Heartland Payments

General Information about POS Pizza 6 and 7
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synpse
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Heartland Payments

Post by synpse »

Question: Is anyone else using Heartland Payments with POS Pizza?

And if so.. what is your take on them? your review. Things to watch out for? Pro's & Con's. Et Cetra.

I've spoken with Charles, and things are looking pretty good. Then I checked the online reviews, and it appears that ONLY people who had problems are leaving the reviews.. not too many 5 Stars. y'kno?


Also.. are they "the best choice" for credit card processing?

We are currently using X-Charge with.. accelerated payments. no. wait.. they switched to Open Edge Pay. and.. their padding and rates are getting absurd.

It's to the point where the convenience is NOT worth the cost.


Also.. Scott
Can I use 1 Heartland Terminal with 2 POS terminals? Don't really have the need to have 2 of these $250 terminals sitting next to each other on the counter... and then telling the customer, "No, use the one on the left, no, your OTHER left, ugh, the one over here." (i can see this happening)
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Scott
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Re: Heartland Payments

Post by Scott »

The terminals can't be shared by stations, because the stations need to communicate with them during sales, voids, and adjusts (add tips). If you had really careful cashiers (many of you are laughing at this point), you could possibly pull it off, but it would be a matter of time until you had a problem. If one person was taking payment on one station, and another decided to void an order on the other, the void station's connection to the terminal would time out since the terminals only deal with a single IP connection at a time. The void would be done in the POS, but not with the card processor. This leaves things very messy, and you having to manually call or use a web terminal to reverse the payment. And this is only if the cashier notices the time out message. If they didn't (or chose to ignore it), you would find out when the customer called and told you that the charge was still on their card. This would be very messy since POS Pizza would show that it was voided. Only by viewing the void logs, would you be able to find the error, and you would still need to manually correct it. In the end it is much better to have one terminal per station.

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Orders that come in over the phones and are paid for by cards will need to be manually keyed in on the terminals as well, so the cashier and the customer will both need to be able to reach them. The cables on them are long enough so that the cashier can hand them to the customer when the transaction comes, or take them from the counter when a call comes in with a manual card entry over the phone, so this is not really an issue.


One of our local customers who has 4 order taking stations and gets very busy, switched to this setup about 2 months ago. I can tell you that if there were any problems with it, that he would have let me know about it. So in this case, no news is good news.

It will be a little different, since you will be manually entering cards on the terminal's keypad rather than on the POS screen, but this is a key part of fully isolating the card processing from the computer, thus taking the computer completely out of scope for PCI purposes.

I can also tell you that in working with the other payment processors, that things will be moving in this direction for them as well. Yes $250 is a lot compared to a $100 mag card reader, but still much cheaper than some other models that approach $750. You should also get a break on rates since the PCI requirement is removed from the computers. Many processors charge additional fees as a sort of insurance policy for PCI, that can be waived or reduced when using the all-in-one terminals. I see these terminals as the wave of the future for computer based POS systems. For me they will allow more time for development of the POS and less time chasing our tails with all of the rules changes that constantly take place in the card industry. There are already more changes slated for 2017, so it is nice to know that people with terminals won't have to do anything, as they are automatically updated over the internet regularly. With software systems, this is not always the case, and many times the way the software is used by the POS has to be changed too, forcing Summit to have to change the integration again. This type of thing kills the development cycle for other things like adding new features, instead of chasing card processing rules changes on a regular basis.


Scott
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synpse
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Re: Heartland Payments

Post by synpse »

Ah! Thank you for the precise reply to my inquiry.
If you had really careful cashiers (many of you are laughing at this point)
Yeah, I laughed almost loud enough to wake others in my house. So, it's a warning not to create more problems. Warning heard.
So in this case, no news is good news.
OH BOY AM I GOING TO HAVE SOME NEWS FOR YOU!! I should just send a picture.

Our restaurant has 2 POS stations on top of the beer cooler, on the wall behind the bar, with the soda (pop!) fountain on the bar counter facing the customers. This is the walk-way to behind the bar counter that all the wait staff passes through to get drinks. So, this having to have the terminal near the POS for the phone orders, and also needing to have it "across the walkway" for the customers in the restaurant is going to be fun.

Also, I'm going to catch flack for only having 1 terminal per store. I might need to bite the bullet and get 2 for the restaurant. The 2nd store, a pizza place, can survive as normal, as that place is laid out normal, with the customers facing the back of the POS screen.

When they get busy on a Friday night, and we have phone orders coming in, people paying with their card over the phone for delivery, and a dozen tables full of people in a rush for the high school football game, things will get hectic. Then only 1 station will have a pad. and this cord is going to go between being near the keyboard to being on the counter, near the customer. UGH! $500 for the wireless PAX terminal might not be such a bad thing at THIS point. Table-side swiping would be nice! (I know, post in the Wish List topic)

Sorry. I'm just stressing a bit. It sounds like you know the type of monkey we have at our circus. Someone will literally end up strangled.

But hey, It's better to plan for this disaster now, before it happens, rather than when the ship is sinking. "Add Item to Shoping Cart - Prevention 1 Oz." Got my ounce of prevention!


Thank you! I'll be getting the 2nd terminal for the Restaurant tomorrow. The 1st ones have already been ordered. I'm gonna need 2. This way I can have one on the POS Counter (away from the customers) and 1 on the Bar Counter (where customers usually sign their credit card slips) I got my solution! Ugh, charge me another $260. (over 6 months!)

We got spoiled with X-Charge, and simply being able to key in on either computer. Same with the mag strip readers. (and they're like $20) But if it saves money, I know the owner has my back. It just has to be practical to use.
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Re: Heartland Payments

Post by synpse »

NOTES from today's 1st of 2 Heartland PAX Terminal setups.


The ZIP CODE in the Customer Account MUST be 5 digits, or it will balk at passing that data to the PAX. We had a work-around system for Delivery Fees, where we would enter "5" in the ZIP CODE field (Postal_Code in the DB). So, to correct this, I padded the values with 0's. 5 became 00005. Then I updated the Delivery Zones, and all was well.

We have AVS turned on. Some busier places turn it off all together, for the sake of speed and convenience. We are a small town, and those % fees add up quick to a small business.


Overall, these PAX terminals are FASTER than x-charge. I'm impressed. The EMV Chip reader is not slow as I had read in some reviews.

Also, install the integration on all POS computers, regardless of whether or not they have a terminal dedicated to them. Just don't enter an IP in the non-payment POS computer. Otherwise, it seems to have cashed out my order auto-magically. I voided it, so that corrected the one-off mistake.


So, for the 1st Pizza shop, we only have 1 cash drawer, and 1 PAX terminal. Sometimes payments can get slowed down, as the order takers should be defaulting to using the non-cash-drawer-POS 1st. But, it's easily manageable. For the 'fine dining' restaurant, having 2 terminals is definitely a MUST, which we have done. I'll be setting those up tomorrow, now that I know what I'm doing.
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Re: Heartland Payments

Post by Ftmoore »

I have Heartland and of all the processors I have used they are by the far best. Someone posted you couldnt use the processors among terminals. I have the newest mag/chip reader and all of my POS terminals can access and process using it. I have two terminals in the front of the store and they both use the one processor.

Heartlands rates are, in my opinion, the best among processors. They specialize with Restuarants in particular and keep their fees low and they disclose them. I have yet to be surprised when I receive my statements each month. Their customer service is second to any that I have used. Very responsive and able to fix any problem quickly. Just my two cents.
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