thread Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail in Archived Discussions (Read Only)

Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

Spenser — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 21:12:11 GMT

Hi Community! I’m excited to share some new features that we’re rolling out in the new Square for Retail solution. Square for Retail is a separate app - now available in the App Store - that adds on a suite of oft-requested features to the Point of Sale app, including advanced inventory reporting (Cost of Goods!), vendor management, and purchase orders. Let’s take a look!

Features:

Inventory Plus

With Square for Retail, you have access to three new, powerful reports: Cost of Goods Sold, Projected Profit, and Inventory by Category. In order to take advantage of the new reports available with Inventory Plus, you can now add Unit Cost for each item in your library.

Vendor Management and Purchase Orders

Now you have the ability to create and manage your vendor list and send and receive purchase orders – your online Square Dashboard is your new Back of House.

Team Management and Customer Directory

We’re bundling some existing features into the Retail POS as well. With Square for Retail, you’ll also have access to Team Management and Customer Directory features!

Pricing:

For $60 a device per month per location you will get access to the full suite of features available above. The first device for each location is free, and each additional device (per location) costs $20. There’s also a zero-commitment 30-day free trial, if you’d like to give everything a try first.*

Processing fees for Square for Retail are 2.5% + 10c for swipe, dip, or tap payments, and 3.5% + 15 cents for manually-entered payments. Invoices and Online Store orders are 2.9% + 30c per transction.

(Note: If you’re already using Team Management, you will not be billed separately and all of your employees will be included in the price of Square for Retail. No action required on your part!)

*Pricing for Square for Retail was updated in 2018 .

Getting Started:

If you’re new to Square for Retail, take a look at our comprehensive Getting Started Guide – it includes helpful tips for sellers who are new to the Square Point of Sale for Retail (but already have a Square account), as well as easy-to-follow onboarding steps for anyone brand new to Square.

You can also check out our Town Square blog for more information.

Feel free to comment below with any questions, thanks!

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

VanKalkerFarms — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 23:37:42 GMT

There are a few things that would be nice to clarify:

1. This is a different app than Square POS. How different is it? It looks like it's just barcode scan or search, no pages of buttons like POS.

2. It includes Employee Management, which is $5 per employee per month when added to Square POS. Does it offer any additional functionality, or is it the same?

3. It includes Customer Directory, which is free. Does it include Loyalty or Marketing as well? Is there anything different about Directory with Retail versus POS?

4. It seems like Retail is particularly intended for those with more complex inventory and purchase order management needs. Does that seem accurate to your view? It would be great to have a side-by-side comparison of features for the two products.

I think a lot of Community members will find this to be a great addition, but giving people as much information as possible is a definite asset.

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

UpstateHydro — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 12:50:47 GMT

Its about time... Cost of goods sold etc. Square finally listened to all of our suggestions and is selling it back to us for 60$ a month? Cant we just buy it outright.. I got rid of Quickbooks POS to come to Square but it was def lacking a few things now it seems complete but you want the 2.75% on all CC and now you want more? Quickbooks is looking better everyday overall price wise now... Figured this day was coming with square.. everyone always wants more guess well all have to do the math on the fees plus monthly.. whats next ? prob more things you can pay for monthly.. im sure (gotta keep those stock prices up, when those folks arent even using this program)

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

sciabica1936 — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 16:42:52 GMT

We always appreciate advancement, but these features do not seem geared toward retail. Everyone has vendors, employees and COGS.

Retail features would be:

- Advanced Discounts & Pricing (Happy Hour, BOGO, Auto Discounts, Wholesale...)

- Separate fields for UPC and SKU

- Loyalty Levels (Bronze, Silver & Gold customers)

- A shipping feature that would allow us to enter a shipping address during the sale. You could tie it into ShippingEasy, Ordoro and Shipworks for awesome order management and package tracking. This would also make for simple and fast phone orders.

- Email campaigns based on purchasing. For instance, if you've added a new item to your store, you could set an email to go to all customers 7 days after they purchase a recently added item to ensure satisfaction.

I could go on 😉

P.S. Most of these are pipe dreams I know, but he lack of Advanced Discounts & Pricing is driving potential customers to other solutions.

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

ShuffieldMusic — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 17:49:38 GMT

Spenser - Is it possible to do open tickets in Square for Retail? We used that function to pend repair tickets for our customers prior to them picking the item up.

Paul

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

Kpay — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 23:20:28 GMT

@VanKalkerFarms - let me see if I can tackle some of your questions!

This is a different app than Square POS. How different is it? It looks like it's just barcode scan or search, no pages of buttons like POS.

The biggest difference between the two is that the Square for Retail app is search-centric, since it is optimized for businesses with significant item libraries. So you're right in that there are not pages of buttons like POS - instead we'd expect people to use a barcode scanner or use search to pull up items. There are also some parts of the app, like the payments screen, that will look very familiar to folks who've been using Square POS.

It includes Employee Management, which is $5 per employee per month when added to Square POS. Does it offer any additional functionality, or is it the same?

The Employee Management functionality offered is the same as with Square POS. If you had been paying $5 per employee per month that entire cost of all your employees would be replaced by a flat $60 monthly fee.

It includes Customer Directory, which is free. Does it include Loyalty or Marketing as well? Is there anything different about Directory with Retail versus POS?

Loyalty and Marketing are not included, and the Customer Directory included with Retail is the same as what's included with POS, with an additional (useful!) feature. With Retail, you'll also get access to the ability to keep multiple notes about a customer, including information on who added the note and when.

It seems like Retail is particularly intended for those with more complex inventory and purchase order management needs. Does that seem accurate to your view? It would be great to have a side-by-side comparison of features for the two products.

Yes! Retail is definitely intended for merchants with complex inventories. A side-by-side chart is a great idea, we'll see what we can do. 😊 And I agree with you: the more information the better!

Also, thank you for the feedback @sciabica1936. We know that things like Advanced Discounts (and all the other things on your list!) would go a long way to getting exactly what you need from Square, and we're continuing to make sure our product teams get this feedback. Thanks for taking the time to outline your needs. 👍

@UpstateHydro appreciate your feedback as well around pricing. We always try to be up front about fees so that you can plan for your business, which is why we outline the monthly and per swipe fees in this post. We definitely hear you though, and will make sure to relay your thoughts to the appropriate team here at Square.

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

Spenser — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 18:25:16 GMT

They're not currently, @ShuffieldMusic, but I can see how that would be helpful. Open Tickets were built with quick-service restaurants in mind, but this a good example of their use outside of that category. We'll continue to pass on the feedback we receive here, so thank you!

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

OjaiChick — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 22:56:57 GMT

I too am not thrilled about the additional $60 cost, since I'm already paying $95 for all of the other current Square offerings... But I figured I'll try it out for the 30 days. I just went and added all the unit cost and try to uplaod that, but even still it's not working just right. When I click on a item in the inventory maganagement section, it still only gives me the option to 'adjust stock' no matter where I click on the item. Are you still working on the bugs? Should I put my 30 trial on hold until it's working correctly so I can make a true assement on if the $155 cost is going to be worth it for us?

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

OjaiChick — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 23:17:01 GMT

Also, do you feel this will be a better alt to those of us that sale retail AND services to use the retail app vs the POS register?

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

Spenser — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 00:51:37 GMT

Sorry to hear that, can you provide a few details on what's happening when you add your unit costs, @OjaiChick?

From the Inventory Management page, you should be able to select an item, pick the update reason, and enter the unit price. Alternatively, you can import your unit costs through the Import button in the top right. Let me know!

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

OjaiChick — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 02:05:59 GMT

I was only able to change quanity though downloading then re-uploading the CVS file after I entered all the numbers there. At least that's what I tried to do! Since it will not let me click on the item name to change anything or see anything other than to 'adjust stock'

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

OjaiChick — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 02:06:36 GMT

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

Dimplesshop — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 16:06:37 GMT

Hi we have been using Square Register since October and as a retailer, there were definitely functions we needed. The 2 biggest issues we had so far were lack of gift receipts which was added in December, so thank you.

However, we still cannot accept returns from a gift recipient and issue a store credit (95% of our business). The only option right now is to issue the credit to the purchaser, which would not make sense in this scenario or record the return manually which is what we're doing and counter productive consdering we have a system and it's 2017.

Will this be addressed with Square for Retail?

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

Sean — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 16:58:34 GMT

@Dimplesshop - Thanks for taking the time to share! While I can't speak to whether or not this will be a feature that is on our immediate roadmap, I definitely know this is something that has been flagged. I'd suggest subscribing to this thread for future updates on this specific feature. We will be sure to keep that one appraised to any progress.

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

Dimplesshop — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 17:02:40 GMT

The it is NOT included in the new retail roll out?

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

Sean — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 17:05:39 GMT

It is not. Apologies I wasn't clear.

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

OjaiChick — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 20:42:39 GMT

I'm trying to make a PO, and I am not seeing a autofill option? It's a pain to have to go back and forth to see what is low/out of stock to add to the new PO. Is there a way to do an autofill?

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

shopwagnation — Sat, 11 Feb 2017 19:45:52 GMT

Absolutely love the integrated approach to inventory management. We've been using Shopventory and are hoping to make the switch to Inventory Plus official after our 30-day trial ends.

However, after submitting a few (3) purchase orders and receiving the inventory attached to those orders, I'm finding that our inventory quanities are not updating. Does Shopventory need to be disabled in order to ensure an accurate in-stock count? Are item quanities adjusted at day end? What might I been doing wrong?

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

reegan — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 17:33:36 GMT

I am considering switching to the new POS for my store where we use an iPad. We also do occasional off-site events where I use an ipad mini. It doesn't seem practical to download the new program to the iPad mini & pay an additional $60 a month, when some months we don't even use it. That being said, can I continue to use the old app on the iPad mini? And if so, will sales from both devices still show together when I run my report on my dashboard on my laptop?

My other question is will items sold off-site through the old app adjust my inventory totals? Or would I have to do that manually later?

I just can't justify paying for the new app on a device I only use occasionally.

Re: Product Update: Introducing Square for Retail

EJ_ — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 19:34:20 GMT

@OjaiChick There isn't an auto-fill feature when creating a purchase order, but I can see how this could come in handy. We'll send this over to our Retail team so they can get it on their radar.

@shopwagnation That sounds strange. Did you mark those purchase orders as "Received"?

Once you’ve marked a purchase order as received, the stock will be reflected in your inventory counts and reports.