

The Re-designed ShopKeep Website

The survey, done in February 2012 before the release of the new iPad, and released Tuesday, found that one in five businesses was planning to buy a tablet in the second quarter of the year. Demand for the iPad increased 7 percent since the last survey from November, while all eight competing products in the survey saw a decrease.

In an informal PC World survey last week, 67 percent of respondents said they were likely to purchase an iPad, while only 34 percent had no such plans. Of those planning to buy the tablet, 8 percent were just as likely to buy either the new iPad or the iPad 2, but 48 percent wanted the new iPad–suggesting that demand could grow even higher.

Here are three reasons why the interest in iPad by businesses will continue an upward climb.

1. Developers

Being first to market with an app store, Apple discovered the importance of apps to a mobile device ecosystem. The number of quality apps available for a device is an important factor in choosing a mobile platform. Apple leads with over 600,000 apps available, and over 25 billion have sold thus far. Developers of business apps are most likely to invest their time in creating apps for the biggest business platform, which the iPad clearly offers. Businesses will buy the device that runs the software they need, so as the apps continue to come, so will sales.

2. Hardware

Compare the iPad against popular Android tablets.In the same way that app developers write for the leading market, hardware developers create products for the most popular devices. In the consumer market, this can be seen by the number of speaker docking stations that are iPod/iPhone compatible, while very few are available for other platforms.

As more iPads find their way into businesses, expect hardware accessories that are specific to iPads to proliferate. From Point-of-Sale (POS) stands to bar-code scanners to medical devices, businesses will find it easier to extend the functionality of an iPad than for competing devices, and that will drive sales.

3. Numbers

There was a saying in the 1970s, “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” The implication was that at the time, IBM was a safe bet, a popular choice, and that one couldn’t go wrong by selecting it. The same could now be said about Apple, considering the lead it holds in the tablet market. There is safety in numbers.

While HP’s TouchPad is dead, and survival of RIM’s PlayBook seems in question, there is no doubt the iPad will continue to be around. Businesses want the reassurance that their products will continue to be supported, and Apple’s currently in the strongest position to provide that.

What About Cost?

All of the reasons above boil down to numbers. Apple has them, and it will fight to hold on to its advantage. Can the iPad remain the top tablet forever?

The most likely way for other tablet makers to compete is on cost. If competitors could offer similar features but at a significant savings, some businesses would be interested and a market shift could begin. Unfortunately for them, however, Apple holds numbers here as well, paying less for its parts due to the high volume it can promise. Though this makes selecting a tablet easy, stronger competition would likely provide better options for businesses to select from. How can the iPad’s competition stand out and become noticed by businesses?

ShopKeep currently has about 1,000 customers, and, according to marketing coordinator Hadley Deming, the company expects to be doing business with close to 100,000 merchants in the next year.

“It’s extremely convenient, it works well and it’s a great user interface,” said Stefan Hersh of Chicago’s Buzz Killer Espresso. The Wicker Park coffee shop switched to ShopKeep’s iPad cash register about five months ago and hasn’t looked back. “It takes a little while to understand, but once you figure it out it’s not bad,” Hersh said. “And people like to see it; customer support has been good.”

via Smartphones paying (and paving) the way to better business.

As the co-founder of a Brooklyn gourmet food and wine shop, Jason Richelson knows first-hand the shortcomings of cash register software. So in August 2008 he invented a new one, ShopKeep Register, that runs on the iPad. He now has nearly 1,000 customers and last month raised $2.2 million in financing.

Watch the video at INC. How to Identify A Business Opportunity | Inc.com.