Handling money

Forms of payment

There are several ways to be compensated at a craft show. Cash, check, credit card and barter. Cash is king. Almost all vendors prefer cash. Unless the money is counterfeit you do not need to worry or take protective measures as you would with checks or credit cards. Be careful if you are going to steal from the government. No tips here just be careful.

Show Special Prices We usually offer some of our wares at a reduced price for shows as we have retail prices on our websites and wholesale prices we offer to stores who resell our items. Our price structure is set up so we can make a profit selling wholesale. We do not offer wholesale prices at shows because of the accumulation of extra costs we incur, including our time spent packing, minding the booth and unpacking at home after the show, booth fee, gas and so forth. We can usually make the same profit selling wholesale or at a show and we will go into this later on in the section on how to figure costs. Not to mention it would not be ethical for us to sell our items for much less than the stores we supply.

Change fund

Make sure to bring plenty of change. Hit the bank before you get to the show. Some shows will offer a bank and make change through out the weekend and that's is darn handy but don't count on it.

There is no rule for the size or denominations in the fund. After a few shows you can estimate the size of the fund. Just remember that people get money from ATM's and ATM's only give out 20 dollar bills. Small sales can eat up your 5's and 10's very quickly. If you have items that sell for less than 5 or 10 dollars make sure you have lots of 5s and 10s because that is what you will be giving back. If you run out of change someone will need to scurry around making small purchases with big bills. Do not do this to your fellow vendors.
You might ask if thy have extra change but do not be so rude as to use up their change fund because you underestimated your needs. We once used our change fund to pay the motel room as the bank deposit had not posted through.

Checks are a risk as there usually is no way to tell if they are good or not. And collecting on a bum check is usually nearly impossible and at the least very time consuming. If you doing a show 150 miles from home you may not know the people and the chance of collecting on a bad check is slim. That said, in 30 plus years we have taken a lot of checks and have only been burnt once. Not bad. We still take checks but only for sales less than $50.00.

These days most checking accounts have debit cards that work like a credit card and many people are using them. Credit cards are used quite a bit at shows so if you are doing any volume at all you may think about taking them. Every credit card provider has their own rules with respect to validation. The most basic way is the old knuckle buster, that caaachunnkk machine that takes an impression of the card. The vendor then uses the information from the customer and calls the number in to the processing company, or enters the data on a secure website. The telephone validation can be a pain for less than $20.00, especially if you are busy. It is up to the vendor as to whether or not to validate every transaction. Validating every card can take time and it really slows things up, especially when taking money hand over fist. Some credit card companies offer a secure line verification card swiper which captures the magnetic strip info and validates the card in real time. This is by far the safest and quickest method but there are likely more initial costs for equipment. This method works for most debit cards as well.

By the way, it is a violation of Visa and Master Card terms of service to demand a minimum purchase for credit card transactions. Read your terms of service. You are not legally allowed to say $10.00 or $20.00 or $any.00 for credit card purchases. Suck it up and follow the rules.

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