Merchant software

[John McGregor]

Madison Kelly wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>   No doubt this has been asked before, but things change so quickly. :)
>
>   A friend has started a small, at home business selling customized
> children's books. Basically, he needs a merchant app that can take a
> customer's billing, shipping and a couple custom fields. Specifically,
> the names of the child and their friends/family to work into the story.
>
>  
I was involved in a similar situation for a small cultural
not-for-profit that was looking for a way to market its memberships and
merchandise on-line. As you've probably found out, there isn't a lot
available for micro retail operations. One solution is to set up a
website that can handle all the text registration info with a  link to
Pay Pal Canada to handle on-line payments and then use GnuCash for the
company's books and to manually issue invoices / record payments for in
person purchases. Your friend should expect to increase his product's
price by $5.00 to cover the Pay Pal and credit card process fees.
http://www.paypal.ca/ca/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_home

Another possible solution is a complete on-line hosted operation like
GoECart. There are a couple of downsides though. At approximately
$3000.00/yr its pricey for a micro business and it's automated data feed
requires Quick Books which means added start up costs of Cross Over
Office and a Quick Books license.
http://www.goecart.com/shopping_cart_software_price.asp

Sorry that I couldn't be more helpful, it's just that there's not much
available that caters to the micro-business market place.

John





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