The short version
At a Christmas market you will sell more in fewer hours than on any normal Saturday, usually in the cold, often with a queue and a patchy signal. The things that help most are done before the market opens: a till set up with your best sellers first, prices in round numbers, a float with plenty of change, and a stock count you can repeat at lunchtime. Mini Till is free, runs in your browser and keeps working with no signal, so it suits the day. This guide covers the preparation and the routine for the busy hours.
Set up the till a week before
Do not build your product list in the car park. Add everything to the Mini Till Products tab at home, put the ten or so lines that earn most of your money at the front, and ring up a few practice sales. The buttons follow the order of your list, so the thumb-reach positions should hold your best sellers.
- Name things the way customers say them. "Small wreath" and "Large wreath" are better than product codes when you are serving at speed.
- Make bundles into buttons. The till has no multi-buy rule, so a "Three cards, £10" button does the job. Check it adds up against the single price so you are not giving a discount by accident.
- Test it offline. Open the till once with a signal, then switch the phone to aeroplane mode and ring up a sale. If that works at home it will work on the pitch. The market stall till guide explains why.
- Charge everything. Batteries drain faster in the cold. A small power bank per device, and a card reader charged the night before, are worth more than any app setting.
If you have two people on the stall, copy the product list to the second phone using the share link under Settings and sharing in the Products tab. Each device keeps its own sales, so decide in advance which one is the till and which is the spare.
Price in round numbers
Queues build when change is slow. Prices at £4.99 or £7.25 mean coins, and coins mean counting. At a busy market, round prices of £5, £8, £10 and £12 let you take a note and hand back a note, and the customer can see the total before you say it.
You lose very little by rounding up or down to the nearest pound if you do it when you set the price rather than at the till. Work from your cost first, so a rounded price still leaves the margin you want. How to price products has the sums. If you are tempted to mark everything down on the last Saturday before Christmas, do it as a clear, rounded offer, such as "Two for £15", rather than negotiating each sale.
Float: more small notes than you think
Round prices change what a good float looks like. You need fewer coins and more £5 notes and £1 coins than on an ordinary day, because most customers will pay with a £10 or £20 note. A float of £100 to £150 in mixed notes and coins is a reasonable starting point for a stall selling at £5 to £20, though your own prices should decide it. The worked float table in cash handling for small business owners is a good template.
Count the float in front of the second person on the stall, write the figure down, and put it somewhere you will find it again. At cashing up, that number is what you take off the cash total. The till does not hold your float for you, so a note in your phone or on the cash up sheet is enough.
Take cash out of the till during the day. A cash tin on a busy stall is a target, so move larger notes to a pouch on your person or in a locked bag every hour or two, and write the amount down each time.
Card and cash during the rush
Most customers will want to pay by card, and some will have no cash at all. Mini Till does not take the payment itself. You key the total into your reader, wait for the approval, then choose Card on the till so your records match. That takes a few extra seconds a sale, so it is worth agreeing a routine before you open.
- Tap the items and read the total aloud.
- Ask "card or cash?" before the customer starts looking for their wallet.
- For cash, tap what they hand over, using Exact, +£5, +£10 or +£20, and read out the change due.
- For card, key the total in, wait for the approval, then choose Card on the till.
- For a mix of the two, choose Split and enter the card part and the cash part.
Card readers need a connection or a data signal, which a crowded market can swamp. Know whether your reader can store payments and send them later, and have a sign saying what you do if it fails. Taking card payments on a market stall covers the options and what to compare on fees.
Handling the queue
Two people on a stall is the single biggest help, with one taking payment and the other wrapping and bagging. If you are alone, wrap as you tap so the customer is not waiting for a second step.
- Keep the till in focused till mode, so the screen shows only the buttons and the total. The sale cannot be completed until the cash handed over covers the total.
- Do not stop to discuss a refund in the middle of a queue. Ask the customer to wait, serve the next person, and sort it out in a gap. If you made a keying mistake before payment, press Clear sale. After payment, void the sale in Sales history and ring up what the customer is keeping.
- Do not ring up tips. Keep a jar apart so that your takings stay honest.
- Put the price list on a card at eye height. Customers who know the price are quicker to pay.
Keep stock counts on the day
The free till records what you sold, not what is left. It does not hold stock levels, so the count is a routine of your own. On a busy day it is worth doing in three steps.
- Count in the morning. Write the opening quantity of each line next to its name, and photograph the list.
- Check at the lunch peak. A quick glance at your best sellers tells you what to pull from the van, or whether a top line will not last until closing.
- Count at the end. Opening quantity, minus the closing count, should match the number of that line in your sales. If it does not, you know a sale was missed or an item was given away.
Export the day's sales to CSV from Sales history before you leave, and take a backup of the till from the Products tab. The export lists the items in each sale, so you can total the units sold for each line in a spreadsheet. If you trade from more than one place and want a single stock count, Mini Till Pro holds stock centrally, moves it out to each location and reports per location and per person, with a 14 day free trial. One stall does not need it.
After the market
Cash up the same evening, while the day is fresh. Count the cash, take off the float, compare it with the Cash figure in Today's sales, and match your reader's day total against the Card figure. Keep your pitch fee receipt and your sales exports together, because the takings are part of your records. What till records HMRC expects sets out what to keep and for how long.
Questions
Does the till need signal at a Christmas market?
No. Once the page has been opened with a connection, it keeps working offline and saves sales on the device. Your card reader is the part that may need signal.
How many products should I put on the screen?
Put your top ten lines first. You can have as many products as you like, but searching a long list in a queue is slow, so keep the rest out of the way.
Can I run two phones as two tills?
Yes. Each phone keeps its own sales, so export both at the end and add the totals together.