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Its actual job
If you run physical locations on Square and want the same inventory and the same products online without doing any integration work, Square Online is close to the perfect product. Stock, catalogue and payments already agree with each other because they are the same system.
Why it cannot become a B2B platform
There is no meaningful concept of a business customer with negotiated prices, a credit limit and an approval chain. Adding that is not a configuration exercise — it is a different product. Square is not failing at B2B; it never tried.
The mixed model that actually works
Keep Square for the till and the walk-in customers. Run Shopware for the B2B channel with its own pricing, its own login and its own ERP link, and sync the product master between them. Two systems, each doing what it is good at, is a perfectly respectable architecture.
The decision in one sentence
If most of your revenue walks through a door, keep Square. If most of it comes from repeat business customers with their own prices, you need a platform that was designed for them.
- Square Online is a POS extension, and a good one.
- It has no real business-customer concept, by design.
- Square for retail + Shopware for B2B is a valid architecture.
Frequently asked questions
No, and not because it is badly built. There is no meaningful concept of a business customer with negotiated prices, a credit limit and an approval chain. Adding that is not a configuration exercise — it would be a different product. Square never tried to be that, so read this as a statement of scope rather than a criticism.
If you want the same inventory and the same products online with zero integration work, it is close to perfect: stock, catalogue and payments already agree because they are one system. The only question is whether your online business is the same business. If it sells to the same walk-in customers at the same prices, stay where you are.
Yes, and it is a perfectly respectable architecture. Square keeps the till and the walk-in trade; Shopware runs the B2B channel with its own pricing, its own login and its own ERP link; the product master syncs between them. Two systems each doing what they are good at beats one system pretending to do both.
In one sentence: if most of your revenue walks through a door, keep Square. If most of it comes from repeat business customers with their own negotiated prices, you need a platform designed for them, and no amount of configuration gets you there. Your revenue mix decides this, not the feature list. Work out the split before you sit through any demos.
We do this for a living — Shopware, Node.js, React, ERP integration and automation for B2B.
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