Share your perspective: What Square feature/function is your BIGGEST pain point?

[LeahK]

Hellloooooo!  For those who don't me, I'm Leah, I work on the community team here at Square. 👋

We've been heads down planning upcoming webinar events to bring to the seller community. One of the opportunities we are considering is bringing topics that ultimately help folks overcome common or frequent pain points using Square products.

Whether you are a restauranteur, own a hometown coffee shop, bakery, retail store, etc -- we'd love to hear from you! All are welcome & encouraged to participate!

👉 Question: What specific Square feature is your BIGGEST pain point? and why?

In other words, if you could name the one thing, that if you just knew how it worked (or the pain point was resolved) you'd be the happiest person in the entire world.

[LeahK]

Tagging in a few of our Super Sellers to kick things off. I am particularly interested in hearing from folks in Food & Beverage industry and figured you all might have some compelling insights to share!

@wajiha, @Tamyra_Paunchy, @saydad, @WST90, @LLCafe, @JamesSandbar, @Devin3627, @timberhillwine, @sugarlab     

As mentioned in the original thread, as Food & Beverage business owners -- I'd love to get your perspective on your biggest product/feature pain points. The purpose, is really to gain some insights to help inform topics for future customer enablement webinar programming.

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@LeahK wrote:

👉 Question: What specific Square feature is your BIGGEST pain point? and why?

In other words, if you could name the one thing, that if you just knew how it worked (or the pain point was resolved) you'd be the happiest person in the entire world.

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Thanks in advance for kicking off the conversation! 🙏

[Tamyra_Paunchy]

For my small business, one of the biggest pain points is not being able to track, or tag, and monitor sales by location. We do farmer's markets and special events during the Summer months. Sometimes that means more than one market or event per day and right now in Square as the day progresses and sales are happening, everything is just lumped together. This removes my ability to look back and see if one event was more profitable than the other, which sold more of a particular flavor, etc. I've posted about this in the past and people have suggested workarounds but those are just that - workarounds. They're not the same as having the ability to actually tag individual sales at specific events and later do reporting on that. 

[RoniM]

I know you mentioned people have offered you workarounds. We recently did event vending at a one off location and what I did is I created it as a new location under business settings. That worked really well for us because it allowed us to create a unique menu for this event as well as have reporting be separate. It was pretty quick too. 

[TheRealChipA]

Sorry, @LeahK.  I know you said ONE.  I’m giving you two. LOL. They are equal in the extra work they cause me.

1) Item catalog maintenance.  This has been my biggest pain point since I started with Square over a decade ago.  Changes don’t always stick.  Applying modifier set configurations automatically to multiple items rarely works and I have to manually check them all anyway, so what’s the point?  It is the one area in Square that really doesn’t always work.  I dread having to do it.

2) We need the option to automatically add cash tips to their own tip pool, and to have that proration imported into payroll.  For me, anyway, that is the last piece of the tip puzzle that would completely automate weekly payroll.  No more spreadsheets!

[ArrostoDeli]

I agree with #1 Item catalog maintenance. The updates don't always stick. I have been updating my item modifiers in the online section as they usually stick there. The annoying thing is waiting for the item to sync with the Item Catalog. Usually 1-2 minutes. A couple of weeks ago it hadn't synced for over an hour. By morning it had, but at least the update stuck.

[BBCafe1]

@LeahK by far our biggest pain point that was almost a deal breaker is the fact of the Square for Restaurants not support Scale / Decimal numbers. Our restaurant can't use Square for Restaurants and it's advantages in design because of this missing feature. It's been something the community has been asking since 2020 and nobody from Square seems to pay attention. There are a lot of business that would take advantage if this.

Bonus minor painpoint: How hard it's to find a ticket using the tab "Transactions" on square. If you need to find information from a day before you need to scroll down all do way, there are no filters available on the device, and unfortunatelly if you try to use the Dashboard it does not find the name of the "Ticket Name" that you inserted. Example: we use pagers, so I sell a item and add the ticket name as number "05", if the customer took my pager home and I try to identify when was the last sale using the pager "05", good luck trying to find this. 

Thank you for the initiative!

[Tamyra_Paunchy]

I second the second pain point here of not having the ability to search prior transaction history with a filter. 

[philwags]

When make tickets are sent back to the kitchen to various make stations (pizza station, salad station, fryer, etc) there is no way to know if there is more to the order of if it is just what is in front of them - makes it difficult to keep orders together and to send things out in the proper order. A simple "1 of 1", "1 of 2" on the slips would allow the pizza guy to know there is something else on the order and to send it out together.

[ChambersSF]

My biggest issue is the inability to configure multiple Other Payment types such as Accounts Receivable, Room Service, Deposit Redeemed, etc. We are a restaurant operating in a hotel so the ability to accurately and easily report on these different forms of tender would significantly improve my life. Currently, these tenders can only be designated by a note on the item or the transaction and then parsed out using a pivot table. Quite tedious and unreliable as it is...

[Lovewell]

We very extremely dislike absolutely that the cash drawer is not automatically named the date in which it is closed. Or that there is not option to have if be defaulted to set the drawer name as the date. We have to go in and edit the drawer first to add the name and then go in and end the drawer. Unnecessary steps.

We just wish there was more customizable features for different businesses. Like for us we don't want there to be a note section for the closing of cash drawer. We would like to be able to turn off the "note" feature. 

And we are not fans that the drawer now says "cash out" instead of "paid out"

[TommoPaul1]

The biggest pain point for us is the inability to do conditional discounting. Simple outcomes like Any Burger & Beer for £15 can't be done.

We would like to build product groups that can then be bundled with other product groups at a set price without having to use workarounds like modifiers that just duplicate work and break the correct category rollup reporting numbers.

[Lovewell]

This one made me think of another, and maybe it is a feature I just haven't found, but being able to have loyalty redeemed on the least expensive item in the cart? Right now it goes to the most expensive item. 

Example for us when you have 9 stars you can redeem a free drink. If someone orders a $7 drink with all sorts of upgrades and then a $3 coffee I would like to be able to have the loyalty free drink redeemed on the $3 coffee. 

In the grand scheme of things it isn't a huge deal and we have been using loyalty for over a year now and will continue to do so, but it was something we did with our physical punch cards that we were not able to get the loyalty system to do.

[TCSlaguna]

Square Appointments: Payment Report Based On Appointment Date (Not Transaction Date)

We would like an easy way to see appointments made and which ones were paid/unpaid. We would like an easy way to calculate how much to pay our Service Providers. 

We need a report that provides: 

1. Created Date
2. Appointment Date/Time
3. Appointment Length 
4. Client Name
5. Staff
6. Paid/Unpaid
7. Amount Paid for Service
8. Tip Amount Given

Currently Items 1-5 are available under Appointments-> Settings -> History, Items 6-8 are not. 

Transactions-> filter by Service Provider shows when a payment was made. Does not show appointment date/time and unpaid appointments. 

Team Report does not show Items 1-4, is based on when the appointment was made, not when the service was rendered. 

Use case: 

We pay our Service Providers every Monday. If we run a report for the week based on transaction date, the service may not yet have been rendered. A client can cancel, no service will be rendered, and I have paid the service provider for a service not rendered. 

Having a report based on appointment date, that shows paid/unpaid, amount paid for service, and tip amount given will help ensure that I am paying out my service providers the correct amount for services they have actually rendered. 

Our current process is complicated and takes a couple hours, when it could take only ten minutes with the above data. 

[TCSlaguna]

And... 

Vendor Item Library: Quantity On Hand 

We would like the ability to see Quantity On Hand when we go to:

Items -> Inventory Management -> Vendors -> select vendor -> Item Library

This will provide us with a quick way to see the quantity on hand, and be able to reorder products from the vendor.

I know a workaround is Items -> Item Library -> Export to Excel -> filter by Default Vendor

However:

As a retailer, we order products from different vendors. Many times, we order the same product (i.e. incense) from different vendors. Who I order from this month can depend on a multitude of reasons.

1) Having to run a report, export to Excel and filter, to order from a vendor should not be necessary

2) Default Vendor means the other three vendors I order incense from will not show in the report

3) As a retailer that needs to reorder products from a vendor, seeing the Quantity In Stock on the Vendor's Item Library page allows me to reorder the amount I need quickly.

Currently a purchase order can take hours to create, when it could only take ten minutes if we have the above.

[DinaLRosenberg]

we don't do purchase orders because of this- it takes way too much time. We just order on our vendor websites or via email and then "put everything into the system".

I also have explained to Square that from a business perspective (putting on my MBA hat) you want Square to be as sticky as possible. The LAST thing they should be encouraging is the data to be exported out vis-a-vis Excel to be manipulated. The better people get at that the less and less they need square to manage their inventory. 

[Candlestore]

@LeahK ;

@DinaLRosenberg ;

My way of doing inventory has now been, when someone asks if we have more of an Item.

I actually open another web page on a Chromebook, Scan said Item and can say where they are exactly by using a free inventory app.   The thing I do not like is I have to get my daily sales to this inventory app to reduce quantities.  

As was mentioned Square wants us to stay in Square ecosystem but does not give us a way to stay here.  I just use Square for CC processing and keeping track of Quantity of Inventory but my Locations of inventory, accounting etc. needs to be done outside and its sometimes hard to get it there.

You may want to look into having the Square Eco system move more into a CRM, ERP, or SAP system where it is all in one package.

Speaking of the Accounting, a big issue is an easier placement on the Square Dashboard for a Monthly Deposit to reconcile a BankStatement with.  Today I was trying to help someone trying to figure out WHICH report the person showed in the conversation since they posted spreedsheet images with Square and Bank statement headers.  These headers are not in any report I know of.   I know there is the Transfer report, but this only shows 10 transfers unless you download it as a csv.   What cant we print a Transfer report as a Mothly Statement from Square?   

Here is my out of Square Inventory for my Inventory in 2 locations  Shrm3 is on Display and Door 3 is a cabinet which has like 8 doors.  My thing is this lets me know Where to look for customers that may want more than what is on display.  And the below image is of my Free account there.  The quantity here shows 11 and in Square it shows 12 because I need to adjust it manually or we missed counted putting it in.

[DinaLRosenberg]

OH you reminded me! The ability to have virtual appoints be pre-paid but in-store appointments not.. right now it's all or nothing.

[LeahK]

Good call linking to the existing feature request @TCSlaguna! If others have the same pain point -- please vote it up! 🤝

[DinaLRosenberg]

INVENTORY!!

INVENTORY

INVENTORY

There are issues around inventory counts remaining consistent between retail/dashboard and square online (I actually just posted an example). 

Then there's the issue of inventory control/location of overstock. 

Example: We have 3 rose quartz hearts. One is in the window, one is with rose quartz tumbles and one is with rose quartz specimens. There's NO way to memorialize within Square where these items are located. So, when a customer asks to see them, we need to rely on memory. The problem is, there's 9 of us working and not all of us have the same memory.

We have two storefronts next to each other, 2 selling floors with 6 individual rooms and a basement and attic for overstock- how do we memorialize WHERE items are? We can't. 

If we have a one-off item that gets ordered we are often looking for that item for 20-30 minutes. It's incredibly frustrating. This can be easily fixed with an internal notes field that we can write whatever we want.

Regarding online orders another pain point are online order internal notes. 

Example: customer orders something that is out of stock (see pain point 1- inventory count issues). We reach out to that customer via phone and leave a message. Aside from printing out the order and writing it down- there is no way to "log" that activity. Say we speak to that person and offer them a substitution- again, aside from writing it on a piece of paper there's no way to "log" that activity.

[DinaLRosenberg]

Another one- the ability to print labels from the item screen!