Ask HN: Review my startup: Cashier Live | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review my startup: Cashier Live

cashierlive.com

40 pointstbgvi49 comments

While I understand the Flash hate etc. that some people have below, before you start doing anything about it do prioritize your features.

Who is your real customer, I'm assuming it's small business owners etc. Do they real care about Flash/AdBlock etc. Do they even know about those things?

Focus on the real features they care about, do some market research, if you haven't already. Offline backup is a high priority feature. CC fallback on the traditional system is another (which I believe works via phone and not internet).

What about touchscreen support and UI to go with it.

I had worked on NCR POS UI way back in the '95-'96 and we used to create OCX (remember those?) controls which were huge so that the UI worked well with touch screens.

You're right on target - our typical customer is a small independent retailer that's currently using an electronic cash register.

Market knowledge and research is actually what lead us to develop this. I had been working for a point of sale reseller and we lost more sales to high cost than to any other competitor.

Currently our strategy for backup is recommending a dial-up if there's concern about connectivity, but thats not ideal and I think Gears or HTML5 is the way to go. And you're correct, the backup for CC transactions is phone authorization (same as any other POS when internet is down)

Touchscreen support is important, especially with non-technical cashiers, and our UI was designed with that in mind.

You guys should look into restaurant POS. The existing systems are horrible and usually require a team to come in and set them up and cost a fortune.

Oh and just a quick comment.. I would spell out Point of Sale and not use the acronym. It has a different meaning to most people.

Restaurant is definitely something we've thought about, but there's a lot of trick things a restaurant can need. Retail has easier requirements so that's where we started.

And I am totally aware of the POS vs. Point of Sale debate, I laugh about it too. Unfortunately it doesn't always fit, like on the home page. Everywhere else we refer to competitors as "POS" and us as "Point of Sale" :)

I've done some work with restaurant point of sales (in terms of third party tech integration). They are definitely ridiculously difficult to configure, and the APIs (if they even bother to expose one) are terrible.

Restaurants are a competitive market, and with big fish like OpenTable killing it I think it would be pretty difficult to come into there. Stick with what you're doing.

++1 for restaurant POS. A MICROS system can cost $40K for a single unit!

Oh for the pricing. I'd make the free kinda sucky, and have the current basic plan be $5 or $10 per month.

My reasoning is that the current free version would meet our needs, but I'm not comfortable putting a free web service into our sales process. When you pay for something you feel like it's going to be around for a while.

Thanks for the feedback - that's definitely a concern we've thought about. The key point is that the free version requires you to use one of our processing partners. They subsidize the cost so while it's free to you, they pay us every month depending on your transaction total.

Agree. I think you're charging too little. Remember that you're worth _more_ to a business owner than a traditional POS because you make all sorts of problem go away which currently require $150/hour (or whatever) on-site visits.

I'm very skeptical of this idea. I don't mean to spread "negative energy" or flame but, may I be frank?

Walking it through:

Let's start with the straw-man that I'm a small single shop and don't want CC processing. Cashierlive will take me as a customer for $50/month - but I can buy a robust cash register that will last years for less than that and I'll probably save more than $50/month using my own in-house inventory management system even if I wind up having to enter journal tape and receipt data into my PC manually. On top of that, the used cash register I buy will likely be a more robust solution.

Suppose I'm that same dinky shop but now I want to add CC processing. There already exists a competitive market for low-acquisition-cost, fee-based CC processing - just go into any corner liquor store in a big city. I can either add a service fee to CC and debit card purchases, or set a minimum purchase price for card usage and adjust my retail prices slightly. (Which is right depends on the nature of my products and my customers.)

Suppose I'm still a single shop but larger and more sophisticated. I want integration of POS with inventory management. I want CC processing. If I'm setting up for the first time to achieve that state I have to drop a decent chunk of change on HW and I damn sure want to have competing offers from CC processing companies. Yet with cashierlive I'm locked into cashierlive's CC processing partners and any subsidy I'm getting on software or hardware looks like chump change in my larger budget.

The higher up the chain my business goes, the less attractive it is to (a) trust cashier live to protect my data; (b) trust cashier live to to remain in business; (c) trust cashier live to keep up with me in feature demands; (d) trust cashier live to avoid massive attacks on their servers; (e) trust that cashier live isn't down when I need to collect reports to file taxes; etc.

As a larger, more sophisticated customer - all those unknowns and risks greatly outweigh the relatively modest cost savings.

What about if I have multiple stores and am really attracted to the cross-site inventory management features? Or like the "access anywhere" features for reporting. At that point I'm sophisticated and flush enough that I can probably do better on my own - with bespoke software if I have to.

The low end of the market has plenty of reasons to find a simpler, more robust, cost competitive solution in existing markets. The high end has every reason to run, not walk, from the kind of centralization of control and purchasing decisions that cashier live implies.

Cashier Live as a business seems to be essentially a value-added broker of CC processing services. In that sense, it competes directly against the IT/POS consultant that my local accounting firm uses - the guy who actually comes into my shop and connects devices and strings wire. Cashier Live is competing against that with on-line training videos and a help line - which is weak. It's especially weak since, regardless, I still have to hire my local accounting firm.

Swapping out my "small business perspective" hat for my "engineer with VC sensitivities" hat: the centralization of data and services proposed by cashier live are just nuts. It creates a massive and precarious single point of failure in direct proportion to the number of customers it acquires and the number of transactions it processes. Asked to comment on the technology I would be conscious bound to speak out against it. Asked to invest, I would have to decline.

BUT: HOW TO FIX IT!!!!

Web-based POS, inventory mgt. etc. is a fine idea provided (as noted in other comments) it's hardened against interruptions of net connectivity and avoids centralization. All of the problems I listed above have to do with the unreasonable centralization of cashier live's model: centralization of choice about CC processing agents; centralization of choice about software features; centralization of choice about database structure, backup-policy, etc.; .....

I think cashier live would have a chance if it polished up its code, released it under GPL, partnered with accounting firms instead of directly CC processing firms, and went into the premium fee support / consulting business while learning to franchise sales to put qualified reps on the floor of customer's shops to hook things up.

I have a hunch that cashier live grew out of doing some bespoke work and then trying to turn that into a commodity service "web 2.0 style". Perhaps the better course would be to learn how to do bespoke work at scale, for a premium.

It would even be OK for cashier live to resell hosting for the web service provided that hosting weren't centralized and the customer had the option of finding their own hosting.

This is an odd criticism. Why is this any different from letting Google store my spreadsheets or Mint.com store all my banking/cc or 37Signals store all my business contacts. Is it because it's a startup? So much for cloud computing...

This will turn them into every other POS vendor. I don't see what GPL'ing the code will do (that's not a feature to most people). Same with accounting firms... I'm going to ask my accounting firm for advice on a POS system??? For most small businesses, your accountant is guy that works out his house and can barely use e-mail.

Why is this any different from letting Google store my spreadsheets [etc.]

It's not, much. I think those things are stupid and irresponsible as well.

So much for cloud computing...

Centralized services != cloud computing.

If you had said "so much for web 2.0" we'd be in vigorous agreement.

I don't see what GPL'ing the code will do (that's not a feature to most people).

It's not a customer-facing feature when we're talking about small retailers, that's for sure. It is a feature that faces the small business support service firms that support small retailers.

I'm going to ask my accounting firm for advice on a POS system??? For most small businesses, your accountant is guy that works out his house and can barely use e-mail.

Advice? Yes. General contracting? No.

Look at main st in some small city or big city neighborhood. There are (knock on wood) still some successful retail outlets. Within that market, some accountants are dominant. And successful in their own right. One of their issues is how cheaply and smoothly they get data from their small business customers. They therefore know which customers have winning set-ups for IT related stuff like POS and which do not. And if they are worth their metal, they can help a new client re-create that success.

I'd bet with you, not against you, that the median small business accounting firm is useless in this regard. I'd also note that successful small business start-ups are unlikely to settle for that median.

Way to go. Web based POS's are definitely the future.

An online demo might be a good idea. Best of luck. Maybe Intuit will but it :)

Hey everyone, we just ended our closed beta and launched so I wanted to get your thoughts. We’ve been working on Cashier Live for about 9 months– in beta for the last 4 or so. Even though it’s pretty polished now, it started off as an MVP and we’ve had our first two stores/users involved from the start. We’re pretty happy with it (so are our users) so we thought now is as good a time as any.

Looking forward to hearing your feedback

I've been dabbling with the idea of bringing operations research to small business, but I haven't figured out a delivery mechanism. However, integration with WebPOS might be a feasible way to do this.

I'm just curious, do you plan to build an API or app store at some point?

Feel free to contact me to discuss it further, email is in my profile.

Quick comment - is there any benefit in using flash for the start trial now button?

Also, can you speed up the demos? The pacing is horribly slow. "now we are going to click 'Item List' [pause] [pause] [pause] [click] [pause] [pause] now..."

I would expect that your potential customers already know about POS terminology and quickly want to see if your software matches their technical requirements and is easy to use. The incredibly slow moving, dumbed-down videos would turn me off instantly.

Yea I agree that theres a few points where it gets slow, I'll take a look at tightening them up a bit. That being said I think they're not bad considering some of the other training videos I've seen :)

Was there a particular one that bothered you? Let me know and I'll get to it asap - thanks

> Was there a particular one that bothered you?

All of them. ;)

I mean that in a nice constructive way. After setting up OpenBravo and other open source POS/ERP systems I am looking to get info on your product quickly. How do I import existing products? How do I perform end of year inventory? How are gift cards/gift certificates handled - if at all? etc.

Personally I'd rather read all the answers than be forced to watch dozens of slow paced videos, but if you could speed them up I guess that would be ok too.

It looks nice :) But seriously - we're going to be doing some a/b testing and that's one of the things we'll be looking at. At this point the main benefit is that they're slightly animated to catch attention

Is it possible to sign up without Flash being enabled? Admittedly I'm currently on a Flash-hate marathon at the moment, and most people have it installed and enabled, but surely it's best to go with HTML for something so important?

We went ahead and put in alternative static images for those who don't have flash/have flash disabled.

Thanks again for the feedback

this is what i see when going to your website:

http://i.imgur.com/qKNAJ.png

ditch the flash or at least put some alternative image/text there.

Yikes thanks for sending that over. That doesn't look too good . I'll get started on having an alternative in there for people without flash.

I have AdBlock+ enabled and I didn't see that flash header either. There was no giant blank space for me though.

Good catch. Just went through some of the flash issues with our designer and he had named the flash header class "adspace"

Something tells me that's the problem :) Should be fixed

Convincing people that broadband is stable enough to bet their income on is going to be a hard one.

Agreed, that definitely a hurdle here :)

Most people using a POS system already require an internet connection for processing credit cards, so either way it's critical to a retailer.

If someone's connection isn't stable we recommend a dial-up as a backup plan. We're also investigating html5 and other options for offline functionality. You're definitely right thought, not everyone's comfortable with web-based pos software (yet)

You may just want to offer an additional piece of hardware that lives on site and does the same logic as the web-based piece (everything's just forwarded to your backend systems for processing), only stores data if their internet is down (with the ability to control how cards are authorized, as in up to $x auto authorize if internet's down and eat the cost later if it fails, or deny all, etc.). I think this would integrate well with the hardware options you have and would provide another sell-point without a large amount of effort. The trick is, they buy the hardware, not the software. The software is still a service that is provided (or you can have a more expensive plan that includes onsite hardware, in which case you own the hardware even though it's at their site).

It seems to me that using Gears (or similar technologies) is definately a must-have.

Gears is being phased out in favor of HTML5

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/12/01/google-is-phasing-ou...

A backup 3g/4g wireless data plan helps.

Do customers want a "web-based" system or simply one that they need not upgrade manually and which stores their data in the cloud? I ask simply because it might be feasible to deploy some client-side software to solve this problem. It's going to be run on dedicated hardware, right?

I haven't tried out their product yet, but it seems like that would be one of the first things they would've thought of. Probably a way to do transactions offline and upload when there is a connection.

I've looked into this problem too, and I think its hard for vendors in a mall type setting, where they may have access to a phone line but use it for credit card systems, or may not have access to separate internet connection.

The site looks polished, and product looks solid. Good luck.

An offline mode should work. Doesn't HTML 5 support something like that? Otherwise Google gears. Otherwise maybe an applet or something?

Yea we're working on offline support with HTML5 now. We were really happy when we heard about that :) I think it's a better way to go than having another completely separate application

This looks great!

My wife owns a dance studio so I'd love to get her switched over to this instead of QuickBooks POS. I hate it because there's this insanely complex process to get it connected to a regular QuickBooks install.

To even bring up switching over these would be her requirements:

1. Integrate with QuickBooks (not QB POS, but regular QuickBooks)

2. Manage inventory very well.

3. Accept QuickBooks merchant service (whatever the one you sign up with when you install QB POS).

4. Have a way to operate when the internet is down.

Note that there are credit card gateway services like intercept so your customers can use their own merchant services. That would probably drive up your adoption.

That's interesting that it's hard to connect QuickBooks POS to QuickBooks, you'd think they would have figured that one out :) They acquired QB POS so that might be why it's not seamless.

On another e-commerce project we set up an integration with QuickBooks so we're looking to port that over here.

I have a feeling that Intuit wouldn't take to kindly to their merchants using us, but that's an interesting idea. We're currently working with a variety of processors so it's a possibility.

BTW, I've done a lot of QuickBooks API programming. Drop me an email if you need any help with that.

Interesting idea. I've been around the restaurant POS space for a couple of years and have been wondering about the feasibility of doing a web based solution.

To my knowledge there are a few other players in this space, although I don't know how big they are or how much traction they have:

http://www.firesalepos.com/ http://www.imonggo.com/

MICROS has a hosted POS solution called Simphony but I haven't seen any restaurants using it yet.

From a customer standpoint, my biggest concern is reliability and redundancy if the network connection goes down. You obviously can't stop processing transactions if the internet is down, which means you have to store that data temporarily locally. I would be concerned about the security of that data (especially if you are recording customer information and/or credit card information, which brings PCI compliance into play).

As an administrator, I would be concerned about:

1) Making sure that you support the hardware devices that I might want to use (card readers, printers, barcode scanners). Are you doing this via some sort of keyboard wedge into the browser window, or some kind of ActiveX control? 2) Making sure the rest of the system is locked down. E.g. I don't want some cashier being able to pull up Facebook in a second tab while running your POS. Generally POS kiosks are fairly locked down to only run the POS application and nothing else.

I haven't read all comments, so apologies if something has been covered. I think you could make some serious cash if you execute this correctly as well as heed customer feedback. For the website, several things... The site looks great, but needs tweaking. I'd get rid of the Flash. The loading is irritating and so is the auto changing between tab views. I want to click to move when I'm ready. The animation is overkill. It really serves no useful purpose except to say you can design a fancy site. I'd stick the animation in the video, but make it actually show something useful - like larger screen walk-throughs. This brings us to the video. I don't like being tricked; when I click a video reading "view video" I expect something to play immediately, not link to another page. Next, the video is too long and boring. I'd use the homepage video to answer these 3 crucial things (applicable to all sites) as quickly and concisely as possible: 1. What is it? 2. How can I benefit from it? 3. What does it take from me? Lastly, I'd put "A Complete Hardware and Software Solution" up higher in the larger green font, as that is an important point to know. That should get you started, but you've got a great thing going I think. Good luck!

This system seems to be like early VoIP applications in terms of product evolution.

Similar challenges: Stability/security/availability, perceived value to customers

But similar advantages: Zero chicken and egg problem (VoIP could do outgoing calls, you still perform the same CC txns), very low costs, ability to compete in a previously expensive market

Any reason the video with the smiling guy on the front page can't start playing if you click him? It looked like it should and I was initially confused when I pressed "play" and the video didn't play, taking me to a new page instead.

That's actually how I wanted to do it - I got overruled by our designer. You just helped me win that argument, thanks!

Should be fixed up in a second :)

In that Flash piece at the top, I can't click ahead to "Manage your store" or "Secure data" or "Try it free". You have to wait for the movie to progress forward. You should change that.

At the beginning it's still downloading the other sections, after they're downloaded you can click around :)

Increase the font size.

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