It is a gloomy day in West Tennessee and a bit warm to be the last day of January. Marjie just asked, “ Where is the snow? I thought someone said it was going to be a cold, hard winter”. “Lucky you, you don’t have to miss a day of school”. I don’t think she liked my response.

Today I’m a bit sad. For 6 years I have been using “Shopkeep” as my point of sale software provider. For those unfamiliar with a POS system, think of an old cash register with a modern look. This is my cash register, and where I enter my inventory descriptions, quantities, prices, customer data and pretty much everything about my business. My sales histories, credit card transactions and, most importantly, 6 years of sales and customer info is stored on a distant Shopkeep cloud…. I think?

Six years ago I recall sitting at my kitchen bar and doing endless Google searches and reading endless reviews about the many POS providers and finally narrowing it down to two or three. I absolutely wanted cloud-based with IPad terminals and a small footprint. After doing a few online demos, I chose Shopkeep. And now, six years later, this lukewarm POS marriage with counseling, a lot of arguments and the threat of separation… I started chatting with “Square”. Yep, Square is the biggest cloud-based, IPad POS provider in the country. I am not a sheep, and I hate going with the Walgreens or WalMart of POS systems, but after six years of Shopkeep, I think I finally know what I really want. And for fear of sounding too techie or like a spouse coming out of a bad relationship, I’ll just say, one of the many advantages of being a billion dollar company is you can hire the best developers and programmers money can buy.

So, on your next visit to White Squirrel Winery, you will see one of those little white terminals with the grey square on the back… the one’s you see in all the coffee shops, donut shops and dress boutiques. And that too makes me sad. I was rooting for the small guy… the one that was there when I started.