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Real retail use, three questions

Hi all

 

I have a square stand, card reader, and cash drawer and printer, and a recent iPad. System works great.

 

But now I am about to start using it in a retail environment, namely my new shop. That means I will have shop assistants who use it. And that seems a little bit difficult in some ways.

 

1. For example, it does not seem that I can turn the unit off if I use guided access, which is the Apple kiosk mode as it were. Am I doing something wrong or will it really not turn off reliably? In that case, is leaving it on 365 days a year sensible? Won’t it wear out, the screen?

 

2. The second question is about logging into the iPad. Do use the app, I guess I need to login using an Apple ID. But I don’t want my staff to ever be able to use my iPad as me, to read my emails, etc. How do you all solve this?

 

3. The final question is about staff. I see that to define staff members I need to pay five dollars US per staff member per month. Really? For every part timer who works a few days a month, some only a few hours, I need to pay five dollars? How do you all handle that? Also I would like to define their usernames and pass codes for logging in, but it seems that only they can do it. Which makes no sense. I need to set up the system before I give anyone access to it. Not the other way around.

 

Any advice very gratefully accepted.

 

Michael

 

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Hey Michael,

 

No Apple ID does not require a credit card. Just make a new account.

 

What I have noticed is that when we leave the ipad on for over a day, we have issues with the printer/bluetooth scanner not working. That is also another reason why we turn it off end of day.

 

Create a number password screen lock is what we do to keep customers out. 

 

To turn off the ipad if your using square stand:

 

1. pull the pin out (bottom left side)

2. behind ipad theres a little circle, push the ipad up just alittle big enough to press the power button on the ipad.

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Hello, we are also using our system for retail. We are still learning the POS system but I can try to help you here.

 

1. We turn off our systems at the end of the day, that way we ensure that the start of each day the Ipad is at its fresh start. No lags or any issues. We also purchased Apple Care for our Ipads.

 

2. I would recommend making a seperate Apple ID or Icloud for the retail side of things.

 

3. You can add the staff as a mobile staff which is free, they can cash out etc. We use paided accounts for our managers or higher.

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Good info, thanks.

 

if I create another Apple ID, I’ll need another credit card, no? And won’t it flag that it’s at the same address etc?

 

 As for powering off the devices at the end of the day, how do you do this? The only way I know is to take the iPad out in order to hit the power switch. Also, it means I can’t use guided access. Guided Access prevents turning off the machine. But if I don’t use Guided Access on the iPad, anyone can just go to the home screen by pressing the home button. Even customers. This is of course not acceptable.

 

How do you handle this? 

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Hey Michael,

 

No Apple ID does not require a credit card. Just make a new account.

 

What I have noticed is that when we leave the ipad on for over a day, we have issues with the printer/bluetooth scanner not working. That is also another reason why we turn it off end of day.

 

Create a number password screen lock is what we do to keep customers out. 

 

To turn off the ipad if your using square stand:

 

1. pull the pin out (bottom left side)

2. behind ipad theres a little circle, push the ipad up just alittle big enough to press the power button on the ipad.

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Yes, and that’s what I was hoping to prevent. My staff having to carefully remove the iPad like that is bound to result in broken connectors in the end. Seems that square really didn’t think his through.

 

And their answers to my questions were pretty much useless. They boiled down to “call Apple support”.:

 

Unfortunately we do not have the ability to "lock out" the rest of the functions of the iPad, as all we is an app that runs on the iPad. This is something that you would have to contact Apple about, as any app you download from the app store will probably not provide a solution to this. 

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