How to Use Square’s AI Features as an Australian Small Retailer

Square is the most common POS system among independent Australian retailers, and over the past year, it’s added a set of AI-powered has that most users haven’t noticed yet.

This isn’t about switching to something new. If you’re already using Square, these has are already available to you. Some require a Square Plus or Premium subscription; the basics are included in the free plan.

Here’s what Square now offers, and what’s actually worth using.

1. Sales Insights and Business Trends

Square’s dashboard has always shown your daily takings. The AI layer on top of that pulls out patterns you wouldn’t spot manually.

Go to Square Dashboard > Reports > Business Trends. You’ll find:

• Which hours of the day are busiest (helps with staffing)
• Which days of the week outperform your average
• Product categories trending up or down over 4, 8, or 12-week windows
• Comparison against the same period last year

Most retailers check their total sales and stop there. Business Trends goes further. It flags anomalies. If a product category that normally sells well is dropping, you’ll see it before it becomes a serious problem.

2. Inventory Alerts

Square’s low-stock alerts aren’t new, but the threshold-setting has improved. More useful now is the out-of-stock prediction feature in Square Retail Plus, which analyses your sell-through rate and tells you how many days of stock you have left at the current pace.

This is particularly valuable in the lead-up to busy periods. If Square tells you your best-selling item will run out in eight days and your supplier needs ten, you know to reorder today.

To set this up: Square Dashboard > Items > Item Library > select a product > enable Stock Alerts. Set your low-stock threshold, then turn on notifications.

If you’re running multiple variants (sizes, colours), set alerts per variant. Running out of size 8 when you have plenty of sizes 10 and 12 is still a stockout problem.

3. Customer Analytics

Square’s Customer Directory builds a profile for every customer who pays by card, including their purchase history, average spend, and visit frequency. The AI layer on this data now surfaces:

• At-risk customers: people who used to buy regularly but haven’t been in for a while
• Your best customers: ranked by lifetime spend, not just recent visits
• Lapsed customers: those who haven’t visited in 60, 90, or 120 days (you set the window)

This is genuinely useful for retention. If 15 of your best customers haven’t been in for three months, that’s something you can act on. A personal message, a targeted offer, a simple “we’ve missed you” email.

Access this at: Square Dashboard > Customers > Customer Directory > Segments.

4. Square Marketing (Email and AI Copy)

Square’s built-in marketing tool lets you send emails directly from your customer list. It has added AI-assisted copy generation. You describe your promotion, and Square writes a draft email.

It’s not sophisticated, but for a quick sale announcement or event invitation, it works. You can edit the draft before sending.

Where this gets useful: Square can automatically trigger an email to lapsed customers with a discount code. You set it up once, and it runs. For a small retailer who doesn’t have time to manage email campaigns manually, this kind of automation is exactly what you want.

Set this up at: Square Dashboard > Marketing > Automations > Customer Lapse.

5. Square Assistant (Conversational Queries)

Square recently added a natural language query feature to the dashboard. Type a question like “What was my best-selling product in May?” or “How many customers have spent over $200 this year?” and Square answers it directly.

This is available in the dashboard search bar. It’s still limited in what it can answer, but it’s improving. For quick lookups that would otherwise require digging through reports, it saves real time.

What’s Not Worth the Hype

Square’s AI has are solid for what they do, but they’re not magic. They work best when your inventory is properly set up: every product catalogued, every variant correctly assigned, stock levels accurately maintained.

If your Square setup is messy (products not in categories, stock counts not updated after receiving), the insights will be unreliable. Clean data in, useful insights out.

Before leaning on Square’s AI features, spend an hour cleaning your product library.

Subscription Tiers

Most of the analytics has above are available on the free plan. The advanced inventory features (out-of-stock prediction, variant-level tracking) require Square Retail Plus ($89/month as of mid-2026) or higher.

For most single-store retailers, the free plan’s insights are enough to start. Upgrade if you’re running a catalogue of 50-plus products with multiple variants.

Sources

• Square Retail has overview (Australia): https://squareup.com/au/en/point-of-sale/retail
• Square Business Trends: https://squareup.com/help/au/en/article/7072-square-dashboard-business-trends
• Square Marketing and Automations: https://squareup.com/au/en/email-marketing
• Square Customer Directory: https://squareup.com/help/au/en/article/5504-get-started-with-square-customer-directory
• Square Retail Plus pricing (AU): https://squareup.com/au/en/point-of-sale/retail/pricing

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