There's nothing to download or install; you run Quail in a web browser (We like Firefox but you can use Chrome or Safari if you prefer!) so you can access it on as many computers as you need.

To start using Quail, just open QuailHQ.com in your web browser and click 'Store Login'. That's it!

The short answer is: check out our dedicated hardware guide.

Otherwise, any computer or iPad that will run Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari -- Quail is very lightweight, and doesn't require much. You can pick up a cheap or secondhand Windows laptop, use an old MacBook Air, a refurbished Mac Mini, or almost anything else. My best rule of thumb is that if you can login to Facebook (the website, not an app) or use Google Docs on it, it'll run Quail just fine.

In addition to a computer, you'll probably want a receipt printer -- we like the Star TSP, but most thermal receipt printers will work. You'll also probably want a kick-open cash drawer that connects to your printer (so it opens automatically when you print receipts).

Quail is card-processor agnostic, so if you have a payment processor that you're already using and that you like (or with whom you're locked into a contract) you can keep using it. The only downside is that you'll need to key in the amount to charge on your card reader.

If you need to set up a payment processor, we strongly recommend Square. And if you do use Square as your card processor, Quail can pair with a Square Terminal to automatically prompt customers to pay, no keying-in of amounts required: just ring up the sale, wait for the customer to tap, dip, or swipe, and you're done.

Quail works with the Square Terminal, but not with the Square Reader, Register, or Stand. If you talk to Square support they're likely to try to upsell you on one of their more expensive devices; don't let them!

You can order a Terminal direct from Square or pick one up at a local Best Buy or Staples. Should be about $299 either way.

You pay for Quail through a fixed monthly subscription based on how many active vendors you have in your store:

• $40/month for up to 30 vendors
• $70/month for up to 60 vendors
• $135/month for an unlimited number of vendors

Nope! Everything is included in the monthly subscription: all features, unlimited clerks & computers, vendor access, backup, everything.

Quail can optionally track clock-in/clock-out times for your clerks, making it easy to tally up hours worked for each clerk. By default this feature is disabled (we've found that most vendor malls don't do time tracking!), but you can always switch it on in your store's settings.

Time tracking is free to turn on; there's no extra charge for it (or any other Quail feature).

Of course! The whole point of Quail is to make it easier to run your store, and we know that dealers like to check in on their sales as often as possible. Your vendors will get an email with a summary of their sales every week, and can use the free Quail for Vendors app to get notifications or check their up-to-the-minute sales from their phone.

Vendors can also log in via vendor.quailhq.com and check their sales from any computer or tablet. Vendor access, including weekly emails, the web-based vendor portal, and the smartphone app, is totally free to your vendors, and part of your Quail subscription. There's no extra fee!

First up: you're not required to use barcodes to ring up sales -- we know most antique stores and vendor malls certainly don't, and we designed Quail to work with stores that don't track their inventory and ring up sales by typing in the details of each item from a vendor-provided price tag.

That said, lots of folks do want to ring up sales by scanning barcodes, so we've added it in as an optional feature in Quail. It's certainly faster, and a lot less typo-prone.

Of course! Vendors can print their own barcodes from Sandpiper or from their Quail vendor portal. They'll need a laser or inkjet printer, plus Avery label sheets onto which they can print labels.

Barcodes printed by Sandpiper or the vendor portal even work in other stores using Quail, so long as the vendor has the same booth number in both stores.