This guide includes a checklist to help you get your Heartland Retail account set up most efficiently.
Welcome to Heartland Retail!
Whether you’ve already completed the process of setting up your new account, or are just collecting the data you will need once your new account is ready, this guide includes a checklist to help you get your Heartland Retail account set up quickly.
Do you have specific questions about how to do something? You can access the Heartland Retail Help Center from within your Heartland Retail account. Simply click the arrow next to your username, in the upper right hand corner of any page, and select 'Help Center'.
You can also reach Heartland Retail via the in-app chat icon!
Setup Checklist: The free trial starts with setting up the five areas in the checklist below.
Should you need to return to this page, you can do so at any point by clicking the orange Setup option on the top navigation bar.
(1) Locations, Stations, and Drawers
Locations are physical places where inventory is located (a store or a warehouse) or virtual sales channels (an e-commerce website.) Each location has one or more stations. Once a location has been created, you can assign users to that location, add stations, and add cash drawers. A user can be added to a location only after they have been set up (see step 2 below).
Stations are a physical point of sale or point of order fulfillment within a location. You will need to name your station(s) during this setup and each station can optionally have a cash drawer.
Cash drawers must be set up before you can accept cash at a POS station. A single drawer can be shared by multiple stations and you can have a station that does not require a cash drawer as it does not accept cash.
Cash drawers are created with a $0 balance. You will be asked to count the drawer, adding to the balance, when you begin using the Point of Sale.
You must create at least one location and station in order to process transactions.
For step-by-step guidance, please use this link, Adding, Activating, and Editing Locations, Selling Stations, and Cash Drawers, to refer to our knowledge base on these functions.
(2) Users
When your Heartland Retail account was created, you were automatically set up as a user with an administrative role, which grants you all permissions. It's quick and easy to create additional users and to control what they can do in the system with roles that you create by assigning permissions to those roles.
For step-by-step guidance, please use this link, Adding A New User, Editing Roles and Selecting Locations, to refer to our knowledge base on this function.
(3) Sales Tax
Tax Rules allow you to control how items are taxed at the point of sale. We recommend that you set up your sales tax rules before you set up your items as each item will need a ‘tax class’ (which you are defining here, under Sales Tax) so that the appropriate tax will be collected upon the sale of that item.
For step-by-step help, please see How To Set Up Tax Rules and Jurisdictions to refer to our knowledge base on this function.
(4) Vendors, Items and Inventory
We recommend that you set up your vendors prior to importing your items, since you are able to specify a primary vendor on each item you create. For information about how to set up vendors, read this article: Creating a New Vendor
In order to sell items at the point of sale, you need to first add them Heartland Retail. You can add items individually or in bulk via spreadsheet import. (Additionally, you’ll most likely want to add custom fields, as described in the Adding, Editing or Deleting Custom Fields article, prior to creating any items.)
Once you have added your items, you can import physical inventory balances with a physical count. When you are ready to do your physical count, read this article: Completing Physical Counts (via scanning items or importing quantities).
(5) Credit Card Setup
With Heartland Retail you can process credit card transactions using Heartland Retail integrated credit card processing. You might choose to process with us or from a variety of other credit card processors. Before processing credit cards you must first set up an account with one of Heartland Retail’s PCI compliant payment processing partners.
Alternatively, you can process credit card transactions using a stand alone terminal (that is not integrated, read this article on Processing Credit Card Transactions with a Standalone Terminal). You will set up a Custom Payment Type if you are electing to use a stand-alone credit card terminal. This will allow you to tender with this custom payment option and then process a customer's credit card using said terminal. To create this go to: Settings > Payment Types > New. You can then name it, add a description to it, and add custom fields. Click save and this will now be an option when tendering a ticket.
Once all five key areas on this checklist are checked…
CONGRATULATIONS - you have set up the areas that are required to begin using Heartland Retail!
To further explore Heartland Retail, here are other areas that we recommend you set up:
- Importing Customers
- Importing Gift Cards
- Importing Purchase Orders
- Completing Physical Counts
- Adding/Editing POS Receipt Templates and Sales Invoice Templates
- If you will be integrating to your accounting system: Configuring QBO Integrations
OTHER
- Roles and Permissions
- Hardware Guidelines
- Configuring CC Reader for Use with Mercury
- Printing a Barcode Label
- Adding Shipping Methods
- Adding, Editing and Deleting Inventory Adjustment Reasons
- Adding, Editing and Deleting Cash Paid In/Out Reasons
Exiting Guided Access
Once you have finalized your account set up and everything in the Initial Setup section has a blue checkmark, press the I’m Done button to exit Guided Access.