Extremely disappointed with iPad stand setup. Why no list view?

[DaoDeJing]

For many months I made do with a bargain basement 7 inch android tablet to process my square payments. Recently, I finally saved up enough to upgrade.

I got an iPad, square stand, receipt printer, cash drawer. It was exciting to set everything up and felt so professional!

But then I opened the point of sale app to discover there is no option for a list view of items! Reading through the documentation I see this is only available for the android version.

My business has too many items with similar names for a grid. I have to be able to see their longer names. And using the all item list is hugely inefficient, scrolling through hundreds of items or searching for each individually. It would be faster to use a physical calculator and notepad!

At the moment I am making do by taking photos of my most popular items to add to the grid, but the grid photos are so small and partially covered by text (which cannot be removed for some reason) that it is still confusing what item the tile represents. 

It is getting to the point where I am just typing in the prices of individual items, which makes the whole system pointless.

I have spent over $800 on this new system, which is a huge expense for my tiny business. It is basically an entire month’s profit. But I am now considering returning all of it, as it seems like a waste.  

I suppose I could get a barcode scanner, and barcode printer and all that stuff. But why should I keep spending even more and adding more complication because of a simple software option?

I cannot understand why list view is not available on iPad. I cannot fathom any technical reason why it should not be possible, and it astonishes me that square has not gotten around to implementing such an obvious feature.

[ACAcatering]

Out of curiosity, how would a list view be different than the item library if you have hundreds of items?  Truly curious.  I have no idea what your business looks like, but have you ever tried sorting your items into categories, and using the grid method?  I find it to be so much faster after you've learned where everything is.

[DaoDeJing]

Yes, just as you said, finding things on the grid is very convenient. Organizing inventory physically in the grid and pages makes it easy to train myself where to find each type of item.

But when the images are too small to tell what the item is, and the displayed portion of the name is too short to differentiate between different items of similar types, and when I have so many items that they are spread across 7 pages or can't even all fit, then the current form of the iPad item grid bogs down and starts to hurt the item selection process rather then helping it.

Categorizing items and going into a list for each category is helpful, but if the category has more than just a handful of items I wind up having to scroll through to find what I want. Not horrible, I admit, but still rather slow and bothersome. And these lists don't keep the same order when I add or remove products like the grids can.

It also starts to get rediculous as to how many categories I'd have to create to break my inventory down enough. I need to organize inventory according to certain categories for tracking and tax purposes, so creating catgories solely for grid organizational purposes is rather cubmersome and confuses my accountant.

I'll try doing more categorization though. Might be the best way to deal with the situation as is. (Or, more likely, I'll just wind up biting the bullet and getting a barcode scanner for my UPC items.)

[ACAcatering]

Honestly, if you have that many items, a barcode scanner is probably the way to go.  I think you will truly like square once you figure out the best option for you.

[DaoDeJing]

I do like Square; I've been using it for almost a year now. And I've been managing all of my items fine with the name-grid view that is available on the Android version of the app.

I'm just disappointed in the iPad app. Getting a scanner is what I'll probably have to do, yes, but when I spent so much money upgrading to the whole square stand setup I shouldn't feel like I'm taking a step backward.

[Chad]

Hello @DaoDeJing, I always appreciate your honest feedback about Square Products! 

I definitely know the list feature that your referring to for Android. I'll pass the request to have the list added to the iOS version of the app to our Point of Sale Team! 

I understand how you feel like you took a step backwards initially, but I think as your Item Library grows you'll inevitably want a barcode scanner like @ACAcatering mentioned. You can only scroll for so long before that becomes inefficient as well. 😀

[DebM11]

List view was available for the iPad in the prior version of POS, I am setting up in front of me now 2 reg iPads in Square stands and one has the old iOS and the other the newer layout with Favorites. I don’t like the new layout, really need list view for longer naming conventions. I could deal with Favorites if I could rename the ‘Favorite’ name. This. Is a step backwards, and now will have to see what the layout is on the four minis iPads.  Yes, I use categories to group.