What’s a change you made in Square—or business setup in general—that totally backfired on you?

[Donnie-M]

What’s a change you made in Square—or business setup in general—that totally backfired on you?

This could also be titled:  What is your most epic fail with square?

I’m talking about the “this is gonna be genius” move that ended up being a beautiful disaster. 💥

Maybe you tweaked your modifiers, changed your hours, swapped your payment flow, or tried that one brilliant shortcut... and it immediately turned into chaos. 😅

Bonus points if your staff still brings it up with a sarcastic grin and still laughs at you today.

I’ll go first. Let’s make each other feel better. 😂

One time I was on vacation, and I got a call that they were out of burger patties on a friday.  I decided to say, go ahead and 86 the all american.  Well my manager went and just DELETED the whole item.  It took me a couple of days to figure out why all I saw were BYOB burgers rang in.  Right then and there, I knew it was my fault.

I once thought I was being brilliant by streamlining everything with one master modifier list—fully preselected to speed up service since we were short-handed.

I spent an afternoon setting it all up and came in the next day ready to unveil my genius plan like, “Alright, here’s how we’re doing it now!”

Let’s just say… it turned into a jungle trek through the weeds.
It felt like we opened a brand new restaurant, staffed with people who had never met, on their first day, and I was like, “Good luck, I’m going on vacation!” 😅

Absolute chaos. Beautiful failure. Never again.

#GloriousBackfires #LessonsWereLearned #StillStanding #Elite8Energy #HatOrBust

[Candlestore]

@Donnie-M;

Before getting to involved with Square, just using the Square system to process Credit cards back in 2019.  I thought it would be Great to start using Square to its full potential for instore purchases.  Well we have had a deal of our Backers Dozen of our 28 oz Candles.... buty 12 get 1 free.  Problem was all our 28 oz candles were in the system 28oz candle.  This does not help with which scent(s) sell the best or worst.  Put each one in individually, then realized I would need to this for our 18 other sizes / types of candles.  There has to be a better way.  Did not find one so Created categories for each Size / Type candle.  Fast Forward Square comes out with Option Sets.  Read about it thought this would be great.  Have an Item Black Cherry for example and a Description of the Scent with the Size / Type as a Variation.  Looked great and easy to find the Candle if the Barcode became unreadable.  Implemented my plan to Create my Candle Size Option Set.  Just to find out I could not use the Variation 28 oz as a Discount but only the Item Black Cherry itself, so ALL variations had this discount.  No problem I will Export my Square Catalog Delete All my Scent items and their Variations.   Then import Back to Square, this did not work and now I had Double my Candles in Square.  So at the Square Stand when scanning the Barcode I would have 2 items or  variations to choose from.  Yesterday I finally figured out besides sitting for Hours deleting 1 item at a time of close to 3000 items (165 scents in 18 sizes) I would again resort to csv files and Move the Duplicates to a Category Called Delete and mark them as not available for sale.   Now all I have to do is slowly delete all the items in the Delete Category.   Nothing is easy   LOL   live and Learn.

[Donnie-M]

@Candlestore The old law of unintended consequences.  I too find myself there allllll theeeee timmmmeeee.  Move something now you got a new issue.  I call it "trial and error scientific method".  Or Passionately Lazy.  But yea, sounds like no good dead went unpunished for you.

[Minion]

Not a Square specific issue.  but back some 9 years ago,  when I still had a "9-5" and was building my business, I was very much into Hydro-dipping  You watch some people on YouTube university and think how hard could it be right? 

So I started looking for "starter" setups.  Found this one company that sold different types from beginner to you owe us your first unborn child.  The rep knew right away when he was talking to me that he hooked a big ol fish when he said "yeah all of our tanks are 100% tax right of".  

Anyways, I purchase this $4k+ hydro tank on a "lease" mind you..(don't ever do it for anyone reading this).  The tank comes in its just a big ole plastic tub with 2 water heater elements in it and a small pump.  The thing took about 6 hours to warm up to temperature before I could even use it.  Overall it was fine for what I was doing, since I was just starting to get y feet wet.

Fast forward to tax time I go and sit with my accountant thinking that I' m getting $4k+ back in my pocket because "100% Write off"...Talk about learning stuff the hard way.  

[Donnie-M]

@Minion Sounds like a giant Sous vide set up!  Immersion cooking lol..

I love the part in parentheses about the don't do a lease! you can tell that was experience earned from bad judgment.

[Minion]

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@Donnie-M wrote:

@Minion Sounds like a giant Sous vide set up!  Immersion cooking lol..

I love the part in parentheses about the don't do a lease! you can tell that was experience earned from bad judgment.

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Yeah Im pretty sure my life philosophy is trial and error , and then if it doesn't work the first time, try again , but don't change anything. and see what happens.  3...seems to be my magic number with getting things right haha

oh yeah those Lease to Owns should be banned from any new business owners. 

[ryanwanner]

Semi Square-related for me @Donnie-M .

Back in 2011 when I started looking into replacing my cash register, I did some research into what iPad based point of sale solutions were available. Space was at a premium in my coffee shop, and the thought of using an iPad instead of that bulky register sounded intriguing.

So I found this little company called Square, and realized that it was definitely a great way to process cards, but at that time, the software on an iPad was very, very limited. No favorites screen, custom number entry only, no real tracking information. I knew the OCD numbers side of me wasn't going to like it, so I made the decision to keep digging but stick with Square just to handle the card payments.

I came across a point of sale solution called Ambur. The sales pitch was spot on. They hinted that they were a startup so there were some things still pending, but overall the software seemed pretty stable. Plus, a software "for restaurants, created by restaurateurs" had to work right, right?

Nope. Their idea of customization of the screens was to change the colors of the tiles. Reporting was murky at best, when orders printed it was a bloody miracle, support was nonexistent, employee management was abysmal, and overall the experience was maybe a 2/10. All for the wonderfully low price of $999.99! They also were mad at me because I didn't want to use their onboard credit card provider since their swipe rates were in the low 10%s plus monthly service charges.

For almost a year I limped along, hoping that the software was going to get better. It most definitely did not, and it became more unstable with each update. One day, as I switched apps over to Square to run a card, I realized that the iPad user experience in Square had come a loooooong way from where it was when the app first launched. I spent the better part of two days creating my item library, setting printers, and setting up the system the way it should have been on Ambur. Once I made the leap to fully operating on Square, my life became so much easier.

To this day I still look back on my Ambur experience and shudder. Aside, Ambur was absorbed by ShopKeep, who promptly killed it off.

[SSB_YVR]

This is a super easy one!

I enabled online ordering for events that we went to so people could "skip the line and order ahead". But we ended up having major internet issues and we were not getting orders coming through, our printers stopped working...
I had a massive 20ft by 5 ft banner printed up with QR Codes, I had a full POS set up with KDS, two printers for the two POS and nada... It was so stressful.. on top of that our massive 7500 generator was overheating and kept tripping its safety, our cooler couldn't handle being in the sun... the entire day and how I set everything up was just a disaster.|
Who woulda a thought a massive 7500 generator and a commercial cooler couldn't handle being in the sun during a Canadian summer in Vancouver...

No matter how many times you test things, how many times you do a dry run, you can never account for on the day issues.

[TCSlaguna]

We did inventory day a few years back. Eight employees scanning thousands of products using the Square iOS app. 
Before we started, I told all the employees to click “submit” every 15 minutes, because if their phone unexpectedly crashes, all progress is lost. 
Well… one of the employees had headphone on during the instructions. 
Three hours later her phone crashed, lost everything she scanned.