I’ve been playing with Square Register on my iPad for a few days. It’s an interesting product. You can set up a Square account and install the POS app on your iPad easily, for no monthly fee for the app itself. You’ll establish a Square credit card processing account to handle your charges, and the fees you pay will be in relation to the credit card charges you run through this system.
Square provides you with a small free credit card swipe device that plugs into your audio port on the iPad. You can also purchase the Square Stand for $99.00 (Figure 1), which provides a stand to hold your iPad, an integrated card reader, and ports that can be used to integrate things like a cash drawer and barcode scanner.
Figure 1: Square Stand holding an iPad
Working with Square Register
There are many options available in the Square Register app. I’m going to show a few of the features to give you a feel for how it works. If you have a supported device, I recommend you set up a Square account and test this – most of the features can be seen if you process cash transactions, and you won’t incur any charges. That makes it simple to test.
I’m focusing on the features available for the iPad. There also is a web account that lets you create items, generate reports, control which employee has access to different features, and more.
You can create a list of items to sell. Each item can have a picture, description, price, and more. You can also create “modifier sets” that let you add optional features to the item that can modify the price (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Adding an item
You can add a number of modifiers to each item in your list. The odd part (to me) is that you apply sales
Figure 3: Options for the item
When you’re entering a sales transaction, you can see the items available for sale in a list format on the left side of the screen. As you select them, they’re added to the list on the right. Some items have additional options that you can use to modify the price (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Sales transaction in Square Register
You have the option of displaying the items in a grid, rather than a list, as shown in Figure 5. You can also set up categories to group similar items together, to make it easier to manage a long list of items.
Figure 5: Items displayed in a grid
You can accept cash, check, or credit card (Figure 6). Credit card information can be entered manually, or you can use the card swiper, either built in to the Square Stand or a small reader that plugs into the audio port of your device.
Figure 6: Entering payment information
Digital receipts, as shown in Figure 7, can be sent to the customer via text or email (or printer, if one is attached through the Square Stand).
Figure 7: Digital receipt
There are a lot of interesting features in Square Register, more than I’ve shown you here. This will fit smaller businesses, but at this time, I don’t think that it has the full range of features as you would find in a more comprehensive product, such as QuickBooks Point of Sale.