31 Days - Day 21: Money

In the quest to get ready for doing a Craft Show, one of the things to plan for and decide is how to take money.  Of course you want to be sure to have enough change on hand when you take money, but you also should consider and decide ahead of time what you will take for money.

Will you take checks?  Of course, there are pros and cons to this option.  In our area, I would say that the majority of people are going to be local, so taking a local check, should be pretty safe.  If you are going to major show that may attract customers from farther away, you may want to reconsider that.  Can you afford to lose the money if the check doesn't clear?

Will you take credit cards?  This is something that is fairly new for availability for small businesses.  To take a credit card has become easier.  As far as I can tell, you have to have an Android or an iPhone.  Unfortunately, I don't have one, and can't quite justify the cost of one just yet.

One of the places that I recommend to take credit cards through is Paypa.com, if you already have an account set up there.  (The transition to this wouldn't be a far stretch if you are already familiar with Paypal.) Paypal is a free option and you only pay if you use it.

Here is what they say about using Paypal for credit cards:

• Accept credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, and checks
• Low 2.7% rate
• Funds are quickly available in your PayPal account
• Encrypted and backed by PayPal's world class risk management system

When you download the app for this feature, you will be sent a free credit card reader for your phone.  I know that some don't care for Paypal, but listen, my experience with Paypal is that they back their transactions that that the money comes right away.

Another option is Square.com.  The information about Square is:

• Accept credit cards: Visa, Master Card, Discover & American Express.
• 2.75% rate
• Next Day deposit into your checking account
• Free Card reader

You would need to make this decision for which to use, but if I had to choose today, I would go with the Paypal option, for three reasons:

1. Lower cost to you.  I know it's only .05%, but it all counts when you are trying to make a little money.
2. You can take more options according to Paypal, such as debit cards, Paypal and checks.
3. You get your funds right away and don't have to wait until the next day. (In other words, you can actually make sure the transfer works.)

Another option that you may consider, if you don't have an Android or iPhone, is to charge people using Paypal when you get home.   This is a big risk, because you would need to bill the person through an email, and trust that they would pay the bill on the internet.  You really don't have any repercussion if they don't pay.

Those are the options that I know about for collecting money.  You can check out all the other steps of preparing for a craft show here: 31 Days Until a Craft Show.  Be sure to check out those blogs in the right column that I love to link up to.

For a complete list of the 31 Day Until A Craft Show series and links to each post go Here to Day 31.