We’d love to hear your feedback on the usability of Square’s mobile apps. 📱

[Ryan_M]

Hi Sellers!

We're shaking things up for this edition of "Question of the Week!" 

Instead of just one question, the Marketing Team at Square is hoping to learn your answers to a handful of questions and understand your experience with Square's mobile apps.

1. Do you currently use multiple Square mobile apps? If so, what is your overall experience with this?
2. What do you like about using multiple apps for different Square products?
3. What do you dislike about using multiple apps for different Square products?
4. Do you have any suggestions on how we can improve the Square mobile app experience?
5. How much impact would having one centralized app have on your day-to-day experience?
6. Do you think each of our various Square apps look related and cohesive? Like they come from the same company?

We look forward to your replies! 🌟

[knottystitches]

I use Shippo.  Its prices are better than square for shipping.  I wish I didn't have to use outside apps for anything.  I tried using pointy and tax jar but i really dont want to pay for so many apps.  I have to pay for shipping regardless.  so until square can match or beat shippo i will use that app.

[TCSlaguna]

Hey @Ryan_M 

1. Currently use Retail, Appointments, Dashboard, Photo Studio

2. I like Dashboard providing important information on how the store is doing today. 

3. Having to switch between Retail and Appointments, chip reader and receipt printer disconnecting and reconnecting, waiting a couple minutes between slows down ringing customers up. 

4. Having an integrated Retail + Appointments app would be amazing. 

5. Having an integrated Retail + Appointments app would SIGNIFICANTLY improve our checkout experience!

Hope it helps! 

[TechExpress]

try appointmentquest.com, they integrated both retail, processing and appointments.   On another note, WTF is this Merchant funds on hold for merchants verification processing after 5+ years of processing with you fools.  Then you send all the inquiry calls for the business/account holders verification out of the country, really..?  Oh sure here is my SSI number and banking account numbers, and you people say you want to make it a "safe and secure card proccing environment"  WTF.....?   

There is not one rep at Square...AI...human....support....bot that can answer the question, what prompted a verification requirement, if it was "suspicious transactions" maybe you might change the process in which one could dispute a transaction...  if there two or five a cc holder must fill -out on line each transaction amount, merchant name, dates  and reasoning for the dispute, anything of 5 or 8 is such a pain, but you guys already know that.    

The question here is:

1. what prompts account holds?

2. what "exact data" is required for removal of a hold

3. And where could somebody find that Information Data for submission to square promptly?

4. Whos' idea was it to send calls for verification to call centers out of the county?

[OldCoder]

I used the mobile app for about a year before moving to Square Terminal. I had no issues whatsoever with the app and found it very user friendly and effective. My reasoning for moving to Square Terminal is so I wouldn't need to handle customer's cards and it seems more professional.

I have the mobile app running on a phone in the store as a backup in case something goes awry with the terminal(s).

[MelissaMcC]

Same here! Used the app with the old tiny square reader that plugged into the headphone jack of my then Blackberry (!! Talk about old!) beginning in 2010 or so, then got the bigger one that was infinitely buggy, then switched to a tablet from personal phone...now I have (and love!) the terminal - for exactly that reason, it looks so much more professional! I just bought a second one to have at a satellite location, and I'm trying to figure out a couple of inventory issues with it, but it looks like I successfully registered it, so I've put a gold star on my forehead...now off to have a juice box and a cookie lol!

[ryanwanner]

Hey @Ryan_M !

Good questions from you and the marketing team!

1. My stores use spos actively on tablets plus Sq KDS as well. On my phone, I have and use spos, Dashboard, Team, Payroll, Photo Studio, Weebly, and Invoices. Overall it's a pretty good experience, but I have to pause every now and then to decide which app would be best for whatever I'm doing at the moment.

2. Having things compartmentalized helps with overall organization for me (payroll questions? Payroll app. These kind of things)

3. My biggest dislike with all the apps is the multiple notifications for the same event: example, if I get an inbound message from Facebook, I get alerts from Invoices, spos (twice!!), and FB's business app. For online orders, I get alerts from spos (twice again!!) and Weebly (well, when it works...). It's a lot of notifications for one event. I don't want to disable notifications on any of the apps though in case there's a specific alert from that app.

4 & 5. I'm hesitant to have only one centralized app, but I do think some consolidation would be helpful: If all the customer-facing apps (spos, retail, restaurant, appts, invoices) were under one generic Square app that would allow linkage between products (like @TCSlaguna mentioned), a Square Dashboard app that combined all the back end information (banking, reporting, payroll, online, reporting, etc), and a Teams app for employees, I can see that being helpful for many businesses. I have two reasons for wanting the management part separate: security and stability. Security because it puts all the financials outside the grasp of employees, who inevitably manage to get into that info regardless of permission sets. Stability because the more things you stuff into an app the slower it runs, especially on older devices.

Hope this helps!

[VanKalkerFarms]

Do you currently use multiple Square mobile apps? If so, what is your overall experience with this?

---Yes, I find that the apps do what they need to do and do it quite well.
What do you like about using multiple apps for different Square products?

---Since I only use Square POS and Square Dashboard they are fine being separate apps as they are doing separate ideas of selling vs reporting.
What do you dislike about using multiple apps for different Square products?

---As above I use the 2 apps and technically Square POS also has reporting but not as much as Square Dashboard, so It would be fine if the full reporting was brought in-app.

  Having so many Square apps, Square for restaurants, Pos, Retail, etc can get confusing for the Square user, especially when first looking into Square and trying to figure out where to start.
Do you have any suggestions on how we can improve the Square mobile app experience?

---On the back end I don't know how much the codebases have changed but it would be nice for there to just be a Square app and however you need to use it was in that app.
How much impact would having one centralized app have on your day-to-day experience?

---It wouldn't really change much for me and I feel would make the overall Square experience easier to start.

[ReginaRMT]

I mainly use Square appointments for almost all things. I do have a terminal as well so I really do not need multiple apps. One would be perfect and not confusing.

[Ryan_M]

Hi Sellers!

Thanks so much to those who have already responded! We really appreciate your time in answering these questions.

I've added one additional question to the list:

6. Do you think each of our various Square apps look related and cohesive? Like they come from the same company?

[ryanwanner]

@Ryan_M  If you would have asked this question a few months ago, I would have said no there is no real cohesiveness. I've noticed a big trend to bring a visual sameness to many of the apps recently. I don't use Retail or Restaurants so I don't know about those however. Using the same font and basically the same UI has definitely brought the apps closer together.

[TheRealChipA]

---

6. Do you think each of our various Square apps look related and cohesive? Like they come from the same company?

---

Yup.  Very much so.

[TheRealChipA]

---

Do you currently use multiple Square mobile apps? If so, what is your overall experience with this?

On a daily basis, I use Team (I am a scheduled employee, so it’s a great app for that purpose) and Dashboard.  Weekly, I use Payroll which I also use on those occasions when I need to correct a time card.  I use mobile POS occasionally for testing or as a backup POS if something has gone horribly wrong with my regular POS options.

---

What do you like about using multiple apps for different Square products?

Convenience, as well as ease of use over having to go to the online dashboard.  Also, obviously the data/function presentation and use is built for mobile, which the dashboard isn’t always.  I especially LOVE Dashboard (which I think is HORRIBLY named, given that it is easy to confuse its reason for existence with the online Dashboard. It should be called Metrics, or Reporting, or something much more obvious than Dashboard.)

Anyway, I digress. I love having everything at my fingertips and hope that continues.

---

What do you dislike about using multiple apps for different Square products?

There aren’t enough of them.  And, see my previous comments about the mis-naming of Dashboard.  I don’t really dislike anything about the current experience, however.

---

Do you have any suggestions on how we can improve the Square mobile app experience?

Silly boy.  Of course I have suggestions!  I’ll summarize them here.

1. I’ll say it again — RENAME DASHBOARD! LOL
2. Add more reporting functionality to the Dashboard App (did I mention, yet, that I think this app should be renamed?).  It should have every report (in mobile format) that exists on the online dashboard and even more!
3. Another suggestion for the Dashboard App (besides renaming it, which I hope I already mentioned).  I love the new iOS widgets, except for the fact that the comparison part of the widget is wrong!  It doesn’t match any comparison that I can find in Dashboard.  Also it takes a long time to get up to date with current sales.  That’s not horrible, just weird.
4. Payroll and Team (and scheduling, etc, etc, etc) should be the same app, so that all employee-centric functionality is in one place.  Sure, for those Square sellers who opt of of using Square Payroll you’d have to disable that part of the app.  But having to switch between them at the account level is odd and confusing at times.
5. No matter whether or not you agree with #4, add more functionality for Team App at the account owner level.  Give us scheduling functionality, including the ability to change schedules on the fly, approve time off requests, communicate with our employees without needing to text/email them.  And I’m just scratching the surface.
6. Create a Square Master App that gives us all the functionality that exists in the online Dashboard.  It should be iOS/iPadOS/Android/Desktop compatible and totally get rid of the need to sign in on the web.
7. Other mobile app suggestions — Marketing, Messages, Banking/Loans…. In fact ever major online dashboard function.  Of course, I’d prefer the suggestion in #6 over a bunch of smaller apps, but I’ll take either.

---

How much impact would having one centralized app have on your day-to-day experience?

Like @ryanwanner I’m not sure I’m a fan of a super-app as far as the POS goes.  I can see @TCSlaguna’s suggestion about combining Retail/Appointments since that functionality overlaps.  But I guess the old programmer in me would be suspicious of a one-size-fits-all POS app since it would be of necessity HUGE and complex and prone to more down-time than is already experienced.  I AM a fan of consolidating similar functionality into one app — Employee-related, banking-related, etc.  But that’s about it for me.

Thanks!

[TheRealChipA]

For the record, as much as I gave the naming of Dashboard App a hard time in my post, I will say that I use this app often throughout the day, and whenever I need quick statistics (like how was business distributed last year during Pride, to help me in schedule planning).  I will say that the Dashboard App is one of the most useful app that Square provides and I’m only hoping that it gets more and more reporting/metric functionality in the future!

[Bronze_Palms]

I only use the Square appointments app as a service-based business on my phone. The appointments app is used on the iPad as well. Everything else (loyalty, payroll, shifts) is more user friendly on desktop.

Since Square accommodates so many different business types and solutions, if it were to be merged into one main app, I can see a feature where we can toggle off payroll features and toggle on appointments and shifts, for ex.

[Minion]

---

@Bronze_Palms wrote:

I only use the Square appointments app as a service-based business on my phone. The appointments app is used on the iPad as well. Everything else (loyalty, payroll, shifts) is more user friendly on desktop.

Since Square accommodates so many different business types and solutions, if it were to be merged into one main app, I can see a feature where we can toggle off payroll features and toggle on appointments and shifts, for ex.

---

Awesome Idea of being able to toggle on/off features if things were merged into one.

[MassagebyMorgan]

it's great but I just received an email that looked like it was from you guys, but I think it was a scam the woman has never seen me before and I don't have her has a client. She stated that she made a mistake of about 900.00 and I don't have anything on my end about this. Just a heads up but there are people out there using your guy's name and trying to scam people out of money. 

[ryanwanner]

@MassagebyMorgan Yeah…. The amount of spoofing emails has grown exponentially over the last month or so. 

Your best bet is to check the senders email. Official Square communications come from messaging.squareup.com. If anything else is listed it’s a definite scam. If it’s a “customer” reaching out that you don’t recognize—and especially if it’s for a much larger amount than your average ticket—I’d still lean towards it being a scam. 

Be sure to forward all questionable emails to spoof@squareup.com as well!

[marciobrenes12]

When will you fix the WEEBLY Iphone APP, this thing has not worked properly for about One YEAR,

I also stopped getting notifications every time I make a sale,

are you eliminating WEEBLY for good?

Don't leave us in the dark!!

Is there another APP that we can use to have all the feaures on IPHONE

[Sweetwife]

I haven't had a chance to try square for restaurants as I set up using the original app and didn't feel like redoing everything so I can't speak to that. I use multiple devices for one account (register, mini ipad, ipad, terminal, phone) and they all work together well. I do think there are too many apps, when I onboard new team members they get confused trying to get their schedule through Square Teams. One centralized app for sales, and one centralized app for teams/payroll/backend stuff would be great. I like that employees can't accidentally access important things, but I dislike that I have to jump around from app to app to see schedules, check clock ins, check sales, resolve problems etc.

My biggest concern is finding someone's transaction without a receipt or credit card number. Why can't I search by ticket name or customer name?

[HHcsJoe]

I use the Square app, Retail app and Payroll app.  All are very easy to use and have a similar look and feel.  I use these apps when I'm away from the store to keep track of sales and web orders- I exclusively use the payroll app to complete weekly payroll- I have never completed payroll from the dashboard.  Honestly, one app with the features of these three apps would be helpful for productivity.