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We are a new Girl Scout Troop wanting to utilize square for cookie booths this year.

A few questions... can I link up square readers that other moms already have to our girl scout account? how do other moms at cookie booth use my reader for the booth? Do they just connect it to their phone and need to sign in? or put in a code?  How do I make it so they cannot see all of the information on the account without setting them up as employees, I do not want to pay 5/month.

Do we NEED to get the chip reader square if most chip reader cards still have a magnetic strip?  Will they still work on magnetic reader?

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Super Seller

A reader is a "dumb" device, meaning it knows nothing about the account it is used for just how to read cards and send the information to the phone (and therefore app) it is connected to.  so any reader another mom in the troop has will work.  All the mom would have to do is log in with the account email and password you provide them and it will automatically link them to the girl scout account.

 

As for needing a chip reader.  Technically you should due to the way the Credit card industry has changed with the liability shift that happened over a year ago.   Read more about square and the liability shift here liability shift guide. BUT, the odds of you running into an issue with a stolen or fraudulently swiped credit card are very remote.  So I think if you will be ok just using the magnetic swiper you can get for free, but, that is a risk assessment you need to make for your own group.  Make sure each booth has 2 on hand I would say in case one gets broken, or lost in transit, or stops working.  Worst case scenario you can manually enter the cards 

 

As for people not seeing what has been sold, that is something you have to decide it's value to you.  In order to restrict what people can see and do you have to use employee management.  I have to ask, why does it matter that the moms running the cookie booth can see how much the group has sold?  They are going to know anyway when you tell them how many boxes the group sold so it's not like you are trying to keep a big corporate secret on how much you handle. It is simple math of we sold 4,000 boxes of cookies at $4.  Depending on how many cookie booths you have running at the same time (say 2 is the most active at the same time) you could just have 1 or 2 employees and pass those login information to the mom's that will be in charge.  Yes, It is $5 a month for the employee, but, that is selling 3 boxes of cookies a month or getting the moms in charge to throw in $5 to pay for her account.  That is something you have to decide is worth it or not, personally I don't see what harm a mom running the booth could do if they saw the amount of boxes sold or the Girl scout troop bank account (I guess if you have mom's you don't trust but that seems highly unlikely a mom is going to clear out the girl scout bank account.)

 

If you have any questions please ask.

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I'm another cookie mom with the same question.  If I understand you correctly.  We only need one account and whoever is using one of the readers(we have 2), will us that account email address and password.  We don't need to set up each mother with her own account.  The selling period only last for about 6 weeks.

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Square

Yep, you could just have a single login that's shared, @Sandebar. Your account can be signed into multiple devices at the same time - each would just need to have the Square app installed. There readers are can be shared with whoever needs one. 

 

If you wanted more control over individual logins, reporting per person, and various app permissions, you can enable Employee Management. As Farms detailed above, just depends what functionality you need. Hope that clarifies, let us know if you have any other questions.

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How many card readers can we order for free?

 

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Also, for Girl Scouts, I think you can set up different moms under different locations correct?

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Square

Yeah, you could use additional locations as a workaround, as well, @GStroop1

 

You can request as many Readers as you need, although they can only be requested one at a time from your Dashboard. Otherwise, you can let our support team how many you need and they'll set you up. Contact us directly to do so. Hope that helps!

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Thanks Spencer.   Every time I try to "contact"  square I just keep getting the same menu of "ordering a free reader".  There is no direct "contact" email I can contact.  Please advise.

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Hey @gstroop2545, once you sign in select, "Other" twice. This choice will provide you with your customer code or allow you to send an inbound email. 

 

Please let me know if you're still having trouble. 

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When signing up each Mom as a new location, does each mom log in with my account?  Or would they have their own that I assign.  Also, how do the amounts get deposited?  In one lump sum per girl or by individual transaction?

 

What is gopayment?  Is there an advantage to this versus entering each girl by location?  I have 10 girls total

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I could only reply to the gopayment system.  It is almost like Square.  However, each mother has her own log on to the account.  We switched to Square because of apple and samsung pay.  I don't find Square as user friendly as Intuit gopayment system.

 

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a week ago i managed to get a passcode and had it sent to my email b.c i was going to share it with those that will use the account for their cookie booth time. i cannot figure out how to get another access code. i didnt activate it in time and it expired. im having hard time figuring out where i got the first passcode? any ideas?

 

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Thank you.  We previously used gopayment and that allowed each user to have their own login and then I set the access levels.  However, this should work as long as no one changes any info I've set up.

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how do you do that?

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