With competition in mobile payments heating up, Square continues to expand its offerings for small businesses to other areas where local merchants are missing out compared to big retailers and franchises.
Today the company is launching Square Analytics, a free set of tools that tie in to its suite of register products, which already includes Inventory, Invoices, and the recently launched Appointments.
Tying in to the data that Square already collects about a small business’s sales, Square Analytics is able to show real-time updates on which products are doing well, when sales are best each day, how many customers are being served, and more:
For those retailers who don’t think they need updates for the very latest data, Square Analytics also sends data summaries to your email at your preferred rate; if you want to dig into that data, each email also comes with spreadsheets with all of the data captured by Square’s tools. Square Analytics can also tie into a retailer’s accounting software, letting you connect your account to services like Quickbooks or Xero.
It’s tough to say how Square’s register toolset is helping the company from a competitive standpoint. If small retailers are too price conscious, they may simply move between Square and competitors like Amazon’s Local Register service for their mobile payments depending on who is willing to charge the lowest fees. With that said, keeping track of sales in real-time is hard and most software for things like inventory management is ugly and difficult to use. Some retailers, if not for Square’s offerings, might very well be managing that information by hand using pen and paper.
By giving free, easy tools to those merchants, Square makes it that much harder to leave its service. While Square might want you to believe that all is swell, thanks for asking, the truth is that it’s working in a crowded space that’s difficult to disrupt. Becoming indispensable for small businesses is one way that Square can keep ahead of competitors willing to undercut on price.