What if: There Is a Power Outage

What if there is a power outage–or the credit card machine crashes or runs out of paper, or the computer goes down?

These are things that we hope won’t ever happen–but they will happen.

We are always ready to sell products–unless they lock the doors of the visitor center. But if one of the above mentioned disasters happen, how do we handle that?

• Get a piece of paper and a pencil/pen, plus a hand-held calculator.
• Write down each item you’re selling–just the part number might be enough (but you may need more info later), and write down the price. Write down “cash” or “CC” for the type of payment for each sale. Writing down the type of credit card would be very helpful, too.
• Total everything with your hand-held calculator.
• If it’s a cash sale, take the cash and make the proper change for the visitor.
• If it’s a credit card sale and the credit card machine is down because of a power outage or there is no paper (all of our machines take thermal paper and will not print anything if plain paper is loaded into it), you must resort to the old-fashioned credit card swiper (pictured above). The credit card is placed in its slot, the multi-part slip is placed in its slot overlapping the card, and the big black handle is then swiped from one side to the other–then back again. This is not a smooth process because it has to ride over the raised numbers and letters on the credit card. After swiping both directions, be sure to fill out the date, write something (fairly general) for the merchandise sold on the slip, make sure the credit card number and name is legible, check the expiration date, write down the CVV2 code from the back of the card and get the customer’s signature (following our standard credit card acceptance steps). Tear off the customer copy and present it to the buyer. Keep the merchant copy with the signature and store it in the cash drawer until it can be processed when the power is back on or the credit card machine is operating properly again.
• Old-fashioned, hand-written slips must be processed through the credit card machine when it is back up in operating condition. You must enter everything manually, starting by pressing “Sale”, entering the credit card number, the expiration, the amount, the CVV2 code, etc. The machine may ask for info that you might not have, like address, zip code, etc. Just press “Enter” to go past these questions. When the transaction is processed, keep the receipt that prints out and clip or staple it to the hand-written slip with the signature on it. These papers are just like cash–if we don’t have the paperwork to back up the transaction in our records, we might get charged back from the customer and the credit card processor and lose the money from the sale–and now the merchandise is gone, so we’ve lost double the money.
• If at all possible, all of the sales that you wrote down on the paper should be entered into the cash register or the Quickbooks or POS system. Each sale should balance with the credit card slip that goes with it or the cash amount that you wrote down.
• The most important thing is documentation. Keep good notes about what happened and the steps you went through to create a paper record that can then be entered into our electronic systems.
• Don’t forget to add sales tax if you are in Colorado or Wyoming. The rate in Dinosaur, CO, is 7.0%. The sales tax for Kemmerer, Evanston and Mountain View, Wyoming is 5%… in Green River, it’s 6%. INHA has a sales tax exemption in Utah–so there’s no tax added to sales.

Please ask questions–ask for help. Some of these steps are a little tedious and take some time, but they are important. Most visitors will understand that it’s going to take a little longer to get their purchase made and will be fairly helpful.