Soapbox Engage Blog

Your nonprofit's online store is probably working exactly as it should. Supporters browse, they buy, orders land in Salesforce. But the moment your team walks into a room full of the same supporters, at a gala, a 5K, a community fair, a table by the front door, that store goes quiet. Someone has to write down a name, collect a check, or point people back to a link they'll forget to click.

That gap is now closed. With the Soapbox Engage Onsite companion app, included with Soapbox Engage Shop, staff and volunteers can sell your existing Shop products in person from a phone or tablet. Each sale syncs to Salesforce just like an online order.

The Gap Between Your Online Store and Your Event Table

Most nonprofit ecommerce tools, Soapbox Engage Shop included until recently, are built around a simple assumption: supporters find your store on the internet. That assumption holds up fine for a webstore that's open 24/7. It falls apart the second your team is standing in front of a supporter who wants to buy a t-shirt, a raffle ticket, or a sponsorship on the spot and there's no laptop, no register, and no clean way to ring it up.

The usual workarounds are familiar to anyone who has run a table at an event:

• A cash box with no real accounting until someone reconciles it days later
• A borrowed Square reader that has nothing to do with your CRM or your Shop app catalog
• A printed QR code pointing to the online store, which leaves supporters to find the item and check out on their own later
• A volunteer taking down names and "we'll follow up," which quietly kills a chunk of the sale

None of those connect back to the same product catalog, the same inventory, or the same Salesforce data your online store already has. In-person selling in the Shop app is built to close that split.

How In-Person Selling Works

The Onsite app isn't a separate store you have to set up. It's a staff view of the store you already run, opened in a mobile browser, with nothing to download from an app store. The products, prices, and options in your Shop app catalog are already there, so there's nothing to duplicate and little for staff to learn beyond finding the item and ringing it up.

A staff member or volunteer pulls up the item, taps to add it, and checks the supporter out on the spot. The supporter walks away with what they came for instead of a promise to "check their email later."

Checkout follows the same rules as your online store, including sales tax. Staff can also add an optional gift to the order, so a supporter buying a shirt can give a little extra to the cause in the same transaction.

Three Ways to Get Paid, One Place It All Lands

In-person selling only works if the payment side is just as fast as the product side. Staff have three ways to close a sale, and the right one usually depends on what the supporter has in hand and what your team has set up:

• QR code: the supporter scans and pays from their own phone, no card handed over
• Tap to pay on a card reader: a contactless tap for supporters who'd rather hand over a card or use their phone's wallet
• Cash: recorded on the spot, so it still shows up in your reporting instead of living only in a cash box

That range matters because a single event table sees a real mix of people: the donor who wants to tap a card in three seconds, the teenager who'd rather scan a code than hand anyone plastic, and the guest who still carries cash and wants to use it. You don't have to pick one method and hope everyone adapts. Staff can match whatever the moment calls for.

In-person card payments run through Stripe, with a Stripe Terminal reader for tap to pay. If a reader isn't handy, staff can also enter a card by hand.

Whichever method a supporter uses, the sale lands in one place: your Shop app order history, alongside your online orders.

Why Shared Inventory Matters More Than It Sounds

It's easy to skim past "shared inventory" as a technical footnote, but it's the detail that keeps in-person selling from quietly breaking your online store. If your event tables and your webstore drew from separate stock counts, you'd have two ways to oversell the same limited-run item, one online, one at the table, and no way to know it happened until a supporter's order can't be fulfilled.

Online and in-person sales draw from the same inventory. Sell the last limited-edition print at your gala table, and it shows as sold out in your online store too. Nobody has to compare two spreadsheets after the event to figure out what's left.

This is the same real-time inventory tracking that helps prevent overselling in the Soapbox Engage Shop app's online store. In-person selling extends it to a second channel instead of introducing a separate system.

Where Teams Sell in Person

In-person selling shows up anywhere your team and your supporters are already in the same room. A few of the most common:

• Galas and auctions: merchandise, raffle tickets, and add-ons sold at the door or table, alongside your auction bidding, without a separate checkout system
• Community events and 5Ks: branded gear, event shirts, or registration add-ons sold on the spot instead of pointed to a link
• Front desk and office visits: a supporter who walks in wanting a membership or a piece of merchandise can check out on the spot
• Tabling and outreach: a folding table at a farmers market or community fair becomes a full storefront, not a cash box and a clipboard
• School and PTO fundraisers: seasonal items like wreaths or poinsettias sold at pickup, with the same catalog used for advance online orders (see our holiday fundraising store setup guide)

The common thread across all of these: your team already has a store built. They don't have to build a second one just because the selling happens face to face instead of on a screen. If you're still deciding what to stock for event tables, these nonprofit merchandise ideas include notes on margin and effort for each item.

What Shows Up in Salesforce

In-person sales sync to Salesforce in real time, the same way online Shop app orders do. There's no export at the end of the night, no batch upload the following week, and no manual entry to reconcile a cash box against a spreadsheet.

That means a t-shirt sold at your gala table shows up in your CRM on the same supporter record as their online orders, and alongside their gifts and event registrations if you use other Soapbox Engage apps. It doesn't sit off to the side in a separate system someone has to connect by hand. For organizations that have pieced together what happened at an event days later, that's the difference between real-time visibility and a reconciliation project.

For a closer look at what a store order should create in Salesforce, see how to sync online sales to your CRM. If you're evaluating your broader app stack, our guide to the best Salesforce fundraising apps for nonprofits is a useful starting point.

Getting Started

If your organization is new to nonprofit ecommerce, our guide on setting up a nonprofit online store covers what to sell, how to price it, and how to get a storefront live. Because the Onsite app is included with the Shop app, the products you add there are ready to sell in person too, with no second set of items to enter. Weighing platforms first? Our comparison of nonprofit ecommerce software covers which platforms can also sell in person.

If you already run Soapbox Engage Shop, a few things to sort out before your first event:

• Connect Stripe. In-person card payments run through Stripe. Order a Stripe Terminal reader if you want tap to pay.
• Check the connection. The Onsite app needs a live internet connection to take payments, so confirm the venue's Wi-Fi or cell signal ahead of time.
• Set up staff access. The Onsite app is a staff tool, so each person selling needs their own Soapbox Engage login with manager-level access.
• Run a test sale. Ring up an item the day before so everyone at the table knows the flow.

Step-by-step setup instructions are in the Soapbox Engage help center. Then bring a phone to your next event, pull up a product, and sell it the way you'd sell anything else, except this time the sale lands in Salesforce before you've left the table.

For a closer look at how in-person sales fit alongside a live fundraising event, see our post on raising more money at a live fundraising event.