Live Q&A with the Square Beta Team!

[kellyj]

On Wednesday the 4th of December at 2pm PT/ 5pm ET we’re hosting our first ever Square Beta Live Q&A! 

Have you ever considered being part of Square Beta and using the Beta App? Would you like to be on the front line of product releases and updates? Want to drive meaningful change for your business and those around you? We want to work with you to make sure our products are not only useful but also invaluable for your business.

Our own @lindsaybee  and @Howard and myself, will be here to answer all your questions live on December 4th at 2pm PT. 

Square Beta offers our Sellers the chance to do all the things above. We know you have Feedback and Requests - now is a great time to get into our specific Beta Community where you’ll be influencing the next product launches. 

Here are some example questions:

• What is the benefit of being in a Beta Program?
• What is the best way to offer Feedback or report a bug?
• What do you need from me as a Beta Seller?
• Do Feature Requests actually go anywhere?

Click Reply below to ask your question and we’ll answer every question on Wednesday the 4th of December!

To join our Private Beta Seller Community check out this post in the Community, request to join, and download the Beta App to get started!

[#2]

Hiya Community! 

We're here and about to begin answering all your questions on this rainy Wednesday in San Fransisco. 

If you have further questions, feel free to post them and we'll get to them as we are able.

@Howard @lindsaybee and myself! 

[samsmith]

As far as Square appointments can the cost of the appointment be added to the customer’s confirmation screen and email? 

Also, double booking option including processing time for services?  

And customizing the online scheduling and adding pictures to services? 

[samsmith]

Also, when is an app coming for Square Marketing and Loyalty? 

[kellyj]

Great questions @samsmith! Both of these are Feature Requests for Appointments and Marketing/Loyalty. We can track this for you and notify you in the case we have a product release around these requests. Also please feel free to subscribe to our Product Update board for specific feature release announcements!

[Blonderellas]

Would love the option for clients to be able to book what they have done on a previous appointment.  Most of my clients book themselves ,but no matter how long they have come to me, they can't remember what we did lol. Seeing what was done the previous appointment and the option to repeat that would be awe! 

[kellyj]

@Blonderellas

You should be able to check the notes you leave in your Appointment by utilizing your Customer Directory.

You can add a custom field and bring up your customer information by going to the Customers Tab > Choose your Customer > View Previous activity (and notes you left on that service) or add a Custom Field to that profile to keep your own notes so they are exportable in the case you’d like to print them. Appointments doesn’t have a specific Beta Feature at this time.

[khendrix]

Why is it not possible to mark an invoice prepaid when it is being created? That would save me and my clients time and paper not having to deal with an invoice and a notification of payment on a prepaid job.

[Howard]

@khendrix Thank you for your feedback. Currently in our Invoices Beta Program we are testing the ability to schedule a deposit and up to nine balance payments on this invoice. You are able to manage the progress of this Invoice and allow your client flexibility when paying their invoice.

As for your request, we have heard this feedback before and we understand how this will help your business. Although we don't know when this feature might be available, this kind of feedback is super helpful to our product teams when roadmapping and prioritizing for the future.

[Westrockwake]

We are a seasonal business that would benefit greatly from some sort of RFID setup, and believe this would be great for any of the festivals you might partner with. Is this something in the Square pipeline? Can we be a beta for some sort of wristband payment system? 

[kellyj]

@Westrockwake You can definitely join the Beta Community and start using the Beta App, although we don’t have that functionality currently in Beta. We are tracking Feature Requests in this thread and in the Community, so this is something we’d be happy to notify you about in the case we have an active Beta to test functionality like this.

[tranquilityskin]

The one problem I have with square POS is with the tips. I have a skin care business and my clients like to tip. But they also purchase products from me. So when it comes to the tip screen I have to explain they can’t use the % buttons because they have products on their purchase so if they tip 20% on the total amount they are tipping on their products as well.  I’ve tried removing the tip % buttons but now they don’t like it because they have to do the custom tip and figure out the tip in their head. I need the tip to be calculated on their services only but not on the product. Thanks!!!!

[kellyj]

Thanks for your thoughts on this @tranquilityskin. Although our Beta program isn’t running any specific Appointments features like this at the time, I can certainly see where that is a problem for you. The workaround that exists would be to check out the service, then start a new sale for the items. That can be a bit cumbersome though, and imagine tedious because you are checking out a client twice.

I'm happy to pass this feedback to our Appointments team for you, I do know it’s a requested often. If you check out my response above about Feature Requests, it should shed some light on this for you.

[Yarrow]

When will the feature become available where a discount can be applied to a specific Category of products.   I am always offering sales on my "Seasonal" category but I have to apply the discount to every individual "Seasonal" product.  I want to set up a discount for "Seasonal" and it automatically applies to the products under that category.  This takes so long at checkout to do it individually.  I've been asking about this feature for almost two years and never hear back or see anything done about it.  I know other sellers who have this same issue with discounts.

Also, I would like an option where the screen stays on all the time and doesn't go to "sleep".  It's frustrating to have to wake it up all the time.

[kellyj]

@Yarrow This sounds like something that Automatic Discounts may be able to help you with. These are discounts that allow you to select and entire category for a select amount of time. So you could do your seasonal items for 2 weeks, or 3 months if you wanted — and set up all the items in that category to be discounted.   

This Product Update has more details and Automatic Discounts for Square Point of Sale app and step-by-step instructions are in the Support Center too!

[Yarrow]

How come this feature isn't available from the Register?  I never knew this even existed because I can only access it from the website.

[SavoryGourmet]

Will Beta ever including scheduling in square??We use Homebase since square doesn’t offer, but we don’t like some of its inherent unresolved issues. For example it doesn’t calculate breaks according to what’s in square, it assumes service charge always goes to the house for all companies, it gives tips to the employees that actually go to the house. We don’t need all those extra calculations it is doing and doing wrong. We just need basic scheduling without including tips or service charge, but Homebase won’t do it. Will square EVER beta a basic scheduling component? If so, we are in!

[kellyj]

@SavoryGourmet I probably need a little more context into what you mean by scheduling. We do offer the ability to run your schedules by using Timecards. Not totally sure this would be the best option for you, but enabling Timecards and Team Management would possibly help with this. For more information on Team Management and Timecards — check out our Support Center article and this Product Update about timecard reporting.

[SavoryGourmet]

By Scheduling I'm referring to employee scheduling. So they know what days and times they are to show up to work. We do currently use the time clock for them to clock in and out. I would prefer to have the ability to schedule which employees  work each day through square instead of a third party app like Homebase. 

[poohbear373]

How does someone become a brand ambassador and promote Square Card to area users already and get credit or some kind of reward for showing them how beneficial the cars actually is.

[kellyj]

@poohbear373

Square Beta does not offer an official brand ambassador program. You are able to send people your link and invite them to try Square - POS or Beta. When they start and account and take payments, it will generate Free Processing for you. Read more about our Referral Program Program here.

[AaronAVDP]

I’ve been using the beta Invoices. Is there going to be a fix on holding the default message in estimates and invoices? The default message will save in the actual Square app under invoices and on the desktop online version.

Will services be added to estimates?

There are modifiers for services now, but they can only be added by us on checkout. Will a customer be able to choose them on the online Appointments site?

[Howard]

@AaronAVDP Thank you for your feedback. We hear these requests a lot from our Invoicing sellers. While we don’t have these features on our current product roadmap, I will share these requests with our product team. 

As far as the Appointments modifiers — that is also a feature request. We’re happy to pass it to the team, and see Kelly’s post about the Feature Request Lifecycle for more information!