Square Point of Sale (POS‪)‬ 4+

The best point of sale software hands down

I have used many different POS systems and Square is head and shoulders above the rest. The POS terminal does what it is supposed to but the real value I receive from Square is the software that comes along with it for free. The sales reports, inventory management, invoicing and other software tools help me manage my business while providing granularity about customer type, purchase frequency and other important sales functions which are indispensable for managing a business in a time constrained world. The ability to create a website and sell products online also comes with multiple integrations for Instagram and Facebook which allows me to connect with my customers via social platforms. The only platform that comes close is Shopify for online sales. Shopify’s online platform is perhaps (and I’m splitting hairs) slightly better and has a little more choice in payment networks and fractionally better social integrations but it’s pretty close. The swing factor for me was the fact that Square has its heritage in the offline world whereas Shopify’s heritage is in the online world. So it’s more driven by your businesses focus. But both companies have Omni channel capability. Square’s recent acquisition of Afterpay will no doubt provide some optionality for merchants as the acquisition is integrated. All in all, you can’t go wrong with Square.

Developer Response ,

We love to hear a good success story! Thanks for reaching out to share with us - you should join our Seller Community, where others like yourself come to exchange business ideas: sellercommunity.com

Fantastic!

I’m a sole trader with a relatively young business. Square is fantastic, simple to use and to be able to run reports, keep a track of inventory and on the services my business offers is really great. The transaction costs are also very low so having the system is not a drain on my running costs. I would not even consider a card machine from the banks because their monthly charges would be a drain on my running costs. I like being able to create my own invoices and be able to take payments remotely when my business takes me on the road. I started with the chip reader but have recently upgraded to the Square Terminal which I love. It looks great and clients comment on how professional it looks. The only downside is that I can’t book appointments on it. I would love to be able to load Square Appointments on it to make things seamless. Hopefully that will happen. I highly recommend Square. Do yourself, your business and your bottom line a favour, particularly in these uncertain times when every penny counts.

Not great for restaurants

“Square For Restaurants”
I’ve had to spend thousands to upgrade my wifi network and still there are issues with orders not printing in the kitchen or bar.
The product has clearly been created without basic knowledge of how a restaurant POS needs to work - the main issue being all data is captured as a ‘transaction’ whereas a restaurant needs the data captured per table.
Example of why this is an issue - occasionally a customer will call and claim they have been overcharged, however we can’t look up all the tables (ie search for all transactions on table 15), we have to search by transaction which requires us to ask them for the last 4 digits of their credit card. This is hard if they paid cash, we need to filter by cash payment and then manually scroll through all the cash transactions around the time they think they paid. A really clunky process - it would be much easier to filter by table number and within one or two clicks I’d find their bill on the system.
Many other issues but that’s the best example I can think of that demonstrates the system has not been created with actual restaurant knowledge. Clearly just adding a couple features onto the retail-focused system.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback for Square for Restaurants with us. We’d love to make your experience a 5 star one! Please don’t hesitate to get in touch by phone so we can troubleshoot a bit further: squ.re/contactsqsupport