Grow your business: Ask us anything about subscriptions and recurring payments!

[Tom]

👋  Hello Sellers! We were thrilled to have our Subscriptions team drop in for a Q&A on Wednesday, September 1st at noon PT / 3pm ET!

We recently launched a set of subscription features that unlock the ability to create subscription plans and accept recurring payments with your customers. As we will continue to iterate after this initial launch, our product team wants to hear directly from you.

With that, it was exciting to introduce you to @JenLax, who has been leading the charge with this new set of features. She and her team were eager to hear your thoughts on everything ranging from initial setup—to what you'd like to see more of in the future.

Note on account-specific questions: For your privacy and security, we are not able to address issues related to specific payments, deposits, or account status details in our public forums. If you need assistance on one of those topics, please contact our Customer Success team and they'll be able to take a deeper dive into your account.

[jle9]

Hi,

Any plans on how a customer can manage their subscriptions by using a customer portal or so in the future? It would be great if a client can have a customer portal to access their current subscriptions or invoices.

Thanks!

[jean_sq]

Subscribers are currently able to cancel their subscription or change their payment method by clicking on links contained in the initial email they receive after subscribing. Soon they will be able to pause their subscriptions as well. During 2022 we hope to offer deeper access to customer information.

[QualityConcrete]

Test

[Klanier22]

Is this new launch the current tab “ subscriptions “ in square? If so it’s not very customizable please advise snd send further information or instructions thanks! 

[Twpchair]

You can change the settings back to the old format if that's what your referring too. 

[JosietheBeautic]

How does this work for service based businesses? This is made for customers to pay before or after they have already gotten serviced? 

What if they don't pay? 

I was under the impression subscription model is meant that they pay before hand and have credited to their account and then it's applied to after their visit from our salon.

[jean_sq]

After a buyer subscribes, they are sent invoices (billed) on a recurring basis. They can cancel at any time. You can view and make changes to the subscription (payment method, notes, price) in Dashboard. You can also visit our help article for a quick overview. Let me know if there is anything else that is not clear to you.

[RedBeeCofee]

I want to make a subscription for coffee bags. Customers can get 1-4 bags and have three different coffee options to choose from. How should I go about this?

Can customers add multiple coffee bags in the same subscription or do they have to create multiple subscriptions if they would like a variety of coffee bags?

[jean_sq]

Unfortunately, currently you would need to create multiple checkout links (one for each variation of your options). Good news is that checkout links with options is a feature coming in 2022.

[KatieHollister]

Thank you for your response to my questions. 

I have a couple more please: what is the difference between recurring invoices and subscriptions? What factors would lead me to choose one over the other?

[KatieHollister]

I see your response to this on my email, but your response is not appearing here. Thank you for your response. So, based on your response, it appears that there is no difference between recurring invoices and subscriptions. If that is not correct, please let me know. Thank you for conducting this Q and A session!

[AdamB]

Hey, @KatieHollister! 👋 Thanks for your questions! The answers will actually show directly underneath the questions themselves rather than here at end of the list of replies to the thread. If you click use the page number buttons on the bottom of the page, you can scroll and see your original questions and the responses as well.

[jean_sq]

That’s a great question. There are many differences between recurring invoices and subscriptions. If I understood a bit more about your situation, I could certainly make a recommendation on which would be the best route for you. Could you share a bit more about what you are considering offering through either recurring invoices or subscription? (Either post here or feel free to reach out to me directly)

[jean_sq · Accepted solution]

Hello Everyone,

Thanks again for taking the time to share your questions and feedback!

We hope your questions were answered—the experiences you've shared will help us as we continue to iterate based on your feedback.

As we close out this event, we wanted to do a recap on three themes that came up frequently:

Subscription fulfillment support: Though not currently available, we plan to offer this in early 2022.

Advanced Seller and Buyer Controls for Subscriptions: We will offer pause/resume capability on subscriptions (for both sellers and customers) as well as custom billing dates on subscriptions later this year (2021). 

Square Online integration: We hope to have full integration with Square Online in 2022 which will offer fulfillment flows with online inventory as well as deeper access to customer information.

Get started using subscriptions today - no monthly fees and only 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction on each subscription, regardless of whether the card is present or not present.

The subscriptions product will see lots of exciting changes in the next six months and beyond. As we work on what things to prioritize, we love to hear from sellers on what controls and features are most important. Please keep sharing here in the Seller Community. We are listening!

Again, thanks for your participation.

For a review of other products we featured this month within the Seller Community, take a look at this post: Upcoming Events in Seller Community, July Edition.

[jean_sq]

Hi! Got a quick update on a popularly requested Subscriptions feature: Pause and Resume. Sellers (and buyers) can now pause and resume their subscriptions through Square Subscriptions on dashboard. Read the product update for more details!

[thebrainlair]

Although I've been able to create a subscription plan, when I add that checkout link to my online store, it skips the cart and it skips adding shipping. I want customers to see the shipping costs since they are increasing often. How do I change the subscription plan to a physical item to add to cart and get shipping added?

[jean_sq]

Hi! At this time, Subscriptions is not integrated into the Square Online checkout flow so you won't see the shipping options from cart flow. Subscriptions is also not currently tied to your Square inventory catalog. The good. news is that we are working on that and expect to have Subscriptions integrated with your Square catalog (physical items) as well as allowing your subscriptions to flow through the Square Online checkout flow by end of this year, early next year. Let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks for using Square!

[FarmerClaire]

Is this working now? I received a notice that my customer paid, but it didn't show up as an order, so I can't create a shipping label.

[jean_sq]

Hi @FarmerClaire , all subscription orders show up in Square Order Manager (and NOT Square Online Order Manager - that will be deprecated later this year). Please note that the shipping options that are available in Square Order Manager are different than Square Online Order Manager. There will be parity later this year though!

[thebrainlair]

Where can I find custom billing options? We ship out boxes on a certain date with monthly cutoff dates and want to give customers cutoff dates.