If you could wave a magic wand and fix one thing about Square, what would it be?

[rtfulk]

Maybe it’s a missing feature, a weird quirk, or just something that slows you down. Let’s hear it! What would you magically improve if Square granted one seller wish today?

I love a lot about Square — the POS is solid, and the online store works great. This  got me to thinking and since @JUYBoutique20 started a thread on revamping their website and we are in the planning stages of doing ours. 

I would like to see a little more control over our website, I would like to be able to place things where I want them,  have more control over the size of some items. Have more control over the options we offer with an item.

One other thing I would really like to see changed. In the past couple of months everytime I log into the seller community, Square opens another Square window. What is the purpose of that?

[Twpchair]

Have loans turn into an RLC that could be re-evaluated once a year. 

[rtfulk]

That is something that really needs a magic wand.  Figuring out how the loan process works seems to be one of the top questions in the forum.   

[BofBArtStudio]

Ability to view Open Ticket history would be something that I would love to see. 

We can create a ticket, add a customer to it, add items to it,  save and print a ticket. However, anyone can delete the ticket and it's gone forever with no history tracking.  Anyone can open a ticket and remove items from it, and there's no history on that. 

When someone opens a saved ticket it then saves under that team members name. So you have no idea who originally created the ticket. 

So yes history of open tickets would be something I would wave my magic wand for if I had one. 

🦋

[AnnaBYLY]

I have a big list around how events/classes fail to interact properly with everything else. Eg. I can’t highlight a class on square online, or send automated contracts for classes and events like I can with appointments, or send automated follow up emails based on the date of an event (eg what use is a feedback email going out when they book a course (item set up as an event), if the course isn’t even starting for another month. 

But the one thing I’d say would make ALL of these easier to work around AND improve other stuff too is if Square Marketing could cope with more flexibility around us setting different delays for different types of purchase, and specifically offered more automations for transactional emails. It being limited to people who have signed up for marketing emails goes beyond UK data protection law - having made a purchase or a booking does allow us to email them follow ups and it’s a bit ridiculous that we can’t do this automatically based on the event/product they’ve bought. So that would be my one thing if I had to choose; making the automated emails more efficient and flexible. 

[DinaLRosenberg]

Shops that have events (like us) definitely need help. We treat our events as if they are items in our square POS- but that means we need to INVOICE people for events so we can find them later- or immediately put their information in a spreadsheet to capture that they're registered..

[AnnaBYLY]

I go into orders about a week before the class starts and manually grab all the details and put them in a list to send welcome emails and things. But I have 7-15 bookings max depending on the class. So it’s manageable. If it was 50 or 100+ I wouldn’t be confident about getting all the details correct and I’d worry about missing people off. Events sold via Items really need some sort of export bookings info button, or an ‘email all’ option that pulls up an email list to copy and paste into your email bcc.

[Candlestore]

@rtfulk ;

Square started off as a POS for small businesses with less features.  Over the years Square added banking, started doing the online Square sites.  These are all great but then these small businesses started growing and need more features or higher expectations of Square.  But Square seems like it is expanding in the wrong directions, and making things Appear nicer.  I am old school if it works leave it alone.   You want to fix things look at what the businesses are asking for.  Square has this community and Businesses using Square ask can X be done or how do you do it?  Then other businesses chime in and say that can't be done in Square but here is a clunky work around, and Square says there is the Solution.  Square should look at all the Work arounds and creat a straight fix for these types of things.  

Example:

1.  Every business no matter the size has Accounting needs.   Square and QuickBooks have integrations but Businesses are like this is not working, neither Square nor Intuit wants to take responsibility.  Why not add lines to a Transaction export or create a New export for transactions that would give Intuit what is needed or being requested by Intuit to get the COMPLETE import.  When I imported to QuickBooks, Quickbooks and Square had rounding errors.  I had to spend hours to manipulate the Square Transactions to get Total Tax for a Transaction with what Items were sold.  Square calculates sales tax per item, Quickbooks does it per Transaction.  In the Transacation Details Export there is some info I merged with the Items Detail report and had to add the Tax to get a Total tax then import it to Quickbooks Desktop.  What if Square added a Total Tax for that Transacation column to a new csv that had Items and the Details csv combined so Quickbooks could import everything.  Now by creating this csv it may help with a csv import to other Accounting Imports such as Wave or Zero etc.   People have been complaining about accounting issues for years
2. If Square does not make this type of import export easier for Square users, what if Square just through everything out the window, Started from Scratch and create a entirely new ALL in one POS which has everything integrated and not Piecemailed as attachemnets that work half assed.  Sometimes the Item is available online, Quantities between online and in store are off etc.  Contacts for customers and Vendors are there but no  ability to have 2 different prices for Loyal Customers, New Customers, Wholesalers etc. You have Online or Retail customers only in Square.   I know this can be done since Square just in the last 3 years added the Online Pricing to an item.
3. Better inventory Location availabilty besides just a total quantity for a Location.  Does everyone have all their inventory of Item ABC out for sale or do you have an inventory room at that location?  Square should be able to have this set by Location.
4. Better Customer Relations features too.   You have a Customer data field but Notes is so General.  Let customers have ability to set pickup times or schedule a shipping / or receive by date approximation.  Most customers may want items asap but others try to schedule these things.   

Square just read the Forums that you create and Learn what your customers are looking for and see about creating something that you can add stuff on with out breaking things that work.  I am not sure what happened a few years ago but adding Images to an Item was easy.  Update came along and then after 2-3 items got an image added Square would freeze?   What did Square try to Change?  Was it needed?   Why did Square Freeze?  Uploading images should not be that difficult that it crashes the system and requires a reboot.  Better reports.   Top 5 sellers does me no good when I sell 12000 items and my top 5 items are from maybe 5 different vendors.   

I like the ease of use with the POS, but some of the added features which are now required or expected seem to fall short somewhere along the way.   Square Read the Forum hear and the Ideate boards or search through for all the work arounds that have been created and, Create features so workarounds would not be needed for the most requested things.   I started not using work arounds and started looking at different software instead of Square.  I found one where I can actually use a Square API, and a completely different Company that does alot of the Work arounds I created in an all in one system.  It has Webhosting, Inventory Storage Locations, Tax calculations and software, Better CRM, Invoicing..... etc  and for One user is less monthly than a Premium subscription to Square.   The issue I have with the competitor is Implementation.  Price is way over my Budget, or too complicated for me to implement myself.

[rtfulk]

I do agree and  I’m also with you 100% when putting up items and adding images you go through the whole process and then you get the dreaded Something went wrong and you have to start all over again   

[BrianaJo]

💯If I could like your post more than once I would. 

And for my answer to RTFulk 's question is the Square/Quickbooks integrations. It's the worst.

It's where I've spent 90% of my time for the past 2 years, just trying to troubleshoot.

Gone through the whole range of emotions, questioned why I started a business in the first place.

And now that I've finally got it to a usable place, I got some notification somewhere(it's gone now, so I'll have to click around and find it again) that it's all changing in a couple months. So we'll see what happens next.

[BofBArtStudio]

@Candlestore 

Nicely stated!

There are many things that I do with the square API and third party solutions for the very same reasons. 

Integration to QuickBooks never worked so We definitely do not want to use that anymore.   I also lost way too many hours of my life trying to fix the mess that became of things when I actually tried the Square to QuickBooks integration years ago.

Inventory management is lacking, even though there have been great improvements.  I would love to bring our inventory management into square, but It is just still missing so many features that we get from an integrated inventory management system.  And I absolutely agree with you that we need the ability to manage what's in backstock which we can easily do with the system that we use.  Plus all inventory information and sales information syncs so nicely between the two systems through the API.  However it's a shame that I have to pay for and utilize a third party system to accomplish something that should be so readily available and set up properly in Square.

The online website just doesn't have The basic features that most websites should have.  I was really hopeful recently when I was thinking about giving it a go again. But there's just no way to make the online website function the way we would need it to with the current setup. 

Thankfully I know how to program and develop tools using the Square API and that works really well. 

However there are a lot of sellers out there that don't have the ability and knowledge to be able to create their custom solutions themselves. 

I would love to see a hybrid of restaurants and retail.  There are so many great features in restaurants that we could use but it lacks the retail aspect that we need.

Overall, I love Square and I think that there are a lot of great things that square does is very well.

I certainly have no interest or thoughts about switching and I love being part of the community. However I agree with you that I wish our voices did not fall on deaf ears or at least seem like it. 

🦋

[dokidoki]

I have so many but my top simple fixes are this: 

• a filter option to view all items that don’t have images
• Sort orders alphabetically

[AnnaBYLY]

Oooh, if we were using a magic wand to fix how it sorts orders, could we have events sorted by dates too please! 

[dokidoki]

YES PLEASE!!

[rtfulk]

A filter that show items without images would be a great addition also.

[JUYBoutique20]

I have to play around with the online store more so if what I mention is something already available please let me know...I would love to be able to add videos to my items.  I want to show my try-ons.  I would also love to be able to add different cost prices to the same item.  I've sometimes restocked an item, and my cost price is less or more than the last order, but I have a few left from the 1st order.  

[rtfulk]

Videos, would be a great addition.

[JUYBoutique20]

I just saw another boutique's page and they added try-on videos.  I thought that was so cool.  

[rtfulk]

They had videos of people trying on clothes and explaining their size and the fit of the clothes?  I would like to see something like Amazon has now that allows you to see the item in your house, With the push Square is having right now with AI, I would like to see them implement the virtual trying on of clothes or if you sell household items place the items in your house.

[JoeTend]

A full re-design of the customer-facing screen on Square Register. Customers have a hard time typing on it to add their contact information. We should be able to customize which fields show up (we only want name, email, maybe phone). Actual keyboard on that screen is clunky, but even more frustrating is that In order for a customer to finish, they have to find the done button which is all the way at the bottom of the whole form, but they have to first find the “close keyboard” button so that the screen will scroll. We’ve had several in-person visits from Square teams (thank you!) and this is an issue I show them every time. 

[prologuebooksho]

Yes! I've never heard anyone else ever mention the customer-facing Register screen. We get all of the customers' information for our email newsletter that way, and it's great, except very awkward for them to use. Even the support people at Square I've spoken to over the years often have no idea that feature exists, and it once was broken for three weeks back in 2022.