15 votes

Square wants to be a bank but doesn’t want to be taxed like one

9 comments

  1. [9]
    MimicSquid
    Link
    As someone who has to deal with Square across dozens of client's interactions with them, they're terrible. They're here "disrupting" all sorts of things, but their reports are incomplete and...

    As someone who has to deal with Square across dozens of client's interactions with them, they're terrible. They're here "disrupting" all sorts of things, but their reports are incomplete and insufficient for anyone to actually make business decisions based on their information. As soon as my clients move beyond "Occasional pop-up shop" levels of payment processing I strongly recommend they move to a company that can do proper reporting.

    8 votes
    1. [2]
      babypuncher
      Link Parent
      They've been operating for over a decade and they still haven't figured out accurate reporting for financial transactions?

      They've been operating for over a decade and they still haven't figured out accurate reporting for financial transactions?

      7 votes
      1. MimicSquid
        Link Parent
        Yeah. The totals will be right, but some of the fees (especially international fees and the Square Loan repayments they'll deduct from your gross receipts without a clear deduction) will have to...

        Yeah. The totals will be right, but some of the fees (especially international fees and the Square Loan repayments they'll deduct from your gross receipts without a clear deduction) will have to be derived from the numbers they do report because they're entirely missing from the very shiny (and incomplete) reports. It's a pain. Rather than just giving at least a big, ugly, overcomplex excel sheet the way PayPal will, they'll give beautiful minimalist reports that only show what the report-maker thought would be relevant. Sadly, they're always trying to "innovate" into new areas, so those shiny reports don't necessarily show everything you want/need.

        7 votes
    2. [6]
      userexec
      Link Parent
      So I do the bulk of my sales online but every now and then need to do physical sales or send invoices. My use of Square is definitely still in "occasional pop-up shop" territory but that will...

      So I do the bulk of my sales online but every now and then need to do physical sales or send invoices. My use of Square is definitely still in "occasional pop-up shop" territory but that will likely be changing next year. Do you have a go-to that you'd recommend that can provide the convenience of POS and invoicing but has better business practices? I've gotten tons of offers from PayPal to Intuit but everyone's fees are nearly identical and without actually test driving the platforms it's just guesswork which one would be best in the long run.

      3 votes
      1. [3]
        MimicSquid
        Link Parent
        Since you already have an online sales platform if you're happy with it, you should see if it also has a physical POS system. The biggest mistake I see people make in the space is trying to have...

        Since you already have an online sales platform if you're happy with it, you should see if it also has a physical POS system. The biggest mistake I see people make in the space is trying to have multiple payment systems. I had one client who received payments through PayPal, Stripe, Square, Shopify, and Venmo, each for a different part of her business. It was a nightmare to actually track inventory and sales across all of those different systems. Even if it's not the best system at either, going with one system that can handle online and physical sales will make things a lot easier.

        4 votes
        1. [2]
          userexec
          Link Parent
          Yikes. That sounds like a nightmare scenario. I sell keycaps so Etsy is basically the go-to marketplace. Square integrates with that, so that's why I went with them for physical and invoicing....

          Yikes. That sounds like a nightmare scenario. I sell keycaps so Etsy is basically the go-to marketplace. Square integrates with that, so that's why I went with them for physical and invoicing. Skipped setting up a separate system with my website too and just wrote a cron job to poll my Etsy inventory and then auto populate my product listings with the purchase buttons redirecting to the Etsy listings. Shipping is integrated through Pirate Ship and federal taxes are automatically done through QuickBooks. I barely even have to think about inventory, payment, shipping, or taxes. It's possible the ease of use of my current setup outweighs changing to a better provider.

          3 votes
          1. MimicSquid
            Link Parent
            I would say so. Given the customization and automation you already have going, the fiddliness of some of Square's reporting is a lesser crime than recreating that elsewhere.

            I would say so. Given the customization and automation you already have going, the fiddliness of some of Square's reporting is a lesser crime than recreating that elsewhere.

            1 vote
      2. [2]
        Greg
        Link Parent
        I've found Stripe to be consistently excellent from a developer perspective, although I haven't used their physical terminals (they have a few "certified compatible" options and they're currently...

        I've found Stripe to be consistently excellent from a developer perspective, although I haven't used their physical terminals (they have a few "certified compatible" options and they're currently doing a limited release of their own branded version). I haven't had huge experience with their competitors, so I can't give you the best comparative answer, but I will say that they're one of the few companies that I'm a happy enough customer of to go out of my way to recommend.

        4 votes
        1. MimicSquid
          Link Parent
          From the admin side I haven't had any troubles with Stripe. That is, the problems that I've seen are ones where the business owner doesn't set up individual sales items, so at the end of the day...

          From the admin side I haven't had any troubles with Stripe. That is, the problems that I've seen are ones where the business owner doesn't set up individual sales items, so at the end of the day all the revenue is in a single pot called "Sales", which gives us minimal info with which to make business decisions.

          4 votes