NCR CounterPoint is a retail management solution, from NCR Corporation. The software features point of sale, an inventory management system, customer management, and reporting and analytics.
N/A
Square POS
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Square POS is a point-of-sale software solution with features such as accept credit cards with your iPhone, Android, and iPad along with the flexibility to accept credit card payments anywhere, from Square headquartered in San Francisco, California.
I have not managed many POS solutions, I have setup Square for a shop, worked with a company that used a product not listed here called OrderDog, and I can tell you it was very easy to do but has no where near the capability that NCR CounterPoint has. Counterpoint will require …
It is a definite solution for a basic store point of sale, we prefer Ingenico card swipes and Epson receipt printers and have had great, reliable success. We have setup the same system at events with VPN connectivity to its server and it works very well with the only bottle-neck being connectivity, this did cause a 3-8 second delay with receipt printing, but was manageable. Mobile tablet in store works well with credit card sales, and can print wirelessly, cashless here is best. Inventory managem[e]nt is vast, with terrific reporting.
Square POS is by far the easiest POS software to use at events and train additional team members on - even with temporary or first-time employees. It's easy to see how each event is doing in live time. It gives the event manager a real-time view of revenue earned. Its really easy to create/manage/delete users to keep the platform secure.
Offline mode -- your POS server can go down - you can still ring sales. Your internet can go down, and you can still ring sales and accept chip-based credit cards. Wow.
Mobile and wireless. Mobile -- you can take your POS on the road and ring sales out in the field, at trade shows or at a flea market booth. Wireless inventory, and order picking - you can walk around the store and ring sales, perform inventory, pick orders, intake items, edit pricing, print labels, etc. Again - Wow.
Magento integration -- with the help of a 3rd party connector, we're integrating our CP system tightly with our Magento based website. This keeps us working out of one system with multiple channels.
E-Plum scale software integration -- we can update prices and information within our scales with this integration, right out of CP
Mobile transactions (not like from a phone, but in terms of the ability to physically relocate rapidly).
Simple setup.
Generally uncomplicated pricing.
Widespread customer familiarity: because it's so regularly in use in our industry (musicians/entertainment professionals), people know and trust it in a way that you might not with a different provider.
I don't really foresee anything being able to dislodge Square from our organization—we're not evangelists or anything like that—it's just the best solution we've found for our use case. Being able to quickly handle transactions from customers and then track all of those sales for analysis/bookkeeping later on.
We find Square POS is very user friendly. Its interface is customizable to our needs and very easy to use. Before we adopted Square POS, we used a combination of solutions from different manufacturer to try and achieve a portion of the functionality that Square POS provides under only 1 login
An admission - I have NEVER had to use Square POS support. The system is seamless, it just works! I have never had any queries about how the system worked as everything is so clearly laid out. I have never had any problems with payments. If their support systems are anywhere near as good as their software, I think we'll be in good hands.
We interviewed quite a few systems while researching a POS replacement for our current retail store. We had things like a second store, a fully integrated website, accounting system integrations, inventory management, restaurant-style ordering integrations, etc. in mind as we made our way through that process. We also made our way around the area to see what other retailers - similar to us - were using as a POS system. After much deliberation, many demos and conference sales calls, we settled on NCR CP because this system did everything we wanted and so much more. But perhaps the biggest reason why we went with NCR was the local support availability. There's more than one player in that field available in the greater NYC area, and we are very happy with the current support team but we also know that should we want or need to, we can switch support to another team, and have no issues going forward. That was a big part of this decision for sure.
We only used Square POS while we were getting set up with Authorize.Net. It isn't as flashy or recognized by the general public, but in our industry, that isn't a priority. We do very large transactions so the higher rates and fees from Square add up insanely quickly making the lower rates and fees from Authorize.Net the nail in Square's coffin for us.
The opportunity cost of waiting for payments and manually bringing them to a bank means that we don't have to visit our bank branch. That alone saves us several hours each month.
We can use ordinary computers and mobile devices with Square instead of paying for expensive software or terminals.
Our clients appreciate not having to process payments to us, and anything that helps our clients and makes them happy carries more import than I can explain in this space.
