Live Q&A: Learn how to get paid again and again (and again) with predictable revenue streams

[Tom]

Square’s subscription management software allows any business to easily create recurring revenue streams. If your business utilizes subscriptions, memberships, donations, or other forms of recurring payments, our product team wants to hear from you. Not using this service but interested in learning more? This is also the discussion for you. 

On Wednesday, September 28, we welcomed back @jean_sq from the Subscriptions team for another Question & Answer session! Her team is always eager to learn about how they can better address your business's recurring payment needs as well as answer any questions you may have.

Have a look below to see what topics business owners brought up, and be on the lookout for a "Best Answers" summary post (coming soon) that covers the main takeaways from this discussion.

Note: Although we can't share specific details on our product roadmaps, this information will be helpful as we continue to make improvements.

 Photo Credit: Ambitious Creative Co. - Rick Barrett on Unsplash.

[jean_sq · Accepted solution]

Hello Everyone,

The Subscriptions team really appreciated all the great engagement! Thanks so much for taking the time to share your questions and feedback! We hope that 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 bubbled up:

Subscription plan management: Ability to change the price of a plan, swap a customer from one plan to another, and enforce cancellation policies (eg. not allow a subscriber to cancel early from a 6-month plan).

Reporting and Subscription management: Sort your subscriptions on Dashboard (by plan, billing status, subscription status, subscription date, alphabetical, etc.), generate more detailed reports (revenue, plan membership, etc.), and keep your Dashboard view clean by hiding canceled/unused subscriptions and plans.

Notifications and customer management: Customer notifications before each recurring charge, reminders of an expiring subscription and more sophisticated customer portal features

The team hopes to tackle many of these in 2023!

There was also lots of excitement around an integration with Square Appointments! In the upcoming year, we will be sharing more details on that in the Seller Community. In the near future, you can also expect to see big improvements on collecting shipping and other fulfillment information and being able to make any item in your Square catalog subscribable!

GET STARTED WITH 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.

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.

[TobaccoLeaf]

Please talk to the team about managing a way to integrate subscriptions in a way to have a balance. If we want some part of the subscription to be given back as a credit or points that they can use. I.E we want our lounge members to have a minimum spend of 100$ a month. 

We charge 120$ which includes a 20$ maintenance fee and give back 100$ on a gift card that rolls over if they don't spend it all but we as the business earn that 120$ from every member every month. This is super important for businesses looking to offer a way to get back dollars on a subscription plan to use on items within that business.

[lisaposeley]

Sorry I missed this! Looking at adding annual photography plans with a monthly membership fee. The membership includes scheduling some sessions so curious how that might work. 

[rarsriding]

what exactly is the difference between setting up a "Subscription" option in Square vs setting up a "recurring monthly invoice"?  With the Subscription option is the client notified each month before payment is automatically deducted?  With subscriptions is auto-draft from a client's checking account an option?  Or can you only take credit card payments with subscriptions? 

[jean_sq]

Hi @rarsriding, In general recurring invoices are best for handling a limited number of recipients (eg. a consulting or law office that offers fixed services with billable hours), while subscriptions are best for creating a single subscription plan that bills many users (or subscribers) automatically (e.g. a coffee of the month subscription available through your website).

Subscriptions also help sellers manage the additional complexity of scaling their business, such as configuring plan billing frequencies, free trials, customer-facing lifecycle emails and more.

Currently, Subscriptions does not auto-draft checking accounts. At this time, the buyer is not notified before each payment is withdrawn. 

[TobyFairchild]

I operate a private drum lesson studio.  I currently use Square's recurring invoices feature to invoice my students for tuition on the first of each month. This has been working well so far. I'm looking into the Square subscription feature as a possible replacement to invoicing. Not all my customers have opted in for auto credit card billing. About half did. The other half mostly pays in a reasonable amount of time but there are a number who despite remimnders being auto-sent, stil lag on payments which i have to manually text them to herd the payments in. I've no major problems with getting in all the payments but I would like to have all customers on a auto-pay / card system thus pretty much eliminating me having to manage accounts recievable. The one good thing about invoicing is that all the invoices go out on the first of the month and the money comes in at that time. With the subscription model it seems that the money would come it al all times of the month which for my type of business wouldnt be optimal. Im wondering is there a way to set / change the billing date to be the first of the month for everyone with the subscription model.  If not then I will just keep using the invoicing method.  Thank you.

[jean_sq]

Hi @TobyFairchild ! Our Subscriptions team is working on a custom billing date feature that would allow you set the billing date for all of your subscriptions (eg. 1st of the month, 15th of the month, etc.). Hope to release that early 2023! Thanks for using Square!

[porkypig1954]

Can u help me set my square so it uses my carrier t mobile to accept payments 

[TobyFairchild]

Sweet! Thanks for the info!

[Amy1222]

Would I be able to utilize this as a way to automatically charge clients on a payment plan?  

[jean_sq]

Hi @Amy1222 , depending on your exact use case, quite possibly! For example, if you had a 6 month payment plan (for example, $100/month for 6 months), you could create a subscription plan that only runs for 6 months at $100/month. With that plan, you could add subscribers/customers to that plan to make it recurring. Feel free to provide more detail if you have more questions!

[Amy1222]

Thanks so much!! Can it be set up so that the subscriber's card is automatically charged each month too?

[jean_sq]

Hi @Amy1222 , yes, if you set it up to charge a card on file, it should automatically charge the customers card. I'd recommend reading our help article to get started: https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/7627-get-started-with-subscriptions-in-dashboard

Let me know if you have any other questions! Thanks!

[Amy1222]

You're the best!! Thanks so much!! I will definitely look into that help article!