What’s one thing you wish you knew sooner about using Square for your retail business?

[sacredheart926]

Whether it was inventory, shipping profiles, online vs in-store syncing, reports, or automations — I feel like there are features we only discover after running into a problem.

What was your “aha” moment with Square, or something you learned the hard way that might help another seller?

[Crazyjamlife]

How much you will have to pay for what should be basic services.

[androo]

I like the way it is now. If they lumped more 'paid' extras into the base, then the % fees would rise. This way basic Square is cost effective, and if you want/need additional features they're paid for - and I'd assume if you want/need them there's a business need for it, so it's a cost of business. 

[kayteeS]

How "clunky" the store set-up and updating would be.

[Getonthebus]

I think there is an update to make set up an easier process.

[ascoach]

Our favorite feature is the ability to duplicate items in the Item Library.  Saves us so much time when we sell a lot of similar items.  Most of the time we just switch the category and the picture.

[BellaSposa]

The fact that for every bridesmaid dress that comes in 72 colors and 22 different sizes each need their own sku!!  That's 1584 sku's for every single item, of which I have hundreds.  An top that with the 20-75 new one's that each designer releases twice a year!  I would need a full time person just to keep the data up to date.  

[androo]

Does auto-generating SKU not work for you? 
https://squareup.com/help/au/en/article/7632-auto-generate-skus-with-square-for-retail 

[Getonthebus]

Not if you wanna match your vendor's SKU's.

[DinaLRosenberg]

I wish we were aware that it wasn't a complete inventory system... meaning, there's no way to actually notate WHERE the items are located, where overstock is, etc

[androo]

I thought it did? 
Square manages stock by location through the online Dashboard under Items & services > Inventory management, allowing for tracking, receiving, and adjusting stock levels per location. Users can transfer items between locations, set low-stock alerts, and view real-time inventory levels across multiple sites (physical and online).

[LaCyclerie]

Only in the paid version I think

[johnson_1320]

Hard lesson - That using the online website e-gift cards for payment will not let you split payments for appointments, only for our chasing items. It has limited us in raising prices because people that have values below the cost can’t use them.

Hard lesson - support is very difficult 

[Girlvic]

I wish I had a better understanding how websites worked and didn't spend 4 years battling with Square to now have to re-do it all elsewhere 😞 

Also that not showing your private home address (for home based business) would cause items to not update! Go figure! 

However, it is great for in-person sales with the Open Tickets option, which I am going to miss with my new system. 
I'll keep my Square Terminal for card payments as the fees are lower! 

[ehflower]

I wish I learned early that you could create a generic sku for an item that has a variable price.  For example, floral arrangement gn with variable price.  You print a bar code for a variable priced item and you can handwrite the price on the label.  Once you scan it through your register you can fill in the price the handwritten price on the screen.  Works great for one of a kind floral work during busy holiday times.  It also keeps tracks of the item in the category.

[doc_choc]

What a great POS and Register system, in person at our store it is fantastic. On the downside the website and some basic functions for online stores really aren't there or are only available in the US, we watch with envious eyes. Focus and Square new feature developments for traditional retail online stores has been sacrificed for the Food and Beverage category.

[TCSlaguna]

It was quite the struggle with item syncing when Square was trying to better integrate Weebly into the new Square Online. 

This includes how categories are done. 

Having said that, I love how it works now 🙂 

[AloeVera]

There are so many disapointment, from loyalty, marketing to lackluster reporting.

There is very little flexibility with the email marketing features and layout. Since promotions are tied directly to email marketing, we would have to pay for an additional external platform to run more effective campaigns. Square also does not track conversion rates, so it’s difficult to measure whether the marketing is actually working.

It would be helpful to separate promotional offers from the email marketing feature. Our previous POS allowed us to send a scannable UPC to customers by email, which they could present in-store for us to scan and automatically apply the discount. That worked very well.

Additionally, the birthday loyalty reward is activated only on the customer’s actual birthday rather than for the entire month. This has led to disappointed customers who are unable to access their birthday perk if they visit a few days before their birthday.

Regarding new loyalty enrollment, they system will capture customer numbers when they don't sign-up. When customer actually sign-up there is a 2-step sign-in process to collect points, customer don't realized they need to enter their number again at the end of the sale to collect point and don't read the message on the screnn and press "NO THANK YOU" at which point they declined points. Faulty promgram, not sure why the programer would make the customer confussed. One time sign-up is good enough as it is tied to the sale, why would it make you enter your number again to sign-in and collect points and upset customers. 

All in all, I don't see updates being made to the program. This POS feels like it caters more to cafes rather retail. 

[Fetched-Up]

I have some different experiences so unsure what plan you have.  We are also using the register.  Sounds like you have used other programs so customer experience/expecation/familiarity could be part of the issue.

If you have the customer sign in, you will see any promo coupon they have.  Not a UPC but it does work well for us, as our customers know to sign in first.  

So is it a birthday or a loyalty anniversary; two different presets, though you can create custom for either.  The birthday default is with 7 days of the birthday, but you have the option to set the expiration period.  Anniversary loyalty can also be set for post expiration past the date.  

There also updates being made all the time.  We experience quite the opposite.  Our frustration is new features being automatically implemented without any recourse for us.  Three major fails are the loyalty screen color updates, item creation and updated navigation.  The number of clicks now is frustrating.  I agree, especially coming from a development background, they are not doing enough user acceptance testing.  We feel some changes are unnecessary. 

[IndoorFins]

I wish I knew that it didn't have a way to track store credit, at all, at any price point. 

I also find the item updating very tedious. I get new items in all the time, or need to adjust the price. I'm on the first paid tier and having to do the POs manually is such a pain, but the trade off is not updating the inventory manually. Still, every week I get new fish; often with new species I didn't have before. So I am constantly, painstakingly making new item listings. 

I do sometimes make them in a spreadsheet first and upload them, but that comes with its own complications. I can't believe they don't let us work in our inventory like its a database (think Jira in a table view or Airtable). 

AND that the barcodes won't print except from a VERY limited number of thermal printers. That are either expensive (Zebra) or use proprietary labels. 

[chocolatemann]

A few years ago, when we signed up, Square was the most progressive of POS systems.  At the time they were the only ones offering POS E-commerce integrations. We were really hopeful that our business needs would be met eventually. Updates to the system were regular and good!

I wish I knew how that would change. Now, new updates are scary because they often make no sense but also take away useful features , like the item coupon feature that now only discounts the first of the discounted item (ex. the customer buys 4 of the discounted item but only gets the discount applied to the first, the three remaining ones are at full price) this feature is now useless!  There are feature requests to fix this but nothing has happend.

I have other feature requests mostly about the e-commerce check-out but not a single one has been resolved.