Convenience Store: Square Retail or Point of sale...

cornerstore · ‎01-05-2018

I'll be new to Square and own a convenience store. Please help me decide between the two...

I ordered the retail kit and it's been over two weeks, and they are still back ordered.

So I used my daughters ipad and decided to play around with both POS and Retail versions.

I have hard time deciding which would be better for me, or I am missing functionality of these apps.

if anyone have workarounds for my issues please help me. Specially those of you running mini marts type of business.

So.... there are three things that I look for and need in the new POS system, outside the obvious basic functions.

1) calculate profit margin and value of stock inventory. (by inputing the cost price for the items)

2) journal/transaction report must show void line/void ticket or remove item/clear items(as in square)

3)must have numeric key pad at the home screen of sales for quick ring up items(the ones without the barcodes... muffins, deli foods, lotto tickets, incense, coffee, too many to put them all in favorites and scroll through them. And we don't really keep inventory of these items, we just put them in the same department/category and get the sales amount)

Point of sales app has 3) covered, and I love the three different way to ring up items in the bottom of the screen. Feels like much more user friendly then retail

Retail app has 1) covered and I get great insight on which category made profit and also easier to find out if the store actually made the profit after buying or not buying inventories. Also, easier to figure out if the products are gone missing by comparing inventory on hand value each week, or month.

Both of the apps don't have the 2) feature, or I haven't found it yet. I have had multiple cases of employee theft, by employee speaks out the total amout to customer to receive cash payment and later deletes the item from the ticket and ring up next person and pocket the money. Also is there way to not show how much cash have been accepted until after printing the cashier close report? Some not so smart cashier thieves forget how much they have been pocketing all day and would look at the report, right before they close out and set up the cash drop exactly as report shows and pocket any over amount. I have even complimented them on their cash counting accuracy until I found out how they were stealing.

Sorry this is getting long, but any experienced square using small business owners input will be greatly appreciated.

Also as bonus question... what would be the best way to set up Lotto ticket payout? Customer could have bought the ticket from another store in same state, but they can claim their winning tickets at our store, so refund won't work. They don't have to buy anything to get cashed out, so discount doesn't work. pay in/out fuction takes too many steps.... is there a way to just deduct the cash value in drawer when paying out without subtracting to sales data? (we didn't really take refund for an item or anything)

we're not a busy store, but we do have rushes of customers lining up time to time, where speed is very important in POS System.

OK, thought of one more question, but I will stop here... another time... Thank you so much in advance~~~~

RHatch · ‎01-05-2018

First let me start by stating the prohibited items, "Lottery Tickets"

As stated in the Payment terms Item 15. "You may not use the Payment Services for the following businesses or business activities: ... (15) betting, including lottery tickets, sports related gambling, casino gaming chips, off-track betting, and wagers at races, ..."

You said you ordered the Retail kit.. Is this the Square Register? or are you going to use in iPad?

I use Square POS. I don't need it to tell me my cost of goods. I know what categories are more profitable. I can look at Net sells and tell how good we are doing. I also have a spread sheet set up so I can drop in my item sales quantities and have it calculate the profit.

If you ordered the Square Register from what I understand it is a hybrid of retail and pos.

You mentioned you like to be able to key in prices. When you do this they are listed on the reports and "custom amount". I woud recomment you create and item like "Deli" and don't enter a price. This will allow them to select deli item and enter the price. This way you know what item type was sold. Otherwise they could ring anything and that I think would concern me more than the voiding issue.

As for your voiding issue, not much you can do there other than a camera to monitor them.

For the closing of the drawer. I have a business friend that the closing staff does not have access to close the drawer at night. The morning staff closes the drawer, usually the owners, and then opens it back up.

Kpay · ‎01-08-2018

Thanks for your detailed answer, @RHatch!

@tce @homeprogreen @rockfordartdeli - are you using Square for Retail? Maybe you'd have some insight to add here too?

homeprogreen · ‎01-08-2018

@cornerstore Sounds like what you’re wanting to do is set up the Square POS app on the iPad for sales then also subscribe to the Square for retail for the inventory and reporting. The easiest way to do custom amounts has already been pointed out i.e set up a button for that item category but don’t set a dollar amount. That way you select that button then enter amount. The problem with that type of setup is that it defeats the inventory function so it’s better to set up each item.

Number 2 is easy but you have to know where to look. Go to sales in your dashboard, then scroll down the list to the different reports and you will see one called voids. Hit that one and it will give you a list of all voids in your selected time frame along with reasons.

in drawer management you can change the settings so that employees can’t see the drawer report until after they’ve entered drawer total so that problem is solved.

The only thing i cant figure out a work around is your lottery payouts. No other way to do it except thru the drawer payout feature in cash management that I am aware of. But it really doesn’t take very long since it’s only 4 steps.

RHatch · ‎01-08-2018

Note: Void report only works with open ticket. Normal sales (swiping right and deleting an item from the transaction) will not ask for a reason or report on the Void report. At Lease in POS, I don't know how Retail works.

homeprogreen · ‎01-08-2018

@RHatch I believe that you can change that in employee permissions so that they can’t just swipe to remove an item in POS and have to use void item button and select reason for void. Not 100% sure on that since I don’t have employees and use retail but 90% sure I have seen it in the permissions

Convenience Store: Square Retail or Point of sales??