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Using Square for Retail Plus - Can't send to terminal for payment

We are new to Square, and just converted our small volunteer-run church bookstore to square.  We have a subscription for the advanced reporting and barcode generation capabilities, and we are using Square for Retail with a cash drawer and receipt printer, and bought an iPad, Stand, and terminal when we bought hardware, as the square shop clearly showed that Terminal was a better customer experience.

 

In our preliminary testing, we used Square for Retail, and I was able to run the cash drawer and receipt printer fine with it, and I could have sworn that I had also had send to terminal working for chip and contactless payments. (I may have been confused and used the other app?)

We Opened last week (after a month closure to remodel, paint, and convert data from our old system), and discovered that we couldn't send payments to the terminal.  In a rush with customers waiting, I used the Square Point-of-Sale app instead to be able to use contactless and chip pay, but to print receipts and run the cash drawer, I had to use Square for Retail because even though Square Point of Sale 'sees' the printer and drawer, it won't print the receipts or open the drawer for some reason (even though it let us start a drawer) - so we were using the key to open and shut the drawer all morning. (we did not install receipt paper on terminal as we want to use our normal receipt printer - which is configure to always print receipt, but it only does that in Square for Retail app).

Somehow we envisioned using terminal for a better retail customer experience (customer can 'pre-see' their charges), and a safer volunteer experience (random customers not touching the iPad app during Covid).

It seems odd to me that Square Retail isn't able to send to terminal.... I could have sworn I had that working in our trials the weeks before opening.

In short, did I mess some option up?  It isn't logical to me that Square Retail can't do this.

 

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Square Champion

As far as I am aware the Square Terminal is a separate stand alone device that requires manual input of charges. If you’re wanting the customers to be able to review charges before payment then the Square Register would be a much better hardware solution since it has a front facing customer display 

Steve Green
Mountain Vapors
www.mountainvapors.com
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Actually, "Send to terminal" for customer payment with square stand and Square Point-of-Sale app work great as an external charge screen in tandem with the iPad.  It is even a recommended upgrade for the purpose I suggested in the Square Store product page for Square Stand -- and NOWHERE in the upsale does it say in the Square store that it won't work with some of the Square apps for the ipad+Square stand.  I feel like I've been led astray, or there is a bug, because it doesn't work from Square Retail app (which is what is needed to talk to my cash drawer and receipt printer correctly).

I have a use case that also requires the Bluetooth Barcode reader, and that doesn't work with Square Register.

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Square Champion

Good to know. Thank you for the information. I happen to use Square for Retail on the register so wasn’t aware that it was an option for the other setups 

Steve Green
Mountain Vapors
www.mountainvapors.com
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