SwipeSimple — Offsite Event Sales
TL;DR
Every festival table, every herf, every pop-up event you do without a register is money you're either handling in cash and hoping for the best — or losing because someone only has a card. SwipeSimple lets you take your TORO catalog to an offsite event on your phone, sell with a card reader, and then bring the whole event's sales back into TORO when you get home. There's no TORO fee to use it. If you do even one offsite event a year, it pays for itself the first time a customer hands you a credit card and you actually have somewhere to run it.
Some of the best sales happen away from the register. A festival table, a lounge herf, a pop-up at a golf course, a booth at a trade show — high-energy situations where customers are in a buying mood and you're the only vendor with what they want. The only thing standing between you and a clean sale is a way to take payment.
SwipeSimple is a mobile point-of-sale app. TORO doesn't talk to it directly — instead, TORO hands SwipeSimple a copy of your catalog before the event, and reads the event's sales back afterward. So there are two file steps: export your items out to SwipeSimple before you go, and import the sales back into TORO when you return. Everything below walks through both.
What it costs
There's no TORO fee for this — it's part of your system. You do need your own SwipeSimple account to run the app and process cards, and SwipeSimple sets its own processing rates and sells the card reader. To get an account set up, ask Mitch on your store's CC WhatsApp thread — that's the fastest way in.
Finding it
Open the Modules & Integrations tab on your dashboard and click SwipeSimple. You'll see two choices: Create Export for SwipeSimple Catalog (the before-the-event step) and Import Transactions from Offsite Event (the after-the-event step).
Before the event — build and export your catalog
1. Open your catalogs. Click Create Export for SwipeSimple Catalog. This opens your list of saved export catalogs. Use the buttons on the right: New to start one, Edit to reopen one, Delete to remove one.
2. Start a new catalog. Click New, give it a name (something like "PCA Trade Show 2026"), and the catalog editor opens.
3. Add the items you'll sell. Scan a barcode, or click Find Item to look one up. Add everything you plan to bring.
4. Fine-tune any item. Click a row to select it, then use the buttons on the right:
- Set Price… — override the price just for this event (a show special, a rounder cash price, whatever you need).
- Choose Taxes… — check the sales taxes that should apply to the item; uncheck one to exempt the item from it. The Sales Tax Applied and Sales Tax Exempt columns show exactly what's happening at a glance — "Applied" lists what's charged (or says NONE), "Exempt" lists anything you've taken off.
- Toggle Tax-Free — a quick switch to make an item fully tax-free, or flip it back.
- View Taxes — shows the exact tax rates that will be written into SwipeSimple.
- Remove Item — takes an item back off the list.
5. Export the file. Click Export for SwipeSimple. TORO suggests a filename and lets you choose where to save it — it's an Excel file (.xlsx) already in the exact format SwipeSimple requires.
6. Upload it to SwipeSimple. At swipesimple.com, clear BOTH your Items and your Taxes first — every single time. This prevents duplicates piling up and keeps the later sales re-import matching correctly by item name. Then go to Items → Import / upload and choose the file TORO made.
Your catalog — with your event pricing and taxes — is now on SwipeSimple, ready to go.
At the event
Open the SwipeSimple app on your phone, find your item, set the quantity, and take payment. Card payments run through SwipeSimple's card reader. The app is built for quick transactions on a small screen, not for fighting with a menu while a line forms.
After you're back — bring the sales home
SwipeSimple sales don't flow into TORO on their own. You bring them back with one more file step:
1. Export the event's sales from SwipeSimple. At swipesimple.com, go to Reporting → Items report, set the date range to cover your event, and Export the report as a CSV.
2. Open the importer in TORO. On the SwipeSimple screen, click Import Transactions from Offsite Event.
3. Load the file. Type the Event name, click Choose Items Report CSV…, and pick the file you just exported. TORO shows you the matched items so you can review them before committing.
4. Import. Click Import to TORO. TORO books the event as one transaction (paid as "Swipe Simple," with the event name on it) and removes the sold items from your inventory so your stock counts stay right.
By the time you're back behind the counter, the event's numbers and inventory are in the system without re-keying every sale by hand.
Heads up: bringing event sales back into TORO is rolling out gradually. If Import Transactions from Offsite Event tells you to contact support, reach out and we'll switch it on for your store.
When this earns its keep
You don't need to run events every weekend to make this worth having. Even one festival a year — where you'd otherwise be making change from a cash box and turning away card-only customers — is a situation this solves cleanly. If events are a regular part of your schedule, exporting your real catalog out and pulling the real sales back is the difference between running a satellite store and running a side table.