Negative $$ Item?

[brad83]

Does anyone know how to ring up a negative item?  

[TheRealChipA]

@brad83 I’m curious.  A negative price item?  For what purpose.  I know that currently this is not possible, even at the modifier level where it would be useful (ie - customer chooses NO cheese, which makes the price $x less).  However, I can tell you that I suggested this to Square a decade ago and they marked it as not planned at this time.  I’ve worked around it with some creative discounts, and by making my items more generic, to only charge for the basic, basic item with modifiers to add on everything else.

Still, I’m curious what you envision using this for?

Regards,

[brad83]

It's for private events.  When a private event pays a deposit in advance of the event. On the day of the event, we ring up the entire bill and then need to deduct the deposit.  All of the discounts I have experimented with try to subtract the deposit amount by splitting the discount amongst items on the tab. 

Example with current discounts:

$1000 total

$500 food

$500 booze

Now If I apply a $500 deposit discount, it'll subtract & split the discount up among every item on food & booze.  I don't want to reduce the cost of a Bud Light, I just need to take $500 off the bill.

[PartyManiaMD]

The quickest way to do it would be to tender the transaction as "Other Payment Types" and make a note that it was a deposit already paid.

You would run $500 on a CC or cash and $500 as "Other Payment Types".

A negative payment type would be interesting as well as a $0 payment amount so that you can make notes on the receipts.

[TheRealChipA]

What @PartyManiaMD said!

[ehflower]

However it would distort your reports by taking the initial $500 Deposit and the the evening other type of payment $500.  In theory it would take the $500 twice on any report you ran and then you would have to back the "other type of payment" out for correct reporting. 

Invoice plus module will be needed

For party work I would create an invoice, set up a payment schedule (there you have the option of creating a deposit as a percentage or as a dollar amount

 

Do not close the invoice therefor you can add your food and drink onto it and then close it out at the end of the night.

hope that helped 

[BernadetteA]

Thank you for sharing, @ehflower ❤️

[Sam_400º]

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@brad83 wrote:

Now If I apply a $500 deposit discount, it'll subtract & split the discount up among every item on food & booze.  I don't want to reduce the cost of a Bud Light, I just need to take $500 off the bill.

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It doesn't work that way in my experience. Looking at a bill I discounted today in transaction history it shows all the items at full cost then the $ (or in my case £) discount as it's own line. 

If you do a % discount then I believe it applies it to each item rather than its own line. 

The only issue with what @PartyManiaMD has suggested is that it could end up recording the same payment (the deposit) twice and screwing with your records. 

** One last suggestion though **
When you take a deposit you could apply it to a gift card (could just be internally done). So they buy a gift card as the deposit, then you apply that gift card to the sale on the day to close them out. 

[TheRealChipA]

@Sam_400º All valid points.  @brad83 would have to be sure not to record that particular payment type where he put the deposit.  I love the gift card idea!  Talk about thinking outside the box!

I think the confusion can be seen here on a screen shot from my POS.  I applied a $6.50 discount to this check, but that discount code and amount is shown for EVERY item on the check.  And to answer your question, if I add a third item AFTER the full discount has been realized, even those new items have that discount line! That is new behavior, I believe, possibly even introduced with the new POS experience.

[Sam_400º]

Ok, it’s showing that there is an active discount on the bill - but it’s not applying a discount at item level. In your screen shot it’s not reduced the $4.50 item line there is only the single line discount. 

It does seem like a strange way to display it though! 

[TheRealChipA]

Agreed.  Causing confusion for no reason.  Ticket level dollar & percentage discounts should not be listed on items, period.  Only item level percentage discounts should show on items.

[TheRealChipA]

@BernadetteA Is this possibly a bug?  I can’t imagine that it was intentional behavior.  I only tag you because I know you are active on the board right now!

[TheRealChipA]

@brad83 It’s highly possible that you are just fine with the discount method you have been using.  I can find no evidence in my transactions that ticket-level dollar discounts are actually pro-rated among all the items.  If it were, it would be a very odd engineering decision, or just flat out a bug.

[Twiggy]

I can help with this - if you need to see how the discount looks Customer end on a sale with multiple items I can send a copy of a recent job.

[BernadetteA]

Hey @TheRealChipA 👋 I'm just now seeing your notification and catching up on this thread. Based on what I've seen so far, it definitely sounds like it could be a bug. 

The best course of action, @brad83 would be to reach out to the support team directly so they can initiate the proper bug escalation. 

I'll also do some digging from my end to see if I can find any more information regarding this. 

[brad83]

Yes this is what it's doing. And when I print the receipt to give the customer, it stretches from the floor to the ceiling 

[Twiggy]

Yea - when the final invoice is raised every item has a discount applied to it - we can’t use reporting to its best as we have to allow for deposits not in the current trading year / month.

It’s a definite “Computer Says No” issue 

[Adamscottsmith]

So we were temporarily allowed to continue our lotto sales when we switched to square. I was unable to enter a negative amount to issue a winning ticket to a customer like at a gas. 

we no longer do lotto partly because of the lack of ability to do winning payouts easily and we made too little profit off of it at the end of the day. 

[artizansty]

Throwing in something else to consider if this ends up on the roadmap – In the UK we have minimum alcohol pricing laws, which it seems this might enable to be broken if discounts are used and spread across alcohol items and pushed those items below that threshold (if it ever got audited).

[Adamscottsmith]

We have the same issue in KS but this is more of a item specific thing I feel that you would set in the item details as the minimum selling price so no discount or coupon could make it lower than that set price. 

[artizansty]

How do you set a minimum price?