Before you sign up

Frequently asked questions

The questions a shop owner actually asks before moving their business onto something new, answered from the product as it stands rather than from where it is heading. Where the answer is no, it says no.

Cost and commitment

What does GreenFinch cost?

Nothing today. There is no billing in GreenFinch: registration has no card field, no invoice is raised, and no fee is taken out of anything you sell. The plans are set out on the pricing page, and the portal shows you which one your shop is on, but nothing charges you against it.

Is there a trial, and what happens when it ends?

Your shop is created as a trial account. How long the trial runs is a property of the plan you pick when you register. Because there is no billing behind it, the end of a trial does not charge you and does not take a payment method, since no payment method was ever collected.

Can I change plan later?

Not on your own yet. The portal shows your current plan and what the others include, but the button that would move you between them is deliberately disabled while there is nothing to bill.

What am I committing to by signing up?

An email address and a password. There is no contract to accept, no card to enter and no minimum term, because none of the machinery that would enforce one exists.

Getting set up

Do I need my own domain name?

No. You choose a subdomain when you register and your shop is reachable there. You also cannot use a domain you already own: bringing your own domain is not available today, so pick a subdomain you are happy to keep.

How long does setup take?

Registration is one form: business name, the web address you want, whether you sell products, time or both, an email and a password. Submitting it signs you in and drops you on your own catalog. Filling in what you sell is the part that takes real time, and only you can do it.

Do I have to confirm my email address?

Yes. We send a link to the address you register with, and branding, banners, your About page, integrations and inviting colleagues all stay locked until you follow it. Everything else is open straight away.

Can I make it look like my business rather than like GreenFinch?

Within limits, yes. You set your logo, your favicon, two brand colors and a font, and they are applied across the shop. You do not get a page builder, a theme marketplace or arbitrary layout control.

Taking money

How do I get paid?

Not through GreenFinch. This is the single most important thing to understand before you sign up. When a customer checks out, GreenFinch records the order and shows it to you. No card is charged, no money moves and no payout arrives. You take payment however you take it now, in person or by whatever arrangement you already have, and mark the order paid in the portal once you have.

Then what is the Stripe setting in the portal for?

It stores a Stripe account identifier against your shop. Nothing in GreenFinch calls Stripe with it and no checkout uses it. It is groundwork for a payment integration that has not been built, not a payment integration.

Can I take a deposit on an appointment?

You can record a deposit amount against a service, and that is as far as it goes. GreenFinch will not collect it and will not show it to the customer at booking time. Collect deposits the way you do now.

Can I run a sale or a discount code?

No. Nothing in GreenFinch reduces what a customer owes at checkout, so a price on your storefront is the price.

What about loyalty points?

A GreenFinch storefront has a rewards page and the portal has a loyalty section, and both are windows onto a points balance. Nothing in GreenFinch awards a point when someone buys something, and nothing redeems one. Read it as not built rather than as switched off for your plan.

Your customers

Do my customers need an account?

To buy, no. A shopper can check out as a guest with nothing but an email address, and gets a private link for looking that order up again afterwards. To book an appointment or to message you, yes, an account is required.

Will GreenFinch email my customers for me?

No. There are no order confirmations, no booking reminders and no marketing sends. A handful of account emails go out, such as a password reset or a guest order link, and that is the whole list. If your customers expect a confirmation, you send it.

How do customers ask me a question?

A signed-in customer starts a thread from your shop’s contact page, and it arrives in the portal where you and your colleagues can answer, hand it over and close it. It stays inside GreenFinch, so nobody gets a text or an email about it.

Your data and your team

What happens to my data?

Every shop sits behind its own tenant boundary, applied to every database query rather than remembered by each screen, so another merchant on GreenFinch cannot see your catalog, your orders or your customers. Passwords are hashed and never stored as text, and credentials you save for outside integrations are encrypted.

Can I export my data, or close my shop and have it deleted?

Neither is a button you can press today. There is no self-serve export and no self-serve shop closure, and pretending otherwise would be the kind of thing you only discover when you need it. Take that into account before you put years of records in.

Can my staff have their own logins?

Yes. Invite them by name and email, then grant permissions one at a time across catalog, pricing, branding, customers, scheduling and your team. A new colleague starts with none of them until you tick something, and an owner always has all of them. How many logins and staff records you get depends on your plan.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. Your storefront, the portal you run it from and this site are all built to work on a phone, and the portal has a dark mode.

How do I get help?

GreenFinch is built by Conroe Information Technology. There is no help desk, ticket form or support address inside the product yet, and no contact form on this site, which we would rather state than paper over. If you are looking at GreenFinch, ask the person who pointed you at it.