Point of Sale: Using a scale to sell items by weight

[saumaya]

Hey everyone

I'm Saumaya, Product Manager for Point of Sale. We're looking for insights into businesses that use a Scale to sell items by weight to better understand how Square Point of Sale can service your needs.

Does this sound like your business? We want to hear from you!

Some questions to consider (Note: We are working on the ability to support decimal places, these questions assume that decimal places are supported while using a scale): 
1. What type of scale(s) are you using today?

2. What made you pick the specific scale?

3. What are issues you commonly face while selling items by the weight? 

4. How could Square Point of Sale help you bridge the gap for these issues?

Thanks for your feedback!

[saumaya]

Does this sound like your business? We want to hear from you!

Some questions to consider (Note: We are working on the ability to support decimal places, these questions assume that decimal places are supported while using a scale): 
1. What type of scale(s) are you using today?

2. What made you pick the specific scale?

3. What are issues you commonly face while selling items by the weight? 

4. How could Square Point of Sale help you bridge the gap for these issues?

Thanks for your feedback!

[#3]

Hello everyone!

Saumaya and team have been hard at work and I'm pleased to announce you can now link a bluetooth scale to iOS devices to sell items by weight with Square! 

For more details on which scale is currently supported, and the steps to get started check out this post: Square now supports scales. 🎉

[cabreramouzo]

Thanks Kellyj.

[Piglady]

I don't use a scale as my product is already packaged and has a certified weight listed on it.  So at time of sale I pull out the cut of meat and need to input the weight into the app with the appropriate price per pound.  For the last year I have used the PayPal app as it has the ability to setup my inventory list for items that are sold by the pound and those that have a set per item price.  In order for me to come back to Square I would need the ability to set up items the same as in the PayPal App (by the pound) without having to purchase a scale.

[millcitycheese]

This is a really important question for my business. We're a cut-to-order cheese shop, and the vast majority of our items are sold by weight. We began by using a simple scale and writing weight on the product labels by hand, then entering "items sold" as hundredths of a pound in order to get an accurate price. That meant listing item prices as, for example, $0.30 instead of $30/lb, and it was cumbersome.

Scale integration would be lovely, but what I really want is just a system that reads a label from my scale with a barcode that includes both product and price ID. That would enable cashiers to simply scan an item and have both product ID and final price in our system. It would speed up checkout and give us good inventory tracking.

Our current setup is a bit faster, but not because of Square. Here's the deal:

1. What type of scale(s) are you using today? Ishida Uni-5

2. What made you pick the specific scale? The ability to print labels with lots of product information AND barcodes. 

3. What are issues you commonly face while selling items by the weight?  We can now print nice labels, but because Square can't work with variable-weight barcodes, we are set up so that our barcode reader recognizes the item and our cashiers still have to type in the price as printed on the label. It saves us tie because we don't have to search through our entire inventory to find a product, but it's still more time-consuming than we'd like. Having to manually enter prices also creates opportunities for lots of mistakes and mis-typed prices, especially during busy times. And we aren't able to track inventory using this method.

4. How could Square Point of Sale help you bridge the gap for these issues? If Square recognized variable weight barcodes, we could save a significant amount of time, eliminate errors, and track our inventory. As things stand now, we can track only gross dollar amounts, and then have to go back and calculate the amount of product sold by dividing gross sales by item prices. With more than 300 SKUs for items sold by weight, that's terribly inefficient. I like Square in general and would prefer to stay with it, but as the business grows, this is the feature (or lack thereof) that will likely prompt us to switch to Revel.

[gcoughlin]

1. What type of scale(s) are you using today?

CAS S2000JR Scale

2. What made you pick the specific scale?

Pricing and the ability to weigh smaller amounts. Yogurt sold by weight.

I would be willing to purchase a new scale if you would fix the intergration issue with the Square POS.

3. What are issues you commonly face while selling items by the weight?

Not sure if the employee is actually ringing up the amount that is on the scale into the iPad correctly. Friends discount. I have caught a few doing this.

4. How could Square Point of Sale help you bridge the gap for these issues?

By intergrating the weight directly from the scale, it is more difficult for the employee to be able to give "Friends" discounts by not ringing up the correct amount from the scale that is not connected directly to the POS.

[CheesePlatebk]

Hi I am also opening a Cheese Shop with cut to order pieces, Did you find a solution to this? when signing up I was told the CAS label printing scales are now supported but now that i have everything set up Square Support cant figure out how to make it work... 

"You are able to use label printing scales that support UPC-A and EAN-13 bar codes, such as the CAS CL 5500L or the Mettler Toledo bPro Terminal with Square Point of Sale. These scales measure the weight of an item and issue a bar code label that contains both an item stock-keeping unit (SKU) number as well as the total weight or price of an item. When items with these types of barcodes are scanned, the item’s weight and price information is automatically captured on your Point of Sale"

[Pioneermarketme]

Even though we use a scale, square doesn't need to worry about that in our case.   I need the ability to prove an item at $10 And sell 1.554 of that item.   people who bill hours need to bill 1.25.  the integration with a scale is not the critical component here,  the being able to sell partial quantities is.

[GlassJudy]

Agreed.  I think Square's missing the bigger picture here.  People who use scales are not the only ones who want to see a partial quantity ability.

[Greatspirit]

Yes, we charge by the hour as well as by partial qtys.  This is, by far, the biggest drawback for square.  We are just asking for two decimal points!

[TxFarm]

Any idea how long this thread will go before an additional decimal solution is rolled out? Maybe they could get the decimal out in the next month or two then come back to concentrate on the scale integration for those that use scales.

[saumaya]

Hey there

The team is currently working on adding decimal support to Square Point of Sale and we are excited to share the functionality with you in the very near future. 

[Greatspirit]

Please do...  We love our square terminal and can not wait to really put it to use.  We will actually be ordering a register for a new location as well but critically need the decimal for that location.  Thank you!

[saumaya]

Excited to hear you love the terminal! Will definitely share an update in the Seller Community once we are ready to launch.

[Greatspirit]

We do, we also have square payroll and now use the terminal for Square "timecards" and completely eliminated our timeclock and the hours of figuring out payroll each week. 

It is a great little machine and it is fast.  All of our products are loaded and waiting for the decimal upgrade!

[trish82]

will it be months, weeks or days???

[puka]

HI @trish82 - Unfortunately, we're unable to share product timelines within the Community, but everyone in this thread will be alerted of any updates as we receive them.

[Tejinder]

Glad this is happening! 

[adamwebby]

I use a scale for a self serve frozen yogurt store! Right now we have square because the savings were too great to pass up. So right now the customer sets their cup on the scale... and it fits 4 cups. So we weigh the cup, add how many tares (subtract the weight of the bowl type) and then we still use an old app that multiplied the weight by .49 ($.49 / oz) and it gives us the price. Then we manually type it in to square. We of course would love to track exactly how much by the ounce and how many bowls we sell. Which is what scale integration would give us. Let me know if you want to know anything else!

[Lima]

Hi,

1. We are using Hobart scale, it prints label for product and codes barcode corresponding to item  EAN and price  for weight.
2. Hobart scales are industry scales use  by biggest retailers... and for us it eBay purchase for  $250 for scale otherwise sold for over $2000

3. It would be great that square POS   can just scan barcode and parse it for product and price  with single scan. ( our process now is having  SKU for product without any price and then when scanned to enter price of product  ( depending on weight)

1. See 3.

 Weight based barcodes are standard, I don’t see that implementing simple parsing of barcode would be that hard. For any square user operating store that sells weigh based products that would be big plus because like that mistakes with entering prices would me avoided.

[LocavoreStore]

Glad to see some movement on this subject. While being able to use a decimal in the quantities sold would be a big improvement, I think the integration of a weight scale is just as important. 

1. Torrey L-PC 40L

2. Because it's price computing, has a serial port so I can hook up to a computer and print labels, and because it is < $200

3. The only problem is the extra time it takes to push buttons on a scale, and then scan a barcode, then push more buttons on the POS.

4. By implementing a decimal place in quantities and/or integrating a weight scale with the POS. I should be able to place an item on the scale, then scan it's a barcode and let Square POS calculate the price. 

We have a rigorous and tiresome system that has to be done outside of Square in order to maintain accurate reporting of items that are sold by weight. Implimenting a decimal place in quantities would eliminate 95% of that process... An integrated weight scale would be the cherry on top. 

[HappyBellyKitch]

Hi! Thank you for working on this - answers to your questions are below:

1. What type of scale(s) are you using today?

A. CAS LP-1000

2. What made you pick the specific scale?

A. It is a very popular scale with delis in our area (New York Metro). We have been using for 10 years.

3. What are issues you commonly face while selling items by the weight? 

A. Square does not have the ability to read the bar code and then automatically show the price of the item. I would have to scan evey possible price variation for this to wok properly which is not an option. 

4. How could Square Point of Sale help you bridge the gap for these issues?

Please come up with a solution that even my old school Sharp UP-700 cash register could handle. Not sure how difficult this is for you to program but it would be really great if a solution was devised ASAP. We chose Sqaure based on its innovation and ease of use - please continue the trend and help us out! Thank you!

[crocart]

We own a FROZEN YOGURT SHOP too.

1. What type of scale(s) are you using today?

CAS S2000Jr 

2. What made you pick the specific scale?

We sell yogurt by wieght

CAS S2000Jr computes price by weight 

3. What are issues you commonly face while selling items by the weight?

Square POS can not integrate with sale by weight items

We have to enter the price by reading the scale and often mistakes are made

4. How could Square Point of Sale help you bridge the gap for these issues?

Please develope the software to intergrate the weight and price directly from the scale

We really love your terminal execpt this one big trouble for us!!!