8 ms·
Business in a Box
- Robin_Message 14y agoLooks great, but seems to imply that the cash register doesn't open automatically if you don't buy a printer, which rather ruins the paperless option. It might be a good business idea to create a simple piece of hardware that does the opening if Square doesn't release one soon – hell, the hardware could just be a broken printer by the sound of it. But very cool ephemeralisation none-the-less.
- RaphiePS 14y agoWhere does it imply that?
- danielpal 14y ago"Open wirelessly from your iPad when paired with a receipt printer, as included in the Printing package."
- Robin_Message 14y agoAlso the Amazon reviews of that cash drawer say you plug it into a printer.
- rbritton 14y agoThose kinds of cash drawers tend to just have a RJ11-style port that the printer can plug into and trigger whenever something prints. They're very dumb devices otherwise and have no wireless capability.
- wtvanhest 14y ago"Open wirelessly from your iPad when paired with a receipt printer, as included in the Printing package." It likely doesn't open the register for cash unless there is a receipt to prevent employee fraud.
- rbritton 14y agoIt is possible they could program it to trigger the cash drawer with the printer even if going paperless, but you would still need to have the printer. Star printers have a control code to trigger the peripheral device. See this for one model: http://www.starmicronics.com/support/Mannualfolder/tsp200pm.pdf http://www.starmicronics.com/support/Mannualfolder/tsp200pm....
- iambpentameter 14y agoThis seems to be an attempt to keep costs low. Most cash drawers have a simple cable connection to the printer which can send a signal down the line to open, very simple. Adding a wireless adapter to the cash drawer would certainly be more expensive.
- smackfu 14y agoMore details on the hardware setup: https://squareup.com/help/en-us/article/5084-using-hardware-with-square-register https://squareup.com/help/en-us/article/5084-using-hardware-...
- prezjordan 14y agoWhy is a receipt printer $300? Just curious.
- peteretep 14y agoPresumably because it needs to work, over and over and over again, and not really break down ever.
- ambiate 14y agoThe ease of adding graphics and novelty information to the receipt inside the printer, wireless, cutting hardware, rate of printing are a few things that come to mind. Its proprietary hardware in a sense.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- smackfu 14y agoIt does have ethernet and USB, while cheaper ones only have USB. And it has a paper cutter, while cheaper ones have a tear bar like an old calculator. And this is probably a solid brand. Square doesn't want to sell a package with a cheap printer that then costs them more in support costs.
- jonknee 14y agoIt's a thermal printer with network access, an automated cutter and is rated to work reliably past 60m lines. That doesn't seem like a lot of money for a good tool.
- mmanfrin 14y agoI work with one at work: these things are bulletproof.
- iamwil 14y agoThe design is great. Even though I don't have a brick and mortar store, it kinda makes me want to buy one, inexplicably. I wonder how many other things you can sell like this, an all-in-one box, that doesn't smell cheap, like a 10-in-1 games CD? The best thing I can think of right now is 'gardening in a box'. I wonder what 'startup in a box' looks like.
- Robin_Message 14y agoDepends what you mean by startup. If you mean some kind of infinitely replicable business (e.g. a cleaning company with subcontractors doing the cleaning) then it contains: a specific and workable business plan, a domain name, a list of potential customers/sources of the same, a company registration, a cheap mobile phone, some web hosting with an open source/simple tool set up to run the business – fuck, I just realised I invented franchising. If you mean a scalable software business (of the sort HN usually means when they refer to a startup) the problem is that execution >>> ideas, and so no-one would sell such a box for less than it was worth, unless they were desperate. Then they'd sell part of it to a VC ;-)
- Simucal 14y agoThis isn't exactly the same as a one time "box" but monthly subscription services for "boxes" of different items have been taking off lately. I currently subscribe to Barkbox[0], a monthly subscription to receive dog treats, toys and accessories every month. A few months ago they had over 20,000 subscribers. They based their model off Birchbox[1], which provides a monthly subscription of hand picked beauty products. I've been trying to think of other niches that would be a good fit for this box model. [0] http://barkbox.com http://barkbox.com [1] http://www.birchbox.com/ http://www.birchbox.com/
- 8bitliving 14y agoI love the idea of barkbox! Ever since I saw this guy's project, http://www.sotmclub.com/ http://www.sotmclub.com/, I've also been racking my brain for other ways to leverage this model.
- HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
- rohern 14y agoThis is fantastic. The POS space has needed massive disruption for decades. Kill the dinosaurs!
- dreamdu5t 14y agoHow is this disruptive? It's still a cash register. Most cash registers for decades have been digital/electronic in terms of running/totals and counting cash, and they all have credit card readers too.
- rbritton 14y agoFor restaurant POS systems the typical cost is typically around $15-20k plus $2k per terminal. For smaller restaurants that don't need more than this package offers it's a bargain.
- ErrantX 14y agoWhich is fine... except this system is pretty unsuitable for even small restaurants (coffee shops, OK maybe :)). The target market for this is very squarely (heh!) high end indie shops.
- dbrian 14y agoIt's easy. It doesn't require having a merchant account. It has an simple interface for configuring items and lets transactions be paperless. That sounds disruptive.
- csams 14y agoMerchant accounts aren't necessarily a bad thing! With a merchant account there's little to no delay on your funds - money goes straight from your customers account into your business account. There's a Canadian company Payfirma that is disrupting payments by giving merchants more payment options like the popular mobile and tablet pos to ecommerce and even traditional chip and pin terminal setups, in one solution. You get to pick and choose the products that help fix your current payment woes but also upgrade those products in the future for when your business grows.
- cleaver 14y agoI love it. Unfortunately, it wouldn't work where you need smartcard chip readers. A lot of the world outside the US uses smartcard + PIN — I can't imagine America is too far behind. Hopefully they have that under development.
- mischanix 14y agoI believe America is indeed that far behind--a majority of businesses where I live process credit card transactions over phone networks and have no internet connection. That said, for Square, I don't think it would be too difficult to integrate a SmartCard reader over the audio line as they have with magstripes.
- wmblaettler 14y agoThis directly competes with Revel POS: http://revelsystems.com http://revelsystems.com, though pricing isn't visible on their site, I would believe that Square's offering is also cheaper -- at least to get setup.
- iambpentameter 14y agoBased on the offering and pricing I'd say it is more in line to compete with http://shop.shopkeep.com/ http://shop.shopkeep.com/ than revel.
- mmanfrin 14y agoAlso GoPago Live: http://www.gopago.com/ http://www.gopago.com/ $99/month, no startup costs, competitive credit-processing. Also has a much more robust featureset than Square. It also makes your storefront work on GoPago's mobile app, which is something that no other modern POS system does out of the box. Disclosure: I work at GoPago.
- heywire 14y agoAnd NCR Silver: http://ncrsilver.com/ http://ncrsilver.com/
- Kerrick 14y agoIt's like the hardware bundles that Checkout, POS for Mac OS X, has done for a long time [0]. It's a smart idea, it makes it easier for small business owners because there is actually a large variety of hardware to choose from, and buying a bundle you know is compatible is one less thing to worry about. [0]: http://www.checkoutapp.com/features/hardware http://www.checkoutapp.com/features/hardware
- drfritznunkie 14y agoI just helped a friend install a iPad POS at his coffee shop this past December using BreadCrumb. We looked at Square Register, but it's rather lackluster feature set ruled it out. Namely, it doesn't support multiple printers or printer queuing (ex. food items get sent to kitchen printer), it doesn't have a modifier system for items (maybe this has changed), and no employee features (clock-in/out) etc.. I would say it's good for a small shop without too many needs. As soon as you have to do funky stuff like modify orders (and report on them), you're better off looking elsewhere. I would also caution people against using the wireless printers and go with hard wired ones instead. I know, wires are not fashionable, but they are damn reliable and predictable. The restaurant next door uses wireless STARs with their POSLavu system(should win an award for worst name), and a waitress there told me they constantly had problems with them, and missed orders, etc. Also, for anyone wondering why these thermal printers are $300+ on a good day, they're built like tanks. I bought all the Epson TM printers for my friend from a bankrupt Chinese restaurant. When I asked the owner if he'd had any problems with them (they self tested okay), he said in his broken english something like "even with roaches, they still print!"... Well, I get them home and start pulling them apart to clean them, and they're FULL of dead roaches. Every empty space inside the printers was chock full of roach bodies. The circuit boards were caked with roach shit and all the feed mechanisms had ingested and ground up the roaches that got in their way. And ever single one of these printers still works flawlessly. So yeah, they're worth the $400.
- trxblazr 14y agoi wonder why that Chinese restaurant went out of business...
- dkasper 14y agoSheesh, that roach story makes the original "bug in the code" story sound tame.
- Gobitron 14y agoThat is the best anecdote I've ever read on HN. Not only funny, but I'm much more likely to buy one of those if I ever should need it. Ha.
- 14y ago
- obituary_latte 14y agoDear everyone: Might you please make use of the noscript functionality provided to you? Many people like myself do not let arbitrary websites run javascript on their machines. Without the use of noscript tags, as is the case here, I am met with an entirely blank page. Had there been something there, something describing what I'm missing and how good it is, I very likely would have enabled js temporarily. But there wasn't, and I didn't. Very best regards, ol
- lisper 14y agoI don't even have Javascript disabled and I still got a blank page (running Safari 5.1.7).
- lobo_tuerto 14y agoI think a blank page is the new noscript.
- joshdotsmith 14y agoThere's an awful lot of work involved in graceful degradation, which I'm sure you know. Will a noscript tag that tells you have JavaScript disabled and that you're missing out on a richer web experience really convert you? The problem here is that "many people" is < 1.6% as of 2010; I'm guessing the number's only dropped since. Noscript is really only useful for telling people that they need JavaScript enabled to use the site in case they don't realize they've accidentally disabled its use.
- obituary_latte 14y ago>Will a noscript tag that tells you have JavaScript disabled and that you're missing out on a richer web experience really convert you? No. But if it tells me what the content is, or the point of, or really any decent info on what I'm missing, I usually do. In the case of HN links, I always do. I'm not sure where you got the < 1.6% figure -- I won't argue with it -- but for a startup, that might be a huge number of people. Maybe it doesn't matter. I don't know.
- toni 14y ago
- ForFreedom 14y agoWhy don't they just do away with the bulky cash register too.
- legutierr 14y agoCash? There aren't many stores that are "credit card only". You'd be turning away customers.
- pc86 14y agoNot to mention that it's illegal. You cannot turn someone away who wants to pay with cash, that whole "legal tender" thing.
- heywire 14y agoThat is a common misconception [0] [0] http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/...
- pc86 14y agoThank you for this. From the relevant paragraph: > This statute means that all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise.
- abstractbill 14y agoMount your stand securely to any surface without drilling. I wonder if "securely" just means my ipad won't fall over, or if it also somehow means customers can't run away with my ipad while my back is turned. That seems pretty important to me, and hard to achieve without drilling.
- hospadam 14y agoI think you're right - it only prevents the iPad from falling over. They probably use suction cups of some sort. If someone is determined though - they'll just rip it off and run out the door.
- misterbwong 14y agoIt looks like this kit comes with the Windfall POS case for the iPad (http://hecklerdesign.com/windfall/ http://hecklerdesign.com/windfall/) which includes a peel & stick disk.
- ravichhabra 14y agoSecurely indeed means "customers can't run away with my ipad while my back is turned" as can be seen in the pictures on the Heckler Design website: http://hecklerdesign.com/windfall/ http://hecklerdesign.com/windfall/
- abstractbill 14y ago(that page says the security comes with extra purchases - a Kensington ClickSafe cable lock, and/or an add-on bolt-down kit).
- MatthewB 14y agoOne thing Square continues to do right is design. Making a POS system sexy is not an easy thing to do.
- kmfrk 14y agoOne might argue that it's the main thing they do. Which is not a bad thing at all.
- LyndsySimon 14y agoYep - they're Apple for credit card processing. All they do is UX work and strip out features. That's a great thing. My wife and I own a small boutique, and we've been using Square since before the public launch in the App Store. We've just about outgrown it, but have been challenged to find another solution that fits in-between the low cost, extremely easy to use Square and the traditional high-cost, complex to set up POS solutions. As one of their employees here has said, GoPago seems to fit that nicely, but we're not decided yet whether we want to commit to a $100 / month payment. Being a hacker, there's also the fact that I have a room full of hardware in the back I've collected over the years, which includes a nice flash-based small format PC, a comparably tiny monitor, bar code readers, and a couple of retail thermal printers. I know I'll never actually sit down and hack out a POS system, but it's nice to think about and the idea has helped in keeping me from sinking a wad of cash into a system I don't absolutely have to have yet.
- mmanfrin 14y agoDisclosure: I work for GoPago, a direct competitor in this market. I am approaching this with a lot of built-in bias. Square is pretty late to the game. Their software is pretty, but it has a much smaller featureset than every other tablet-based POS software out there (including our own competitors). Additionally, their prices do not include the cost of the iPad, which is another $500 on top of this 'business in a box'. They are selling a cash box, an ipad stand, and a card reader for $300, which is not a terribly great deal. Their software does not include modifiers, which is of paramount importance if you're dealing with any volume of customers over a trickle. Their reporting system is slick, but bare. Square works very, very well for P2P transactions. People at farmers markets, flea markets, garage sales, or anywhere where the volume of orders is small will find great value in Square's handheld offerings. But for businesses, it is sincerely lacking. Comparatively, GoPago (my employer) sells GoPago Live, a tablet-based POS system that costs $99 a month, and comes with literally everything you need: stand, swiper, cash drawer, plus the tablet, printer, optional scanner/upc support, wireless chit printer, and a built-in 4G connection. And it comes with the GoPago Mobile storefront -- which allows your customers to send orders (with modifiers, instructions, etc) directly to your POS terminal. I am obviously biased, so take all this with as much salt as you'd like -- but Square has a lackluster offering polished behind a veneer of masterful marketing. Their 'business in a box' is a misnomer, as it does not include the core component: the tablet. GoPago truly offers the complete system.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- notjustanymike 14y agoI think you had a point on pricing until you explained GoPago's fees. Assuming a company uses the same system for 3 years, you're looking at $3,600 spent on a rental. Square and the separate iPad Retina purchase add up to a $1,100 one time fee. I can't debate you on features, but I would argue they're extremely competitive with pricing.
- jgh 14y agoExcept you also need some kind of wireless connection for that iPad, which is apparently included in the price of the GoPago package. So you'll have to either pay the $30/month for the iPad data plan or get some other form of high-speed internet for about the same price plus a router. This would bring the price up to $2180 over that same three year period. So it's still cheaper, but not as much as you suggested. If you're dealing with apparently inferior software (I don't know anything about this POS stuff) is that $1320 savings really worth it?
- fijal 14y agoI would honestly love to have a flag saying [US only, don't bother if you're not from there] on articles (like that one) EDIT: this is genuinely not a snarky comment, but this this company will likely go bankrupt before I could use it (for example paypal is not universally available, in SA you need to have an account with a specific bank)
- kmfrk 14y agoAnd an additional one warning about Americans whining about how their Netflix/Hulu/Square/MLB/Pandora/HD TV networks/Amazon Prime perform subpar ...
- thoughtpalette 14y agoPretty sure it's the rest of the countries that are complaining the U.S. typically has a better selection in those categories.
- pbreit 14y agoI'll save the HN programmers some cycles: everything here is [US only].
- fijal 14y agoThat's provably not true. Everything that concerns actual software (and not service!) is international by-default. That's my personal reason to hate services, they can be (and often are) discriminatory.
- dclowd9901 14y agoA friend of mine and myself had this idea a while back, while Square was still in its infancy. It would allow people to find out exactly where to find the merchandise that they wanted, its price at that location, the number of items they had in stock, a way to order it if they wanted to purchase it... It would bring non big-box stores into the world of organized supply chain. In order to do this, we posited, we'd have to create a dirt-cheap POS that was also incredibly easy to setup, use, and track inventory. The idea was hung up on the fact that we didn't have an "in" -- the clout to get these smaller stores to invest in us. As we simmered on it, Square turned hockey stick, created a mobile app, and we already saw that they were headed in this direction. Kudos. Even if it wasn't my implementation of the idea, I'm glad to see a step happen in that direction.
- gmisra 14y agoI own a small business and we have experimented with Square Register and other ipad-based POS systems. Register is by far the least feature rich of all of the offerings we looked at - this is not necessarily a bad thing. Specifically, Cons * Register is not designed for restaurant use - many of these reasons have already been discussed on this thread, the biggest being the lack of modifier support. * Register does not support weight-based pricing (delis, produce, etc). * Getting meaningful data out of Register is annoying * There really isn't much tech support for Register - for a lot of businesses, being able to pay somebody to come set-up a POS and train the staff is a real feature. * The card reader is unreliable - multiple swipes are often required. (A non-free, durable and reliable card reader would be a good thing for Square to consider offering). * No inventory management. (If there was a nice API, other people could solve this problem.) Pros * It provides a nicely unified experience across Register and Wallet, which makes enabling Wallet easy. * Square is still our preferred payment processor for credit card transactions. I especially appreciate how they transfer money into our bank account within 24 hours instead of trying to justify why they should be allowed to hold on to it until the end of the month. * It is the easiest to set-up and use, and to train employees to use. In terms of the ipad POS space, none of them are really mature POS systems yet. If your transaction set is simple, or if you're willing to modify it to fit into the POS feature-set, then one of them is probably right for you. If you need Aloha-style customizability, you should wait. My guess is that different POS solutions will generate traction in different markets, and then it will become much clearer with solution is right for your business. Personally, I think the old-style POS's are such a rip-off that figuring out how to make your small business work with a newer technology is worth it. Running a food business, however, I would not recommend Register. If I ran a business with a simpler item set (e.g. a clothing store), then I would seriously consider it. Asides * Yeah, those printers are like tanks. Two thumbs up! * You definitely want physical security. The bundled stand includes the ability to secure against grab-and-go theft (http://hecklerdesign.com/windfall/ http://hecklerdesign.com/windfall/). (edit: formatting)
- drfritznunkie 14y agoJust curious, what system did you choose and for what type of business? As I mentioned above, I set up my friend with BreadCrumb which is okay for quickserve, but not great. There QS workflow needs to be extensively overhauled, and they need to support sig-less CC transactions and gift cards. If I were to do it over again, I might actually look a bit more at a QS specific system, even if it's windows95 POS POS (ha!), because the efficiencies of workflow may make it worth it.
- thinkcomp 14y agoIt's too bad that Square gets all the press when the tech community should really be spending (at least some of) its energy trying to defeat a law that makes it a federal crime to start a payments company that actually does change things. See http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=86 http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=86
- erikpukinskis 14y agoI support your cause, so I'm going to give you some feedback. Feel free to ignore it. I've seen a lot of posts and comments from you on HN. I've visited FaceCash a number of times. You've built some cool infrastructure, and I think many of your visions about what the future of money should look like are spot on. That said, you come across as having a lot of anger and entitlement and that makes me want to ignore you, even though I think you're totally right that our payment laws are messed up. Complaining about competitors doesn't help you, it just makes you look like a whiner. Square is making very crafty strategic moves to slowly maneuver around the regulatory issues that are sinking you. It's bullshit that they have to, yes. But that's what they're doing. Criticizing them or the press they're getting just looks like sour grapes to me. If you made a strategic plan to actually route around the screwed up stuff in the system, or to chip away at the edges of the problem with concrete steps, without denigrating other people who are trying to innovate in the space, I would feel a lot better about supporting you. But as it is it seems like you're just going to complain about the state of affairs while your business gets ensnared in well documented roadblocks. Again, feel free to ignore this. I could be totally wrong about your strategy. I just wanted to give you the feedback since you seem to be soliciting support and may be interested in why people aren't lending it.
- daemon13 14y agoErik, great feedback
- EToS 14y agosquaredown!
- msteinert 14y agoAm I missing something here? Square Readers free [1] Heckler Design WindFall iPad Stand $129.99 (free shipping) [2] APG Vasario 1616 Cash Drawer $102.18 (free shipping) [3] I don't understand why I would pay $66.83 for the convenience of having these items shipped to me in a pretty box. [1]: https://squareup.com/reader https://squareup.com/reader [2]: http://hecklerdesign.com/windfall/ http://hecklerdesign.com/windfall/ [3]: http://www.amazon.com/APG-Vasario-VB-1616-MultiPRO-interface/dp/B000V2ATRQ http://www.amazon.com/APG-Vasario-VB-1616-MultiPRO-interface...
- Cryode 14y agoOne word: convenience. People will pay to have them give them everything they need up front, instead of researching or finding it themselves.
- smacktoward 14y agoNot to mention support. You don't want to have your system flake out and then find out your vendor won't support you because you bought the wrong cash drawer.
- ssttoo 14y agoHow do square's fees compare to paypal? I got a free square thingie at a conference, gave it to a vet friend who does a lot of house calls and needs to accept payments. He ended up not using it, preferring to manually type CC#s in paypal's UI. Explanation: cheaper
- Cryode 14y agoPayPal is not cheaper unless you do a lot of volume: https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees
- gamblor956 14y agoSeveral local restaurants, farmers market vendors, and food trucks use the Square register, but most others use a local competitor PayDragon or another competitor (probably GoPago). The vendors using Square tend to be low-volume, and the use is limited to paying and tipping. Paper receipts are not included with the order, in violation of California law (email is not enough! if you don't get a paper receipt you can technically demand a free meal [EDIT: not actually California law, it's part of the payment processor contract with the vendor]). The vendors don't use Square for any sort of order management because it can't handle that. Square is a good fit because these vendors don't need the advanced features and the simplicity of the interface is a plus. The food trucks using PayDragon or other competitors are much higher volume. You also get printed receipts with your order. At least some of these Square competitors include order management features. Most of them (my primary experience is with PayDragon vendors) are not much more complicated than Square. A lot of these vendors started off on Square and graduated to various competitors when Square stopped being able to handle their needs.
- signed0 14y agoI had hoped they had come up with a more robust version of their card reader. There have been several times where it has taken 5+ swipes to read my card. I have also witnessed this happen to people in front of me in line. My credit card has never had a problem anywhere else. I've found it easier to just use the Square app on my phone, though I've yet to see someone in front of me in line use it.
- dmckeon 14y agoWe found that the prompt after a failed Square swipe is poorly worded. It says something like: try again, only faster - but it should say: try again, at a different speed since swiping the card more slowly often worked when trying faster did not work.
- hoodq19 14y agoI'm not looking for them to include an iPad or a data connection. I'd buy it if it came with customers. The "business in a box" marketing would then be spot on.