Jolt is a task and workforce management, with time & attendance, remote (selfie) login, scheduling, and simple tasking tools, from the company of the same name in Provo, Utah; useful for small teams that could leverage frequent communication.
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ShopKeep
Score7 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
ShopKeep is an iPad point of sale system; The vendor says it is intuitive, secure, affordable software that helps merchants run smarter businesses. The product optimizes staffing and inventory, while offering sales reports and customer information on a cloud-based platform. The product includes low-cost, integrated payment processing, as well as point of sale hardware. According to the vendor, ShopKeep has 23,000 customers, and a customer…
There is no better way for Cleaning & Maintenance Lists. The follow-up is automatic, it is user-friendly for leaders, and easy to update as needs change.
I am excited for the new updates coming out that will help our new hire training!
ShopKeep can maintain up to 10,000 individual stock items. This is perfect for a cafe, coffee shop, wine bar, small retail store, etc. If you're inventory exceeds the 10,000 items then it may not be a fit for you. Also, ShopKeep works with Apple tablets only (iPad 2 or later). If you prefer Android or PC based tablets then this won't work for you.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Time management and tracking of daily employee productivity.
Allows for instructional data to be added to all our checklists, audits, etc to provide hands on training all the time!
Ease of use. It's a breeze to create new lists and use the lists already created
Mobility- my staff is on the go and being able to grab an iPad at the beginning of their shift and take it with them through the day completing tasks and allowing for more autonomy in our work force
Versatile. Can be use for simple list down to more complex guides and checklists with calculations and scoring.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
ShopKeep provides solid pre-sales support. They did a pre-sales screen-share demo that helped us ensure that their system would handle the needs of the business, and they assisted us in making decisions around which hardware would be appropriate.
ShopKeep's hardware seems well thought out and well integrated. One exception is issues with the connection between their recommended iCMP credit card scanner and the register. Other than that, the hardware works well together.
The register has excellent configurability and customization capabilities, and handles a large variety of products easily. High-volume products can have their own buttons on the register. Products can be added to a purchase by using these buttons, by scanning a bar code with an integrated bar code scanner, or by doing a live text search.
The register is also easily configurable to handle product options - either multiple options like pizza toppings, or exclusive options like regular or decaf coffee.
The ShopKeep system can handle hybrid retail/quick serve/restaurant scenarios with grace. This was a factor that eliminated many other systems that are optimized for one or the other, or where the products for handling retail are completely separate from the products for handling quick serve/restaurant operations. Since this customer has a location where there is a quick serve counter, a restaurant, and a retail gift shop all in the same location, ShopKeep's ability to handle all of these kinds of transactions from the same platform is a powerful advantage. ShopKeep also recently added functionality to transfer open tickets between registers, so that if a customer starts out with a cup of coffee at the quick serve counter, their ticket can be picked up and added to at the gift shop if they wander in there to purchase items.
ShopKeep has a Back Office system that can be accessed through any Web browser, or through their mobile app. The Back Office system is used to import and export data, manage inventory, configure the iPad registers, set up product options, manage employees, and report transactions, sales, product costs & margins, and other data.
Discounts, returns and credits are relatively easy to handle from the register, and the system can be configured to require a manager to approve these kinds of transactions, or not.
Bulk imports and exports are handled well by ShopKeep's Back Office. When setting up initial inventory, products can be added through Excel, then imported as comma-separated values (CSV) files by uploading them through the Web browser. Once inventory is established, adding or modifying items can be done directly through the Web interface.
ShopKeep has a mobile app that can be used by owners or managers to remotely access real-time snapshots of sales and other important data whenever they wish.
We would love to see a "favorites" icon that can be enabled for any label. We have dozens of labels specific to products/processes that are grouped within a multitude of categories. If one is not familiar with which category a label is stored, it requires the use of the search function in Jolt (which is definitely a nice feature and great time saver). However, we were able to create a category called "favorites" and duplicated our frequently used labels into this location for ease of access.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Jolt is very user friendly and offers a lot of solutions to my companies needs. If it offered a Payroll piece and a Point of Sale piece it would make it a complete system that would solve 99% of my companies needs.
Because we expect the current issue with the credit card reader disconnecting from the register to be solved with an upcoming software update, and we like many of the features of Shopkeep.
The system itself is very user friendly and every one of our team members is able to use it easily. The only difficulty that we have occasionally run into is a lack of connectivity between the Bluetooth printer and the iPAD. There are only two or three of us on staff that are well versed enough with the product to be able to fix it when there is this kind of issue.
The register functionality is excellent, both from a learning standpoint and an operations standpoint. Cashiers learn how to use the register quickly, and the registers can be configured with hot buttons for fast-moving products. Setting up product variations and additions is straightforward. The web-accessible Back Office has good features, but lacks enough granularity to provide a store manager with the ability to modify inventory settings without giving them access to all of the financial reports as well.
When I have had questions or needed technical support, I have received a very prompt response to my emails. The answers are concise and if there are instructions they are easy to follow and implement. All interactions I have had with the Jolt team have been a very positive experience.
Occasional long waits [5 minutes or more] or call-backs needed for telephone support. Email support replies usually take several hours. Support personnel are generally friendly and knowledgable.
If moving from a "dumb" cash register system, spend all the time needed to get starting inventory and product costing and pricing correct. Shopkeep has good tools for reporting inventory, margins, and other critical business info, but the information is only useful if the starting figures are accurate.
Jolt provides a full house of solutions. I would have to go with at least two of the other companies to capture all the solutions I was looking for. Jolt gave me all of it. I also want to be clear that other companies promised solutions that they hadn't built out yet. Jolt is upfront and honest about things they are working on, but they won't sell them to you as a means to get you in, only to disappoint you. I have a lot of respect for that.
ShopKeep is an inexpensive choice iPad POS system that comes with all of the tools needed to do business without any long-term contracts or expensive fees. It also offers free 24/7 phone and email support along with online live chat during business hours. Coffee Shop Manager offered some of these items, but they also tied you into a long-term contract and you were charged fee after fee for support, etc. Also, the CSM system was big and took up a lot of space compared to ShopKeep's integration with an Apple iPad tablet.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Food safety processes have reduced significant amount of time managing.
Cleanliness- Saved some labor dollars here by implementing a more consistent process. Added some training videos on cleanliness to help give a clear message of the expectation.
Recipe Management- We have saved thousands on having the ability to upload live recipes and be global rather than having the paper copies of recipes laying around and possibly not being up to date.
ShopKeep didn't integrate with my accounting software. I had to double enter all financial data.
Without inventory controls, all of my financial information was inaccurate. It is impossible to grow a business without accurate financial information.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
