Clover Networks, a First Data company (merged with Fiserv July 2019) offers a modular suite of Point of Sale systems (PoS) for restaurant and retail. This modular suite features fixed PoS stations, a customer loyalty program and gift card, an analytics module, as well as a mobile point of sale that Iplugs into the users smartphone and tablet to accept secure credit card swipes, as well as dips and taps like Apple Pay®, Samsung Pay™ and Android Pay™.
$9.95
per month
Square POS
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Square POS is a point-of-sale software solution with features such as accept credit cards with your iPhone, Android, and iPad along with the flexibility to accept credit card payments anywhere, from Square headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Clover is well suited for high-volume environments where quality and dependability are paramount. The hardware can scale easily and always looks good on the counter. I have even seen Clover hardware used in small mom-and-pop type stores. The ability to swing the monitor around for signature is really nice. Customers appreciate the ease of use. The stations we have to use nice large bright screens. Not familiar enough with the Clover product line to know if the smaller screen sizes are available for applications where space is a concern.
Square was absolutely fantastic when I first started using it. Easy to set up, use, changing settings, and the like. It has evolved over the years, almost too much, to an insane amount of options, apps, settings, et cetera. I would like to see options for just utilizing specific parts, such as invoices, versus the entire system being set up for daily sales. It makes the tracking side of things a little wonky when you only send 2-5 invoices/month for larger projects. Overall, I like that it’s familiar to me, which is why I continue to use it
After you set a daily processing deadline time, charges processed by that time are deposited the next business day.
The reporting dash board looks overwhelming but that's because it has all of the the information that you've processed before. That was invaluable when we recently went to look at the detail on a two year old transaction and were able to find the information by ourselves.
The ability to use multiple devices is great. We can process charges on a computer, a tablet, or even a smartphone.
Receipts are automatically sent to the customer's preferred email or texted to their phone.
The cost of the hardware (specific scanners and receipt printers) was prohibitive for my company, and whilst we managed without them, they would have been nice to have. The range of scanners and printers that integrate with Square is small, so despite our devices' capabilities to read barcodes (we used ipads) and the Zebra receipt/label printers we had, we couldn't use either as the system wouldn't integrate with them.
Whilst Square's credit card reader is nifty in design, it's a bit small and lacking substance to have as a customer-facing reader so it really needs the dock the company offers. The dock is awkward to open to reset or pair the reader. We often found pairing the reader with the device running the system tricky and confusing, relying on pressing one button and then interpreting a sequence of lights that often caused confusion. The pairing process might have been clearer presented through the device rather than the reader.
I don't really foresee anything being able to dislodge Square from our organization—we're not evangelists or anything like that—it's just the best solution we've found for our use case. Being able to quickly handle transactions from customers and then track all of those sales for analysis/bookkeeping later on.
There are numerous aspects to Clover's usability: the usability of their point of sale systems, the usability of their CRM and web dashboards, and the technical side of integrating with other third-party services. All are top tier. Clover's usability is excellent and I have never had a problem figuring out how to use their services at any level. The POS system has a very low barrier to entry and an easy learning curve for newcomers.
We find Square POS is very user friendly. Its interface is customizable to our needs and very easy to use. Before we adopted Square POS, we used a combination of solutions from different manufacturer to try and achieve a portion of the functionality that Square POS provides under only 1 login
We didn't have any significant complaints about their support. As we transitioned out of BluePay to a new provider that partnered with our new CRM, they were able to help with that transition. However, it was a little slower than we'd have liked.
Square POS support is good, I would not say they are great. There is a good knowledge base that you can access and there are other service providers who support Square POS who can assist you, but I find that the lack of help and support for setting it up for different industries is a let down. We had to research for hours just to find a solution to fix our need for a billing option for services for example. It would be great if Square POS broadened its support and solutions for various industries.
We initially chose BluePay because they had purchased the company that we used for our online payment processing and sales applications. To remain with our previous provider would have required costly updates but BluePay was fully integrated and allowed for a very smooth transition with little to no disruption for our employees or customers. After making the switch, we were so glad that we did. Our account rep has been so helpful and responsive, even going to the level of creating and scheduling custom reports to allow our users to do their jobs more easily and efficiently. We've also been pleased to see our overall fees/interchange go down from what we were charged by our previous providers. Overall, we have been very pleased with the service and services provided.
Square POS is just the easiest to use and therefore the easiest to onboard new users to. I'd also like to point out, that if you're missing or lost one of the readers it's so easy to buy one at an Apple store or even other merchants like T-mobile or Verizon. WePay had less fees but was harder to onboard new users to. Eventbrite had really high fees.
The transaction fees and charge rates are much higher than other options available. We only used this system for a short time while we were switching to a MUCH cheaper option (Authorize.net).
I have also used this system with a charity that I volunteer with who only uses it during a couple of fundraisers a year when they have a small gift shop set up to sell donated goods to raise money. For such low volume, the fees aren't as big of a deal and the convenience of being able to take cards no matter where the event is located makes it worth it.
This is a system your average consumer will recognize and trust, so there's that.
