thread Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything in Archived Discussions (Read Only)

Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

Tom — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 19:49:26 GMT

Hello Sellers! Our Square for Retail team hosted a virtual office hours session on August 11th, 2021.

Product managers @NKRfromProduct, @LeahfromProduct, @KCfromProduct, @MLBfromProduct, and @TonifromProduct lead this session.

Learn more about their areas of expertise below:

@MLBfromProduct: I’ve been a product manager at Square since 2019, based in the NYC office. My area of focus has been helping Retail expand into new countries such as Canada, Australia and the UK as well as integrate parts of the Square Ecosystem into the Retail POS that are useful to Retailers (such as messaging). I’m really excited to hear about anything you wish was in the Retail App, such as being able to manage your team, as well as any pain points you have with managing your relationships with your customers that we currently don’t serve well.

@KCfromProduct: I recently joined Square in July 2021. As the Product Manager of the Retail Machine Learning team, it’s my job to think about all the ways we can use AI/ML to help you save time and grow your business. As such, I’d love to learn more about which tasks you’d like to see automated and what types of insights would help you run your business more efficiently.

@LeahfromProduct: I started at Square in 2018, where I worked from Square’s Atlanta office as a Product Manager on the Catalog team. I have since relocated back to NYC and am now the Product Manager working on catalog building and advanced inventory features on the Square for Retail team. I’m excited to hear about the things that slow you down so we can help give you time back to grow your business.

@NKRfromProduct: I started at Square in March 2021 and am based in San Francisco. As the Product Manager for the Growth team, I’m looking for ways to help sellers better understand how Square for Retail can be valuable to them and expand our reach around the globe. I’m particularly interested in what you could use more help with learning how to do in the product or what type of information or tutorials you might have found helpful when you were first getting set up.

@TonifromProduct: I’ve been at Square since 2016, focusing on our hardware integrations for the last few years. I joined the Square for Retail team earlier this year and am focusing on order management, fulfilment s and complex transaction needs. Looking forward to hearing from you about any omnichannel needs you have, and how we can help serve you better.

Having worked on a variety of features on Square for Retail and more than 9 years of combined experience at Square, they answered questions and made sure your feedback went to the right decision makers. Learn more about Square for Retail.

A few example questions:

How can I make sure I'm getting the most out of Square for Retail?
What are the best strategies for fulfilling customer orders with Square for Retail?
What’s the difference between a GTIN and a UPC?
How can I make sure I’m getting the most out of my Inventory reports?

Note on account-specific questions: For your privacy and security, we are not able to address issues related to specific account status details in our public forums. If you need account assistance, please contact our Customer Success team and they'll be able to take a deeper dive.

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

Dayhill — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 16:16:09 GMT

we need a quicker way to get out of a rejected card read. When either card declined or network down there needs to be a way to get out of the sale quicker. As of now when declined you have to wait to long to get back to select new payment Also Bottle deposit function would be good

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

TCSlaguna — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 19:02:11 GMT

Hi Everyone!

Under: Inventory -> Vendors -> (Select Vendor) -> Item Library we would love to see "Quantity on Hand"

We order products from different vendors. Many times, we order the same product (i.e. incense) from different vendors. Who we order from this month can depend on many factors.

Unfortunately Item Library -> Export -> Filter by Default Vendor does not solve this for the following reasons:

1) Having to run a report, export to Excel and filter, to order from a vendor takes quite a bit of time

2) Default Vendor means the other three vendors we order incense from will not show in the report. To reorder, we have to match items from vendor library to item library and write the quantities down. This process takes a long time if a vendor has 50 products.

3) Sometimes a vendor will stop by and ask if we need anything. We will not have time to go through the process of matching items from vendor library to item library and writing the quantities down in the time the vendor is there.

@LeahfromProduct we would love your insight on how we could pull up the data faster.

Thanks in advanced for considering it. Keep up the great work!

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

Trish_Yarn — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 19:57:25 GMT

Streamlining the creation of Purchase Orders is much needed. In my retail shop, I often have dozens of variations per item. It would be great to be able to add items to a PO by a checkbox in the Item page itself in my dashboard, instead of one-by-one in the PO system. I'm aware of the feature to create POs automatically for items predicted to run out soon, but that feature does not address my issue.
When a customer uses multiple forms of payment for one purchase, they are prompted after each form to get a receipt, rather than one receipt covering the whole transaction. This is tedious and unnecessary.
Is there a way to download the history of an Item (i.e., showing restocks, receiving Items, etc.)? I've resorted to copying and pasting which is clunky and not convenient.
Orders made through Weebly often create duplicate Customer records which I then have to manually merge with their already existing record. What can we tell the customers to do to avoid this?
Is there a way to auto-save a cart in the iPad app? Often times we begin ringing up a purchase, then need to access a website to answer a question for the customer, and then when we go back to the SfR app, the cart has been reset.
Occasionally we accidentally mark an item in a PO as received, only to discover once the PO has been saved that the item was left out of our order. It would be helpful to be able to un-receive an item.
It would also be helpful to be able to add shipping costs when creating the PO, rather than waiting to add them after items have been received.
As far as I can tell, there is no way to bundle multiple Items, or multiple variations, to make a kit. Instead, we have to create a new Item for the kit, then manually adjust inventory of the individual components, add inventory for the kit, and then reverse the process once the kit is no longer available for sale.
Putting items on sale requires separate processes for in-store purchases via the SfR app and online purchases via Weebly. This duplication of work can create significant delays and also introduces the possibility for error (especially when the sale price is a percentage of the original price; Weebly requires that the sale price be manually entered). I know there's the option to use a coupon, but sometimes we prefer not to use that.

Similarly, after the sale is over, it is time consuming to remove the sale price from the various Items in Weebly, while it's much easier in Square.

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

themoose — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 22:16:05 GMT

- Receiving inventory - is there a way to back-date when receiving inventory? It appears this defaults to the current date always with no options for changing.

- Receiving inventory - would love an option where I can put in a total cost for the inventory received along with qty, then have Square figure out the unit cost. Stopping to calculate unit cost when receiving inventory takes a lot of time for us! We buy a quantity of items at a total cost and the invoice we get from the vendor does not show a unit cost.

- Need more granular options for determining COGS each month.Need to be able to filter the COGS report by specific items.

- Order management - need a better way to manage customer orders. We take orders that may or may not be inventoried items. And usually for a date sometime in the future. Also, we don't always take full payment when the order is placed. Sometimes no payment. Need a report/screen to show a list of custom order with the status of each and the required completion date.

Thanks for doing this!

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

homeprogreen — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 23:31:18 GMT

I have been running Square for Retail since it was released and overall I like it. Have to run it to get the advanced inventory features and the P.O. ability. Couple of things that are needed is a way to print out the P.O. from within the dashboard instead of saving as a PDF, jumping out of dashboard and then opening up preview to print.

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

homeprogreen — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 23:36:29 GMT

Any plans to add the ability to enter a discount to a purchase order? Right now we can add taxes, fees, to a P.O. then receive the items and the fee is automatically broken out across all the items in the order so you get a true cost of goods. But sometimes vendors are having a sale so they give say a 25% discount on the order. Right now it means that I have to manually change the per item cost for each item instead of just entering the negative number as a fee so it’s automatically broken out across all the items on that P.O. not good when I am dealing with a lot of items and variations on a single P.O.

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

homeprogreen — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 23:42:35 GMT

Ok 1 last question. I tried to break them out separately so it would be easier for the individual team members to answer depending on their area of expertise. I upgraded to the Square Register running Square for Retail a couple of days ago. Today I was adding an item variation and tried to scan the SKU into the spot it goes like I normally do on the IOS version and discovered that it won’t scan in. I ended up having to type in the sku and then save. Once it was saved then the scanner reads the barcode just fine for checkout. Is this a bug or a known limitation in Retail running on register?

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

homeprogreen — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 23:49:38 GMT

Ok I lied, one more question. Is there a setting or a way to make it so the customers check in with their phone number at the beginning of the checkout process on the front display when running Square for Retail on the Square Register? I know that that’s the way it can be set up on the regular Square POS running on Register. As it is now in Square for Retail if the customer is paying cash I have to type in there information myself, check to see if they belong to any group like veterans or first responders that I give discounts to, check if they have a reward available and apply any available myself. This is definitely slowing down the process and it must be do-able since it’s available in the regular Square POS on Register. Since we pay a monthly fee for Retail it should have all of the features that the free app has plus the advanced features

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

KatieKarma — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 15:34:40 GMT

Hi there,

We'd like to move on online store from BigCommerce to Square Online.

We're hoping someone can point us to information on the process for moving our existing domain and if we can build /complete the Square Online store in a development environment and then turn it (switch from old to new) on when we move the domain - if that makes sense 🙂

Thank you for any guidance you can provide, we really appreciate it!

Kind regards,

Andy

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

Addieleeskitche — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 20:27:23 GMT

Addielees i see some activities from Square forvthe amount $150.00 c as n that be explained

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

Addieleeskitche — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 20:30:53 GMT

Explain the transfer. amont of $150.00 ftom square

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

juanjesussalina — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 16:16:27 GMT

Hi,

Can you please help me to obtain my costumer code?

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

ZestoIceCream — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 17:58:28 GMT

I found discrepancies in the amount that was deposited in my account on 2 days. The square report shows one amount and my bank statement shows a different amount. I checked and there weren't any refunds on those days. Please advise.

Susan Goodwin

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

ZestoIceCream — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 18:10:37 GMT

I found that the discrepancy is in the fees taken out. Not sure why. Please help.

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

dmcericola — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 19:46:34 GMT

I've never used my Square Reader. Now I want to start selling. How can I try it out so I don't mess up with a real customer?

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

TylerKing080105 — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 22:13:50 GMT

As sad as it sounds, I’ve been paying for Square for Retail, $60/month, for almost 9 years, while not knowing there’s a difference between Square and Square for Retail! We’ve been using the free version all along. Now, we’re trying to learn about Square for Retail. It’s quite a bit more complicated that the free version. Wondering what the best videos/training there is to get this figured out. Are there consultants one can hire to help?

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

Grassroots1 — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 20:30:45 GMT

We have been using square for retail for about a year and I wish we were able to use the advanced inventory features to it's full capabilities. Right now the most useful thing would be to sell bundles of different items while still maintaining our inventory. I am currently trying to test the stock conversion - sell by feature, but we really need to be able to sell bundles of different things.

For example we sell muffin & coffee has a combo, its discounted if you purchase both. I currently have a combo item set up, so my muffin & coffee inventory are always off by whatever muffins I sold in the combo. It would be great if could sell the combo but it adjusted the actual inventory of each item.

We also use DoorDash, why can't square for retail customers get the same integration has Square for restaurants? This would also very helpful to us in maintaining accurate inventories. I currently need to manually adjust inventory for every item sold on DoorDash. It would be very helpful if I could have all items sold on DoorDash integrate into our square for retail system. It would save me a ton of time! Thanks!!

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

regionwine — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 21:32:23 GMT

Is it possible to have the customer entry fields on the Customer facing display to be customizable? Right now that setting is specific to the Square Register and doesn't reflect on the customer-facing display. Lots of other companies and ours need this feature desperately.

Re: Q&A: Ask our Square for Retail Product Managers Anything

keicollective — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 21:46:28 GMT

We currently do bundles by checking out the individual items in the bundle and having an automatic discount apply at checkout that reflects the bundle discount (you can do a % or a set dollar amount off). Example: we sell $3 stickers that can be purchased as 2 for $5, so an automatic discount is setup to take $1 off when 2 of the stickers are bought; there's about 50 different designs that can be included in this discount and they all keep the correct stock counts this way.

Hope that helped!