Faster Checkout Options

[_Brandon_]

Hello all,

We have been using the square system for a while now, and the POS register as of the 1st of the year.  It works for us but not as well as I would like.  We sell a mix of one off vintage items and new items, and have around 2200 items in the system right now, but are nowhere near finished adding.  We are using it in combination with a woo commerce based website.  

Invoices for repairs flow pretty smoothly, but when it comes to just a normal shoppers check out process things really slow down. I have a few pages set up on screen, but we certainly don't have room to list all the items and categories are worthless without being able to upload icons to them. Most of them time this results in us doing an all item search. Far too often we aren't finding the item. At a PC we can find it quickly in the items list but not through the POS.  

My current thought is adding either a bar code scanner which I have no experience with or seeing if we can get a keyboard or at least 10 key attached to make searching faster.

With the barcode scanner will I need to change the sku to match the barcode or can those exist independently of each other? Our skus are set up to match our distributor for easier reordering, so I don't want to change those.

Is there a keyboard or 10 key that's compatible with the system, that might makes these tedious searches faster?

Is this all a lost cause? Did we choose the wrong system for our needs?

[AshleyK]

Thanks for reaching out about this! Large inventories can be a lot to manage on any system, so I'm tagging a group of our Super Sellers to see if they have any advice on how to manage inventory from a business owner perspective. 

I do think that using barcodes would be a huge benefit to you. They can match the already existing SKUs and once they are all imported into the system, you can simply scan the items to bring them to your customer's cart at checkout. 

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[HC_Charlie]

Thanks for your question. Don't fear...all is not lost LOL! I've been using Square register with a barcode scanner and it been working beautifully for me for over 2 years. Since you're starting with already a lot of items, you may have some work in getting your items barcoded, but it will be worth it and you can start small with your most difficult items to find in your inventory. You can use barcodes already on your inventory, if your supplier puts them on for you and the sku matches what's in your Square inventory. You can even create barcodes on a website and print them on a sheet to keep beside your register, so you wouldn't have to apply a barcode sticker to each item if that's too much work. Just reference your sheet at the register when checking out and scan the barcode from that. If you google barcode generator websites you'll find some sources. Just use the sku already in your system and type that to generate a barcode. It may take a bit of trial-and-error to make sure everything is working together.

Just remember you can start small, take chunks at a time so you don't feel overwhelmed. It's a process but definitely worth it to keep organized and make checking out fast and easy. Good luck to you!

[homeprogreen]

A barcode scanner is definitely the way to go. I have a few thousand items in my system with up to 75 variations per item. I have used square since it first started and search does work very well as long as you’ve set your categories up to simplify things. You can use the barcodes supplied by your distributor or you can print your own for those items that don’t come with barcode. The system doesn’t care as long as they’re in the proper format 

[GourmetOnWheels]

I currently have only 385 SKU's, but when I was selling CD's (4,582 SKU's) I was glad I had a barcode scanner to keep track of my inventory.

René

[_Brandon_]

Thanks for all of the reply's.  I don't think the barcode on the product and the SKU in the system will match, and I didn't want to have to change the SKU away from our re-order number for obvious reasons.  The printed sheet or likely a book in our case might be just the thing.  It seems kind or backwards to think about using a printed book to aid a "computer", but I know it's often used at hardware stores, which isn't terrible far off of our business here, so it might just be perfect. 

[homeprogreen]

Actually you can use both the SKU on the product and the number you use for reorder. You set the sku to whatever is on the product and then you can set the other number in the box labeled GTIN. The system will track either number. Or vice versa if you already have a bunch of SKU’s in the system you don’t want to change. This will have to be setup on your dashboard though I believe. Haven’t personally used the dual numbers but I can see it in the dashboard when viewing items