Meet the Device Experience team: How can we help you better manage your devices?

[Tom]

Happy New Year, Sellers!

On Tuesday, January 18th, our Device Experience team hosted a Q&A focused on sellers' needs with device monitoring. Topics covered related to: Square Card Readers, Square Stand, Square Register, Square Terminal, printers, scales, scanners, and cash drawers.

We've got exciting plans this year that will help you monitor device connectivity, battery status, and logins from a single hub within the online Square Dashboard. We can't share out specific details on our product roadmaps, though we will certainly make sure all of the feedback that came through on this thread is incorporated into the decision making process.

[AnjaliA]

Hi @kasada5603, Thanks for reaching out. Are you printing order tickets or item labels? Could you expand a little more on how and where you are printing the labels from?

[keyworth]

Will we be able to control on line ordering more efficiently - the area we would like to expand on the iPad App is to be able to turn on line of and on and to control order timing and spacing on the I pad instead of having to go on line to the dashboard

[AnjaliA]

Hi @keyworth Thanks for the feedback. This is helpful to know as we design the feature.

[GContinuum]

My opinion is for the Square Retail Register..

https://squareup.com/us/en/hardware/register

It is a wonderful system but there is a couple suggestions I'd like to see and here they are

• onscreen keyboard does not pop up as it take up alot of screen real-estate unexpectedly. This becomes annoying when entering in inventory or just doing minor operations. Maybe just adding a small popup bar at the very bottom taking less then an inch of screen space on the bottom. The bar would say "slide up or tap for keyboard"  this way its less intrusive, more so if you use an external keyboard and mouse.  Also it provides no major flow changes for both displays, maybe have an option in settings to swap between these two onscreen keyboard styles "Standard Onscreen Keyboard"  &  "Unobtrusive Onscreen Keyboard".
• Modifiers could use negative values in cash & percentage amounts.  Since modifiers apply to the product not globally its easier to track these.  For example make a sandwich you have a modifier that add $.50 for tomatoes....  but what if you have a product that had a removal options like "dress & handbag combo"  buyer removes handbag now there should be a modifier that has -$50.  Also a modifier with percentages would be nice also.  Basically make modifiers similar to the discounts option but since discounts only work globally modifiers will only work per assigned product.

And those are my two major suggestions,  Thanks for taking the time to read them I look forward to further collaboration on making this square product the best possible product for small business.

[AnjaliA]

Hi @GContinuum, Thank you for the suggestions. Will supporting an external keyboard help in your scenario?

We will pass along your “modifiers” suggestion to the Catalog team.

[GContinuum]

Hello Anjalia,

We do use an external USB keyboard and mouse, but the register does not know that so the on screen keyboard just keeps popping up when input is needed.  Now this is a needed feature as the Register has a 2nd display for the customer to use when entering information or sliding cards.  It's why I suggest having an option for regular on-screen keyboard which currently pops open when needed. And one option that is just asking if you need the on-screen keyboard by just popping up a simple small message on the bottom of the screen, which would say slide up or tap for keyboard.

I just feel this is the easiest solution to implement coding wise as it would not need any major changes.  Basically you are only adding one feature in the options with would be different keyboard option.

[bfcoffee]

Hi- we ugraded to square register for our cafe a year ago (and make sure it always has its updates), but we notice that it is extremely slow and unexpectedly restarts very often. Other devices on our networks aren't slow like the register is. 

I'd still love to see bluetooth ticket printers that we can refine to categories so our kitchen can get orders printed as they come in, our roastery can get its shipping orders, and our counter can get bar orders printed.

[AnjaliA]

Hi @bfcoffee Sorry to hear you are experiencing slowness with Square Register. Please upgrade to the latest app version on Square Register where we have fixed similar issues. If you are still facing slowness after upgrading, please contact Square support so they can troubleshoot and find the root cause.

Some good news on Bluetooth printer support on Register - We are starting a beta program for this feature soon. If you are interested in participating, we can get you signed up for it.

[SunnysidePlants]

I have a square terminal and a compatible honeywell Hyperion 1300g scanner but can only search barcodes but it will not automatically add to cart.  There's a chat thread about same, is there a fix or will there be? 

[AnjaliA]

Hi @SunnysidePlants We do support Honeywell Hyperion 1300g scanner on Square Terminal. We add the item automatically to the cart if we find a match. If we don’t find a match there is an error displayed. Are you seeing an error?

[SunnysidePlants]

No error.

So the only way I can pull the product up is by clicking Library, line up the cursor info the search part, scan, then manually click add to cart. 

Please tell me how to have it automatically add to cart. 

[PartyManiaMD]

This actually came up in another thread when talking about receiving new items.

When using square for retail;

On square dashboard in item library you can add all the info including vendor and vendor number. You can't quickly receive stock on multiple items 

On Square register you can't add vendor or vendor item number, but you can quickly receive existing items.

Can we please get the ability to add vendors and vendor item #s to square register when adding new items? If this is in the works is there an eta?

[AnjaliA]

Hi @PartyManiaMD, Nice username! 

We’re working on the ability to manage vendors from within the Create Purchase Order experience coming soon to Square Register.

We recently launched the ability to manage vendor codes and vendors from the Point of Sale for iOS devices at the end of last year. We’re working on the same feature set for Square Register this year.

You can explore this experience from an iOS device and let us know if it will meet your needs.

How to view the “manage vendor” experience that exists for iOS devices:

• From iPad or iPhone open the Retail app, enter the Inventory Applet. Tap Purchase Orders and select Create purchase order.
• Select an existing vendor or tap Create new vendor to add a vendor you’re working with for the first time. Then, select Continue.
• Once you add items to your purchase order, you’ll see the option to add a Vendor Code and Unit Cost for all items on the Purchase Order on a page titled “Confirm unit costs”.

[Jimmyshu]

How do I get a devise for square

[AnjaliA]

Hi @Jimmyshu You can order Square payment and POS devices as well as accessories like printers from the Square shop - https://squareup.com/us/en/hardware

[KatieHollister]

Issue: iPads using square POS not syncing open tickets quickly -- a lag time: We are a winery. In our tasting room we use several iPads with Square POS to check out customers.  Our staff create Tickets (open tabs) on the iPads for customers who want to keep an open tab during their visit.  Customers will often order something at one of the tasting bars and then quickly move to another tasting bar for a different item and want to close their tab at the second tasting bar. When a customer wants to close their ticket and pay, any of the staff can assist the customer using the nearest iPad.  There often seems to be a lag between the iPads syncing the tickets -- for the same ticket, different charges appear on different iPads resulting in incorrect charges and confusion. How can we be sure the open tickets are syncing across all of the iPads in real time, especially during very busy times when we need to close customers tickets quickly, please?  Thank you!   

[MattLaroche]

Hi @KatieHollister,

Sorry to hear you are having issues with open tickets syncing. Some of these lags are often caused by weak wifi signals. You can purchase a wifi signal booster to help adequate coverage across your store. 

There is work in progress to update the platform that powers open tickets. This is an invisible update but the new platform is more powerful and will solve some of the existing kinks in the system. The changes are tentatively launching later in the year.

In the meantime, if you continue to have issues, please contact Square support.

[KatieHollister]

Thank you for the response!  Our business is in a rural area and we do not have high speed internet -- the iPads connect to the internet through the mobile cell towers.  Would a wifi signal booster help in that situation?  

Looking forward to seeing what the changes are to the open tickets platform.

Thank you for your help!

[MattLaroche]

@KatieHollister Thanks for your reply – being connected by mobile data store being on  is good information, and I'll make sure to pass on your use case and feedback to the right team! 

[KatieHollister]

Thank you very much!

[Addison]

I would really like to add handhelds like Toast has for its restaurant POS platform. Is there anything like this available or in the works?