We have 19 locations. The onboarding experience has gotten better throughout the years. For our locations we do the following:
New Store:
- The first thing we do is establish a location profile. This includes the store's email address, physical location, phone number, and other necessary information.
- We will go to the locations tab and add a new location.
- We fill in all of the necessary information.
- We duplicate the menu from one of our existing locations.
- Device Management: We will go to device management and add all of our devices, including POS and KIOSK.
- We will turn on the POS and begin the configuration using the Device ID code. This process takes between 30-60 minutes depending on updates.
Online Settings:
Once the store is set, we go to Square Online / Menu Management and add any necessary items or changes.
- We set up Google My Business and
- We configure Google My Business under location management.
- We add delivery settings and store information for Square online under Fulfillment.
- We test to ensure that the location is online.
App Integration:
The last part of the process is App integrations. This includes:
- Shogo.IO for accounting and Quickbooks integration.
- Doordash integration linking Doordash to Square.
- Cuboh integration for Uber and Grub Hub.
- Homebase integration for HR management, scheduling, and labor management.
- Zapier integration for Square POS printing, Google Ads, Social Media, and CRM.
Its been 5 years, I have had a lot of opportunities to complain and celebrate both my business and Sqaure over that time. I can't recall my onboarding being memorable at all either positive or negative which mean it was pretty easy I suppose.
Happy to chat with anyone as desired about anything with Square as always 🙂
Back in 2011 or 2012, we were at the Florida state fair, using ShopKeep for our POS. This is how our onboarding with Square went. A guy approached our booth, carrying a messenger bag. He asked if we’d heard of Square and if we’d be interested in using it. He pulled out a small dongle and explained that Square POS was free (compared to ShopKeep’s $49.99 monthly fee). He also said that after we set up Square, we wouldn’t need the handheld credit card machine anymore. He gave us his card and we signed up. We’ve been with Square ever since!
I joined Square back in 2015 and the onboarding was fairly easy. I loved that the system basically walked me through each step making it seamless. The same for the online store. I so love all updates Sqaure has implemented since then.
I set everything up a couple years ago and I never really felt like I did it right or that it went well. Even to this day when I go to set something up it's confusing and frustrating. It's been almost a year now of me trying to get my products set up to be able to ship out, and for monthly subscriptions. It still doesn't work. When I try to work my way through a screen it basically tells me Oh wait, can't do that yet, go change this other feature, or this other option first. You need to turn this other thing on. So I go to that screen then it says Well, you can't do that yet because you don't have this available to you. You have to go over here and do another thing first. It not just item set ups, it's with every part of Square that I have like employees, permissions, and scheduling, timecards. It's with the online site stuff. Nothing seems intuitive. I've learned that I basically just need to start with the bottom of the screen and work my way up. Global settings first, left side of the menus bottom, and go up one by one. Everything seems to be backwards. And it's so easy to lose my place, once I'm directed to three different screens to set up one thing I don't know how to get back to what I was doing. It's hard to know what the consequences are of turning off or on things.
I have a small update, I've been trying to get things set up to ship out coffee. So I thought I finally had it all figured out and texted my Uncle whose been bugging me about it since he lives States away. Well, come to find out whatever I did wasn't good enough because my Uncle's order didn't have shipping or taxes on it! I poked around enough to figure out that I didn't have the polymailer "assigned" to the items, so that *might* fix the shipping going forward, but I was still expecting the "Fall Back Rate" to kick in but it didn't. And I have no idea how come taxes weren't on there.
So for onboarding it's things like this, where I have to go back and forth, back and forth. There was no tutorial, direction, pop-up, flag, arrow, nothing to sign post what I'm supposed to do next. I saw no alerts telling me that after I click on that items fulfillment methods for shipping that I would then have to 'assign' the box. I'm pretty sure that option wasn't even there until I saved and went back into the item so it was literally impossible for me to see or know.
And where was the 'fall back rate'? Why didn't that kick in if there wasn't a box assigned.
And what about taxes? I don't even know where to start to research that one. I've never seen taxes not show on an order before.
A suggestion that might help is if I had a way to test what I'm doing before sending it out to my customers. I would love to be able to see how the shipping process works for them, what they have to click on, what the customer's process is like. So that way I can ensure it's how I want it to look, how I expect it to go, that it's providing my customer's with a great experience, and so that if a customer has any issues or questions for me I can actually answer them instead of shrugging and saying I don't know.
This is my first and only POS experience so I'm very green to it, but I feel like I'm walking around with lead boots and a blinder on. I am experienced with videogames. Right now my kids are playing a lot of Donkey Kong Country Returns HD and the 'signposting' for all the hidden locations are there. A lone banana on the edge of the screen so you know to roll jump into the no where to grab the platform you can't see. The coin glittering obscured by a bush telling you that there's something behind it.
It's hints like that that really help an onboarding process, imo.
I have been using Square for 8 years, so its a bit fuzzy haha. I found it easy, but I have done a lot of POS over the years. The only thing I find a touch annoying, is I don't seem to get updates on new products and features.
