Squarespace & Square POS

Greetings from Vancouver Island, BC.  Hope everyone is staying safe.

I've got the Square Point of Sale (this beautiful stand unit and the mag reader) and I've signed up for Squarespace thinking, okay, these can either be stand alone or you can use them both.  We're setting up our fish & chips place to accept online orders for takeout, spacing people out to come get it, the usual.  It appears the squarespace site can reasonably do this, accept prepayments, etc.  It also appears the whole this is not really set up as a restaurant management system with tickets to the kitchen and the like. But I'll figure all that out later.

The biggest issue is that it appears to me that the POS and the site don't actually talk to each other or work together in any way.  I'm looking to confirm if I have this right.

• After you set up your squarespace website with a menu/pricing/ordering, you have to do the exact same thing on the POS in the case of a walk up placing an order. I have to use the iPad app to make the menu items, variations, pricing, etc. all over again and can't just bring the website over or the menu anyway.  Not the end of the world, I just want to stop trying to do what can't be done.  I see there is a mobile/iPad app to manage the website/orders, etc.  But I was hoping for a total solution.
• Weebly by Square.  Is that the integrated choice or a better choice?
• Does anyone know if there is a specific template or custom work that has been done for the restaurant industry that covers ordering, tickets to the kitchen, etc.

It is going to be a fun weekend getting all this going and ready.  As a side note the packaging for the Square Stand is stunning, well done!

Thanks for any feedback/comments.

Rick 

I'm running into the same issue - Squarespace seemed to advertise that they can sync inventory but this doesn't seem to actually be the case. I've got an issue where my inventory is in Squarespace and I need to offer employees a way to use the POS app. There isn't a way in squarespace to give permission just to use the POS app (and I don't even know what admin permission I'd give them to do it) - and if they use the Square app instead it wont keep track of our inventory.

GRRRR!!!!

As expected, there is quite a lot of confusion about the Point of Sale services provided by Squarespace, especially as they partnered with Square - a major player in the point of sale payments market. The company names are just too similar!

To ensure everyone is on the same page, I'll try to clarify some of the areas where others have been confused.

Square isn't Squarespace

Firstly, it's important to remember that Squarespace and Square are completely separate companies. They are not connected, and neither are their ecommerce platforms. You need to select one or the other for your inventory management. You cannot link or sync them yet*.

Availability

The options available to you will depend on your location.

Squarespace POS is currently only available in the USA. You cannot use it in Canada (or anywhere else) yet.

Square POS is available in many more countries.

Moving from Online to In-Person

If you are based in the USA and have been using a Squarespace Commerce plan to sell online, you can now sell in-person too, using the same Squarespace platform. To do this, you need a newish iPhone, iPad or Android phone that is capable of running a recent version of the Squarespace Commerce App (you'll find specific App version details in this support article). You'll also need to open a Square account for in-person payment processing and purchase one of their card readers.

If you are based outside the USA and are selling online with Squarespace, there isn't a Squarespace-only option available to you yet. Hopefully soon - but there's no word from anyone at Squarespace about when this will be. 

Moving from In-Person to Online

If you are based in the USA and are using Square for in-person sales then you have two options available to help you move online:

1. You can build a new Square Online Store and start selling online really quickly. Square will sync inventory between your POS and your Square Online Store if you create it using the "online store" option within your existing Square account.
2. You can build a new Squarespace store and then transition your inventory off Square and onto Squarespace. Once complete, you can use Squarespace for both online and in-person sales.

If you are outside the USA and you currently using Square for in-person sales then your options are:

1. You can build a new Square Online Store (as described above) for your online sales.

2. You can build a new Squarespace store for your online store and then purchase a third-party solution to bridge the gap between the two different inventory systems. Bear in mind that there will be additional costs to use a inventory-sync service such as Trunk Inventory.

I hope this helps.

21 hours ago, RickSegal said:

Greetings from Vancouver Island, BC.  Hope everyone is staying safe.

I've got the Square Point of Sale (this beautiful stand unit and the mag reader) and I've signed up for Squarespace thinking, okay, these can either be stand alone or you can use them both.  We're setting up our fish & chips place to accept online orders for takeout, spacing people out to come get it, the usual.  It appears the squarespace site can reasonably do this, accept prepayments, etc.  It also appears the whole this is not really set up as a restaurant management system with tickets to the kitchen and the like. But I'll figure all that out later.

The biggest issue is that it appears to me that the POS and the site don't actually talk to each other or work together in any way.  I'm looking to confirm if I have this right.

• After you set up your squarespace website with a menu/pricing/ordering, you have to do the exact same thing on the POS in the case of a walk up placing an order. I have to use the iPad app to make the menu items, variations, pricing, etc. all over again and can't just bring the website over or the menu anyway.  Not the end of the world, I just want to stop trying to do what can't be done.  I see there is a mobile/iPad app to manage the website/orders, etc.  But I was hoping for a total solution.
• Weebly by Square.  Is that the integrated choice or a better choice?
• Does anyone know if there is a specific template or custom work that has been done for the restaurant industry that covers ordering, tickets to the kitchen, etc.

It is going to be a fun weekend getting all this going and ready.  As a side note the packaging for the Square Stand is stunning, well done!

Thanks for any feedback/comments.

Rick 

Weebly, while now owned by Square and sales integration is good, product/stock integration is still not great. It's still 2 databases and they don't sync. I'll be curious to hear your experince of it after you've run it awhile. As I'm in Australia, we don't have yet ... would love to know if/when it's rolling out in Australia?

Ok I've been looking into this some - and it looks there are some services you can pay (like $19/mo) to synch your square and squarespace inventory. But they both have public API's (assuming you are on the advanced commerce plan here) so I'm pretty sure my company will just make a custom inventory synchronizer.

To reiterate what Paul said, looks like the Squarespace <> Square integration is merely re: hardware. There's no software or systems integration.

See attached image, pulled from https://www.squarespace.com/ecommerce/point-of-sale

If you want a webstore that syncs with your POS for a physical store, you EITHER commit to Squarespace OR you commit to Square ... at least for inventory mgmt and payments.

• SS solution: use Squarespace commerce functions for online sales + use Squarespace APP on an iPhone iPad etc WITH a Square card reader for brick & mortar (what I'm not sure about is whether this routes $ into your Square account, which is not the same as sending money into your Stripe account via SS Commerce on your webstore)
• Square solution: Square POS terminal for brick & mortar + Square Online Store for online sales ... do NOT use Squarespace Commerce functions

Seems like ... best thing to do is go with Square. And then if you need a website more robust than the Square Online Store, have a Squarespace site without Commerce, and put your Square Online Store on https://store.yourdomain.com

On 4/24/2020 at 2:53 PM, YourePerfect said:

I'm running into the same issue - Squarespace seemed to advertise that they can sync inventory but this doesn't seem to actually be the case. I've got an issue where my inventory is in Squarespace and I need to offer employees a way to use the POS app. There isn't a way in squarespace to give permission just to use the POS app (and I don't even know what admin permission I'd give them to do it) - and if they use the Square app instead it wont keep track of our inventory.

GRRRR!!!!

Same scene buddy.

I realize I'm late to the party here, but it seems this thread is still being referenced in other discussions.

I would recommend Extensiv Integration Manager (formerly CartRover) for syncing inventory between Squarespace and an inventory management system. They don't have native connections to every single platform, of course, so you should make sure yours is supported or better yet, migrate to one that is.

You'll definitely want to minimize the number of connections across your process and to pick an inventory system of record that is as close as possible to the point of sale. You'll also want to make sure you have failure alerts configured for every link in the chain, preferably at both sending and receiving ends.

Finally, if you have questions, feel free to reach out.

On 4/24/2020 at 4:53 AM, YourePerfect said:

I'm running into the same issue - Squarespace seemed to advertise that they can sync inventory but this doesn't seem to actually be the case. I've got an issue where my inventory is in Squarespace and I need to offer employees a way to use the POS app. There isn't a way in squarespace to give permission just to use the POS app (and I don't even know what admin permission I'd give them to do it) - and if they use the Square app instead it wont keep track of our inventory.

GRRRR!!!!

I have 2 stores with 4 POS systems which are basically the Squarespace app on an iPad, we unfortunately have to provide each minimum wage clerk Squarespace Site admin permissions to sell on on the Squarespace POS. How Dumb is this?

Hey Squarespace, why not leverage the built-in Store Manager Role instead of Site ADMIN. This is a gapping PCI DSS compliance hole in the US