Q&A: Using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional

[Kpay]

Hi Sellers,

On Friday, January 26th from 10am-11am PST, we hosted a Live Q&A on payment best practices for freelancers and service-based professionals. We had the Square Invoices Product Manager, Rohini Pandhi, here to help you make the most out of our invoicing product. Check out all her answers below! 

@rohini leads the product team for Square Invoices. Previous to Square, she worked as a consultant, started her own company, and has experience invoicing her own clients. She understands how important getting paid on time and having a healthy cash flow is for many small businesses.

Customize your Square Invoices to have your professional branding.A couple example questions:

• How can I protect my business from future disputes and non-payments?
• How can I automatically charge my customers for their monthly service fees? 

Thanks for all your questions and cheers!

[DavesOriginals]

That is a good question. We came across this during the holidays last year. I just went in and added it as an item available for sale. Then when we were sending invoices for something we had to mail I just included the "SHIIPING FEE" to that one invoice. We left the price open as a variable so you can change the price depending on what you're mailing out.

If you don't use this often you can always delete it later on so it doesn't get too jumbled in there.

Hope this helps!

[rohini]

@justtherightbli, we realize that shipping goods is a huge part of the business flow for many of our customers, which is why we recently released the ability to ask your buyers for their shipping address during their payment checkout. 🙌

We have also received feedback on integrating shipping with other label printing providers (see my response to @wisconsingirl30 on this above).

And another request we sometimes hear is what you’ve mentioned - automatically adding a shipping charge to an invoice that has a shipped product. While there isn't a built-in method for adding shipping to an invoice, as @DavesOriginals mentioned (thanks again @DavesOriginals!), you could create an item named "shipping," and then add it to your invoice to help simplify your invoicing process.

[zack12255]

Are you going to add the function to add customers to the loyalty program when sending payment as an invoice?

[rohini]

@zack12255, we’ve heard differing opinions on this from our sellers; some want the loyalty integrations, others do not. Since there are a broad set of use cases with something like this, it may become a global setting you can configure for your Square Invoices in the future!

[peterg]

Wll the Live Q&A be reorded?

[katieand]

Hi @peterg - Our live Q&A is "live" in the internet sense. We'll be online in live time posting answers to these questions and any more that appear, but won't have an actual video recording. It's similar to an AMA (Ask Me Anything). 

If you're not available to be online with us from 10-11am PST, you can always navigate back to this page to read the responses that Rohini posts. 

Let us know if you have any other questions.

[ImmersiveSpaces]

With the tons of duplicate feature requests, you guys should just have a page that has a list of requested features that people can vote on so you can see what is a priority for your users and also provide updates on when they are being actively worked on. Not necessarily delivery dates, but just letting us know they are in progress. It may seem trivial, but as a small business owner, knowing that a needed feature is at least in the works may entice me to at least stick it out with Square while it is developed vs switching to another provider that already offers the solutions I need.

In my time with Square I see repeated requests for these:

1. PARTIAL INVOICE PAYMENTS
2. ABILITY TO DELETE ERRORED TRANSACTIONS OR AT LEAST HIDE TRANSACTIONS FROM REPORTING
3. ABILITY TO ISSUE STORE CREDIT (Separate from Gift Cards)
4. REGISTER PRINTED ANNUAL REPORTS BY CUSTOMER
5. BACKDATING OF INVOICES
6. CUSTOMER NAME ON REGISTER RECEIPTS

These are from my wishlist on this thread.

[Kpay]

@ImmersiveSpaces, thanks for your comments. I agree with you - we could do a better job here in the community of providing more clarity on the status of feature requests. This is something we're actively thinking more about and will be testing soon, so stay tuned! As we roll out solutions for this please be patient with us - we'll need your feedback to make sure we're doing it in a way that works for customers and for Square. 

Regarding your list, I know what you mean for items #1-5, but can you describe #6 a little more? With Square Point of Sale, if you swipe or dip the card, you should see customer name on the receipt, since we pull that info from the card. It's true that right now if you add a customer to a sale from Directory, their name won't automatically appear on the receipt. But after the sale, if you find the transaction on your dashboard or in your app, you'll be able to see the customer from Directory associated with that payment. 

[smallakin]

I don't know what his needs are, but we take custom orders for some items in our store and we add a customer to those sales to make sure we have all of their information.  However, it doesn't print out on the receipt and therefore doesn't really help us at all to contact them when their order is ready.  We made a separate form for these orders just to take their info, would be super convenient to have their saved customer info on the receipt.

[creatorsgame]

The IRS requires that a donors name is listed on the receipt for tax deduction purposes. If the donor gives with a credit card, it's not an issue, but if they donate with cash, then their name is not listed, even if we select them from the customer directory and add them to the sale. Right now the workflow for cash donations is to add the customer to the sale, and then type their name again in the notes field... it's terribly time-consuming especially when you are trying to get through a line of people, so we use a completely separate system for cash/check donations.

[rohini]

That's helpful to know your perspective @smallakin! Thanks for sharing.

[ImmersiveSpaces]

That suggestion on the wishlist was from one of the non-profit organizations. I'll defer the response to @creatorsgame on that one.

[Mingo]

EXACTLY! 

I’m still carrying an additional CC processor on top of square because I can’t fully transition with out making a mess of my book keeping or confusing my clients with excessive emails or weird modifiers on their reciepts. 

The responses for repeated feature requests are so vague and unassuring.

I’m not even fully on square, I want to be, very much so, but I’m already shopping other options. 

[ImmersiveSpaces]

We aren't fully on Square yet either mainly because of the inability to take partial invoice payments.

[stonewaterarts]

I’m just running into this I ramp up my custom work.  I’ll be using PayPal to invoice for custom work since I can take a partial payment there.  I’m re-evaluating Square as a useful payment processing option based on this issue. 

[wisconsingirl30]

I’m in the same boat! I have to manually re-enter all of my clients info into PayPal as well... i send out about 50 invoices a week. I sure wish they would take the step to implement shipping with usps to make small business easier!!! I know a ton of people who would be thrilled!!!

[rohini · Accepted solution]

Thank you all for the great questions and participation! I really enjoyed talking to you about your businesses and invoicing needs. To wrap up, I thought I’d leave you with a summary of the tips we discussed today:

1. Stay organized and manage your payments

We know that you didn’t get into business because you love the invoicing process. But getting paid on time is important to your cash flow, so use tools (like Square Invoices) that will help you stay on top of your outstanding payments and get money into your bank account as quickly as possible.

If you have regular customers that you need to invoice on a set schedule, you can also use Square Invoices to manage your recurring payments. Your customers can securely save their cards on file with Square and your business can automatically charge those cards when an invoice is due.

For more information on how to use Square Invoices, check out our YouTube videos on How to Create an Invoice with Square and Advanced Invoicing.

2. Send contracts with your payment requests

When invoicing for your goods or services, it’s important for your invoices to be clear and professional. Having a detailed contract attached to your invoice allows you to set expectations with your customers, avoid future disputes, and get paid faster! We’ve put together a few contract templates for you to adapt for your own needs here: https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/6302. You can customize these documents and attach the resulting PDF to your Square Invoices when requesting payment.

3. Take your invoicing on-the-go

You may not always be in front of your computer when you need to send an invoice. Our free Square POS app (for Android and iOS) lets you view and manage your invoices from your phone or tablet wherever you are. For more information on how to use our mobile app, check out this handy guide on our blog: https://squareup.com/townsquare/free-invoice-app.

No matter the platform, with Square Invoices you can send an unlimited amount of invoices free. You just pay the processing fee for any invoice that gets paid online with a credit or debit card.

Thank you again for your questions and comments. If you have any other questions, feel free to post them on Seller Community and we’ll answer!

[marblecreekfarm]

We use ShopKeep solely because of this. We are a meat farm but the same issue is true for produce vendors, seafood sellers, butchers or anyone that sells by weight not just hours. How many small to medium farmers are out that would be customers if you fixed this one thing.

At some point Quickbooks will do it and then Square will permantely lose these potential customers.

I just cannot understand why this is so hard. I (and many others) want to be a square customer so badly but this is just an unacceptbly long period of time to not give your customers what they ask for. Take this platform to the next level and fix this!! 

Please. I will send you steaks and bacon. I will make you your own custom sausage if you want. Whatever it takes!