1. Home
  2. Point of Sale Systems
  3. Square POS Reviews
  4. User Review of Square POS
Square POS: Pretty much the best option going for small scale, flexible POS
September 21, 2020

Square POS: Pretty much the best option going for small scale, flexible POS

Nathan Bowman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Square POS

I use Square POS for almost all of my merchandising sales—it's quick, fast, and easy to set up and since we're constantly on the go from festival to festival, job to job, I love that it's mobile-friendly. It's tough to find something that allows us to be up and running quickly since my team is often just a few people, and we can handle transactions while we're still in the process of loading in/out.
  • 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'm not a fan of some of their hardware (it's a little clunky in design).
  • Another hardware thing is that it can be hard to pair the chip reader with phones. If some of my team members like to use their own phones rather than my provided devices, that can complicate things a little.
  • I would like a little more flexible categorization in their sales reports, sometimes I want to really drill down into the data and I have to do it with a different set of tools.
  • Being able to accept multiple types of payment options has allowed us access to a lot more impulse purchasing customers.
  • Being able to offer a variety of payment options means that a lot of the time, these purchases are meant as a show of support, and this allows our followers/customers a lot more ways to help us!
  • I have seen people take cash out, notice that we take Square, and then choose to pay with a card instead, which means that we're then hit with those processing fees— that's a potential downside to the convenience factor.
  • With COVID though, being able to avoid cash altogether has been a HUGE benefit.
The only other real competitor that we looked at was PayPal Here and we went with Square because the fee structure felt fairer, and because our customers were much more familiar with the Square hardware and ecosystem, rather than trying to convince them that Paypal was a viable option. In general, Square seemed to be what most people use and trust, and we wanted to maintain that level of comfort for our customers.
I haven't had to use much support from Square—the set up was pretty painless—and what questions I did have were answered by their documentation. I don't know that I can speak much to their in-person support because I haven't had to experience that yet. In general, we were able to pretty easily set up our system without much hassle.
This is where Square really shines—the usability is top-notch. It's very easy to train up my team, which is frequently made up of volunteers or temporary staff, and the back end is very easy to understand and use as well. It's clear they put a lot of time and thought into the UI, but not just on the customer side, but on the owner/manager/retailer side as well. I have zero concerns about how useable Square is.

Do you think Square POS delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Square POS's feature set?

Yes

Did Square POS live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Square POS go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Square POS again?

Yes

I think that Square POS is pretty much the best thing going in terms of short term, pop up sales, or event marketing type situations. If you need to process payments quickly, assure customers that their data is being handled appropriately, and find a way to move your merchandise, Square is pretty great. I wouldn't think it would be as appropriate for a larger retailer—anything where you're handling hundreds of transactions at a time, or a day, I would look for something a little less 'start-upy'— if that makes sense.

But for my use case, as an entertainment professional, where I'm frequently handling 20-50 transactions an evening, moving locations rapidly, and needing to be able to grab analytic data without resorting to a pen and paper—square is pretty much perfect.

Using Square POS

They are mostly the people front facing the customer, plus myself, using the data generated to plan new products/merchandise.
1 - Honestly, the in house support for Square is pretty much general IT support—anybody that can make sure the network is connected and the power is on, the cables are plugged in, etc.—that's essentially all we've required. For the most part, it's a pretty turn-key operation, and the parts have generally worked together without needing much more internal support.
  • Customer Transactions: obviously the most used situation.
  • Sales analytics: 2nd most used case.
  • Some contracting payments: we don't do this much, but sometimes we'll take payment for services as well as merchandise through Square.
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.