Point of Sale

A gallery front desk sells a piece on a Square Terminal from inside CartonCrew Studio, so the work is marked sold and the artist paid without anyone re-entering the sale by hand.

The register now takes card payments. A volunteer finds a piece by its Label ID, sets a price if the artist has agreed to one, takes the card on the Terminal, and Studio marks the work sold, splits the consignment and tells the artist. A refund can now be taken at the desk too, with a manager’s own PIN, and the piece goes back on the wall. And the sale now reaches QuickBooks on its own - one receipt for the basket, carrying the sales tax Square charged as tax, and one bill for each artist in it.

Who this is for: an owner or admin setting up gallery hardware. The register itself, when it arrives, is for front-desk volunteers.

Before you start

Point of Sale needs the Square connector. Connect Square first — with no Square connection the Point of Sale panel tells you so and does nothing else.

You also need a Square Terminal, the card reader Square sells. This does not work with a phone or a tablet running the Square app.

You will probably need to reconnect Square once

Pairing a Terminal needs two permissions that galleries connected before this feature existed never granted. If the panel shows Reconnect needed, open the Square Integration tab and press Connect Square again. Nothing else changes — the same merchant, the same locations, the same catalog. It is a permissions top-up, not a fresh setup.

Pairing a Terminal

Open Settings → Point of Sale.

1. Under Pair a Terminal, fill in Device name. Give it something the front desk will recognize — “Front desk” rather than a serial number. This name is what you will see against the device from then on.
2. Choose the Location. A Terminal belongs to one Square location, and the sales tax the register charges comes from that location’s own Square settings. If your gallery has one location it is already chosen.
3. Press Create pairing code. A short code appears.
4. Type that code into the Square Terminal. The code is only good for a few minutes — if it lapses, press Create pairing code again.
5. Press I have entered it. Studio asks Square whether the device actually paired and updates the badge.

The device then appears under Devices with Terminal paired. If it still says Awaiting pairing, the code has not been entered on the Terminal yet, or it expired before it was; press Check pairing once you have entered it.

Arming the register

Pairing tells Square which reader belongs to this gallery. Arming tells Studio which computer is allowed to act as the register.

Press Arm this device on the desk computer you want to use. The badge changes from Not armed to Armed. Arming applies to the screen you are sitting at, not to your account — arming from your laptop at home arms your laptop, not the gallery desk. Use Re-arm on this device if you need to refresh it.

Revoke removes a device. Do this if the desk computer is replaced, sold or lost. Revoking is not a delete: sales already rung up on that device still point at it, so “which register was this sold on” stays answerable afterwards.

Terminals Square knows about

The last section lists the readers Square itself reports for your merchant account, whether or not Studio has them paired. It is there for comparing against the Devices list when a pairing has not behaved — a reader that appears here but not above has paired with Square but not with Studio.

Who made the sale

The desk runs one shared account, so the screen alone cannot say which volunteer rang something up. Each volunteer therefore has a six-digit PIN, which they type at the till to put their name on the sale.

A PIN is not a sign-in. The desk is already signed in when it is typed, and a PIN grants nothing anywhere else — not on another computer, not on the website, not on your phone. It answers one question: who is standing here.

• Six digits, and not six of the same digit or six in a row. 112233 is fine; 111111 and 123456 are refused.
• A volunteer manages their own. An administrator can set one for somebody who has forgotten theirs, and should expect them to change it afterwards.
• Five wrong tries locks that PIN for fifteen minutes. A run of wrong tries across lots of different volunteers locks the whole register for half an hour — that is somebody guessing, not somebody fumbling.
• A manager approving a refund or a void types their own PIN, and that approval covers one amount, for one item, for two minutes. It cannot be used twice or for anything else. Discounts do not work this way — see below.

Setting a PIN needs both things the register needs: an armed desk and a signed-in account. A leaked desk password on its own sells nothing.

Where the screens are

A volunteer sets their own PIN in the member portal, under their profile. The section only appears for somebody who actually works the desk — it needs the Point of Sale capability, which an administrator grants on the Users page. A volunteer who does not have it sees nothing about PINs at all, which is correct: a PIN they cannot use would only be confusing.

An administrator sees who has one on this page, under Who can be identified at the register: who has a PIN set, and who is locked out right now. Resetting one is choosing a new PIN and telling them what it is — it does not recover the old one, and it clears a lockout immediately, which is the faster answer when somebody is at the desk with a customer waiting.

And who is on Square. A volunteer is added to your own Square staff directory when their PIN is set, so that a Square receipt can name who rang the sale. Their name, their phone number (from their artist or volunteer record) and the job Member with no pay rate are sent — never their email — so the Square profile is complete enough for a personal passcode without you finishing it by hand. They are deactivated rather than deleted when their PIN is removed, so receipts for sales they already rang still resolve to them. Add to Square on a volunteer’s row also completes a profile that was created before the phone and the job were sent.

That step can fail quietly: Square may refuse it, or the connection may not yet have carried the permission it needs. Nothing about the till changes when it does — the PIN works, the sale is recorded here under their name — and the only symptom is a Square receipt reading Untracked team member. So the card says which of your volunteers Square knows, and offers Add to Square beside anybody it does not, showing the reason if Square refuses again. The column appears only when Square is connected.

When Square refuses, the card shows the code Square itself returned, not a generic failure. Two are worth knowing:

• UNAUTHORIZED — the connection is no longer accepted by Square. Reconnect it on the Square Integration tab.
• INSUFFICIENT_SCOPES — the connection was made before CartonCrew asked for permission to manage staff. Reconnect it, same tab.
• BAD_REQUEST — Square authenticated us and objected to the details sent. Square’s own sentence follows the code and says which part.

Anything else is shown with Square’s own wording, because a code we have not seen before is the one most worth reading. In every case the PIN is untouched and the sale is still recorded here.

Somebody who is listed against a different Square account — which happens if you reconnect Square to a new one — is not treated as linked, because an identifier from one account means nothing on another.

You will never see a PIN anywhere in Studio. It is stored the way a password is, it does not appear in any list, any export or any log line, and nobody — including an administrator — can read one back.

The pad for typing a PIN at the till arrives with the register itself. Setting one works now; there is nothing to sell with yet.

Trying the register without a card reader

A gallery connected to Square’s sandbox — a practice account that takes no real money — gets an extra card in Settings, Point of Sale, called Simulated reader. It does not appear once the gallery is on live Square, and it cannot be added there.

A simulated reader behaves the same way every time, which is the point. Square provides several, and the useful ones are the ones that go wrong:

Adding one takes a name and an outcome. There is no pairing step — nothing is being paired with, so the desk simply exists once you add it, and it is badged Simulated reader in the device list rather than “Terminal paired”. A desk that takes no money should never read the same as one that does.

One reader per outcome, per gallery. Adding the same one twice says so.

Square approves sandbox payments up to $25, so practice pieces have to be priced under that. It is nothing like a real artwork price, which is worth remembering when the figures on screen look wrong.

Selling at the desk

Open Register in the sidebar. Choose your name, enter your PIN, and the till opens. The PIN is not a login — you are already signed in on the desk computer. It answers which volunteer is standing here, so the sale has a name on it.

1. Find the piece. Type its Label ID or part of its title.
2. Check the price. It starts at the asking price. You can type a lower one — see below for when that needs somebody’s say-so.
3. Pick what kind of sale it is if it is not the usual one. This is what decides the artist’s percentage.
4. Ask for a phone number. This is how the gallery builds its list of patrons. Tick the box if they are happy to be contacted. If they would rather not, skip it — it never blocks a sale.
5. Choose how they are paying — card, cash or check. Card is already chosen, because it is almost every sale.
6. Take payment. On a card the reader wakes up and asks them to tap, and prints or emails the receipt. On cash or a check there is no reader step — see below.

The work is marked sold, the consignment is split, and the artist is emailed — none of which you have to do.

Leaving the register

The register has no sidebar, so it has its own ← Back button at the top left. It returns to the admin page the Register was opened from, or to the Dashboard when the Register was opened directly (a bookmark, or Open the register in a new window in Settings → Point of Sale), and never to a page outside CartonCrew. It works without any browser controls, so a kiosk or tablet can use it.

With pieces in the basket and no sale started, Back asks first (Stay keeps the basket, Leave empties it, and nothing has been charged). Once a sale is started, or while the reader is waiting for a card, Back is grayed out until the sale is finished or canceled with the screen’s own Cancel. After Sold or Payment stopped it works straight away. Back is ordinary navigation: the page it lands on applies its own role and extension checks, and the desk’s device check on the server is unaffected.

If the browser closes mid-payment

Nothing is lost. The sale is recorded from Square’s own notification, not from this screen, so a closed tab, a sleeping computer or a dropped connection makes no difference once the customer has tapped. Reopen the register and carry on.

If Square’s notification never arrives

Very occasionally it does not. A notification can be lost in transit, and when that happens CartonCrew has heard nothing at all about a sale the customer has already paid for.

The piece is never put back on the wall while that is being sorted out. The register reserves each work in the basket for fifteen minutes, and normally releases it again when the basket is abandoned. A sale that is waiting to hear from Square is the one case where that does not happen: the work stays reserved until there is an actual answer, so it cannot be sold twice.

Getting the answer is automatic and usually instant. If the register is still open, it notices as soon as Square confirms the payment and finishes the sale on the spot. If the laptop was closed, a check runs every few minutes and finishes it then instead. Either way the sale is recorded exactly as it would have been: the same receipt, the same split with the artist, the same email, the same figures in QuickBooks.

If the check cannot get a straight answer out of Square — rare, and usually a sign that something went wrong at the reader — the work stays reserved and a line appears in Settings → Recent Activity. Cancel that sale from the register when you are sure no money changed hands, and the work goes back on the wall.

Cash and checks

The register takes all three. Card is already selected when the sale opens, so the usual sale is unchanged — the tender buttons are there for the ones that are not.

All three go through Square. That is deliberate and it matters to the treasurer rather than to you: it means the gallery’s Square reporting, its deposits and its books all agree without anybody copying figures between them. A cash sale recorded only in CartonCrew would be a figure somebody has to reconcile by hand every month.

Cash

Type what the customer actually handed you, not what the piece costs. The till works out the change and shows it, and once the sale is recorded it shows the change Square calculated — which is the figure in the books.

If you type less than the total, the till says so and will not let you continue. That is not fussiness: a sale taken for less than it cost leaves the gallery owed money by somebody who has already left with the piece.

Checks

Enter the check number. That is the required one, because it is how the treasurer matches the sale to the bank statement later. The name on the check is worth entering too and is optional.

What is different afterwards

• There is no reader step. Nothing to tap, nothing to wait for, and nothing left hanging if the reader happens to be offline or unplugged.
• The sale is recorded immediately. A card sale waits for the customer to tap; cash and a check are already paid by the time you press the button.
• Everything else is identical. The piece is marked sold, the commission is worked out at the same rate on the same price, and the artist gets the same email. The money reaching the gallery differently does not change what the artist is owed.

You do not need a card reader for these

Worth knowing if your gallery has not set a reader up yet, or has not reconnected Square since the register was added: cash and checks work anyway. Only the card path needs a paired reader.

The sales tax

On a card, the reader adds the gallery’s own sales tax. On cash you need the number before you take the money, so the till now asks Square what the tax is and shows you the tax and the total before you collect anything.

Selling for less than the asking price

An ordinary discount comes out of the artist’s share as well as the gallery’s. At a 75% rate, $25 off a $200 piece costs the artist $18.75 and the gallery $6.25. So the artist is the only person who can agree to it — and they agree to it on the phone, piece by piece, in the moment. Every discount works this way: the gallery never takes a discount on itself, so it always keeps its cut of what the customer pays (see How commission works on a discount below).

There is deliberately no pre-approved discount anywhere in CartonCrew. No lowest price an artist sets in advance, no percentage they will come down, no code to redeem. If you have not spoken to the artist about this piece, there is no discount to give.

What you do at the desk

1. The price box shows the asking price and will not let you type in it. That is on purpose: a discount cannot happen by accident.
2. Ring the artist and agree a price.
3. Press Sell below the asking price. A confirmation appears.
4. Read it, then tick it. It says that you have spoken to the artist and they agreed — so only tick it if that is true.
5. The price box unlocks. Type the agreed price, or type the discount in Take off and choose $ off or % off — the price is worked out for you, to the cent.

Changing your mind is one click: Sell at the asking price instead puts the original price back.

What happens after you tick it

Two things, and you should know about both before you tick.

It is written down permanently. The piece, its Label ID, the asking price, the price it sold for, the discount, your name, the desk you were standing at, the customer if you took their number, the time, and the exact wording you agreed to. That record cannot be edited or deleted by anyone — not by an administrator, not by us.

The artist is emailed, and the treasurer is copied. The message names the piece, the price it sold for, the discount (as a percentage too, if you entered one), the amount their commission is worked out on and the commission they will actually be paid, and what to do if they did not agree to it. That email is how the gallery checks itself, which is the reason a tick is enough on its own.

None of this is a trap for an honest mistake. It is what makes it safe for the gallery to let any volunteer agree a price over the phone, rather than making a customer wait for somebody with a key.

How commission works on a discount

Commission is always worked out on what the piece sold for. A $100 piece sold with a $10 discount pays commission on $90: at 75% the artist is paid $67.50 and the gallery keeps $22.50. A big discount works the same way: the same piece at 60% off sells for $40, the artist is paid $30.00 and the gallery keeps $10.00.

The gallery never takes the whole discount on itself, so it always keeps its cut of the sale. There is no promotion setting that pays the artist on the asking price, and nothing to change on the Commission To Pay Report afterwards.

Both prices are kept on the sale, so a discounted piece reads as a discount in your reporting rather than as a piece that was worth less.

What a manager cannot do

There is no manager override for a discount, and no PIN that reaches past one. A manager’s PIN is for refunds and voids. If the artist has not agreed a price, nobody in the building can sell their work for less — which is the point.

Giving the money back

A customer changes their mind while they are still at the desk. On the Sold screen, tap Refund this sale.

A refund needs a manager’s own PIN, not the volunteer’s. Both of you are recorded on it: who asked, and who agreed. Say why in a line if it helps — “frame damaged”, “wrong size” — and that line goes on the record and into Square.

When it goes through:

• a card sale refunds to the card, and that one is finished when you walk away from the screen. A cash or check sale is refunded by written check, and the treasurer writes it — so nothing is handed over at the desk, and the screen says so rather than sending you to the drawer. The screen asks for the name to write the check to and reads Refund recorded: check owed until the treasurer records the check as issued under Artwork Catalog → Refund checks. How each tender is refunded, and roughly how long it takes, is the gallery’s own setting in Settings → Returns;
• the screen shows Tell the customer: with which way the money is coming back and roughly when, in the same words the gallery’s website publishes;
• the piece goes back on the wall, available again;
• the artist’s commission for that sale is reversed, so it will not appear in the next payout run;
• the sale itself stays in your records, marked as refunded. Nothing is deleted. On the artist’s statement it is listed and worth nothing, so they can see what happened rather than wonder why a piece vanished.

It refunds the whole sale. There is no part-refund at the register yet.

A sale that was recorded by mistake (no money changed hands, or the buyer is really paying on a layaway) is not a refund and is not undone at the till. An Owner, Admin or Treasurer reverses it in Artwork Catalog, Artworks tab, Buyer (or Sale when the Patrons module is off), Reverse sale, with a reason. It then reads Reversed (recorded in error), never Refunded.

When the register will not do it

If the artist has already been paid for that piece, the register refuses. That money has left the gallery, and putting the payout back to “owed” would leave your books saying it was never owed at all. Instead the sale is flagged for review, the refusal is recorded with both names on it, and a person has to arrange the refund and recover the commission from the artist. This is the one case the till deliberately cannot finish.

A sale can only be refunded once. A reversed payout cannot be put back to “owed” by hand, and no payout run will pick it up.

A refund taken in Square instead

If somebody refunds a sale in Square’s own app or dashboard, Studio does not put the piece back or reverse the commission. It flags the sale for review and waits for a person, because nothing in that refund says anybody at the gallery decided the work should come back. Take refunds at the register and this never arises.

What reaches QuickBooks

Two records, at the moment of sale.

One Sales Receipt for the whole basket - one line per item, carrying the piece’s title, its Label ID, what it sold for and the classification it sold under. However many artists were in the basket, it was one payment, so it is one receipt. The money is deposited to a Square clearing account rather than the bank, because Square takes its fees before it pays out and a receipt deposited straight to the bank never reconciles against what actually arrives.

One Bill per artist in that basket, for the commission they are owed, against their QuickBooks Vendor record. Five pieces by the same artist in one sale is one bill for the total, not five. The bills stay open as payables until the treasurer pays them in QuickBooks under Expenses to Pay Bills, which is where the gallery wanted the review to happen. Studio never pays a bill and never marks one paid.

Marking a payout run paid no longer posts anything. It used to, and it had to stop: the commission is already in the books from the sale, and doing both would record every commission twice. The run itself is unchanged - worksheet, lock, artist statements, payouts flipped to paid - it simply stopped doing bookkeeping.

Four accounts are chosen in Settings, QuickBooks Online, from the company’s own chart of accounts: the clearing account, the sales income account, the artist commissions account and the payment bank account. Nothing is defaulted and nothing is guessed. Until they are set, sales do not reach QuickBooks - and nothing is lost meanwhile, because the sale, the split and the money owed are recorded in Studio either way.

If Settings, QuickBooks Online says QuickBooks is not set up for this environment yet, there is no Connect QuickBooks button on purpose: CartonCrew does not have its QuickBooks connection details in that environment yet, so sending you to Intuit would only end in an Intuit error. Nothing is lost meanwhile. Once it is set up, the tab shows Connects to: Sandbox (a test company) or Connects to: Production (the gallery’s real company), so you can tell which one Connect will use.

If Intuit’s own Square connector is switched on, turn it off first. It knows nothing about artists or commissions, so it cannot raise the bills, and running both records every sale twice.

A failure to reach QuickBooks never affects the sale: the sale is recorded first and the books are told afterwards, so a bookkeeping problem can never cost the gallery a sale. A failed push is recorded and can be retried, and a retry never duplicates - one register sale can produce one set of records.

What is not here yet

• Class seats and memberships at the till. A class seat has to hold a place on a register and a membership has to start or renew a term, and taking money for either without doing that would be worse than not offering it. Sell those the way you do today.
• Splitting one sale across two ways of paying — part cash, part card. Take it as two sales, or put the whole thing on one.
• Tips. The reader does not ask for one.