What Is Square For Bars & How Does It Compare To Other Bar Software?

The free POS app is just that, free.

There are no long-term contracts, and you can use its basic feature set that includes payment processing, inventory, and employee management, access to the Square App store, and more with no upfront costs. All you can expect to pay are the processing fees of 2.6% + $0.10 per tap, dip, or swipe transaction. Businesses processing more than $250,000 in sales can call about a custom rate.

Square For Restaurants also has a free option that comes with basic restaurant features and the same 2.6% + $0.10 processing rate. If you are looking for a more advanced POS for bars, you can upgrade to the Pro Plan, which runs $69/month and comes with some extra benefits like 24/7 customer phone support and unlimited use of Square KDS devices. It’s an additional $40/month for each added countertop device and an additional $50/month per location for locations using mobile POS. Square also offers a custom pricing plan for more high-volume establishments.

While you can start with Square or Square For Restaurants for free, you can also tap into some of its other pair offerings to expand your business or simply help it run more efficiently.

Square Loyalty: If you want to increase your customer retention rate, you can add Square Loyalty to your POS offering. Square Loyalty allows you to quickly enroll customers in a plan where they can earn points or rewards, encouraging them to keep coming back to your bar or nightclub. Plans start at $45/month for 0-500 loyalty visits, and higher tiers are $75/month and $105/month.

Square Payroll: If you want to keep some of your accounting integrated with your POS software, Square Payroll is a terrific option. This service allows you to file taxes and provides you with expert support. You can pay your employees immediately and easily track employee hours. There is a free option for basic payroll and a paid tier for $35/month with more advanced features.

Square Advanced Acess: For more advanced employee management, you may want to consider upgrading to Advanced Access. For $35/month per location, you get team sales reports, schedule creation, open-shift scheduling, timecards, tip tracking and pooling, additional reporting, and other valuable features.

24/7 Phone Support: When you upgrade to Square For Restaurants’ $69/month paid plan, you get access to round-the-clock customer support.

The Square Stand is simple but effective and, for $149, turns your tablet into a fully functional POS system. Square Stand takes all forms of payment and can be used both customer and employee-facing. It is compatible with all of Square’s major software offerings and can now be purchased with Square Stand Mount, giving business owners more versatility with where they place their systems.

Square tablet POS iPad stand with built-in card reader.

For bars that are wanting to emphasize the ability to take mobile payments, Square Terminal might be an excellent choice. Square Terminal can function as a countertop POS but can also be used remotely by servers to take payments on the go. It accepts all forms of payments and now functions with all of Square’s software. Square Terminal costs $299 per unit and comes with a built-in receipt printer, and can also connect to any other device running Square POS.

Square Terminal Contactless Payments

The most powerful offering in Square’s hardware line-up is Square Register. This all-in-one POS system costs $799 and features a separate screen for employees and customers. It runs Square for Restaurants, Square for Retail, and Square Appointments and takes all forms of payments, including Cash App. Syncing Square Register to other products like Square KDS, receipt printers, and scanners gives you the ability to run your entire business from one easy location.

Square Register

Clover is priced similarly to Square and has equally intuitive hardware for accepting mobile payments. It also has a rich feature set with excellent inventory management that is updated in real-time. Clover’s reporting is deep and allows you to drill down into what products and ingredients are money makers and which are loss leaders.

Clover accepts all forms of payments and allows you to pre-authorize credit cards. You can also easily split tickets and manage tipping. Like Square, Clover has a unique app market that gives you access to scores of integrations to help your business run more efficiently as well. The downside of Clover is that its hardware is slightly more expensive than Square, and its parent company Fiserv does not have a sterling reputation when it comes to customer service.

Toast was created with restaurants in mind and is a terrific option for bars and nightclubs. The company has carved out a niche when it comes to mobile ordering and contactless payments and has everything you might need to help cut down on wait times at a busy bar. Toast has Toast Go, its intuitive mobile ordering device that allows servers or bartenders to take orders and payments directly.

Toast comes with outstanding 24/7 customer support and, like Square, has an excellent Kitchen Display System to help your cooks keep tickets organized. Its software is sleek and intuitive, with an easy-to-see dark mode that fits in with your bar or night clubs aesthetic. Toast does lock you into its own payment processor, however, and has had a reputation of signing up customers to long-term contracts that are difficult to get out of.