How to Automate Square

The register is the most honest record a shop keeps

Square is the card reader and the point of sale a great many small businesses actually run on: a game shop, a cheese counter, a pet store, a coffee bar, a stall in a food hall. It began as a white plastic square plugged into a phone, and Square Point of Sale grew into the whole counter.

What it holds is unusually complete for something so cheap to start with. Every sale, with the items, the modifiers, the tender type and the tip. The item library and what stock is left. The customer directory, built quietly out of the people who chose to have a receipt emailed. Team timecards. Appointments, if you book them. Payouts, and when they reached the bank.

Nobody typed any of it in. That is the point of a till. It is the one record in the business that is a byproduct of the work rather than a chore added on top, which makes it the most reliable thing an owner has.

Closing up is a second job after the doors lock

Then the shutters come down and the second shift starts.

The day's total on the Square Dashboard gets copied into a spreadsheet, because the owner wants it next to last year's. The delivery platforms get opened one at a time, since a third of the takings never went through the register and each app keeps its own dashboard. The payout that landed this morning is a lump sum covering parts of three days, and somebody works out which days.

Stock gets counted against what sold, because Square knows what left the shelf and only the supplier's portal knows what is coming. That supplier site gets checked for the price on the case you reorder every fortnight. Reviews get read. The invoice a wholesale customer has still not paid gets looked up.

Every one of those is fifteen minutes, and there are six of them, and they land at the end of nine hours on your feet.

Square

One total, every channel The register, each delivery platform and the online store added up into a single figure, waiting before the shop opens.

Payouts traced back to sales The lump sum that landed this morning split across the days it covers, with anything that does not add up flagged for you.

Reorders priced first Low stock checked against the supplier portal for availability and this week's cost, so an order is priced before it is placed.

Square's automations begin and end inside Square

Square automates a surprising amount at no extra cost, and a shop should exhaust that list before buying anything else.

Square Marketing sends recurring automatic campaigns: a welcome for a new customer, a birthday discount, a nudge to somebody who has lapsed, an abandoned cart reminder. Square Loyalty tracks points and applies rewards at checkout on its own. Square Invoices sends recurring invoices on a schedule and chases with automatic payment reminders before, on and after the due date. Square Appointments sends text and email reminders ahead of a booking, and Square Assistant handles the confirm-or-reschedule reply on its own. The Customer Directory builds itself out of transactions.

Look at what every one of those has in common. The trigger is something Square handled: a Square sale, a Square booking, a Square invoice, a Square loyalty account.

The takings on the delivery app are invisible to it. So is the wholesaler's price list, the bank statement the payout actually landed in, and the review left on a site Square has no relationship with. Square is honest about being a point of sale. It is only that a shop is bigger than its point of sale.

The whole day's takings, not just the ones on Square

Widen what can be read and the morning report stops being a Square report and starts being a business report.

Yesterday's total across everything: the register, each delivery platform's dashboard, the online store, added up and waiting before the shop opens. The payout that arrived this morning broken back down against the sales it covers, and flagged when it does not add up.

The reorder list checked twice a day against what is on the shelf, then against the supplier's portal for what is in stock and what it costs this week, so an order is priced before it goes out. Refunds from the last twenty-four hours read and anything unusual pulled out, because a run of refunds on one till at one time of day is worth seeing early.

New reviews found across the sites that carry them, with a reply drafted in your voice. Wholesale invoices still unpaid, checked against the bank rather than against hope.

Reading and comparing can run unattended all night. Anything that messages a customer or moves money should be prepared and left for a person, because a shop like this lives on its regulars.

The evening count no longer needs a person

Six dashboards, one total, and the person adding them up closed the shop an hour ago. Adding up is not the judgement here.

WebRun is an agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens the Square Dashboard, the delivery platforms, the supplier portal or the bank, reads what is on the screen, and writes the result into a spreadsheet, an email or the channel your team already checks. Because it works the browser rather than an API, it reaches the systems that never built a Square integration, which is most of them.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, and you can watch a run and stop it partway. Anything that reaches a customer or moves money is drafted and waits for you.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names the sites it opens.