Terminal + iPad VS Square stand + iPad + Printer

[BellevilleDSS]

I have a small women’s clothing business that somewhat lacks technological knowledge wanting to get set up with a POS system and I’m trying to help her by making it as seamless and simple as possible. She wants a system that can print receipts, upload and manage her inventory, and take payments. I am looking for some advice on what our best bet would be.

Would it be better to get the terminal to take payments on and print receipts, and then separately go out and purchase her an iPad and get the Square app to manage her inventory on a larger screen that is a bit more user friendly? Or should we just get the square stand that she can take payments and put an iPad in, and then buy a printer separately? This seems much more expensive as the printer costs a lot, and with the DMS grant only $1000 of the budget can be allocated to hardware. 

If we did the terminal + iPad does the terminal integrate with the iPad to be able to take payments and talk to each other, or could she just select what inventory piece she is selling from the terminal? 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much! 

[KParent · Accepted solution]

I had used the square stand with a cash drawer/printer combo (Star Micronics mPop10).  A very functional system!  Personally, I wouldn't bother with the Square Terminal unless you don't want customers to touch your ipad.   Either way you need to sanitize in-between customers.  The mPop cash drawer comes with a small stand for the ipad, but really not very useful.  The drawer also has a kensington lock slot to secure it to your counter.  The Square stand is well built and functional with a swivel to turn towards the customer and it is held in place with 3M double sided tape.  The only thing I added was a little ribbon to pull to help get the ipad out as I would  remove it for the night.  It does lack a customer facing screen, but I understand they are beta testing some form of customer facing screen using a phone as a display.   I would still be using this if I had walk-in traffic - with covid we shut that down.  I now have a padfolio I use to take the square reader and ipad into the yard for collecting payments.