I’m trying to create a work-around for processing club shipments from the tasting room. I dread the idea of training my staff to learn how to use the club processing module when they can barely remember to update the customer data properly. What we have found to be the most effective way to sell club memberships is to let the customer leave with the club shipment when they sign up in the tasting room. I created a product bundle for the wine club shipment and placed it on the home screen of the POS. What I have trained my staff to do is enroll the member into the club and mark the member as on hold (and retained club benefits) until we switch into the next club season. After that my staff will pick the wine club bundle from the POS and sell the wine as is with the correct automatic club discount and the new member can leave with their wine. Does anyone else do this? Can I imporve this at all? I would rather do this than pull a customer list of anyone who has purchased the club bundle and “skip” these customers when I batch process my club shipment. I want to remove as much of the thinking as possible and be able to rely on Vin65 to make sure I don’t accidentally double charge a customer.
Part of my issue is reporting. I will have 195 club members on hold when in actuality that 95% of these are active members that have left with the wine and only 9 or 10 members are actually on hold.
Does anyone else do this? Is there a better way to get an accurate number of active club members without going through and checking?
The Club Processing tool won’t automatically add new members to the batch after your initial add. So if you’re worried about them being charged twice, it won’t happen unless you manually go in there and add them to the batch.
So after your initial billing date, you could tell your Tasting Room staff to charge all new in-person sign-ups (over a desired time period) and then they wouldn’t have to put members on hold. You could also use the Club Processing tool’s Qualification Date as another measure to accomplish this.
The exceptions, naturally, are going to be members with declined cards that update in person and online Wine Club sign-ups. For the former, you could tell your staff only to charge new members in-person and simply update existing members cards for you to process later. For the latter, depending on your policy and volume, you could just charge on a case-by-case basis.
I’ll echo what Ed said: new members aren’t added to club processing queue unless you choose to do so.
We simply don’t automatically process new members after the initial club run, the staff member who signs them up is responsible for that. If for some reason they need to be processed after the fact, our staff simply leaves a task on the member’s account, assigned to the club manager.
This whole thing isn’t pretty and hopefully we can get Vin65 to focus more on workflows going forward to address stuff like this.
What we do: sell the package in the TR as a normal sale. Staff lets me know they did so (usually). When I re-attempt processing I go back and double check any successful orders for TR sales, and void the authorized order immediately. It ain’t pretty but it gets us there.
Ed Thank you! I appreciate the time you took to answer my question. I understand that I have to manually add the members to the batch in order to process. I used to just blanket add everyone to the list and then tried to ween out and skip the ones I didn’t need to. I see how inefficient it was, but it was only my first attempt at trying to batch process a club run. If I am firm with my qualification date and aim to be processed the majority by the month’s end after the qualification date, I can leave the responsibility of the club sale to the tasting room staff.
@Rmcguire, I really like that idea, getting my staff to use more tasks is going to be better for everyone. If the customer notes aren’t correct and the tasks aren’t done properly, I could make it contingent on their commissions.
Does anyone do that?
How do you push your staff to take better notes without incentivizing?.
@ElJefe So you will void the tasting room order and recharge through club processing? Does that annoy any customers if you don’t catch it on the same day?
No, I do the opposite: keep the TR order and void the just-run club order. Staff is supposed to tell me when they sell an order in the TR - what they do is capture a credit card update, and that tells me to skip them - but checking orders after the processing run catches the times they don’t tell me. Belt and suspenders.
Tasks are the staff’s primary way of communicating with the club manager, paper notes are not allowed.
Also, our staff is not yet allowed to edit club memberships. There’s enough ways one could mess things up, we prefer to limit the risk. All updates (cancellations, address updates, club switching, etc) are handled via tasks.
@ElJefe ahh okay, thinking about that, I would just do a search based on the bundle I made that is the exact same as the club run. How long do you have to void the just processed club run, that is if you catch one?
I like that a lot more going forward. My admin team is really good at using tasks and they do a good job. I can force the TR staff to do the same. I like the idea of not being allowed to edit the memberships. I do most of that on my end as it is, so that would be an easy integration. Your staff does the initial data entry for a new a membership though … right?
Yes, all signups are done on a nice paper form, and input by back-office staff. We find it is quicker and more efficient, especially on a busy Saturday. It also seems to be a better experience for many customers. This also allows us to catch errors, typos, and incorrect information.
One of the thing on my wish list is being the ability to turn off editing memberships for certain staff through security groups, similar to how you can turn off refunds and price overrides.
We have a similar set-up, we have beautiful paper forms. I’ve tried to get my staff to input the information, but the errors waste a lot of my time. I like the idea of the back office staff to verify any “off” information. Thank you!
I’d also like to see functions like that, especially if the staff use tasks diligently, you can know if there are any “permanent” changes to be made you can give the authorization to the right people.
If you do end up using tasks more often, be aware that there is no timestamp/user identification on the tasks. I have our staff end all tasks with their initials, so I know who to ask if we have questions.
