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Square Outage After Action Review: Back Ups to Square Services

I feel like a fool for falling for Square's land grab for so many parts of our business. As a bookstore with a cafe/bar, we are in a weird hybrid space, and use Square for POS and inventory management for both retail and food & beverage; payroll; loyalty/CRM & marketing. I was considering Square online, but absolutely won't do that now.

 

I also understand an outage of this magnitude could and probably will happen to Clover, PayPal, etc., so my question is about diversification and redundancies, not choosing to move all my business to one other competitor.

 

I will continue to use Square for POS and inventory management with some redundancies, but everything else should be on the table. So, who/what is everyone using for the following: 

 

- Back up for Credit Card processing? (Other than Venmo, PayPal) 

- Customer Relationship Management/Marketing: Specifically email & text marketing, and how are you integrating the names and information collected via Square's loyalty program at POS?

- Loyalty/Rewards: Anything compatible with Square?

- E-Commerce: Best tools, and their ability to integrate with Square for inventory management? 

 

And one snarky comment: For a company led by an individual who was a pioneer in communications platforms, the crisis comm during this outage has been abysmal. I'd say sophomoric, but that would imply they made an attempt. 

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That is the problem with the system we have in place now. It’s a lot easier to use every thing when each component is integrated into one system. It saves us time and money. Yes it’s important to have backups in place to handle payments and even your internet service because those do have disruptions that occur. I recall a couple of months ago that the actual major card companies had issues so that even though Square processing was up and running card payments couldn’t get approved from the actual card issuers. As far as backup for things like loyalty programs, messaging advertising, etc it’s really not worth the expense and effort to try and have backups or have a different program that runs through a different system. It’s very rare to have the kind of outage like we had yesterday that literally affected every single component of the Square ecosystem 

Steve Green
Mountain Vapors
www.mountainvapors.com
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@TessC  I agree with @homeprogreen I know some people have different backup card processing systems for situations like an outage, But when it comes to loyalty and marketing, outages don't last long enough to need a whole new system . We have learned too that if you are transparent with your customers regarding not being able to log their loyalty for the day, at least in our customers everyone is already appreciative that we have a loyalty system in the first place that no-one throws a fit not getting credit once. 

Lovewell Tea & Coffee//
Ventura, Ca


https://www.lovewellteaandcoffee.com/
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The way I handled I just grabbed a pad and wrote down phone number & number of stars. Told everyone that I would add the stars to their loyalty account once it was back online. Everyone was happy with that solution 

Steve Green
Mountain Vapors
www.mountainvapors.com
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Yes that is fantastic too!!! I like that. We have done that in smaller glitches.

Lovewell Tea & Coffee//
Ventura, Ca


https://www.lovewellteaandcoffee.com/
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Another backup for payment is that if you use Quickbooks then you can sign up for Quickbooks Go Payments. It’s based on the same arrangement as square processing so you don’t incur costs until you swipe a card. So the process would be you ring up the sale in Square like normal then grab your phone with the Go Payment app open. Enter the sale and have them pay via the Quickbooks reader. Then you just select other payment in Square so that it’s in your sales report and adjusts inventory like normal 

Steve Green
Mountain Vapors
www.mountainvapors.com
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@TessC Having backup processes in place is essential, and it is something I have been working on for the last year, considering every "What if..." situation. Yesterday we did exactly what @homeprogreen mentioned above. It worked flawlessly. 

 

In regards to backing up customer/loyalty information, you may want to look at Zapier integrations. I just learned about it today, but in reviewing the set of features they have it looks magical. 

 

Our business has grown immensely since we started using Square for Retail, Appointments, Online and Email Marketing. I could not imagine using different platforms to do the combination of activities we do. And while I do have a list of feature requests that would make my life easier, I am appreciative of the Seller Community and being able to provide my input and actively see Square services improve. 

 

Good luck with setting up your backup processes. Let us know how it goes. 

 

 

 

 

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Hey there, @TessC.  

 

I feel your pain.  Thursday is not something any of us want to live through, again.  Also, I commend you for being thoughtful and measured as you consider how you are going to prepare for the next big one.  I say it that way because even if it isn’t Square the next time, we can all be sure it will be someone.  It’s one of the drawbacks for living in an age of convenience and technological “miracles.”  We’ve become dependent on them to function.  I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that technology is grand, until it isn’t.  Thursday, it wasn’t.

 

Like you, I’m questioning a lot of decisions and trying to decide what else I’m going to do to protect my business in the future.  And your question is one of the biggest for me.  First, I will say one thing, which you probably already know but is worth saying.  It’s too soon to be making big decisions.  We’re all still licking whatever wounds we have and recovering.  It would be easy to make rash and uninformed decisions and then regret those.  There’s a good reason for another wise saying — don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

 

I tend to be loyal to companies once they’ve earned my loyalty.  I’ve been an Apple fanboy since the 80s and the Apple II.  And I’m definitely a Square person.  Currently, I use Restaurants Plus, KDS, Marketing (both text and email), Loyalty, Shifts/Teams Plus, Payroll, Online website and store.  All of these used to be parts of my business I fulfilled from various companies.  But I moved them to Square for one big reason.  it made sense to me to use tools that “simply worked, together.”  I love the seamless and simple way that Square tools interconnect without the complexities of interfaces between tools of different companies with different visions.  Using Square for all of this has reduced my workload more than a little.

 

A disclaimer.  Thursday, while not fun at all, was not as bad as it could have been for my business.  You see, years ago I created a disaster plan that included switching to Stripe as my card processor.  For my POS, I always hoped I could use offline mode, which I did and which worked, albeit with a few glitches that I hope will be fixed sooner rather than later.  And, if offline mode hadn’t worked, I had a spreadsheet-based “POS” ready to go.

 

Did I sweat other things?  Yup.  I worried about payroll, especially the tip pool.  I couldn’t communicate with my customers via Square Marketing.  My customers couldn’t use loyalty or gift cards.  And the list goes on.

 

@TCSlaguna and @homeprogreen  and @Lovewell have laid out a number of suggestions and good ideas.  As for me, I found that I had some other backups in place and didn’t know it.  I had Facebook for communication.  I had a pen and paper to write down loyalty customer names, numbers and added points.  I have the kind of relationship with my customers that if someone had wanted to redeem points and showed me a recent text with rewards available, I would have taken them at their word they didn’t redeem them already and honor their request.  Thankfully, no one asked.

 

I’ve gone on too long.  To answer your question, you have options for all of those things.  But, remember.  Even if you had separate apps that linked to Square, Thursday’s outage still would have been the same result, because even that link to Square would have been severed.  The only truly separate set of solutions you can create becomes vulnerable the moment you connect one to another for ease of use.  When one goes, others go.  Still, it would be wise to spend some time in the Square App Marketplace, a collection of third-party apps that integrate with Square.

 

During this outage I found a few holes in my disaster plan and plugged them.  I have a list of a few more redundancies I want to put in place.  One of the big ones is something I discussed with another Super Seller yesterday.  There is a brilliant internet tool called Zapier.  With it, I can create “zaps” that are triggered by one event and that perform some action in another app because of that event.  For example, if I had a Google Sheet of my customer directory, I could create a zap that will execute when I add a new customer to Square, and then also add that customer to my Google Sheet.  Now, I have an up-to-date spreadsheet of all my customers that I can refer to when Square is down.  I’m going to be exploring this avenue for my critical business needs.  I already know of a few walls with Square I’m going to run into because we don’t have access to things like loyalty activity without their tools.  But, as I find those you can bet I’m going to request better access.

 

That’s where I am today.  For the moment, I’m still comfortable with what I have with Square. I’m mostly happy with my now-tested plan and will make it even better before the next time. I hope what I’ve said helps you collect your thoughts somewhat.

 

Feel free to come back here and ask questions about specific tools or ideas you come up with.  I’m sure that someone will either have experience with it here, or pointers and ideas.  And we will all benefit from seeing how fellow sellers are responding to a day we will never forget!

 

Be well.

Chip

If my answer resolves your issue, please take a minute to mark it as Best Answer. That helps people who find this thread in the future.

Piper’s Ice Cream Bar, Covington KY USA
Website
Facebook
Click here to see a list of third-party apps I use to add functionality to my Square account!

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We use both Venmo and Zelle in case of an issue like this (often it's our internet processor that goes out 1-2 times a year- not Square). We run the payments through square and just click "other" as payment and record it as Zelle or Venmo 

Dina
Co-Owner Amityville Apothecary
www.shopamityvilleapothecary.com
Instagram | TikTok @AmityvilleApothecary

Podcast: Apothecary After Dark (YouTube & Spotify)
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Oh I forgot about Zelle since I rarely use it. That’s a good option since it dumps directly into the business account. I know my bank has it so I will have to look and set it to the business account. Thanks for the reminder 

Steve Green
Mountain Vapors
www.mountainvapors.com
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I am a sole practitioner who sees and bills clients online, so small potatoes.  When Square went down I had done a week's invoicing and had no idea when it would come back up, I re-invoiced everyone through PayPal.  PayPal now has a limit on how much one can transfer out of one's account per month, which is nuts, it's our money, so I had to fight with them to let me take out a fraction of my monthly earnings.  I don't work for PayPal or Square, I am a customer, they work for me, they have no right to withhold my funds beyond the fees they charge.  So now I am back to invoicing through Square, and am ready to use PayPal if needed.  

 

I received email from Square saying "a few people were inconvenienced" "short outage" "fixed quickly" so my trust in the folks at Square is nil, those are just flat out lies.

 

What's clear to me is that these companies are greedy and unethical at their core, and that's just what I have to deal with to do what I'm doing, but it is disappointing to say the least.  Everyone at Square got their paycheck!  I might not have gotten mine, and in fact it was delayed because of their outage, along with a couple of hours of extra work on my part re-invoicing everyone.

 

I guess I am ranting more than anything.  The dishonest emails from Square support really disgusted me.  I don't trust Square one iota.

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As long as the invoices were issued then your clients would’ve been able to pay the invoices once everything came back on line. I have a couple of vendors that invoice thru Square. They sent me invoice and then we discovered that I couldn’t pay. Not a big deal. Just let them know I would keep trying. We do have the ability to enable taking payments in offline mode when something interferes with the normal process and a lot of us very quickly enabled that functionality along with switching to our backup processes. So yes while it was a very broad and widespread outage for the most part it was a minor inconvenience for the majority of users. I hate to say it but your issue with PayPal holding your funds is honestly on you. You jumped the gun by re-invoicing your client’s thru another processor without knowing exactly what that processor’s policy were. Square has been very transparent every time there’s been an issue that was on their end. It’s a fairly long reach to call them unethical 

Steve Green
Mountain Vapors
www.mountainvapors.com
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We will have to agree to disagree.  Funds not being available is funds not being available.  A day of not being able to get paid is a day of not being able to get paid.  The PayPal thing is on PayPal...lol...it's a ridiculous policy.

 

Square wasn't transparent at all...they told us nothing until days later.  Receiving lies from Support in email is not ethical.

 

How do those boots taste?

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Actually we were informed what happened the very next day. Also my funds were deposited into my bank account the next day which is in accordance with the normal square deposit schedule. I do understand that there were deposits delayed for some sellers until later the next day. They also waived the fees for instant transfer to accommodate those who needed their funds as soon as systems came back on line. The Square status website did list the issues that same day. So I am not sure why you ask how my boots taste since my feet aren’t anywhere near my mouth. Has Square had an uptick with issues in different parts of the ecosystem lately? Yes they sure have. Honestly it could happen with any tech company but they’ve always been transparent about it and very quickly taken steps to remedy the problem. They don’t make money if we’re not processing payments. That’s a far cry from unethical. 

Steve Green
Mountain Vapors
www.mountainvapors.com
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No, the big report was days coming out.  My funds came a day later. They waived instant transfer fees for 24 hours, not much considering the mess this made for some folks.

 

I understand you think they were transparent.  I think their communication was terrible.  I guess we have different expectations.  I like more than platitudes and "We're working on it."

 

Being lied to in the emails I received is unethical.

 

I just wondered how the boots you're licking taste.  You seem every bit the corporate apologist.

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Yes, they went down for 8 or so hours. And it sucked.   They got it fixed and deposits and offline payments all went thru the next day.  Every company has had outages at some point or other.  Even with 5 9s (99.999%) uptime, there is about 9 hours of downtime still.  Paypal has had issues, Clover has had issues, Venmo, Zelle, Sumup, etc. have all had issues at one time or another.  

As for what to do.  You could still run transactions in POS (just not credit cards) and could invoice etc.  We have a backup card processor that you can do the transaction in Square and then checkout with "other" as payment type, then run it on the other processor.  Depending on how long or when it happens that could be $50k in an 8 hour window.  The other processors will almost all have policies that you can't just come in one day and bang out 50k like it is nothing and will have extra steps to verify the business or have limits on what you can take out at a time.  It is a risk that you take but the alternative is no credit cards.

I don't see any lies in the email next morning that they sent out apologizing.  There had also been a different one about reader connections over USB but I wasn't affected so I didn't get an email about that.

Hi Robert,
 
We are writing to apologize.
 
Due to a systems outage within Square, sellers have been unable to log into their accounts or process payments since around noon Pacific Time on Thursday. We know that you trust us with your business, and these types of situations add challenges to running your operations. For that, we are truly sorry.
 
Our services are now starting to come back online. As a reminder, you can use offline mode to continue accepting payments during these types of outages.
 
Once the outage has been fully investigated, we plan to publish a full review of this issue and determine what steps we can take to prevent it from happening again. In the meantime, we will continue to keep you up to date on the status of the outage and next steps via email, as well as through our social media channels and on issquareup.com.
 
Thank you for bearing with us and for your continued partnership.
 
The Square Team


They are in business to process cards and make money from doing that so obviously it is in their best interest and our that they are remediating what they can from what happened.

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Yeah the USB problem was a pita until I got the information to unplug it from the Square Stand and connect the reader via Bluetooth. Update to fix that issue was released yesterday though so it’s resolved now 

Steve Green
Mountain Vapors
www.mountainvapors.com
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@Baruch You’ve managed to make me very sorry I told you about this thread in your other thread.  In that one you seemed sincere about wanting ideas to lessen the impact of the next outage. But you started out here argumentative and belligerent and now you are doubling down. We are not Square. We are fellow sellers trying to help one another. I’m sorry that I thought you might be one, too. 


To everyone else here, I apologize for enabling this to happen. I’m unsubscribing from this previously helpful and informational post.  I guess I should report it to the admins, too. 

Chip

If my answer resolves your issue, please take a minute to mark it as Best Answer. That helps people who find this thread in the future.

Piper’s Ice Cream Bar, Covington KY USA
Website
Facebook
Click here to see a list of third-party apps I use to add functionality to my Square account!

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Nah let it roll. No need to report it. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

Steve Green
Mountain Vapors
www.mountainvapors.com
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