Square POS vs. STORIS

Square was absolutely fantastic when I first started using it. Easy to set up, use, changing settings, and the like. It has evolved over the years, almost too much, to an insane amount of options, apps, settings, et cetera. I would like to see options for just utilizing specific parts, such as invoices, versus the entire system being set up for daily sales. It makes the tracking side of things a little wonky when you only send 2-5 invoices/month for larger projects. Overall, I like that it’s familiar to me, which is why I continue to use it

Incentivized

Inter-store Transfers and Inventories have always been an issue, and this program will let you know that something isn't completed and or processed correctly. The ability to set the security levels of staff is a major plus for our business, from Management to RSA's we can allow what information we want them to have. RSA's love the instant feedback of the program from tracking sales and commissions to responding to an incorrect sales order. The system doesn't allow you to forget there may be a problem, which is key to ensuring accuracy of your processes and procedures.

• After you set a daily processing deadline time, charges processed by that time are deposited the next business day.
• The reporting dash board looks overwhelming but that's because it has all of the the information that you've processed before. That was invaluable when we recently went to look at the detail on a two year old transaction and were able to find the information by ourselves.
• The ability to use multiple devices is great. We can process charges on a computer, a tablet, or even a smartphone.
• Receipts are automatically sent to the customer's preferred email or texted to their phone.

Incentivized

• Inventory Control is an important factor. STORIS does a good job of tracking inventory from the order being placed with the vendor to the merchandise being delivered to the customer.
• The Sales module provides extensive information pertaining to each purchase from the customer. The comments section of this module, as well as all other modules, is very useful to determine what actions were taken for each sale, along with dates and times of every occurrence.
• The Report Builder is an excellent tool to create customized reports relevant to our business' way of obtaining information.

Incentivized

• The cost of the hardware (specific scanners and receipt printers) was prohibitive for my company, and whilst we managed without them, they would have been nice to have. The range of scanners and printers that integrate with Square is small, so despite our devices' capabilities to read barcodes (we used ipads) and the Zebra receipt/label printers we had, we couldn't use either as the system wouldn't integrate with them.
• Whilst Square's credit card reader is nifty in design, it's a bit small and lacking substance to have as a customer-facing reader so it really needs the dock the company offers. The dock is awkward to open to reset or pair the reader. We often found pairing the reader with the device running the system tricky and confusing, relying on pressing one button and then interpreting a sequence of lights that often caused confusion. The pairing process might have been clearer presented through the device rather than the reader.
• Truly can't think of any more!

Incentivized

• Would like to see a more "out of the box" user friendly set up for smaller companies that don't have IT.
• Would like to see a built reporting package that companies can expand on.

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.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

This can be an overwhelming experience if you are new to point of sale software. There is a lot of information and decisions that have to be made as you set up this system. I highly recommend the in person training to get a better idea of the process. With that being said, this is the reason you want a system like this, it gives you the ability, control and support to build a system that meets your needs with the flexibility to make changes as you grow.

Square POS support is good, I would not say they are great. There is a good knowledge base that you can access and there are other service providers who support Square POS who can assist you, but I find that the lack of help and support for setting it up for different industries is a let down. We had to research for hours just to find a solution to fix our need for a billing option for services for example. It would be great if Square POS broadened its support and solutions for various industries.

Incentivized

All support staff are professional, courteous, and genuinely interested in helping

Incentivized

Square POS is just the easiest to use and therefore the easiest to onboard new users to. I'd also like to point out, that if you're missing or lost one of the readers it's so easy to buy one at an Apple store or even other merchants like T-mobile or Verizon. WePay had less fees but was harder to onboard new users to. Eventbrite had really high fees.

Incentivized

We used a similar POS system for 35 years, and it worked quite well for a long time. However, the base technology did not keep up with the changing times, and any updates to the software were slow and expensive. In considering a new solution, we looked at several other companies that had very similar offerings, but felt that STORIS was the most technologically advanced, and had the most to offer.

Incentivized

• The transaction fees and charge rates are much higher than other options available. We only used this system for a short time while we were switching to a MUCH cheaper option (Authorize.net).
• I have also used this system with a charity that I volunteer with who only uses it during a couple of fundraisers a year when they have a small gift shop set up to sell donated goods to raise money. For such low volume, the fees aren't as big of a deal and the convenience of being able to take cards no matter where the event is located makes it worth it.
• This is a system your average consumer will recognize and trust, so there's that.

Incentivized

• I have worked with Storis in 3 retailers now. In all cases, it has scaled beautifully to allow the companies to grow.

Incentivized