New owner - taking over a Cloud Retailer shop

Modified on Wed, 4 Sep at 12:39 PM

Overview

If you are a new owner of an existing business that is currently using Cloud Retailer, firstly, congratulations! This document is a guide to help you understand what a good transition looks like.

WHAT IS INCLUDED WITH MY MONTHLY FEE?

The monthly Cloud Retailer subscription entitles you to:

Access to the Cloud Retailer system

At its core, this fee covers your ability to use Cloud Retailer software or infrastructure. These systems are hosted and managed in our environment. That means you don't pay for servers to manage your data, backups, security, etc. Our team manages and monitors these systems 24-7-365

Regular updates to Cloud Retailer

We release a new revision of Cloud Retailer every week that contain a significant number of new features, bug fixes, and other improvements. Your subscription entitles you to these new versions. We typically apply updates to customers instances about once a quarter.

Basic support services

Your subscription includes basic support services. Premium support bears additional costs. See this page with more information on what our support covers

Premium Support Services and Hourly Rates

We also offer support packages which decreases the hourly rate paid for support. More information can be found here.

TRAINING

Training is a critical step for new customers. Cloud Retailer is like any tool, if you don't know how to use it well it won't be as useful as it should.

It's tempting for a new owner to rely on existing employees to train them on the system. Getting training from existing staff is a great step 1, but we strongly recommend that you undertake our formal training to make sure your knowledge is complete and well rounded. You can include one of your employees on the training as well!

For more new owners we recommend a 10-hour package of premium support (cost $1090). This covers two 2-hour training sessions plus some hand-holding that covers questions and issues that often come up during the first 30 days.

For people that have more complex operations, will desire system changes, custom reports, etc. A 25-hour package ($2475) might be a better option.

CREDIT CARD PROCESSING

When you take over the store, you'll need to switch your credit card processing so that money is deposited into your bank account. You'll either need to sign up with a new processor or sign up with the same processor that the store is currently using. You should check out our article on things that are important to look for in a processor as well.

Changes to card processing have a cost of $390 for the first terminal and $120 for each additional terminal for reconfiguration and testing. A minimum of 2 business day's notice is required prior to the appointment.

If you're interested in saving some money when it comes to merchant service/credit card processing, please contact us at [email protected] or 888-267-7483. In many cases, we can find a way to lower your rates and waive some or all of the fees related to payment terminal programming.

AGREEMENTS

As Cloud Retailer is a subscription-based product there's a small amount of paperwork we'll need the new owner to fill out, which includes payment information.

WHAT IF I AM ALREADY A CLOUD RETAILER USER AND AM BUYING A CLOUD RETAILER STORE?

We will create a new store within your existing instance and then import pricing from the existing store. We will also need to reconfigure your payment terminals (see above). You will need to manually address missing products from your core database. The cost for this process is $250.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to import past historical information into your existing data. We've attempted this and due to bad data either within the source or the destination data, it turns into a mess. As an example, we had a well-organized client with 3 large liquor stores with what they had products set up in their system consistently. What we found were things like:

Smirnoff Vodka 750 ml - UPC 12345 @ Store 1 with an alternate UPC of 5555Smirnoff Vodka 1 liter - alternate UPC 12345 @ Store 2Smirnoff Vodka Vanilla Flavor 750 ml - UPC 12345 @ Store 3Smirnoff Vodka 1 liter - alternate UPC of 5555 @ Store 3

Multiple different products are sharing the same UPC, which should never happen. This is a near-literal example and these folks were well organized! The best part was when they tried to figure out which product UPC 12345 or 5555, they couldn't find those UPCs on any product as they were probably old. As a result, when we were trying to attach sales data to a product record the system had no clue how to manage it.

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For an additional cost, there may be some options in terms of bringing in certain pieces of additional data. Contact your RITE salesperson for more information.

APPOINTMENT CANCELLATION FEE

For any plannable work, we will require you to set an appointment for our tech team at least two days prior to the scheduled work. By making the appointment, you agree to be charged a cancellation fee of $168 in the event you need to cancel with less than 1 business day notice. For flat fee work, we simply charge the same flat fee rate again at time of rescheduling.

SUMMARY

In summary, most new store owners go through the following process:

1) They connect us with their new credit card processor ($390 for the first terminal and $120 for each additional terminal to switch + cost of new payment terminals if needed)

2) They sign up for a 10-hour support package and use 4 hours of that for training. The remainder staying in reserve for premium services they will need during their transitions.

3) They sign some basic paperwork authorizing us to collect ACH or credit card payments for the services.

4) They contact us at [email protected] or 888-267-7483 to discuss cost-saving options when it comes to payment processing and terminal programming fees.

That's it. Once again, welcome - and we look forward to working with you. Thanks!