January 1st 2013 we began using Square Register. Getting to this point was a long journey which took about a year. In this blog entry I will discuss my experiences and thought process that led us to use Square.
It has been one month since we started with Square register. So far it has been great, with a few issues. We had about an hour one day when Square would not take credit cards and since there is no customer service to call we had to wait. (Back then the only way to get customer service was via email. I am still waiting for a response). Luckily I know other business owners who use square and after contacting one I found out it was a system problem. We lost a few customers but we had similar issues with our old system. Not a big deal.
One continuing issue is that the credit card reader does not always work. (In 2025, these issues continue. We sill have hardware problems) We use all the old tricks to try to get the reader to work but on occasion nothing helps. In this case, the card number has to be manually entered. Square treats a manually entered card just as if the customer used Square Wallet and charges me an additional 3.5%. Basically I get charged extra when their equipment does not work the way it should work. Probably the most effective thing we did to manage this issue was to use a different card reader.
{Here is another 2025 update. In 2019, Square changed their pricing structure. Essentially they decreased their percentage per transaction but added $.10 per transaction. At that time, with three shops, it added $10,000 in fee's. It was crazy but trying to switch when we were so embedded was too much to consider. Now looking back, this occurred right before covid and due to that calamity these extra costs helped to crush a lot of businesses.}
At this point, the positive sides to Square seem to outweigh the negatives. Customers love our new IPad set up and when asked about I tell people we leapt three decades into the future when we switched. Our old system was an old school register with a merchant credit card machine. Keeping track of data used to mean a lot of manual entering and lots of time wasted. Now we have lots of data at our fingerprints without having spent thousands of dollars for a POS system.
