Our POS system was 15 years old and beginning to throw errors from time to time, so it was time to look for a replacement. We've been using the Square terminal as a replacement for our old credit card processor for about 8 months now, and decided to look at the register too.
The first consideration was cost. For us, just to replace the old software we were using with the most current version would have been around $1700. Then we still would have had to add in a new computer and printer. So, we'll call that another $1000. Grand total $2700.
The Square register was a no brainer for us. It's price (including software) was a lot less than half of what it would cost to replace exactly what we had.
We were able to export our inventory from our old system and import it directly to Square. This was for the most part a painless thing, except for some minor mistakes on item settings that were quickly found and corrected.
One of the hurdles we had to find a solution for, was for what most people call a discount for multiple items. And discounts, as we tried them in the register, weren't working the way we expected. The solution that works perfectly for our use was to set the price of the items that have muti-level pricing to $0.00. And then use modifiers for the different levels, requiring one to be chosen. This was big, and influenced my decision to purchase the register. Without it, it would have been a no go since our best selling product requires multi-level pricing.
When the register got here, installation and setup were a breeze. Especially since we had already uploaded our inventory to Square and were running our old system in parallel with Square for about a week using our Square terminal. Once everything was mounted where we wanted it, it was just a matter of logging into our Square account and BAM, our system was up and running.
From the user standpoint, the system is very easy to use. And took little training on our end. Everything is running smoothly without any problems.
Our customers thought the Square terminal was the greatest thing they had ever seen, it's speed and look wowed them. Now, they are almost speechless and are amazed with the new Square register customer display. We are getting quite a few "Wow that's nice!" comments.
I've mentioned most of the good, but there are three places where I feel Square register falls short. And we had to find a work around for them.
1) There is no cost field for items in inventory. This is a must for a retail business like ours where inventory value is reported to the IRS on Schedule C. We've gotten around this by creating a spread sheet with our item costs and overlaying it with an inventory export from Square. That causes an additional step which really wouldn't be needed if there was an item cost field in the software for the register that could be updated as needed.
2) There is no purchase tracking. Not even at a very basic level. This is something that also gets reported to the IRS on Schedule C. We've gotten around this with the same method as #1. But it would be nice to have some way to record purchases in the software. I'm not saying a full blown purchase order tracking system, but 3 simple fields. Total, discount and freight. That way we could simply record the values from an invoice and run a report at tax time.
3) Discounts can't be applied to individual items or categories. They can only be applied to the sale total.
Now I know there is software available from Square that fills those gaps. But I can't justify the monthly cost. And to the best of my limited knowledge, that software isn't compatible with Square Register. It would have been nice if they would include the top end software (Square for Retail) with Square Register at no extra cost, but it's not a show stopper.
In closing, if there were a 5 star rating system for the Square register I would give it 4.5 stars just because of those three places where I feel it falls short. Otherwise it would have been 5 stars. I would also highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new register system.
