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Business in a Box

squareup.com

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Re: Business in a Box

#101

Post by jackhlaw »

mmanfrin wrote: post #89
nathannecro wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not affiliated with either company and my only experience with operating a physical storefront are restaurants. That being said, after taking a quick look at the front-facing material on both sites, I have a question for you/GoPago: While the point you make about the initial cost being higher (about 1k with iPad) is valid, Square seems to run a pricing scheme where they charge a flat $275 per month and get rid o…

Square's $275 plan is only for the first 250k ; after that they charge a normal credit-card rate. What's the value of GoPago over Square for that 50k merchant? Mobile Storefront -- which has been a fantastic discovery tool to connect consumers with merchants on GoPago. It allows people to place orders on their phone to the POS terminal itself, no phone-calls necessary. We also have a much more robust reporting suite,…

Square's Wallet app also allows customers to send orders right to Square Register. Square wallet stores your credit card info so you don't have to swipe. The customer's picture pops up on the register and the seller taps the photo.

Square Wallet also does business discovery via location and promotions/loyalty programs (i.e. virtual "buy 10 get 1 free" deals, etc) and gift cards.

Re: Business in a Box

#102

Post by drfritznunkie »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #58
drfritznunkie wrote: post #23

I just helped a friend install a iPad POS at his coffee shop this past December using BreadCrumb. We looked at Square Register, but it's rather lackluster feature set ruled it out. Namely, it doesn't support multiple printers or printer queuing (ex. food items get sent to kitchen printer), it doesn't have a modifier system for items (maybe this has changed), and no employee features (clock-in/out) etc.. I would say i…

* Every empty space inside the printers was chock full of roach bodies. The circuit boards were caked with roach shit and all the feed mechanisms had ingested and ground up the roaches that got in their way. And ever single one of these printers still works flawlessly.* Now that's a product I'd be proud to say I designed. Seriously, that's the kind of bulletproof performance I aspire towards.

I'm pretty sure Epson engineered these T88-TMs sometime in mid-80s and haven't changed them since. It seems that the only difference between the versions is the print speed due to upgraded processors, but nearly all the mechanicals are exactly the same!

Stuff like this reminds me that at some point people really did give damn and that you can still buy quality if you're willing to look. Like when I go to the bank and they're still using a 20 year old Okidata Microline dot matrix printer for receipts. My dad had one for his office that never skipped a beat in over 15 years of service.

Re: Business in a Box

#103

Post by Cryode »

ssttoo wrote: post #99

How do square's fees compare to paypal? I got a free square thingie at a conference, gave it to a vet friend who does a lot of house calls and needs to accept payments. He ended up not using it, preferring to manually type CC#s in paypal's UI. Explanation: cheaper

PayPal is not cheaper unless you do a lot of volume: https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees

Re: Business in a Box

#104

Post by Cryode »

msteinert wrote: post #91

Am I missing something here? Square Readers free [1] Heckler Design WindFall iPad Stand $129.99 (free shipping) [2] APG Vasario 1616 Cash Drawer $102.18 (free shipping) [3] I don't understand why I would pay $66.83 for the convenience of having these items shipped to me in a pretty box. [1]: https://squareup.com/reader [2]: http://hecklerdesign.com/windfall/ [3]: http://www.amazon.com/APG-Vasario-VB-1616-MultiPRO-int…

One word: convenience. People will pay to have them give them everything they need up front, instead of researching or finding it themselves.

Re: Business in a Box

#105

Post by drfritznunkie »

gmisra wrote: post #76

I own a small business and we have experimented with Square Register and other ipad-based POS systems. Register is by far the least feature rich of all of the offerings we looked at - this is not necessarily a bad thing. Specifically, Cons * Register is not designed for restaurant use - many of these reasons have already been discussed on this thread, the biggest being the lack of modifier support. * Register does no…

Just curious, what system did you choose and for what type of business? As I mentioned above, I set up my friend with BreadCrumb which is okay for quickserve, but not great. There QS workflow needs to be extensively overhauled, and they need to support sig-less CC transactions and gift cards.

If I were to do it over again, I might actually look a bit more at a QS specific system, even if it's windows95 POS POS (ha!), because the efficiencies of workflow may make it worth it.

Re: Business in a Box

#106

Post by drfritznunkie »

sahaskatta wrote: post #98
mmanfrin wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Square's $275 plan is only for the first 250k ; after that they charge a normal credit-card rate. What's the value of GoPago over Square for that 50k merchant? Mobile Storefront -- which has been a fantastic discovery tool to connect consumers with merchants on GoPago. It allows people to place orders on their phone to the POS terminal itself, no phone-calls necessary. We also have a much more robust reporting suite,…

Can you elaborate on what "modifiers" are? Just curious. Are they just addons? For instance, "add cheese" for $1 to an existing menu item? Or are modifiers something else entirely?

Basically used for food service. You want a system that supports multiple modifier groups per item, of which some may be required for the order. So for instance, if you order a steak, the required modifier group would be "doneness: rare, medium rare, ...", but you could also have optional additional modifier groups available such as "allergies", "togo/for here", etc.

It's actually a quite interesting mapping exercise. I spent a couple of days watching how my friend handled his customers, and what they ordered. This was important because it comes down to decisions like do I make the menu item "Large Coffee" or "Coffee" with a size modifier group. The latter may make most sense to the developer parts of our brains, but it was completely the wrong thing for my friend, with the former, he could just stab "large coffee" and move on... Workflow trumps "correctness" in some sense.

I'm only familiar with the modifier system in BreadCrumb, which works okay, but would really benefit from conditionals, since modifier groups may have the same label, but have different pricing schemes. For instance, lattes had different price differentials between sizes than chai lattes, so two size modifier groups had to be created with those different price differences. It's not so bad until you go to create a new group, and try to find the right modifier for "Large" since you've now got 5 of them to account for all your menu differences.

Re: Business in a Box

#107

Post by 286c8cb04bda »

drfritznunkie wrote: post #102
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Every empty space inside the printers was chock full of roach bodies. The circuit boards were caked with roach shit and all the feed mechanisms had ingested and ground up the roaches that got in their way. And ever single one of these printers still works flawlessly.* Now that's a product I'd be proud to say I designed. Seriously, that's the kind of bulletproof performance I aspire towards.

I'm pretty sure Epson engineered these T88-TMs sometime in mid-80s and haven't changed them since. It seems that the only difference between the versions is the print speed due to upgraded processors, but nearly all the mechanicals are exactly the same! Stuff like this reminds me that at some point people really did give damn and that you can still buy quality if you're willing to look. Like when I go to the bank and…

> Stuff like this reminds me that at some point people really did give damn and that you can still buy quality if you're willing to look.

I agree with this, but it's getting pretty hard. I've got an HP Laserjet 4 -- It's a brute; A beautiful work of functionality which I expect to be able to hand down onto my children when I pass. Hopefully somebody is still making consumables for it then.

There are now 20x more products in the same inflation-adjusted price bracket, but most are over-featured and over-marketed garbage.

Re: Business in a Box

#108

Post by pc86 »

heywire wrote: post #86
pc86 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that it's illegal. You cannot turn someone away who wants to pay with cash, that whole "legal tender" thing.

That is a common misconception [0] [0] http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/...

Thank you for this. From the relevant paragraph:

> This statute means that all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise.

Re: Business in a Box

#109

Post by mirkules »

cvg wrote: post #100
mmanfrin wrote: post #49

Disclosure : I work for GoPago, a direct competitor in this market. I am approaching this with a lot of built-in bias. Square is pretty late to the game. Their software is pretty, but it has a much smaller featureset than every other tablet-based POS software out there (including our own competitors). Additionally, their prices do not include the cost of the iPad, which is another $500 on top of this 'business in a b…

Nice to see another option, but the early termination fee of, "$2376, less $99.00 for each full month of Service completed," is brutal. Source: http://www.gopago.com/merchant-terms-conditions/

It is very likely that if their service uses a data connection, their MVNO requires a fixed-year subscription fee upfront - $2376/$99per month = 24 months. Yes, it's steep, but that's probably why. (Note: I don't work for GoPago)

Re: Business in a Box

#110

Post by gamblor956 »

Several local restaurants, farmers market vendors, and food trucks use the Square register, but most others use a local competitor PayDragon or another competitor (probably GoPago).

The vendors using Square tend to be low-volume, and the use is limited to paying and tipping. Paper receipts are not included with the order, in violation of California law (email is not enough! if you don't get a paper receipt you can technically demand a free meal [EDIT: not actually California law, it's part of the payment processor contract with the vendor]). The vendors don't use Square for any sort of order management because it can't handle that. Square is a good fit because these vendors don't need the advanced features and the simplicity of the interface is a plus.

The food trucks using PayDragon or other competitors are much higher volume. You also get printed receipts with your order. At least some of these Square competitors include order management features. Most of them (my primary experience is with PayDragon vendors) are not much more complicated than Square. A lot of these vendors started off on Square and graduated to various competitors when Square stopped being able to handle their needs.

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