Live Q&A: Ask us anything about managing employees with Square

[katieand]

Hi Sellers,

On March 29th, we hosted a Live Q&A all about managing your employees! We had Chris Cosgrove, Product Manager from the Employee Management team, here to answer your questions.

@Chris_C leads the product team for Square Employee Management, which includes employee permissions, timecards, and sales reporting. Prior to this role, he led the onboarding team which focused on helping new sellers get started with Square as quickly and easily as possible. As a Bay Area transplant from the Boston area, when Chris isn’t hammering out the details of engineering work and future feature releases, you can find him gearing up for Red Sox opening day.

A couple example questions:

• What are some best practices for setting up different employee permissions in Square?
• How do I know which will work best: Guest Mode, Employee logins, or mobile staff?
• What are the biggest benefits of using timecards?

Chris Cosgrove, Employee Management Product Manager

[NJFCafe11]

Would like to receive an email when employee clocks in and out so I know they are there.

[Chris_C]

Thanks for the timecard questions. We’ve discussed timecards a bit in some of the earlier questions, but there’s much, much more to come in this area. We will likely start with mobile optimizing timecard reporting first to make it easier to interact with on a phone or tablet, but we have also had some discussions about showing timecard reporting in the Point of Sale app in the future. No firm plans as of yet, but it is something we will do in the future. An email alert each time an employee clocks in/out is not a request we’ve gotten before, but does not feel at first glance like something that would be too difficult for us to implement. I could see it being a timecard setting that you could turn on/off. @tap1495, @NJFCafe11, Do you envision this as an alert sent when an employee clocks in/out, or more of a ‘show me what’s happened in the last 2 hours’ type notification? 

[Michael-StarB]

Mulitple Pay Types for each employee would be helpful.    Sometimes a staff member needs to clock in as an Line Worker and sometimes as  WAIT staff (or for us as PRODUCTION work) 

[ACAcatering]

I have a bit of a unique situation, and hopefully this isn't a setting that I've overlooked, but here goes.  I usually only have one employee that clocks in, but there are occassions where I have need for two.  From everything I have seen, I have to pay monthly if I want to have multiple employees in the system with a passcode to clock in.  I don't want to have to pay for an employee that may not be working that month, but might the next.  I also don't want to have to try and remember to switch that employee's role everytime I need them for a day or two.  Am I missing something, or is this just how it is?

[Chris_C]

Thanks for the question, @ACAcatering. You’re not missing something - that’s just how it is right now, but I am very aware that the current pricing structure may not be ideal for customers in your situation. We’ve been exploring a few different things to help with this - for example, pricing by location instead of by employee so you wouldn’t need to juggle if/when a certain employee is scheduled to work and make sure they’re active at that time. I am really interested in hearing pricing feedback from you and others, because I know it is a pain point for some of you for scenarios like this one.

[VanKalkerFarms]

location pricing sounds like a great idea.

[thesweetpraxis]

I own a bakery and would love the option for scheduling staff (in an app format like When I Work") and requesting time off.

The most critical item we need is the ability for staff to check how many hours they've worked in a given pay period (to avoid overtime) and to review their own timecards in order to catch errors (like accidentally forgot to clock in). This also ensures transparency within the organization so our staff can see if we have adjusted timecards.

[harriscoffee]

We're looking to move an employee to a salaried (instead of hourly) position soon. Can we do that in Square?

[Chris_C]

Hi @harriscoffee, you can do this with Square Employee Management. You’ll just need to edit that employee’s details by first selecting them from your employee list in your Square Dashboard. On the ‘Edit Employee’ page, change their pay type from ‘Hourly’ to ‘Salary’, and you’ll then be prompted to provide their annual salary and weekly hours worked. These data points are used to calculate an hourly rate, which will be the new basis for this employee’s labor costs as shown in timecard reporting, assuming will continue to have them clock in/out. 👍

[PaintnSip]

Do you have a road path for the Employee Management? I'm most interested in the ability to pull in credit tips and to add card tips. As well as giving staff multiple pay rates.

[Chris_C]

Hi @PaintnSip 👋 I do not have a roadmap to share publicly, but can confirm that we are currently working on multiple pay rates. As mentioned in an earlier response, I’m happy to include you in our testing of this feature a bit later in the year. Can you elaborate a bit more on where you’re hoping to see credit card tips and what you’ll do with them? These are available today in the Employee Sales report in your Square Dashboard (assuming your employees are logged in while executing sales transactions). Are you hoping to see them in a different place as well (e.g. Timecard reporting)?

[PaintnSip]

First of all, thank you for doing this. It's always nice when a software company takes time to communicate to their users. I'm a huge fan of square.

We are a bar, so my staff record their time, and their card and cash tips for tax reporting purposes at the end of every shift. Right now I'm having to do that on a spreadsheet, and then manually input them into the payroll system. At the very least, I would think Square would be able to automatically import the credit card tips since, as you mentioned, they are already tied to the employee in square.

Ideally, the solution would:

- automatically fill in the credit card tips based on square's existing system

- allow the employee to input cash tips on a separate line

- then input both of those into the the payroll system

[TheFreshLoaf]

Hey @Chris_C! It's super cool that you're doing this, so thanks in advance. Personally, it's important for me that my employees take proper breaks because: 1) they deserve them 2) I want to be compliant with the law. Is this on the roadmap? 

[Chris_C]

Hi there @TheFreshLoaf and thanks for the question! 💯 I know this a really big deal from a compliance standpoint, and we want to make sure we’re supporting you. Good news - this is actually something that a subset of sellers are testing as we speak, and it’s not too far away from being available to everyone. I’m happy to include you (and anyone else) in that testing. If you’re interested please just let me know! 

[thesweetpraxis]

Taking breaks is a huge issue for us as well! Can we be included in the test please?

[Chris_C · Accepted solution]

Thank you all for the great questions and participation! I really enjoyed talking to you about your needs and ideas for managing employees with Square. We hear you loud and clear, and have a great team working on many of the things you asked about. To wrap up, I wanted to leave you with a few pro tips to make the most out of your experience:

1. Double check your workweek and workday settings.

Separate from your business hours, your work day and work week settings are specific to how your employees should be paid. For most businesses, the start of a work week is 12AM Sunday, matching the typical start of the week. However, certain businesses may need to operate on a different work week schedule, such as Tuesday-Monday. Others have a work day that runs overnight (e.g. bars). Since Square uses these settings to determine when an employee qualifies for overtime, I recommend making sure your work week and workday settings correctly match your business needs. Check out our Support Center for more details on how to change your settings.

2. Make sure your employees are logged in when taking a sale.

If you are interested in tracking individual employee sales and credit card tips, make sure you are instructing your employees to log in to the Point-of-Sale with their passcodes prior to executing the sale. We are rolling out some improvements to

Employee Management device settings as we speak which will help with this. The best way to ensure that an employee is logged in at all times (and to avoid untracked sales in your reporting), is to select the ‘Always Require Passcode’ option. You will see an

employee’s Initials in the corner of the screen when they are logged in.

3. Keep the feedback coming!

I’m looking forward to doing another AMA, but in the meantime feel free to tag me directly in your future posts for any other questions or ideas you have. I’ll also be following up with any of you who expressed interest in testing the features we’re working on right now (break tracking, multiple pay rates).

Thank you again for the great questions and comments. Feel free to post any others and I’ll get you an answer!

[katieand]

Quick update for everyone - @Cosgrove is looking for some feedback about employee management. Feel free to leave some comments on this post about how you're using employee management! 

[cbtractor82]

I there a way that one can look at time clock history?

[Joe]

Hi there, @cbtractor82 👋 Thanks for reaching out to us here on the Seller Community!

I've gone ahead and merged your post into an existing thread of Sellers who were also looking for information regarding Timecard reporting.

Take a look at this helpful resource which will walk you through navigating the reporting details for your Team Members and Timecards.

Let us know if you have any further questions!