Square for Retail Reviews

I love the convenience of swiping a card, I love that it pays out quickly (far quicker than over my website) and it keeps peoples information from past square interactions they've done so you can send them a receipt.

I would love to have an offline setting so it could save the cards and charge when you reconnect. I don't always have a connection at the markets I'm working. I'm working currently with the smallest square phone connection so I also look forward to updating to the version that accepts debit cards too

Simple enough to add products and check out.

After using square POS for a few years, we switched to Shopify bc we also had an online store and needed to consolidate systems. We continued to pay for Square for a year although we were no longer using the system for anything other than to access old orders. When our office manager canceled the paid account, Square no longer allowed us to access the account at all. Our office manager spent several hours and finally got access. We were not informed that all other user accounts would be closed and that the only way to access old records would be through the owner email account. I called square to ask about being locked out of my account and the customer service rep ([SENSITIVE CONTENT]?) was incredibly rude, unhelpful, and sarcastic. I'm happy that we no longer use Square solely based on the customer service. Additionally, the processing fees went up drastically for us when we began offering one CBD product (THC free) out of several hundred products in our store.

Square easily handles transactions for our church book stall. It provides up-to-date inventory and online reporting for tax purposes. You can easily add sales, promotions, and other tailor-made functions.

What I like least about this software is the hardware. We utilize the Square Terminal, which was attractive as a portable register in that it takes credit cards via swipe and chip, but also prints receipts. The optional scanner is even nicer to use. However, for the scanner to work, the terminal must be plugged into an outlet, which robs it of its portable nature. Additionally, adding inventory via the Terminal is cumbersome and slow. Imagine typing in inventory titles using a small smart phone that is slower than a smart phone.

User friendly platform to load your storefront with products. Present templates that are also customizable to your liking. Integration of an inventory model to track what you have left on hand.

Have a plan for your products of offering multiple size and/or color options before entering on the site. It's much harder to edit and change the categories once it's set. Know what your page intent is as well ahead of schedule.

It was easy to setup and start using when you need it. You connect it to your phone and use it as a normal POS you would in a store

Support isn't always easy to get a hold of and it wouldn't integrate it with our system. This is more for small business use and not for tracking and reporting on analytics.

We use square daily to keep track of sold items / integrate inventory / keep track of customers purchases.

We do not have any cons that come to mind!

Cost and set up were both affordable and easy, plus transactions were never an issue on any device or credit card. The processing fees were very reasonable for our use. The reporting features were very straight forward to implement in our CMS tools.

Nothing!!! Could not find an issue if we wanted to, the hardware and software worked flawlessly.

There are so many great features with the Square for retail. The ease of use is at the top of my list. It hooks up with my phone and never misses a beat.

I have not had any issues using this software. Even when I dont have a signal, it keeps the transaction in que and processes it when a signal is present.

Square pretty much takes all the leg work out of setting up a POS system for any business, but I'll speak specifically as a small business owner.
-If you're a first time small business owner, save yourself the headache and just go with Square; you might be able to get a lower merchant fees rate with another service, but then you have to deal with the hassle of setting up a separate POS register, possibly a separate app you'd have to setup on an iPad if that's what you plan to use, setting up the merchant account, etc. With Square, it's all wrapped into one easy setup.
-Easy to setup on an iPad, create a catalog of items to sell and process payments
-The item catalog screen is very user friendly and customizable
-Doing refunds is easy
-Reports are incredibly easy to run
-Square integrates with QuickBooks online, so it's been seamless to link all my Square sales to my accounting books and makes my tax filings much more accurate
-Creating invoices is also easy and gives a professional look to my invoice emails
-Ability to create forms that require signature, so no need for another digital signature service (unless you need more details, see Cons below)

-I wish you could have the same virtual terminal on the iPad on desktop as well. There have been times when my iPad crapped out and had to use my laptop, and it's not the same experience.
-If you're using the signature service for forms that you need to send out, it only records the signature itself and nothing else. Either it's a user error on my part, or they need to update it, but it needs more customization.

I love that I can use my Square terminal anywhere. Whether I am at an event or in the back room, I can get paid.

I do find that sometimes the payouts can be confusing

Use this product for just 6 weeks, was very very easy to learn and had people using it that were generally not good at computers. They also had an easy time using it. Easy to change product description at one location or across all locations. Really enjoyed the reports, easy to manipulate

Really really challenging to use on a ipad for scheduling and adjusting people's time cards. Was very slow and would regularly crash. (This was specific for this app, all other functions on the ipad worked fine and quickly).
Online orders, loved that when they came through you could update the progressed. HATED that you could not undo it. Would like to see the function that you could go forward and backwards, not just forwards.
Online orders - customers would enter address online and it would go to the shop "closest" to their location. However this was closest as the crow flies, not closest for driving directions. Would love to see it function off of driving directions. Frequently, a people would make a curbside order and they would end up going to the second or third closest location to where they lived due to this

Its very simple to use and train new employees on. Reports are easy to run and can get most data that you need. Allows you to communicate with customers.
They are continuing evolving and adding new features.

Wish there was a way to take a deposit for future orders (placed online or on the phone) so the sales are applied to the date they are picked not the day we take the payment. For advance orders, available pick up times are based on your hours of operations. Wish we could limit that depending on what is being ordered.

We have used Square in our retail location for over 2 years now. We also utilize the system for mobile sales. We love being able to use one system for both. Square doesn't require extensive training and is self explanatory.

I would love to be able to text our customers to broadcast announcements, sales, etc. This is currently not an option which requires us to have additional third party software.

The ease of implementation of the square system was excellent. Once implemented, managing and controlling items and inventory is simple and efficient. The POS system is easy to manage and use, easy to train our staff on, and customizable for all of our needs. The reporting system gives us all the information we need to summarize our sales data, run sales tax reports, and more.

There is not much to not like. For our small business the software works wonderfully, if we had a large variety of items the POS system might get more complicated, but not for us.

The software is user friendly, quick and easy. I love their simple and straight forward layout. They literally contributed to my business growing!!!!

I can't think of any negative thing to say, except at the beginning I had some problems that turned out to do with poor internet connection.