Trying to decide between Square Register and or Square Stand

[earthfirearts]

The title of this thread has been edited from the original: Trying to decide between a Square Register or a Square Stand.. any comparison tips welcome

Hello!

Trying to decide between a Square Register or a Square Stand.. any comparison tips welcome. Any comments on what works better and why.

[VanKalkerFarms · Accepted solution]

I can't give you reasons to buy the Square Register because I don't own one, I'd like to because It is very pretty, but here is my opinion on a Square Stand.

In our Retail Garden Center, we use 3 Square Stands with iPad Air 2s, 3 ethernet printers, and 3 cash drawers.  We also have 2 iPad mini in L7 cases to hold the Square NFC chip card reader in one nice handheld unit to process people portably in line.  We only have a crappy 1.5Mb DSL line coming in and everything works flawlessly.  We process more than a million dollars thru Square each year and I couldn't be happier with the free POS software, the under 3-second chip card processing, and the drop-dead simple rate.  I love the simplicity of the Square Stand and the freeing up of space on our checkout compared to our old cash register.  People love the simplicity of me swinging the stand around 180º and them singing with their finger.  The amount of data you will have from the free POS app will be staggering and can really help you tighten up your bottom line when you see what you sell when and for what price.  The POS app isn't perfect and depending on what you are trying to do there are limitations and or workarounds you have to do, but the POS app is constantly being updated and tweaked, and features are added.

The one standout feature of the Square Register is the customer display, but I just don't see in my use case that it is worth $700 more than an iPad and stand per setup, and I don't like the fact of a proprietary hardware and if it goes bad I'm out $1,000 but if an iPad dies $250 and you're back up and running.

One thing I can say is DO NOT buy the plugin chip reader/swiper combo, between the poor battery life and the insane fragilness of the unit for the tamper detection to make the unit unusable I would avoid that completely.  I've gone thru 7 units and all are garbage, I bought 4 and got 3 under warranty replacement and 2 of the 3 replacements were broken out of the box with the Tamper detection tripped.  The NFC Chip card Bluetooth reader though is rock solid.

[VanKalkerFarms · Accepted solution]

I can't give you reasons to buy the Square Register because I don't own one, I'd like to because It is very pretty, but here is my opinion on a Square Stand.

In our Retail Garden Center, we use 3 Square Stands with iPad Air 2s, 3 ethernet printers, and 3 cash drawers.  We also have 2 iPad mini in L7 cases to hold the Square NFC chip card reader in one nice handheld unit to process people portably in line.  We only have a crappy 1.5Mb DSL line coming in and everything works flawlessly.  We process more than a million dollars thru Square each year and I couldn't be happier with the free POS software, the under 3-second chip card processing, and the drop-dead simple rate.  I love the simplicity of the Square Stand and the freeing up of space on our checkout compared to our old cash register.  People love the simplicity of me swinging the stand around 180º and them singing with their finger.  The amount of data you will have from the free POS app will be staggering and can really help you tighten up your bottom line when you see what you sell when and for what price.  The POS app isn't perfect and depending on what you are trying to do there are limitations and or workarounds you have to do, but the POS app is constantly being updated and tweaked, and features are added.

The one standout feature of the Square Register is the customer display, but I just don't see in my use case that it is worth $700 more than an iPad and stand per setup, and I don't like the fact of a proprietary hardware and if it goes bad I'm out $1,000 but if an iPad dies $250 and you're back up and running.

One thing I can say is DO NOT buy the plugin chip reader/swiper combo, between the poor battery life and the insane fragilness of the unit for the tamper detection to make the unit unusable I would avoid that completely.  I've gone thru 7 units and all are garbage, I bought 4 and got 3 under warranty replacement and 2 of the 3 replacements were broken out of the box with the Tamper detection tripped.  The NFC Chip card Bluetooth reader though is rock solid.

[salsberygc]

Hi, 

Your review was very useful to me in deciding to move over to square stands from our bulky old pos system at our garden center.  I am not set up yet with our new devices but have a question that I thought you could maybe help with. Are you using the DYNO label maker with your stands? What are you using and I'm also trying to figure out a new waterproof label making option. In the past we have just hand typed on a brothers machine, a very time consuming way of doing it for each item.  I'd love to connect into the inventory on the square app and have them spit off quickly, but the DYNO dual has some consistently bad reviews on the plastic label making. Thanks for your time!

[hellomosiacand2]

Hello, 

I know your post is a bit old but I am now doing research on the same thing for my garden business that I will be opening this fall. 

What printer/label solutions are you able to recommend? 

Thanks so much for your time! 

[JustinC · Accepted solution]

You can try Dymo 450 label printer, but you'll need to create barcodes through a third-party application. 

If you're looking to generate and print label directly from the Square system, subscribe to Square Retail and get started here. 

@hellomosiacand2

[straycatbrew]

Having considered this for myself - the biggest consideration has to be your average transaction size.  They charge a different rate structure than the regular Square transactions.  So, if your average purchase is under $40 per customer, you will end up paying more in transaction fees for the Square Register, so it's not worth it in my opinion.  (Square Register: 10¢ + 2.5%)

[MichiganFarmsta]

If you have enough volume square will give you a custom rate on processing.  This will apply to your Square Register. 

To qualify you need a $15/ transaction and $250K annually.  

https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5068-learn-about-square-s-fees

[MichiganFarmsta]

I went with the Square Register in my farm market for the front displays.  It keeps a clean counter and lets the customer see what is happening.  You never have to touch a customers credit card.  The forward facing screen was the biggest reason to go with the register.  It helps speeds up the check out because the customer checks the receipt as it is entered, and trust the transaction to be accurate

The square registers allow for a very efficient checkout process.  On our busiest days of the year we routinely run up 80 transactions per hour per register. 

We have only had a few issues with the square registers.  Square was able to help us and quickly replace the defective parts.  We had to replace the front screen/card reader on one of the registers because the chip reader quit working. We also replaced the power/usb interface on one of the register because all the USB ports quit working,

Unlike Ipads and tablets the square register do not have any battery.  So we have an external battery backup under the counter, we can run for 2 days with no power.  

One final note on Square Registers. You do not get to choose if/when you update.  I would like to have control over updates in my busiest seasons because sometimes updates change a setting or work flow and cause a disruption.  

In our "rural" location we do not have any high speed internet options.  We run a Verizon Home connect to get internet from cell towers.  The square registers automatically update themselves.  It takes 4-6 Gigabytes of data per month to support the registers.   For selling and using a square tablet and taking it home to update we used less than 100 megabytes a month

In areas (our outside entertainment) where it very simple transactions we use square stands because there is no reason for the expense of a register.

There is a scale for each register and

We use a omni directional scanner (Zebra DS9208) to help speed the checkout process.  (this is not offically supported by square)

Cost of my setup - I share the printer between 2 registers.  

Scanner	Zebra DS9208	$130
Drawer	APG BL16-16	$188
Printer	Star Micronics TSP143IIILAN	$229
Register		$999
Total		$1546

The square register are now $800.  I purchased most items from Amazon as I could get a better price or they are not available from square.  When I was running one square register I was able to run a much cheaper cash drawer ($80) that was printer driven.  But when I upgraded to two register this drawer would open for every transaction because I share the printer between to Registers.

In 2018 when I setup my regsiter this was my projected cost for a tablet system

	Chip Reader		$          49.00
	Dock		$          29.00
	Stand 9.7		$          91.00
Drawer	APG BL16-16		$        188.00
Tablet	Ipad 9.7		$        307.00
Scanner	Zebra DS9208		$        130.00
Printer	Ethernet Print		$        228.99
			$    1,022.99