Ken,
It sounds like your customer service experience was in the toilet and that doesn't help when you feel you have no other option for a POS system. I get your frustration but I think you're taking it out on the wrong thing here. Blame management if they won't take your money and get you the level of service you deserve. Our motto here is if you don't service your customers someone else will.
We develop and maintain a management system that offers syncing between standard platforms as well as account syncing with Quickbooks (quickbooks connector) and Quickbooks online. It's a breath of fresh air for our customers to get everything in one place. In a few cases customers have called me literally crying they were so happy.
Good thing about our situation right now is that these companies are a dime a dozen, take your pick and roll with who treats you right. Or, see me as your arch nemesis and stay mad about the situation, up to you.
What exactly do you need from your POS system? Do you use quickbooks now? Need them to sync?
Brian
I mean, sure. Syncing them could be useful, if it's a non-maintenance intensive task. I would expect something like Square should offer export functionality. I don't want to add complication to increase simplicity, though. Either it works right every time and it's useful or it's just a feature I don't need.
Got to wait for someone to get back to me in order to find out the details on some of this stuff, as the sales materials are not informative.
I haven't used Quickbooks in a few years, but that's because it never worked well for me. To me, it's been "so simple that it's complicated" for quite some time; like a wet suit that's just one size off. I haven't really been able to use it for anything else, as what I'm typically up to changes too often to fit in their little organized boxes. I just have to use normal spreadsheets. Quickbooks didn't really give me any benefit.
I get the point, though. It's a flexible enough for generic functionality in any industry. It's OBDII for finance.
Things may be different this time around, and I do want to give them a chance given they still offer one-shot software. I'd just need to hit up Lynda or something to brush up. I'm sure whatever passes for a new interface will be just as baffling as it always was; but then again, I have always found Adobe products frustrating to use, as well.
I'm still considering Square for the actual POS system, depending upon how integration works. It's a pretty clean all in one setup that seems to be as reliable as anything else. Square appears to now be pretty "once and done" for a behind the counter setup.
They still haven't got back to me, though. Get a phone number and a fat chick, Square. It's now Wednesday, and nothing...
Sure looks useful, though.
I've got to handle appointments, services, customer management, basic marketing, transactions; that sort of thing. People will come in either prompted or not, get something done, perhaps buy a product from a very limited selection, and leave. Might send people on the road, but it's the same drill. It's nothing fancy. Going with one of the intermediaries will allow very easy mobile deployment and hopefully remote access (the "cloud" benefit). It should also help produce a more idiot-proof system.
I normally despise remote access, but this is different. If I can log in and manage live data and transactions... That saves me a hell of a lot of driving around. No idea how they have that set up, though, which is why I want to speak directly with them. With the way the industry is today, I don't know if that's a reasonable expectation of the software or not. I'd probably gripe about it if I couldn't use the feature right now.
I'm not too keen on going with a traditional POS solution at this time, as I don't see a reliability increase there at all and I don't need to run fifty locations; just one. Ingenico has it locked up around here, actually, and their ghetto hardware causes a lot of long lines. If you see four of those things in a row, two almost certainly have problems...
One company that consistently keeps me happy is Paypal. I just haven't fully researched what they offer yet. I don't think it's as singular a solution, and Square explicitly mentions this industry in their marketing, which is fucking sweet. That
never happens to me.
As a side note, this is a good example of how things
should work. Quickbooks ought to be a purchase, and Square needs to be a subscription. I don't have a problem with that at all. It makes
sense.
Cheers,
Kennith