Square Features for Point of Sale Users

[DavidOhmann]

We are a small bar at a non-profit theatre. We love the pre-authorization feature for opening tabs, which restricts us to using Square Point of Sale. That interface is actually perfect for what we do. The frustrating part is, there are some features that are lacking. We pay $89 / month for Square for Retail Plus, just to get the Stock Conversion feature for our wine sales. We don’t use any of the other features from Retail Plus. We would also like a Close of Shift report, as we have multiple shifts, and sometimes those shifts go past midnight. It would be great if they could add full reporting of credit and tips on the cash drawer report, problem solved. Square for Restaurants Plus offers end of day reporting, but we cannot use that interface as it doesn’t support pre-authorization, the interface isn’t as speedy, we don’t use any of the other restaurant features, and one other huge problem. If you have Square Restaurants Plus activated, but use the regular Point of Sale interface, all of your transactions will not post, because it requires the end of day function to be run, but that isn’t available in the regular Point of Sale interface.  Square advertises its support for a large variety of business types, but why do people like us get stuck in this position?  Clearly these things can be done, but we can’t use them properly.

[TheRealChipA]

Hi @DavidOhmann.  If I misunderstood something in your post, please forgive me.  When I read it, I decided to do so a few times because there is a lot to digest there.  Here are my takes on what I understood.

Square for Restaurants was built to handle the complexities of the restaurant business, which are many and aren’t always easy.  Many of the extra features that the standard POS does not have are in paid tiers because Square can’t just give those away for free.  I will say that pre-authorization/bar tabs are in beta test now, and should be released to everyone very soon.  But, just in case, here is a link to that beta test that is going on now.  Once you have the functionality you should be able to mostly switch to a Restaurants paid tier and leave Squaer POS completely.

The one thing that would not (I don’t believe) be available in Restaurants is the stock conversion for wine sales.  I wish I had a crystal ball and could tell you this was going to be ported from Retail to Restaurants, but I can’t say that, of course, since I am only a fellow seller.  Having said that, I’m a little confused.  Do you really need to track inventory for wine sales at a small non-profit theater bar?  If not, you could just use Square for Restaurants, and create both a bottle and glass variation for your wines with the appropriate prices.

If, however, inventory control is imperative, at this point I can’t think of much else to help you with your monthly subscription costs.  Hopefully inventory control is not critical you can just switch to Restaurants, get rid of Retail Plus, and quit using the standard POS. 

Like I said…. I’m spit-balling based on how I read all of the issues I see in your post.  Feel free to post back with clarifications, questions, etc, and I’d be more than happy to refine my observations to reach a solution you can live with for now.

[DavidOhmann]

Hi Chip,

I appreciate you responding to my post.  As far as the wine inventory, this was one of the selling points I presented to my boss (also named Chip).  We don't have a full-time bar manager, so having online access to the inventory for him to do the weekly order is a huge help to him.  As far as your statement about the crystal ball and having stock conversion available outside of Retail Plus, that is my exact feeling, so I figured I'd post it here in hope of Square seeing a need for it and making it happen.  Most everything I need the system to do is out there, the features just can't all together at the same time.  My thoughts were just that Square advertises being able to support a lot of different types of businesses but lacks a bit on the execution of meeting the needs of businesses that fall in between categories.

[TheRealChipA]

David,

Of course you are welcome.  That’s why we are here, hopefully to help and fix problems, but if not to commiserate and make noises about changes we’d love to see as a Community!  Honestly, if the full suite of inventory functions (especially inventory conversion) were available in Restaurants as it is in Retail, your problem would be solved because you could just use Square for Restaurants exclusively.  

So, I’m going to suggest that you head over to the Square Ideate Board and submit a feature request to the Restaurants Team requesting this.  If/when you do that, please come back here and post a link to that request because I, for sure, will like/upvote it and add my own comments.  I did some testing before I replied to you earlier.  When I did I found that while I could use items in Retail that I had set up with inventory conversion (bottle to glass) those same items caused the message “Unsupported item” in Restaurants.  This makes me strongly suspect that it will eventually be ported to Restaurants, but a feature request could accelerate that process.

[DavidOhmann]

Stock Conversion in Square for Restaurants - The Seller Community