Tools that help businesses grow (beyond payments) | for those who do

Running a business is not an easy task. Beyond the cost of initial access to financing, running a company on a day-to-day basis is full of difficulties of all kinds related to payments, invoices, personnel management, customer service…

For a long time, different initiatives have been promoted to help SMEs and self-employed workers, essential actors in the recovery of the economy in this post-pandemic era, to adapt to this new digital context. Since last January, Square has offered in Spain a comprehensive package of tools for software Y hardware customizable to the needs of each business, which is designed to help in the management and growth of companies of different sizes and sectors – including retail, hospitality, health and beauty, home repair and professional services.

In addition to proposing solutions that facilitate payments in a completely secure way in a matter of seconds, Square develops a multitude of tools to make control of business activity more bearable. This technology helps manage staff, assign work shift schedules, keep track of hours… This is one of the most tedious tasks, since it is not always easy to anticipate the needs of the staff and maximize their productivity.

In scheduling, planning is essential. That is why we must always try to anticipate possible needs and make sure that there are enough staff available at times of greatest workload. To do this, you have to review the historical data in the software of the point of sale (POS) terminal such as those offered by Square, which allow you to process payments over the Internet without resorting to expensive servers or a software expensive that forces to buy new versions to be updated.

For the planned schedules to be valid, it is essential to manage the availability of the staff. It is also interesting to know what their preferences are: the staff may prefer to work first thing in the morning, or at night, during the week or on weekends, depending on their personal situation. Knowing this information in advance helps to avoid two big problems: on the one hand, not having enough staff inevitably affects customer service. And having too many employees on a slack schedule hurts business profitability.

Square Team Management lets you plan schedules in minutes, easily customize employee access, and view real-time sales and performance stats. In turn, workers can find out and adjust their schedules, record the time they come in and out, request days off, as well as check the hours worked and get an estimate of their salaries. All from a single application, through your iPhone or Android devices and at no additional cost. To use this tool, it is essential to have Square POS, which makes personnel accounts and reports available so that employee management is as simple as possible. In addition, each worker has a personal PIN that allows access to the tool. In short, a solution that avoids many headaches when creating work schedules. All this, in addition, allows savings in labor costs, improves the performance of the company, boosts sales and avoids possible losses.

Reservations to win customers

Also, Square allows us to book appointments through its platform. From hairdressers to private music lessons, professional services or personal training, the tool turns your customers’ device into a simple and powerful system to manage reservations automatically. Among other functions, it allows you to make appointments on the go through a apps and send automated email and SMS reminders to customers to remind them of their reservation. For any business, it is important to have a digital system with these characteristics, since in general, people usually make their reservations in their free time and it may happen that at that time, the physical store is closed (with the loss of potential sales). ). Using this tool on-lineentrepreneurs and self-employed workers ensure that the reservation is completed successfully and, therefore, materializes in a future income.

Another of Square’s most useful applications is related to invoices, which is one of the most cumbersome moments in daily business operations. However, invoices are very useful, as they help keep track of payments in real time and keep track of those payments, which comes in handy when calculating income at the end of the year. And while creating an invoice takes extra effort, it’s not too much work either, especially if you use a software billing that allows you to create templates.

Precisely the program developed by Square saves time and helps to collect more quickly, in a matter of a few hours. In fact, three out of four invoices sent with Square are paid in one day. Among other things, this tool allows you to send electronic invoices and estimates in a matter of seconds, and consult the documents from anywhere, as well as accept payments, launch reminders and track which invoices have been paid and which have not.

It also helps to streamline and organize the work agenda, since through a series of templates it facilitates the issuance of personalized electronic invoices, project folders, installment payment schedules and budgets with various options. Any type of business (retail, professional services, organizations, restaurants, self-employed…) can use Square Invoices.

Loyalty and know their tastes

In addition, Square allows you to keep the customer directory updated through a software CRM (Customer Relationship Management), which stands for customer relationship management. This process helps to know and understand users, their likes, dislikes, favorite products and interests. The CRM program streamlines this process through the collection of customer data and its subsequent interpretation, so that their needs can be better met. It can be information obtained from the POS system, marketing campaigns, social media interactions, registration forms and surveys… The latest CRM tools store customer information in the cloud, which means that it can be accessed at any time and from any device.

Among the numerous advantages that the use of CRM entails, the care of the client portfolio, better orientation of marketing actions, time savings and identification of new buyers stand out. In this sense, Square offers a software free CRM that is integrated into your payment tools and can be used to check customer information, see how they interact with the business and also communicate with them from one place. This allows you to give them special treatment, discover what their favorite articles are, listen to them in real time, personalize their profiles and create a database on-line that stores information of each user. In addition to all of these benefits, Square’s Customer Directory ensures that all of your data is protected and stored securely.

A wireless dataphone to sell instantly

To make getting paid easier (and faster) than ever, Square has developed Square Terminal, a portable payment terminal with a built-in receipt printer that lets you manage inventory, accept payments, and even view real-time reports. This device – wireless, secure and with integrated software – is intuitive, easy to configure and allows you to start selling instantly. It is an ideal tool for remote billing or receiving card payments by mail or mobile. This includes the ability to send secure payment links to customers via SMS so they can easily pay without accessing a computer and do so directly from their smartphone.

With its built-in free virtual POS system and a set of robust tools, Square Terminal lets you choose items from the catalog and avoid manual errors, pay no setup or subscription fees, protect customer information with built-in security features, forget of paper and send electronic receipts, as well as see how the business is evolving with real-time data analysis. Another advantage is that a team of experts monitors any suspicious activity, blocks fraudulent transactions and negotiates with the bank when there are payment claims.