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.
MicroBiz is an eCommerce retail management solution butil around features such as inventory management, payment gateway, and purchase orders / receiving tracking.
We had a 1 door retail sporting goods shop that was not franchised. We used Retail Edge for inventory control, frond end sales and back office management in conjunction with Quickbooks for accounting purposes. We also used it for quarterly full inventory reporting.
The front end register was ideal for new, young sales and customer service reps. Detailed reports and cutomer management worked really well.
Gift card issuing and redeeming was very easy and simple to track
Individual user id's meant we could track sales for contests and customer service issues as well
Like any complex program there were bells and whistles that were bundled and only available if you paid for a better package.
Tech Support was paid for on an annual plan and even though we rarely needed it, the few occasions I did have to call (never during regular working hours of course) I wan't a "gold" member and therefore had to pay or wait or both
Many of our competitors were franchised base or a "factory store" meaning they HAD to use a specific software. This could be nice, but also very intrusive, in that they saw everything you were doing and could dictate what/when/how you ordered merchandise. So this is good for the independent retailer who does not need or have access to something created at a large corporate level.
It knew a lot more about the retail process than I did. For instance, I knew I should look at sell through reports, but did not know how to run them or read them. Their tutorials were very helpful
Even though I complained about the tech support, their user base forums were great for knowledge and trouble shooting and seemed to be well proctored by the comapny as well.