Live Q&A: Learn how to make any item in your Square catalog subscribable!

[kristen]

Hello Seller Community,

Exciting news! We've just launched Square Subscription availability through your Square Online catalog. To showcase this powerful feature, we brought back @jean_sq, the Subscriptions product marketing manager, for a quick demonstration on how to create these subscription plans. We'd love to hear your reactions, so take a look at the videos below and drop your feedback in the comments section. Please note that this feature is currently only offered through Square Online and Square Dashboard.

How to sell subscriptions through Square Online

How to create a plan with Square Dashboard

With this new feature, you can sell physical items, donations, and services on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly subscription basis. In addition, you can create "Subscribe & Save" programs, which allow you to give your most loyal customers discounts on their subscription orders.

How to participate:

Check out the video demonstration above and post your questions to this thread. Then, check back with us on Thursday, July 13, at 12 p.m. PDT/3 p.m. EDT as the Subscriptions team responds. 

A few example questions:

• I'm just getting started with subscriptions for my business — what should I keep in mind as I get set up?
• If I could do "_______" with subscriptions and inventory, that would make my customers' experience much better.

Please note: We are unable to share specific details on our product roadmaps, though this information will be helpful as we continue to make improvements.

[Mycology]

Hello @jean_sq ! We’ve been looking forward to this product update and very excited that it’s here. Here is our scenario:

We’re a mushroom farm and have been using the checkout link subscription plan to offer customers a "Subscribe and Save 20%” option for 4 different kinds of grow kits. With that legacy plan, the customer had to write in the type of kit they wanted. It confused people.

 To set up the new subscription feature, my plan is to create a new “Subscribe and Save 20%” subscription and assign the 4 different kits to it. Since each kit has its own product page and if I assign the new “Save 20%” plan to each of the grow kit pages, will the Square order properly track the type of grow kit because the customer subscribed to it from that specific kit page?  

OR is it better if I set up a “Subscribe & Save”  subscription plan for each of the 4 different grow kit types and put the specific plan on the corresponding page?

Also, am I correct in assuming that a customer can buy a single kit OR buy the “subscribe and save 20%” from the same kit product page?

Thanks!

[jean_sq]

Hi @Mycology if I'm understanding your situation, I think you could go a couple directions. If the description for each of these grow kits is the same, you could have just one listing and have each type of kit as a required choice. Do they all cost the same amount as well? You are correct that you are able to offer something as both a one time option or with a discount as a "subscribe and save". 

If you want to have a different description for each kit, you could create separate listings for each kit (and offer each as one time and as a "subscribe and save" subscription)

Without a thorough understanding of your order inventory situation, I believe that it should track each kit properly. Let me know if you have other questions 🙂

[christiema]

Is there a way to categorize the subscription charges? As it currently stands, under reports, it's listed as "uncategorized" and for reports sake, I would like to include it in services or under a category of its own.  

[doc_choc]

Hi @kristen could you confirm when this function will be available in the UK region?

Many thanks 🙂

[kristen]

Hi @doc_choc - great question! There is no ETA yet for the UK or international release; the team is addressing some international-specific bugs before it can launch. We'll keep you posted in UK Product Updates when we have launch info! 😊

[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 some themes that bubbled up:

• Custom Billing options: Ability to set a particular billing date for a subscription so that they all bill on the same day. (eg. have all subscriptions bill on the 1st of the month)
• Additional fulfillment options for Subscriptions: Allowing a customer to pick-up their subscription item or have it delivered.
• Tracking Subscription Benefits: Having the capability to keep track of how many times a subscriber has used a particular subscription benefit (eg. track how many times a subscriber has had a massage as part of their monthly “3 massages per month” subscription plan).
• Reporting and Subscription management: Sort your subscriptions on Dashboard (by plan, billing status, subscription status, subscription date, alphabetical, etc.) and generate more detailed reports (revenue, plan membership, etc.). (Update! We have just released CSV Export for Subscriptions which will allow you to download all of your subscription data as a CSV file)

The team hopes to tackle many of these this year!

The team is also working with Square Appointments on an integration to launch a more robust membership option. This integration will include allowing a seller to keep track of how much of a subscription benefit a customer has used in a particular time period.

In the upcoming year, we will be sharing more details on that in the Seller Community.

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.

[WineFactory]

Please confirm:

Are you setting the date 1 time?

Or are you able to modify the date after the subscriptions have already been ran?

Thank You

Brandon

[jean_sq]

Hi @WineFactory , I'm not sure if this is what you are asking but once you create a subscription on a particular date, it will continue to re-bill on that same day in the future (Eg. you create a monthly subscription on the 22nd, it will always bill on the 22nd). In the future we will be releasing custom billing dates which will allow you to pick a particular day (for example, first of the month) to bill all subscriptions. Does that answer your question? Thank you!

[js4sfarm]

Hi, I’m wondering if you might consider the option to allow customers to create a subscription based on any of the items I currently sell - not for an individual item only. Let’s say I sell tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers and basil. Maybe customer A wants to create a weekly subscription for Lettuce and Basil, and customer B wants to setup a subscription for Tomatoes and Cucumbers, etc. Do you think this type of item variation in a subscription, chosen by the customer, will be made available sometime?

[jean_sq]

Hi @js4sfarm , we do have subscriber chosen subscriptions on our product backlog. However, it's not planned for this year and I don't have any more specific ETA for it. Sorry 😞

[js4sfarm]

If it’s on the backlog, that’s already good to hear. Thanks!