If you had to pick one feature you feel Square's platform is missing, what would it be? 🪄

[Ryan_M]

Hi Canadian Seller Community! We here at Square are wondering...

If you had to pick one feature you feel Square's platform is missing, what would it be?

We look forward to reading your replies! 👀 

[TorontoHeadshot]

Sorry to be blunt but 20-30 minutes of reviewing threads on here would give you a ton of answers. You have a lot of upset customers on here giving you all the info you need about "what is missing". Square as a company seems to simply ignore it all.

[Boardwalkcafe]

If I could add one feature to Square POS it would be a membership management/check-in module that would allow me to sell passes that would grant particular benefits.

In our case, we're a board game cafe that operates on a cover charge system. We also sell memberships for 1 month, 3 months, and 12 months. We use a simple paper card but would much rather a more robust system that would allow us to add additional benefits.

Square already has many of the functions that we would want but doesn't allow them to easily be connected to one another. For example, we already have customer profiles and the ability to add recurring payments and to keep cards on file. We can do messaging with customers that have allowed their phone numbers to be on file. We can have set discounts that apply to specific groups of customers. We can send coupons and specific rewards. We can use QR codes to add customers to transactions.

90% of the functionality is already there, it's just not talking to each other.

What I want is to be able to set a customer to be a Member for a set period of time. During that time, checking them in by entering their phone number like the loyalty module) will indicate whether their membership is active or has expired. If active, they'll receive a 100% discount on their entry fee and get access to the other benefits that we decide like a free drink or discounts on retail purchases.

Integrating the membership module and the marketing module would allow us to send specific promotions to members. Integrating it with the loyalty program would allow us to only offer the loyalty program to members as an additional incentive.

Again, it seems like a lot of the features and functionality are already. I can see that these features would be of great benefit to businesses like gyms or play centres. 

[SamuelDesgagne1]

Accrual method reporting and invoicing, and the inventory to follow this idea.

warehouse style location to order to it for stock delivery.

show taxes separately even if taxes are included.

bundle inventory and creation form existing product

@TorontoHeadshot comment's could not be better. stop reading complaints and write code to fix them. some feature request, as bundle inventory have been requested since 2016. we are in 2022 and it's still not a thing. and we are paying an extra via retail to get inventory sorted out.

How you want me to tell people that i recommend square? if i could go back in the past, i would have consider other option much more.

[cdeann]

If I could choose one new feature for Square it would be to connect the Terminal to Square Appointments so that we can cash out appointments seamlessly through the terminal. Currently my terminal is connected to my Square stand in the Square POS App which allows me to cash all my clients out but this makes me unable to “cash out” my clients from appointments making it harder to see which clients have been checked out vs. Who is still needing to be cashed out at a glance. 

[everaftershelby]

This is already an option on the square POS - you can attach an appointment to a receipt at checkout 

[mannyh]

Hi Ryan!

We operate a field service business.

What we feel Square's platform is lacking in the following areas and could benefit. Sorry for this long post but I see Square really dominating small to even medium sized businesses if they can improve or add these features. Feel free to ask me any follow up questions or tell me concerns.

In regards to Customer Directory (These both have already been passed to the product team already I believe:

1. Customer Searching by more fields (not just name, number, and email). A use case for this is that field service businesses heavily depend on customer addresses. 
2. Re-ordering of columns, and addition of some fields to the column panel view. For example, currently we cannot add address as a column when it would be really nice to quickly look at a customer's address as well.

On appointments:

1. Appointment Notes are lacking timestamp and some history. For example, if I (as an office worker staff member) create an appointment for a customer and assign it to another staff member (a staff member on the field) with notes on the appointment. If the field service staff member completes the service and adds notes to the appointment, it currently gets bundles with the original note textbox with no indication which staff member creates the notes. Client notes has this feature of timestamps/staff member history, however on the appointment notes level, this is missing. Long story short: I think the original note by the creator of the appointment should persist and another entry be created if the assigned member wants to add a note.
2. Ability to add a file/attachment at an appointment level (by a staff member), that perhaps syncs with the customer's files as well.
3. Appointments change colour or have an x of some sort if they have been completed. Right now, it only shows "PAID" if you click on the calendar item.

[ReginaRMT]

More customizable receipts for treatments that are reprintabile with all information included on one easy to view area, including name, date, treatment length, payment form, therapists name. Also to be able to send exactly the same receipts in email form. 

[JTPets]

I've generated many feature requests, and would encourage you to view that forum for a wealth of information on what is needed. While I feel square does review and implement some features, many issues that seem pretty basic go unanswered. I feel Square for retail is lacking a lot of features for the price i pay monthly.

A few things that come to mind now that would improve my end user experience are:

1: cycle count system for inventory accuracy and verification, a full system would be amazing and could use smart phones to scan barcodes. However even something basic to validate X% of inventory weekly to ensure product availability (i myself have 1200 plus skus)

2; average sales over last 13 weeks when reviewing item lists for re-order -  Example: 0.5 would mean i sell one approximately every two weeks and 2.1 means i sell two a week on average

3:check boxes for "add to purchase order" on my inventory item list

4:speed, speed, speed, half my time is spent waiting for a box to open to click another box to edit one thing then save and wait for reload....

5: adjustable column widths in inventory item lists (needs to be more like excel, less bulk, more steamlined easier to view, and manage, and COPY!

6: COPY AND PASTE from item list. I want to order X item from my supplier, i can see vendor code but cant highlight and copy text without opening a window...waiting for it to load

[SamuelDesgagne1]

+1 on the feature request channel

+1 on retail missing a lot of feature for the price

[SNI]

More freedom to customize.

Square appointment site is not ideal for multiple locations, and now you want to charge by location. A premium price i might add. It's a nightmare how many clients book at wrong location, the "change location" tab at top is not prominent enough. I should have ability to customize booking site same as any page on my website. 

For contracts that automate with appointments, would be nice to have choice of when contract auto sends (ex-day of appointment, 2 days before ...)

Notification emails- should have control of where client replies are directed.

Also customer service, when i started with square customer service was responsive and curious to issues, now seems like no one cares.

[Poshak]

Can you please add more filtering options, or at a min. advise where it is on the product development roadmap?  All I am looking for is a filter by size: Small, Medium, Large, XL.  Thanks.

[FCExcavating]

PRE_AUTHORIZATION 

Would be super helpful for limiting liability when we do deliveries (as our delivery is an hourly rate that can fluctuate). 

Thanks Ryan!

[FringeTheatre]

Bundling items, with proper inventory tracking and price changes. E.g., a "Shirt and Pants" bundle that doesn't require manual discount adjustments (thus also allows for online sale).

Also, a price override feature at time-of-sale. This is compared to the current method of editing the item, making the sale, and the re-editing the item back to the original price (or having the same item at multiple price points/variations).

[Alexssi]

Good idea!

[lenjobakes]

As many have mentioned, checking the feature request thread would be the absolute best place to start.

However, on behalf of all bakeries that use Square:

Having the ability to generate a report that spits out what has been ordered for a specific PICK-UP DATE would be life-changing.

The December holiday season is the worst example of this, but with Valentine's Day coming up next week I've found my "holiday order" notebook that I will use to write each product option available and go through the orders one by one and create a manual count of how many of each product needs to be prepared for each day.

For bakeries like ours, this kind of information would be life-changing all year round - Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, St. Paddy's, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Canada Day, Labour Day Weekend, Thanksgiving, Christmas, any number of food holidays, etc. Right now the work-arounds are not worth the effort, but the hours spent tallying orders (with a high rate of error) is truly taxing on SMEs.

It's been a feature request for years. And years and years. The information already exists for each account - we just need a way to access it.

[TELSCreativeDgn]

Hey I totally agree! Even though I don't bake... I sell hand crafted items and printing out work slips with complete info for each job would be heaven.

[everaftershelby]

Custom fields for more information in the appointment booking 

[everaftershelby]

and being able to attach received inventory to a specific invoice 

[LukeNieuw]

I've got 2, sorry I can't help myself 🙂 

1) A Pre-order system. Ability to order ahead (multiple days to weeks) for a specific date(s) in the future. 

2) Afterpay Integration - I know it just became available in the US but I would love to have that option for my Square Online site. Especially for bigger ticket items this would be amazing.

I know there are lots of complaints being dropped in this thread and I've given mine in the past as well but I have to say I LOVE Square. And having been through 5 other POS systems in the past decade I can say that NONE of them hold a candle to Square. 

Keep pushing forward!

[meggyj113]

1. The ability to have actual memberships that you can bundle services, products and discounts into and the system will keep track of what they have available to use each month (clients can also track online via their profile). Clients will also be able to book “member only services” with their memberships.  @Boardwalkcafe goes into perfect detail about this feature!

2. blocking clients from future bookings 

- “Tiers/Levels” for stylists or other service providers that have levels. Many salons have stylists that range in skill level and by default pricing levels. It would be nice to have the ability to put each stylist as a specific Tier and the system would automatically change the pricing for the services based on that tier.  Clients would also be able to view tiers of each stylist and find the price best suitable for their budget. 

- Cashing out multiple appointments together (mother and daughter come in together and want to pay together)