How to provide a credit on a invoice?

[MamaTorrez]

Question: When selling and using invoicing in square how can one provide credit for and item and have it show on the invoice. We sell to retail account perishables and returns are part of the program.

[RHatch · Accepted solution]

The only way to show a credit is to create a discount.  When you enter a discount you can enter a title for what the discount/credit is for.  Otherwise there is not a way to show a credit.  They were not designed for that.

[Jimjiminyjim]

The answer does seem to be to use the discount. It’s not ideal, which I explain in my own case below, so I was wondering who best to contact to request a new look at doing credits?  Or better yet, maybe this can be forwarded directly to the right people?

The challenge for me is that a credit is not necessarily a discount. Because we are dealing with returnable glass bottles, a credit on that item would help me keep inventory. More importantly though, a credit system would make for much easier and less error-prone entry. Currently, a credit requires manual calculations. If you want to give a credit for a certain item, or multiples of a certain item, you need to find a calculator, or leave the square app if on an iPad/iPhone, remember the item price, do the calculation, remember the result, then repeat for each item, possibly going back and forth between item list and calculator to find prices, then tally and enter. If you could do a credit for a given item or multiples of that, it removes the headache. On our farm and creamery, for example, some of the products are milk or chocolate milk or kefir or cream in glass bottles. Customers pay a deposit on the glass bottle. That’s simple enough. I have an item for the chocolate milk, and an item for the glass deposit. Where it breaks down is when dealing with returns, especially more returns than new purchases. You can’t use a set discount amount, because sometimes we have buying groups bringing a lot of bottles back, and a customer can have any number. You can’t set the discount amount to match the deposit value, because you can only add one discount (why? I get it for percentage discounts, but why can’t you add multiple dollar value discounts?). So that’s my case for adding a credit.  Am I winning anyone over?  On the technical side, it’s always work to update code, but just maybe allowing a negative sign on an item would do the trick, and coming up with a visual cue to show that it is a credit when that happens might be enough without reinventing the whole system?  These are ideas that someone might want to use to get the ball rolling?

[StephanieStyle]

Adding my voice to this call for credits on invoices. I'm a personal wardrobe stylist, and sometimes customers choose not to keep an item of clothing that they had originally wanted. I allow them to give them back to me and I want to credit their account for the return. Right now, I have to keep track of this manually and deduct it from their next service invoice manually. BIG HASSLE! Plus, I'm working with multiple clients at a time, so keeping track of returns, when I am invoicing every 6-8 weeks is a nightmare. 

I'm with you, that I only need the opportunity to put a negative number into Square and have it deduct from the customer's invoice total. 

[MayaP]

Hey there @StephanieStyle I appreciate you reaching out with this feedback. I think this is a great suggestion and see how having a feature like this would be greatly beneficial, especially for your business model.  I would encourage you to submit this request on our Ideate Board where we are tracking feature requests now. Please keep in mind a submission to Ideate does not guarantee the feature will be implemented but we will provide updates on features as they become available. 

Again thank you so much for taking the time to reach out and provide your input on this! 

[tmorgan]

Unfortunately, this answer doesn't answer the issue raised about credits in the original question.  Discounts (percentages) don't work when an invoice needs to apply a credit for an item.   Crediting is a common function of invoicing and very different than a percentage discount.  Perhaps someone from Square can provide the answer or work-around to everyone asking.  

[dotdotsmiledp]

This reply created from merging an existing thread: "How to give customer a discount" The author has been notified via email.

I do in home and online parties for my products. I would like to give hostesses a credit to be applied to their purchases. Is there a way to assign a credit to a customer and then the next time they get an invoice it will be applied until it isn't available anymore? I don't want to have to keep track in a seperate spreadsheet and I don't want to pay fees associated with buying gift cards. I just want to attach a store credit to a customer account. Is this possible and how?

[hbuchwitz]

I would try adding a gift card at 100% discount & they can use the gift card on a future purchase.

[hbuchwitz]

just noticed you didn't want the gift card bc of fees.... I don't do gc's so nevermind 🙂

[dotdotsmiledp]

Is it possible for someone from Square to chime in here and advise on this? It's becoming a logistical nightmare!

[LaLoteria]

Did you ever find an answer on this? We need to do the exact same thing - have a customer use a code at time of purchase on their invoice to recieve a discount. All invoices are emailed to clients through Square for payment. 

[pathillary]

This reply created from merging an existing thread: "Adding a credit to an invoice." The author has been notified via email.

If a customer overpays his rent invoice for last month, how can I include a credit amount in this month's invoice?

[spthomas1]

A very common business and accounting issue is crediting a customer for something.  Say they return an item they paid cash for.  Or say they overpaid an invoice. It's normal and necessary to be able to show the customer the credit on an invoice.   Can it be that this is not possible on Square? Hard to imagine this common task can't be done. But I cannot find out how to do it. 

[ashc]

Hey @spthomas1 and welcome to the Community.

I moved your post to an existing thread where another seller had the same question. 

@RHatch provided a solution above with adding a discount and you can put the reason for it on there too. 

[tmorgan]

@ashc Ashley, please note @RHatch did not provide an answer to the issue raised about not being able to issue credits on Square invoices.  Discounts (percentages) are much different than issuing a line-item credit for a particular item.  To date, a solution has not been provided on this thread by the community or Square.  Users are stating here  that they need Square's help to fix this common invoicing function.  Please advise.  Thank you 🙂

[COAT]

I use Square invoicing to bill our members for event registration fees. Due to Covid-19, we had to cancel an event in March. Several of my members had already paid for that event. We have another event coming up in November. Is there a way to credit the March payment on November's invoice so I don't have to write a bunch of individual checks? I tried to list a (-1) in the quantity portion to show the credit, but it won't allow that. Any other ideas??

[Valentina]

Hi there @COAT 👋

I've moved your post to a thread where others sellers had similar questions about invoicing, @RHatch came through with a great bit of advice that should point you in the right direction here!

[tmorgan]

Unfortunately, the answer you referenced doesn't answer the issue raised about credits in the original question.  Discounts (percentages) don't work when an invoice needs to apply a credit for an item.   Crediting is a common function of invoicing and very different than a percentage discount.  Perhaps someone from Square can provide the answer or work-around to everyone asking.  

[AshleyK]

@tmorgan Thanks for addressing this. The ability to issue a credit for an invoice, rather than a discount, is a feature request. I will pass this feedback to our developers for future reference, but I appreciate your questions. Please let me know if I can help otherwise. 

[CarolineTotah]

I agree wholeheartedly that there needs to be a credit option that is distinctly different from a discount. Is there a place we can make feature requests, or add our support for those that have already been suggested? 

[kls1]

We have the same problem with Covid related cancellations, where the customer wanted us to reserve the payment for a future event. Did you find a way to credit a paid invoice  to a future invoice? I thought I did it by using the discount function, but when it zeroed out the new invoice it said the invoice had to be at least $1.00. I can't seem to make anything work.