Improving the Estimates and Invoicing Process

[WonderTent]

We've been using Square for our business for several years now and love the ease and integration that is starting to happen. I have the following suggestions to improve the Customer Experience for business not using the Square Terminal but rather sending our Estimates/Invoices.

OVERALL

INCLUDE IMAGES

We can add images to our ITEM LIBRARY so isn't there the option to include the images when pulling together an estimate or invoice. As we are a service company where clients pick experiences, and themes - being able to confirm their inquiry with visuals would be a HUGE improvement to the Estimate and Invoicing process.

ESTIMATES

SAVE PACKAGES FOR FUTURE

The new PACKAGES beta shows a lot of promise. It could be improved by allowing us to pre-populate our packages and save them - similar to an ITEM so that if a client is interested in X we can offer them X+Y, X+Y+Z etc. Currently having to start each package from scratch is time-consuming and cumbersome.

OPTION FOR ADD ONS

It would be great in addition to or in place of PACKAGES we had the option to include ADD ONS. For our company clients are drawn into our base packages but often want to add on other services, sometimes 2 or 3 more. Rather than trying to cover off all variables in PACKAGES it would be great to allow clients to select 1, 2 or all add ons. 

INVOICES

TIP AFTER JOB IS COMPLETED

Many clients want to Tip following our service period. We arrive, set up an experience and collect the next day. May don't want to tip in Advance (understandable) but want to tip after having a great experience. As our company operates, clients pay prior to delivery of the experience so there isn't a flexibility there. 

Is there a way to generate a THANK YOU message after the experience that allows clients to TIP?

CONTRACTS

The options you have are great but lack flexibility. We already have a standard contract for our experiences that cover off advance payments, liability, weather conditions etc. It would be great to have a Blank/Guided Contract option that allows us to fill in the sections we need (literally copy and paste what we already have) for clients to sign digitally.

I'm sure I'm not alone in needing some flexibility in the above, and this additions would be great for our customer UX and our own.

Thanks

Trish

[JustinC]

@WonderTent

Thanks for expanding your thoughts and voicing your suggestions. These are great ideas and we hope to implements them in the future. 

Regarding item images and invoices, a workaround that might work is using the attachment feature to include the designs you offer. Hope this helps for the time being. 

Be sure to keep tabs here for future improvements 🙂

[WonderTent]

@JustinC 

Another thought that just arose as we deal more and more with estimates is giving clients the option to Approve with Notes. Provide a small note section for them to make changes etc.

Currently they will Approve an Estimate to get the booking locked in but then email, DM or text me to say "can we add this" or "can we not do this" etc. If we don't receive the email or text in time we thing everything is Approved and then end up looking bad and having to redo invoices.

Thanks

[Joe]

Hi there, @WonderTent 👋 I can step in for Justin on this one!

This is a good one! This kind of feature reminds me of the editing ability of Google Docs, which allows all parties to make edits and it tracks those edits for further visibility. It is a super helpful feature and I can definitely see how this would be helpful for collaborating parties on Invoices!

I'm going to go ahead and pass this along to our Invoices Team as a Feature Request! Should anything come down the pipeline, you will be the first to know here.

Thanks, again!

[thesweetpraxis]

I agree with ALL of the suggestions above and would like to add on some requests and feedback.

We have been testing the new Estimates feature which has allowed for multiple options in an estimate, and the customer can select which option they would like to move forward with. It would be helpful if the customer could select multiple options, instead of only one. We are a bakery and for catering events such as weddings, we sometime include many options for desserts, and often our clients want to choose 3 of the 7 options we propose, however the current feature does not allow for that.

Additionally, if the customer had a way to "request a change" to the estimate as another option besides "Accept Estimate" that would be helpful. There are a lot of emails back and forth currently.

Another feature request is to allow for us to attach an unsigned contract, so that they can sign at the same time they accept the estimate or invoice.

Thanks!