Card processing, Clover point of sale, and gateway tools for flower shops. Set up around phone and web orders, delivery runs, wedding deposits, and a Valentine's week that does not forgive a slow terminal.
None of these are line items. They tend to show up in February, when the volume is too high to fix anything.
A large share of what a flower shop sells is card-not-present, and keyed orders price differently from a card handed across the counter. If nobody has walked you through the difference, you are absorbing it on most of your volume.
Valentine's Day and Mother's Day compress a month of orders into a few days. A terminal that hesitates, or a second register you never set up, costs real orders during the only weeks that are guaranteed busy.
A wrong address or a recipient who was not home becomes a redo, a refund, or a dispute. Without delivery details tied to the order and the payment, you are defending a chargeback from memory.
Weddings are booked months ahead on a deposit, with the balance due near the date. Handled casually, that gap becomes the dispute you are least likely to win, and it is the largest ticket in the shop.
We start from where your orders actually come from, then match the hardware and the program to it. These are the setups that commonly fit a retail florist.
A Clover Station for walk-ins, pickups, and the loose retail by the till, with a customer-facing screen so the card price and the cash price are visible while the order is rung up.
The EmeraldPay Gateway virtual terminal for keyed orders, set up and priced as card-not-present rather than treated as an exception to your counter rate.
A second register that goes live for Valentine's and Mother's Day and runs the same item list, so the extra hands you bring in for those days have something to ring on.
A Flex handheld for drivers and event setups, with delivery details kept against the order so a disputed drop-off has a record behind it rather than a recollection.
A deposit up front and the balance settled against a stored card near the date, set up correctly at boarding instead of patched together after the first argument.
Both prices go on the counter sign, the order page, and the event proposal, so the customer knows the number before they hand over a card rather than after.
Nothing above is a rule. A shop living on wire-service and web orders and a studio built on weddings need different setups, and the right answer starts with how much of your volume is taken without a card in the room.
A lot of what a florist sells never touches a counter. Phone, web, and wire orders run through the EmeraldPay Gateway virtual terminal instead of a device. These three are the pieces that matter on the shop floor.
Walk-ins, pickups, and the loose retail that sits beside the till. The second screen faces the customer, so the card price and the cash price are in front of them while the order is rung up, and those sales land in the same reporting as the phone orders your designers are entering in the back.
Drivers carrying a balance to collect, and event setups where the client wants to settle once the last centerpiece is placed. The Flex takes the card at the door or at the venue instead of adding an invoice you will be chasing in three weeks.
Valentine's week is a different business from the rest of February. A Mini opens a second point of sale for the days that carry the quarter, runs the same item list, and spends the rest of the year handling pickups at the side door.
If nearly all of your volume comes in by phone and wire and none of this is your bottleneck, say so and we will spec the gateway side instead.
Design, pricing, and the orders that arrive over the wire stay in the system your shop already runs on. We handle the processing and the deposits underneath them.
Two prices go on the order, one for cards and one for cash. The terminal or the payment page applies the correct total, so the cost of accepting cards sits in the card price rather than in an arrangement you already costed tightly.
Both prices are on display before a customer reaches the counter, which is why almost nobody asks about it.
The terminal applies the right total. Your team keeps doing what they already do.
Program setup, signage, and terminal configuration are handled as part of onboarding rather than left to you.
Made-up numbers and arithmetic you can check, so the shape of a monthly bill is clear.
The figures are invented but realistic for a shop outside its holiday weeks, and the math is 85 times 520, then 3.4 percent of that total. Keyed phone and web orders normally price higher than counter sales, so a shop with more card-not-present volume sits higher again, and your real rate comes off your own statement rather than a website.
Actual savings depend on your card mix, average order, and the program you choose. We will quote your specific number from a recent statement rather than a range from a website.
Most flower orders are bought for somebody else, often in a hurry, and price sensitivity in that moment is lower than it is on a weekly grocery run. The version that goes badly is the one nobody mentioned until the receipt.
On the phone that means a sentence before you read the total back, and on the website it means both prices on the order page. A customer who hears it at the start rarely reacts. A customer who spots it afterward calls you back about it.
Wedding and event work is agreed in writing weeks or months ahead. Both prices belong in that proposal, so a five thousand dollar balance in June is confirming a number the client already accepted rather than introducing a new one on the day.
Some florists will not put two prices on a sympathy order or a wedding proposal under any circumstances, and that is a fair position to hold. We will quote traditional pricing from the same statement, so the comparison you make is between two real options.
Florists have something most trades do not, a list of dates that repeat on the same week every year. Almost none of it is being used.
For two days a year the phone rings more than anyone can answer. An automatic text goes back asking what they need and when it has to be delivered, which keeps the order with you instead of the shop down the road.
The recipient is delighted and the buyer never hears about it. A short text to the buyer the day after delivery asks for the review, and it goes out on its own rather than depending on someone remembering during your busiest week.
Someone who sent flowers last March will very likely need to send them next March. A message a week ahead, naming the occasion, is the closest thing to a standing order this trade gets, and near enough nobody sends it.
Restaurants, hotels, and offices on weekly arrangements drift when nobody checks in. A scheduled message before each cycle confirms the delivery and gives them a chance to change it, which is cheaper than finding out at the end of the month that they stopped.
An online application that takes about five minutes.
We confirm the program and finalize the rate sheet with you.
Your Clover devices arrive configured for your business.
Plug in, run a test ticket, and you are live.
Not in January, and not in the two weeks before Mother's Day. Changing anything that touches your register right before the weeks that carry your year is a bad trade. Late summer or the back half of autumn gives you time to learn the setup while volume is normal. Send a statement whenever you like and we will tell you the sensible window.
You quote both amounts before taking the card, and the total charged matches the method the customer chose. Nothing is added after the fact. The discipline is saying it up front on every call, so we write that line with you rather than leaving each designer to phrase it their own way on a busy morning.
No. Your floral system keeps doing order entry, recipe costing, and the wire orders that come in through it. We are the processing underneath. Tell us which system you run and how wire orders settle before you sign, because that is worth checking in advance rather than discovering in month two.
Not as a single payment that far out. Anything collected more than twelve months before the service is not boardable, so a couple booking two years ahead cannot pay it all today. A deposit now with scheduled installments inside the twelve-month window works. If your contracts depend on collecting everything up front, tell us early.
On what you can document. Delivery confirmation, the driver's photo, the order notes, and the authorization record are what decide it. We can keep the payment side of that record clean and easy to pull, but the delivery proof is yours to collect, and a photo at the door is the cheapest evidence available to you.
It can, if nobody tells the underwriter first, and this catches florists every year. A sudden spike against a monthly volume estimate can trigger a hold on funds at exactly the point you need them. We set your expected volume with the holiday peaks written into it at application, which avoids the problem rather than fixing it afterwards.
Getting the number does not involve a sales call. We read your most recent processing statement and tell you what you are actually paying, line by line, including what your keyed phone and web orders are costing against your counter sales.