We have a bias toward features and improvements that benefit the entire community of users, rather than one-off or proprietary customizations. The more customization we build into the software, the harder it is to maintain, the slower it runs, and the less fun it is to use. If what you see today doesn’t work for you, it may be a sign that we’re not a good fit.

It’s not that we won’t do custom work. Or that we suck at writing custom code. But it’s the exception and our business model doesn’t rely on it.

We have no desire to replicate really good financial software systems. Does Hello do accounting? Of course it does, to meet its own ends. But it doesn’t internally pay bills, cut checks, run profit and loss and balance sheet, etc. We provide robust financial reporting categories and other data in the form of reports. But we expect your existing accounting systems to manage final accounting. We are in the process of integrating with third party accounting systems where heavy financial accounting can happen more seamlessly outside of Hello (but informed by Hello).

We do our work remotely. Depending on your learning style this might sound tough. But our system is easy to learn, has good training documents and support, and our costs are built around being able to remotely deploy an entire store soup to nuts. We’re certain we can do that successfully.

There are legacy EDI integrations with publishers and other suppliers and the like that we haven’t done, and don’t intend to do. We produce purchase orders and wants lists which you can use to place orders from any publisher or other supplier, and return orders to return merchandise to them.

Some point of sale platforms allow you to bring your current credit card processor along with you to a new system. As a general practice, we don’t. These are major integrations with PCI implications. We use Card Connect by First Data because of their stability, usability, and PCI standards for a cloud environment. Their rates are also highly competitive. Having said that, if you have a mandated credit card processor on campus, reach out and let us know this is a blocking issue for you. We do have some selected credit card processor integrations on our roadmap and they may align with your current setup.