Can I backdate, edit, or delete a transaction?

[AC]

The title of this post has been edited from the original:  Can you delete a transaction?

How do you delete a completed "Cash" transaction? I ran it just as a test.

[AC]

The title of this post has been edited from the original:  Can you delete a transaction?

[#3]

Hi @TheGlencafe,

Right now we have no plans to add the ability to backdate, delete or manipulate transaction information after a sale is complete. 

For context, the ability to manipulate transactions can cause issues for reporting and chargebacks. Also, it would make it easier for fraudsters and scammers to commit crimes using Square Point of Sale. 

If you have test cash transactions in your transaction history, you can always refund these payments to balance your books. See our help article on how to refund a payment.

Hopefully this has provided some transparency on this request, and why it's not available. 

[#4]

Hello @alexaiezza, welcome to the Seller Community! 

Currently adding the ability to delete a transaction is not on our road map. The reasoning behind this is we use this information to submit 1099-K's to the IRS. I'm not saying you would do this, but it would be easy to cook your books if this ability was available. 

Another request on this thread is to be able to void transactions so they don't show on reports. Currently we are in the process of collecting feedback for this request. I don't have a timeline on when it might be available. 

If you have any other questions please let me know! 

[#5]

@TomTr

I appreciate your feedback in regards to this. I know you've probably read this multiple times within the Seller Community, but we really do send customer feedback over to our Product Teams, and advocate for changes for you.

I absolutely agree that a void feature would help with training and testing, and also make reporting look a lot cleaner as well. You make a great point that with test payments, or payments made by mistake, nothing is ever actually sold, so your gross sales report shouldn't reflect a sale (which is what results when issuing a refund).

As you've alluded to in your previous post, there are two different requests within this thread. Some folks are looking for the ability to completely remove or delete a transaction, which isn't possible at this time. We don’t have any new information around whether or not this will ever become available.

The other option that folks are looking for, having an option to mark payments that have been completed as voided/cancelled rather than refunded, would help sellers a ton and we’ll continue to reiterate that to the team on your behalf.

We know this request is important to you, so as soon as there are updates that we’re able to share publicly, we will.

I hope this provides more clarity, and thank you all, again, for your feedback!

[#6]

Maybe the Square team can find a way to mark the transactions as Void, so that they do not affect sales totals, but neither are the transactions erased.

From an accounting standpoint, I can see why they would not let a transaction just be deleted. There has to be a documentation trail.

When I have to make test transactions, when I refund the transaction I make note that it was a test transaction and that is why it was refunded. There is also the "Accidental Charge" notation available.

Then when I download my sales reports, I sort the test transactions out and make a note in my saved spreadsheet.

[fbcamp]

I can't believe the question is 5 years old and still no solution.  I just signed up for square, have done a ton of test transactions and now I want them gone.  Sorry, remembering start date is a very poor work around for square failing to recognize that EVERY new account will go through the same process.  Maybe a hide button or test button or at the very least allow a 1 time reset when done with testing.  I am completely baffled that after 5 years square has failed to recognize that this is an issue.  I now feel my entire reporting data set is going to be forever dirty because of these test transactions.  Regretting my decision to use square.  I no longer have faith in the new features that the sales team said were coming in Q2 this year.  Thankfully there are no contracts here.

[AnetteB]

Hi,

I am fairly new to Square and made a boo-boo today.
I put a payment through under "Others" without acutally receiving the payment. It was certainly my mistake, because I am also starting to take HICAPS payments, so trying to work it all out.

Anyway, I just put it through as a refund, but it still looks like my client has paid.
Can anyone tell me how to reverse a mistake like that?

Thank you

Anette

[TheAlderman]

I'm glad I only did one test transaction but like everyone else here, I feel ripped off by Square. I'm a software engineer by trade and am setting Square up for my partner. I've never seen a system so poorly thought through from a "testing and training" perspective.

[flanaganlady]

How do I cancel an accidental cash sale that didn't happen?

[VanKalkerFarms]

You can refund the sale so your reports will show the right net income, but you can't delete a transaction. One of my kids rang up a million dollar sale once. Nothing we could do to fix our total sale numbers. 

[TRBrown]

I wish there was an Void button instead of having to use the refund, for the reason that it shows in your totals 

[Wrenn3]

My child did the exact same thing, we only use square for mobile transactions when we are not in our brick and mortor will this screw me up? Should I just refund it? Thanks! 

[puka]

Hey @Wrenn3! We definitely recommend refunding it and it should balance your books. 🙂

[red-barn]

Refunding will "balance the books" but my four 999,999 dollar sales that got rang up by kids messed up my sales trends reports.  Even after the refund, the report shows that my sales are up 700 percent from last year.  Can we have a way to remedy this so the sales trend reports are still accurate and relevent? Thanks

[Flourpower49]

Did you figure out how to fix your reports. I had an accidental $90,000 sale that is throwing my records off. I did do the refund. 

[red-barn]

I have not found any solution.  Square has been quiet on the matter.  I read where they are not able to take fake sales off the record so that folks won't be cooking their books.  Folks will always figure out a way to cook the books if they intend to.  They can do daily refunds for all sales I suppose.  Anyway, the honest folks (who simply need to have an erroneous charge removed) are being limited by rules applicable to the dishonest folks.  It's like airport security:  All the normal folks are gettting groped and spending hours in lines and the terrorists continue to laugh.

Hey Square, here is a solution:  keep the fake charge if you must, (who has a sale for $999,999 anyway?) but allow a modification to the sales trend report, with a note of course, explaining that we aren't trying to hide this sale for any other reason than to keep the reports meaningful for our business. 

With my huge "sale" in my sales trend reports, it's going to be hard next year to top this years sales.  I suppose next year I could add an even bigger fake sale and then I could refund it real quick but it would still jack the yearly sales figures way up.  Hey I think I found a way to cook my books to make my sales look bigger than they are!  Maybe I will just keep doing this and when I sell my business I can flaunt my gloriously inflated sales trends! 

I did the refund but it did not balance out and fix the sales reports. 

[gariston]

Lack of this ability is something people should be aware of before chosing Square POS. I haven't seen this in any reviews while doing my POS research. I still haven't decided what I'll use but erroraneous reporting of refunded items as sales is a significant obstacle to choosing Square POS.

[cmusicshop]

@red-barn Something like this is definitely needed.  Dishonest people will always find a way.  We need a way to void a sale, add a note and move on.

Also, a training mode would be nice.  It is hard to walk someone through the sales process when you have to stop before the actual completion.

[CRF]

Second a training mode

[CB03801]

I also vote for the ability to void an erroneous transaction. If Square doesn’t want to do that, then a simple toggle ability in reporting to go from gross to net would be helpful. All of the metrics that I use to track my business are screwed up because an employee accidentally made a ginormous cash sale. Assuming that doesn’t happen again, it will take two years for that number to clear out of relevant reports. grrrr!!!

[Hive]

Someone "accidently' entered a charge of $999,999.99.  We issued a refund but can't get the amount out of revenue reports.  THat messes up comparatives, etc.

[VanKalkerFarms]

Unfortunately, there is not a way to delete a transaction. I have the exact same issue that my daughter ran a million dollar transaction. I wish this could be done but I have called in and emailed and talk to many people at square over last 5 years and it can’t be done. 

[VanKalkerFarms]

While I understand not wanting employeess to just delete transactions as they want, I think that there should be the ability for the owner of the company to call into Square, with some 2-factor authentication if need be, to delete obviously erroneous transactions like a million dollar transaction.  I understand Square doesn't want to be babysitting customers accounts deleting transactions all day but big ones like this make all the fancy stats Square is great for nearly useless because it still shows as a sale and throws off all charts and graphs.  I have one transaction in 5 years I would like deleted so it isn't a daily thing.  Hopefully, someday it will become a possibility.

[douglastonwine]

This reply created from merging an existing thread: "How to permanently remove transaction record?".

How to permanently remove the transaction record?? rather than process a refund.  I don't want the record in square database.

Square: Can you add this option to POS?

thanks 

[Keslerscience]

First post here. 

What's the first thing anyone does with a new POS?  Create a dummy transaction.  

Why can I not delete it?  This seems completely illogical.  

Chris

[Dingo]

I too am frustrated. Our sales reports are now way off after a large order was returned. We issued the refund on the transaction and assumed the sales reports would have made the adjustment instantly. We depend on the sales reports to see items sold in each category. We continued carrying on business as normal. It took a while before someone on our team realized the sales reports were inflated because Square never adjusted the sales report totals after the return. We still haven't found a way to correct the reports and now have to keep a shadow system in addition to square just to reconcile everything. Simply ridiculous that the reports won't adjust to reflect returns or mis-entries. An auditors nightmare. Please fix!